Mass Effect: The Hunt for Saren

Six years later, 2183.







John Shepard stretched, rolled out of his sleep capsule, and pulled on his standard-issue Onyx class battle armor. The armor was new, but worn--just like him. It was dented, scratched, and dirty even after it’d just been washed. John pulled the top half of the armor on, carefully avoiding scars. They weren’t sensitive anymore, not after six years, but he had made a habit of avoiding the contact with their sensitive spots. Some days he forgot he even had them.







John opened his foot locker and spent a moment looking at the contents. Lancer assault rifle: his baby, always first in his hands as long as he had enough elbow room. Striker pistol: for use when he didn’t have the elbow room for an assault rifle. Avenger sniper rifle: to kill those enemies with the sense to keep their distance. Scimitar shotgun: hell, John didn’t need this--he didn’t use it--but John always made it a habit to be prepared. Always.







After strapping each gun to their magnetic holsters on his battle suit, John made fast and long strides up to the bridge. He was supposed to supervise the jump to the Eden Prime relay, and he could hear Joker’s cocky voice ticking off the countdown to transition.







Shepard was stationed aboard the fast frigate Normandy. It was a brand new ship, built by the Human Alliance with the assistance of the Turians. Faster and more stealthy than anything either race had yet built, Shepard was told his assignment there was to put the ship and crew through their paces: work out all the kinks in the systems before they got their feet wet. A simple job, and he was already late for it.







Shepard arrived at the fore of the bridge just in time to see the transition, and overhear Joker complain about their guest: a Turian spectre named Nihlus.







“Only an idiot believes the official story,” Joker told Lt. Kaiden Alenko authoritatively.







“Joker, just fly the ship,” John retorted in a clipped tone. “Leave the worrying to the men with their boots on the ground.”







“Aye aye sir,” Joker said, eyes fastened on the console.







“Commander,” Alenko began, a nervous tone to his voice.







“Yes, Lieutenant?” Shepard asked quickly.







“Captain wants to see you in the comm room,” Kaiden said, clearly switching topics from what he had originally intended.







Shepard didn’t notice, however. He just nodded, spun on his heel, and strode to the comm room. He stopped to have a few words with Navigator Pressly, who was complaining about having a Turian aboard. John told him to keep it down: he didn’t have a problem if Pressly didn’t like Turians, but he’d better keep it to himself. A little grumbling went a long way on a ship this size. He then came across Private Jenkins and Doctor Chakwas, who were discussing the upcoming assignment.







“What do you think, Commander?” Jenkins said to Shepard, interrupting his progress to the ship’s aft. “Where are we going to get deployed after Eden Prime? I’m itching for some real action.”







“I do hope you’re joking, Private,” Doctor Chakwas interposed, irritated. She loved using this matriarchal tone that drove Shepard crazy, even when he wasn’t supposed to speak to the Captain. “Your ‘real action’ usually ends with me stitching up one or more of you marines with wounds. At best.”







“Marines fight. Doctors patch them up,” John said. Chakwas was about to say something snide back, but John just turned to Jenkins before she could get in her two cents. “And you. Stop trying to be a hero, private. I knew a lot of heroes on Akuze; they were the first gored by the Threshers. Follow my orders and keep your head down.”







Jenkins bit his lip, hurt by Shepard’s rebuke. “Yes, sir.”







Satisfied, Shepard strode past the two and entered the comm room. That’s when Captain Anderson and Nihlus decided to level with him: Eden Prime had just unearthed an intact Prothean beacon. Such a technological treasure was more than just priceless--it could vault humanity, the Council, or any other race ahead of the known galaxy in terms of technological advances. But Eden Prime didn’t have the facilities to analyze or research such an ancient and advanced piece of tech, and so Shepard would be leading a ground team on the surface to pick it up and bring it back to the Normandy, so they could give it to the Council.







“And one more thing, Shepard,” Anderson added. “Nihlus isn’t just here for the beacon, he’s also here to evaluate you for the Spectres program.”







“You want me to be a Spectre?” Shepard asked, pointing to the Turian.







“We don’t have to make this a race issue, Commander,” Nihlus said confidently. “You’ve survived Akuze, moved on, and continued to be an effective leader of soldiers. And I hear you’re quite the soldier yourself. If you perform the way I expect you to, it won’t matter if you’re a Human, Turian, or... Krogan, for that matter.”







Nihlus laughed. Neither Shepard nor Anderson laughed.







“Get in, get the beacon, and get out before anything can go wrong,” Anderson said quickly.







An alarm rang out.







“What’s that?” Nihlus asked.







“The sound of something going wrong,” Shepard murmured.







Joker relayed a garbled video fragment from the surface of Eden Prime as they neared the planet. It depicted some marines taking heavy enemy fire; a marine wearing a Phoenix class battle suit pushed the cameraman down as explosions roared overhead. The camera, pointing up into the sky, caught an image of something like a huge claw lowering over one of Eden Prime’s skyscrapers in the background. Anderson paused the image. The thing looked like a ship, but unlike any ship Shepard had seen before, and judging from Anderson’s face, he’d never seen anything like it either. The scale of the ship relative to the building meant it was a dreadnought class ship, but it was able to make a controlled descent over an earth-class planet--something no Alliance or Turian ship could do.







“Joker, bring us in quick and quiet,” Anderson said, gritting his teeth. “This mission just got a lot more interesting.”







* * * * *







There were no wide open spaces to drop the Mako AFV near the dig site, so Joker had the Normandy hold position over a small clearing nearby. Holding it steady, Shepard, Jenkins, and Alenko used the Normandy’s personal mass effect projectors to literally float down to the surface. It was relatively slow and exposed compared to dropping the Mako, but there were no large weapons firing in the Normandy’s direction, and they couldn’t take the time to find a landing site suitable for the Mako.







The three landed on their feet, and immediately took cover at some nearby rocks. John peered around the corner, spied a disgusting floating blob of flesh and tentacles, and swung his Lancer out around his cover sprayed the alien with high velocity slugs. The creature exploded pathetically.







“Easy!” Jenkins cautioned. “Those are just gas-bags, local animal life. They’re harmless.”







“Thanks for the heads-up, Jenkins,” Shepard said halfheartedly, then motioned for him to take point and continued in a whisper. “This is your homeplanet, Private. You should know the quickest way to the dig site.”







“Yes sir!” Jenkins smiled as he trotted ahead of the group, relishing the thought of some excitement.







Jenkins had gotten maybe ten meters ahead of them when three flying machines, about the size and shape of three metal footballs attached in a triangular formation, came flying into view. Shepard raised his gun but the machines were all focused on the nearest target.







Jenkins stopped in his tracks, startled and caught in the open. The flying drones fired dozens of pulse rounds into his body, causing his shields to flare up in puffs of blue and he spasmed from the impacts. His shield overloaded, and at least six rounds ripped through him, gouging holes in his flesh that exposed muscle tissue, organs, and bone. Jenkins collapsed in a heap.







Kaiden and John charged forward. John stepped over Jenkins body and kneeled, putting himself between the fallen soldier and the machines while he fired his Lancer on fully automatic. Kaiden grunted as a shimmering field of blue engulfed his hand, which he threw at the nearest drone. It detonated upon impact. Meanwhile, John dispatched the remaining two drones, there constituent parts clattering to the ground.







Certain the area was clear, John turned to the Private’s still body. He fought the urge to wretch, swallowing the bile as it collected in his throat. Kaiden closed the corpse’s eyes.







“Ripped right through his shields...” Kaiden said, voice choked up. “He never had a chance--”







“No time for that,” John said, glad his helmet was obscuring his dark and tearing eyes. “We have a mission. Get moving.”







“Aye aye sir,” Alenko said grimly, a brief look of resentment crossing him as he stood up straight and held his pistol at the ready.







The two lurched forward, taking cover at every rock outcropping or tree they came to, making certain they’d learned from Jenkins mistake. As they progressed, they destroyed a dozen more of the drones, which Shepard figured were intended for reconnaissance and disruption: they were too lightly armored for anything else, but their heavy rate of fire could suppress enemy troops.







As they approached a rock-strewn gully, John heard something approaching and motioned for Kaiden to hold position. John trotted ahead of him and took a knee behind a boulder. A female marine wearing Phoenix battle armor--the one from the video fragment--came running towards his position, followed closely by two drones. One fired a bolt into her bolt, causing her to stumble and her shield to collapse. John stepped out of cover and fired two short bursts, even as the hunted marine fell forward. She rolled onto her back, pulling her pistol and training it where the two drones had been following her. Surprised, she looked around to find John standing calmly over her.







“Relax, marine,” John said, offering her a hand up. “If they weren’t dead already, you’d be the dead one by now.”







“You’re telling me, sir,” the marine said, noting the rank insignia on Shepard’s collar. “Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams of 202nd, sir. Thanks for saving my ass.”







“Can’t be helped, Chief,” John replied warmly. “Your ass was in my way. What’s the situation?”







“Enemy patrols are strung out all over the area, hunting down all the stragglers they can. My unit got attacked and pinned down while we were trying to make it to the beacon.” Ashley motioned defensively as she continued her sitrep. “We held our own, but they were coming from every direction. We couldn’t stay there, so we ran. I ran.”







“You did what you had to marine,” John reassured her, reaching out to touch her armored shoulder. “Believe me, I know what you’ve been through.”







“Sir?” Ashley spoke up after a moment’s silence. “They’re Geth.”







“Then we’ve really got to hurry,” John said, motioning them onwards as he broke out into a jog.







The Geth were a race of machines, created by the Quarians over three hundred years ago. The Quarians were almost wiped out by the Geth, and only a few million of their people escaped in a massive fleet. No one had heard from the Geth since then; they just stayed on their side of the Terminus Systems that bounded Citadel space. Until today.







Fighting their way to the beacon, the trio killed a few of the Geth troopers. Composed of wiring that resembled gray muscle mass and with heads composed of one shining beam of light, they were almost as disturbing to behold as the Thresher Maws. What they did to organic prisoners was much more disturbing: they impaled their victims on spires that filled them with neurological circuitry and basic bionics. A few hours later, the corpses would be lowered to the ground and used as shock troops against their own people, reduced to mere Husks of human beings filled and covered with the machine-taint.







Once they got to the dig site, however, they found that the beacon was already gone. Frantic that the beacon might have been lost to the Geth, Shepard ordered a sweep of the area. Not too far from the dig site, they found a civilian who told them that they had moved the beacon earlier that day down by the traindocks. But he also told them something worse: Nihlus had been killed, and his murderer was another Turian Spectre named Saren.







“You’re full of shit,” John blurted at the already frightened man. “How would you know he was a Spectre?”







“I know guns,” the man insisted. “I am--I mean, I was--a weapons smuggler. And he had a special issue pistol. Just look at the wound,” the man said, walking them to the corpse. “And who else but a Spectre could have snuck up on another Spectre and shot him in the back of the head? A Spectre would see it coming, unless he let his guard down.”







“So now we’ve got a bunch of living machine warriors and a rogue Spectre between us and the beacon of Prothean technology?” John asked helplessly, looking to his two subordinates. They shrugged. Shepard sighed. “Show us where the train is.”







They got there just in time to defuse some tactical WMDs that would’ve destroyed what was left of the battered and war-torn colony, but Saren had already gone, leaving behind the beacon he had fought so hard to get.







“I don’t get it,” Ashley murmured as she observed the eerily glowing beacon. It possessed no obvious interface marking, just glowed ominously. “It wasn’t doing that when they first dug it up. Why’d this damn Turian come all this way just to get it, set it to lava-lamp mode, and then leave it here?”







“Maybe it’s not working,” John said with a shrug and reported back to the Normandy. “We have the beacon, and we’re ready for pickup.”







“That’d be funny,” Ashley snickered. “Dumbass alien goes through all this trouble and then ‘oops, the warranty has expired.’ I’d sure like to see the look on his face then. It’d be--”







While she was talking, Ashley approached the beacon, and was cut short as the beacon’s green aura brightened and pulse towards her, drawing her towards it like a singularity. John saw this, grabbed Ashley around the waist and tossed her aside. He tried to move himself, but now he was caught in the beacon’s pull. It drew him in, its light filling his visions, lifting his helpless body into the air and showing him...







Pain. Decay. A scream. A face. Blood. A computer. Limbs. More screams. Lightning. A star. A Moon. An explosion...







Darkness.