“Well, what about Shepard?” Captain Anderson asked.
“I don’t like it. The first human Spectre should be one of ours.” Ambassador Udina predictably groused.
“Things have been tense between the Vaastans and the rest of the Alliance since the... incident on Gagarin Station. This could be an opportunity to smooth things over.” Anderson retorted.
Udina began to reply, but was cut off by Admiral Hackett. Both men stopped quarreling when the elder statesman of the Alliance Navy spoke up. “She proved herself during the Blitz. Held off enemy forces on the ground until reinforcements arrived. She’s the only reason Elysium is still standing.”
“We can’t question her courage but…” Udina tried to reply, but Anderson cut him off.
“Humanity needs a hero, and, Alliance or no, Shepard’s the best we’ve got.”
Udina glared, but it was clear which way the winds were blowing. “I’ll make the call.”
In the year 2048, a colony ship departed Earth with hundreds of cryogenically frozen bodies aboard. They emerged onto a vast and hostile alien structure which was nonetheless rich with mineral resources. One of these was an exotic form of matter which, when properly refined and electrically charged, distorted the very field in which the fundamental forces of nature propagated. With this material, travel even to the furthest stars became, not only possible, but relatively simple.
They called it the greatest discovery in human history.
The civilizations of the galaxy call it mass effect.
Jane Shepard listened to Joker rattling off the pre-transit checks with only half her attention. She only needed to step in if something went wrong, and she could easily check the familiar patter against her expectations. That freed up the rest of her mind to think about the extremely unexpected element standing directly behind her chair in the cockpit. She could feel his beady black eyes boring into the back of her head.
“Something bothering you, Jane?” Flere asked through the speaker mounted on her mastoid, the sound reaching her eardrum and thence her brain at full speaking volume while not allowing any noticeable sound to escape into the rest of the ship.
“No shit. Three guesses, and the first two don’t count.” she subvocally moved her jaw and tongue and flexed her vocal cords, equally silently responding to the drone.
She felt the mass relay kick her into her seat as it jumped them from Sol to Utopia in a mere handful of seconds. She heard Flere knock into the turian Spectre, Nihlus, apparently as a result of the unexpected shift from the relay.
“That was funny, don’t do it again.” Shepard subvocalized.
“You’re not my mom.” Flere retorted.
“No, but I can have you reassigned.”
That shut the drone up.
“1500 is good.” Nihlus said, likely in response to Joker’s drift report. “Your captain will be pleased.”
“I hate that guy.” Joker said after the Spectre turned his back and left.
“Nihlus gave you a compliment… so you hate him?” Lieutenant Alenko asked from his place across from her on the other side of the cockpit.
“You remember to zip up your jumpsuit on the way out of the bathroom? That’s good. I just jumped us halfway across the galaxy and hit a target the size of a pinhead. So that’s incredible. Besides, Spectres are trouble. I don’t like having him on board. Call me paranoid.”
“You’re paranoid.” Jane chimed in. “But you’re not wrong.”
The two men waited for her to elaborate further. Deciding to maintain the air of the mysterious Vaastan, she declined to do so.
“The Council helped fund this project. They have a right to send someone to keep an eye on their investment.” Kaidan said, trying to come up with a reasonable explanation which might provoke further comment from the commander.
“Yeah, that is the official story. But only an idiot believes the official story.” Joker reasonably replied.
“Mission’s to retrieve something from the surface of Eden Prime.” Jane said. She’d been given the full briefing about the Prothean beacon before they left Earth, along with a list of local contacts (many of them), expected resistance (none), and the usual bullshit that occupied 90% of 90% of briefings. She’d still loaded tactical maps of the Eden Prime colony onto Flere’s databanks in case the batarian slavers or opportunistic Terminus pirates which had been listed under the “worst-case scenario” section of the brief decided to show up, but Flere had checked the base rates. If Eden Prime’s archaeological site had any operational security at all, the odds of that happening were less than 1%. Now that they were in-system, she could read the crew into the mission-critical non-sensitive details of the operation. “More than that… you can probably read about it in the news a week from now but, for now, OpSec.”
“I knew it!” Joker punched the air in celebration. “I knew there was…”
“Joker, status report.” Captain Anderson’s voice coming over the comm interrupted him.
“Just cleared the mass relay, Captain. Stealth systems engaged. Everything looks solid.”
Jane tuned back out of the routine chatter, bringing up Flere’s short term recordings from their onboard camera from right before the jump onto her console. As she’d felt, the turian Spectre’s eyes had been glued to the back of her head. Joker jumped and Flere rammed the turian, causing him to stumble. Jane chuckled at the footage, then tuned back in when she heard her name.
“...epard to meet me in the comm room for her briefing.”
“On my way.” she said, bringing her chair around and pushing herself to her feet.
As she walked through the CIC, she heard several crew members speculating about what their mission really was. She hated the Alliance sometimes. Vaastans knew that sometimes you had to keep a secret, their entire society was built around mystery cults, but she hated actively lying to her crewmates. She’d have much preferred to tell them that they were running a mission that Alliance command wanted to keep a lid on for now and, for OpSec reasons, they couldn’t give anyone any more details. But that sort of decision was made about 6 org chart levels higher than her own position, and the entire point of the Alliance/Vaastan cross-recruitment program was to get Vaastans and Terran humans comfortable with exactly this kind of institutional difference, precisely so that they could smoothly work together if humanity ever faced a serious external threat.
“You’re drifting. Back on target.” Flere said.
“Thanks.” She replied as she entered the comms room. Her attention, gradually drifting back to the present, snapped all the way there as she processed that Nihlus, and only Nihlus stood in the comms room.
“Commander Shepard.” the turian finally addressed her directly. “I was hoping you’d get here first. It will give us a chance to talk. Privately. And off the record.” He said, giving Flere a significant look.
“I would prefer to turn off the recording functions and keep the drone with me, if that’s alright. It’s a religious thing.” She replied.
“I understand, but this is a matter of some importance and sensitivity. Please.” He gestured towards the door.
Jane nodded and opened the drone piloting app on her omni-tool, piloting Flere out of the room and parking it near where Doctor Chakwas and Corporal Jenkins were chatting. She didn’t actually say she wasn’t recording, just that she’d prefer it. Her mastoid implant was more than sensitive enough to pick up conversation, and Flere’s built in microphones were well up to the task of recording through ship bulkheads and filtering out the background noise of a ship at work. But the Spectre’s concerns about security were misplaced. She could count the number of known entities who could bypass Flere’s security without triggering their self-destruct on her thumbs, and still have a hand free. To say nothing of how they were usually airgapped during combat. But she couldn’t say that without letting a Council Spectre know that the drones which followed around most off-world Vaastans were piloted by fully-sentient colonies of virtual emulations of human brains, rather than the dumb library VI’s they allowed the rest of the galaxy to believe they were. So, she decided that the two deceptions cancelled each other, and since she hadn’t positively said any statements that were false, she hadn’t sinned.
“Thank you.” Nihlus said.
“What did you want to talk about?”
“I’m interested in this world we’re going to - Eden Prime. I’ve heard it’s quite beautiful.”
“Not my preferred vacation destination, I prefer mountains to beaches. But if you go in for that sort of thing.” Jane said, trying to figure out where the conversation was going, offering a titbit of personal information in hopes of starting a tit-for-tat.
“Yes, it’s become something of a symbol for your people, hasn’t it?
“Not my people, but for the Alliance, yes.”
“Ah, yes. The human schism. Forgive me. It’s been a while since Council space has played host to a species with unintegrated colonies. Still, to the Alliance, Eden Prime is proof that humanity can not only establish colonies across the galaxy, but also protect them. But how safe are they, really?”
A shiver went up Jane’s spine. That had sounded… rather reminiscent of the sort of thing a Dark Age gangster might say to a shop owner during a shakedown. It might have been funny, if it hadn’t been coming from a Council Spectre.
“Are you trying to scare me, Spectre?” She asked, cocking an eyebrow, covering her concern with cockiness.
“The beacon on Eden Prime is potentially one of the most valuable finds of the last hundred years. I need to know that you, this crew, and your entire species are up to the task of handling it.”
Jane was… not sure she could vouch for her species like that. Her people, there was no question. But the original Vaastans had left Earth for a reason. Things had improved in the 130 years since the Age of the Precipice had ended with Luna’s colonization in the 2050’s, but Terran humanity was still a far cry in terms of… cultural maturity from their Vaastan cousins. She was saved from having to reply by Captain Anderson’s arrival.
“Commander, I know you were briefed back on Earth, so we can keep this short. Your mission is to recover the Prothean beacon, bring it back to the Normandy, then we’ll take it to the Citadel where it can be properly and safely studied. Any questions?”
She’d already asked her question back during the first briefing, and the short summary told her that nothing substantial had changed. “No sir.” Then, opting to cut off Nihlus’ earlier line of questioning with a diplomatic touch, she turned to him and said “I’m glad you’re with us. It’ll be good to have backup on the off chance something goes wrong.”
“That’s not the only reason he’s here. Nihlus wants to see you in action, Commander. He’s here to evaluate you.”
“Evaluate me? For what?”
“For the Spectres. I know the Vaastans have little interest in galactic politics, but the Alliance wants a greater role in shaping galactic policy. The Spectres represent the Council’s power and authority. If they accept a human into their ranks, that shows how far the Alliance has come.”
“If this is an Alliance objective, then why me?”
“You held off an enemy assault single-handedly during the Blitz.” Nihlus cut in. “You showed not only courage but incredible skill. I put your name forth as a candidate, but I need to see your skills for myself, Commander. Eden Prime will be the first of several missions together…”
The Spectre was cut off by Joker coming over the comms. “Captain, we’ve got a distress signal coming in from Eden Prime.”
Flere took advantage of the interruption to say “I know you well enough to guess you don’t feel great about this, but the political prediction markets have this as a pretty strongly positive event. You should…” Jane muted the drone so she could focus on the transmission.
It looked… bad. Alliance marines under attack from some kind of energy weapons. Vaastans had those, but it was unthinkable that they’d attack Alliance marines. Diplomatic relations between Vaastu and Earth weren’t great, but, if nothing else, the Vaastans knew who’d win in a shooting war. She couldn’t think of anyone else with that kind of tech, though. Maybe the geth?
Her train of thought derailed at a sound which, even through the low-fidelity speakers, set her teeth on edge. Captain Anderson paused the broadcast. A massive structure was on screen. It stood supported on slender legs which couldn’t have held its weight without a - literally and figuratively - massive assist from a mass effect field. She glanced to the side long enough to notice Nihlus’ mandibles twitch in the turian equivalent of a raised eyebrow.
“What is that thing? If that’s any sort of metal, it’s mass effect fields must be…” she trailed off.
“About 3.8 times more powerful than Alliance standard. Assuming a hull composition and internal density identical to those of Alliance warships.” Flere finished.
“It seems I’ll be getting a better look at your skills than I’d anticipated, Commander.” Nihlus said.
Anderson nodded his agreement. “Tell your team to gear up.”
Shortly afterwards, the three of them, along with Alenko and Jenkins were standing by the Normandy’s open jump door.
“Take these.” Jane shouted to make herself heard over the whipping of wind through the jump bay. She reached down to her ammo belt and handed a half dozen metal cylinders, each about an inch and a half long and a quarter inch wide to Nihlus.
“What are they?” he asked.
She pulled up her omni-tool and activated them. “Midges. Tactical camera drones. They’ll relay tactical information to your helmet readouts.” The midges flew out of the Spectre’s hands and took up a tight orbit around his head, making sure to keep his line of sight clear. They’d scatter and begin relaying after the Spectre jumped. “You sure you want to go out solo?”
“I move faster on my own.” The turian replied.
A moment later, he jumped out the open door. A few seconds after that, the human marines followed.