《The ARK Effect》 Act 1 Chapter 0 - Timeline Calendar dates used; BCE - Before Council Era CE - Council Era Nth Century - Human Calendar. Unknown date; The Reapers are created by the Leviathans in an attempt to prevent evolving sapient life from destroying itself with artificial intelligence, and in the process destroy much of themselves with their own artificial intelligence. The Reapers begin the harvesting and resetting of the galaxy every 50,000 years. Approx. 37,000,000 BCE; An unknown race resists the Reapers, and manage to kill one of them with an unknown mass accelerator weapon, leaving a corpse and creating the Great Rift Valley on the planet Klendagon. Approx. 68,000 BCE; The Protheans achieve spaceflight and begin their colonization and advancement through the galaxy, including the discovery and usage of the Citadel. Approx. 48,000 BCE; The Protheans are almost entirely destroyed by the Reapers, aided by their trap of the Citadel. The Protheans survive for a few hundred years however, delaying the next Cycle, and during their survival they make good progress on the creation of The Crucible. They are destroyed before they can complete it however, but they manage to leave a large quantity of relics and knowledge behind, although most of their data will degrade before it can be used. Approx. 540 BCE; The last of the current cycles sentient races evolve, and begin their growth. Within this time, humanity begins growing as a species, the Krogan break apart and begin warring among themselves, the Asari discover Mass Effect based FTL from Prothean ruins, and are shortly joined by the Salarians. The races of the Andromeda galaxy emerge. Approx. 500 BCE; The Council is formed by the Asari and Salarians, with the Citadel as their capital. Approx. 300 BCE; The Volus join the Council and form the Unified Banking Act, creating a universal monetary system. They, to their chagrin, are given an embassy but not a Council seat. Approx. 300 BCE to 1 CE; First contact has been made with the Batarians, Quarians, Hanar, and Elcor, all of whom are given embassies. 1 CE; A dormant Mass Relay is opened, releasing the Rachni on the galaxy, who are being directed and aggravated remotely by the Reapers. Approximately 80 years into the war with the Rachni, the Krogan are discovered, rapidly uplifted, and used to begin fighting against the Rachni. 300 CE; The Rachni are almost completely wiped out by the Krogan, and the war with them ends. A Reaper untouched Queen remains dormant in an egg however, although it will be millenia before it is discovered. 693 CE; The first Spectre is created by the Salarian Beelo Gurji, to counter growing Krogan aggression. Approx. 700 CE; The Krogan Rebellions begin after Spectres preemptively strike a lone Krogan clan annexing Asari territory on the colony world of Lusia. Overwhelmed by the Krogan response, the Council makes first contact with the Turians, who are enlisted to fight the Krogans, causing the Turian worlds and colonies to be targeted in devastating attacks. Seeing no hope as current events stand, a group of Salarians begin creating the Genophage to counter the Krogans rapid birth rate. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. 710 CE; The Genophage is completed and used to cripple the Krogan rate of birth. This, combined with further Turian aid, leads to the end of the Krogan Rebellions in 800 CE. 900 CE; The Turians, to the chagrin of multiple other races, are given a seat on the Council for their actions in the Krogan Rebellions, where they take up the role of military and peacekeeping. Approx. 1600 CE; A sighting of an unknown race, later known as the Collectors, is reported. It is dismissed as hearsay and rumor. Approx. 1900-2000 CE; The Quarians robotic worker creation, the Geth, gain a hive-mind sentience. The Quarians, partly out of fear of the Council, and also the Geth, panic, and try to destroy and disassemble the Geth. The Geth revolt in response, after peaceful attempts to continue coexistence fail, and take the Quarian worlds, including their homeworld of Rannoch. They never expand further. In response to the actions of the Geth, the Council banish the Quarians, removing their embassy and membership, and forcing them to live in a massive migrant fleet. The Quarians already weak immune system almost entirely dies, forcing them to be incredibly careful about health and sanitization. Approx. 1900 CE/1961, 20th century; Yuri Gagarin becomes the first space-faring human, followed eight years later by the Apollo 11 mission landing the first humans on their moon, Luna. Approx. 1900-2000 CE/20th to 21st century; Humanity spreads across the Sol system, utilizing cryo-stasis techniques and automated programs to colonize Luna, set up a base on Mars, and harvest materials from the asteroid belt. Approx. 2100 CE/2143, 22nd century; Gagarin Station is created beyond the orbit of Pluto, where the first FTL tests are performed. The base science for Warp technology is discovered, and Element is invented as a compact, cheap, energy dense fuel for fusion reactors. This also allows the continued compacting of fusion reactors, until they eventually reach, with large costs of course, microchip sizes. Approx. 2200 CE/2152, 22nd century; Element becomes commonplace on Earth, and it fuels dozens of new technological discoveries. Much of Earth unites under the United Earth Federation. Approx. 2217, 23rd century; Element advancements are made, increasing its stability and energy density. In addition, the very first instance of Element expiring is recorded, creating what is labeled as ¡°Corrupted¡± Element. Approx. 2256, 23rd century; Testing with Corrupted Element is done, to figure out if it can be recycled or otherwise renewed. It is discovered that Corrupt Element will, strangely, corrupt normal Element it comes in contact with. March 7th, 2257, 23rd century; A large power plant accidentally feeds Corrupted Element into its reactor, causing a chain reaction of Element corruption, alongside critical overloads resulting in a large scale explosion. This catapults hundreds to thousands of Corrupt Element shards into low orbit, where they will fall scattered across the entire world over the next decade. Approx. 2270, 23rd century; Element corruption begins spreading across the entire world, damaging and corrupting machinery, and mutating wildlife into stronger and incredibly aggressive forms. Approx. 2275, 23rd century; One of the dozens of growing Corruption zones reaches a Sanctuary, quickly infecting and subverting all of the revived species of dinosaur and other such previously extinct animals, and leading to an explosive amount of spread, due to the much stronger animals now controlled. Approx. June, 2301, 24th century; Earth begins to fall to Element corruption, and the ARK program is initiated. An unknown extra organization begins the creation of the separate Lifeboat initiative. Approx. October, 2324, 24th century; The ARK program successfully activates, raising large chunks of many different biomes, artificially maintained and populated with life, into low orbit of Earth. The Lifeboat initiative nears completion, but is being delayed more and more by the Element corruption consuming Earth. Approx. January, 2329, 24th century; The Lifeboat initiative completes, at this point only due to automated programs, as all human personnel are either in cryo or dead by now. The Lifeboat launches, picking up human Survivors from multiple large ARKs, including The Island, Scorched Earth, and the damaged Aberration. The Lifeboat then leaves the Sol system and begins automatically warping to different systems, attempting to locate a new home for humanity. Unknown date, between 2340 and 2400; The Element corrupted Doctor Rockwell, after an unknown amount of time subverting and growing among the Lifeboat systems, is defeated. This is mainly done after the original support crew is all slain, and the backup crew awoken from among ARK Survivors, who all manage to subdue the primary control nodes of Rockwell, where they maintain a permanent team that keeps Rockwell subdued, while the rest of the team goes and creates an unknown but massive amount of various neurotoxins, tranquilizers, and other harmful substances. After the hundreds to thousands of gallons are transported to different areas of Rockwell¡¯s body, the various substances are all rapidly injected into Rockwell, killing him after a few days. Subsequent years were spent awakening more support crew, cleaning up the corpse and repairing system and hull damage, and stabilizing the Lifeboat. Approx. 2411, 25th century; The Lifeboat is fully cleaned and repaired, with the Lifeboat support ring that Rockwell modified being stabilized, researched, and eventually modified until it is no longer actively hostile to humans. A common decision among the crew was that much of the life on the modified ring was, while admittedly terrifying and incredibly dangerous, still generally unaffected by Element corruption, and as such most of the unique lifeforms that Rockwell artificially created were left alive and intact, with the modified ring being left for them, with safety modifications. April 10th, 2419, 25th century; The Lifeboat warps into a so far unnamed system, and discovers a high quality planet, perfect for colonization. The Lifeboat finally ends its automated journey, and the entire crew is finally awoken for colonization. The planet is named Shanxi. Intermission - Terran Federation records (art chapter 1) You can completely skip this chapter, it purely contains some relevant (official ARK: Survival Evolved) art, mainly for showing off the looks of some of the stuff at hand. NOTE: NONE OF THIS ART IS MINE, IT IS ALL OWNED BY THE CREATORS OF ARK, I''m just using it to show what everything looks like, mainly because the stuff I''m showing off matches what the humans have - for the most part. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Official art document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kJyBE14jrnI2tmb3GGhrwiwR88c1Z5gYGQoLuIRnwoA/edit?usp=sharing Apologies, but I both cannot find a reliable website to turn images into functioning URL links, and I know that said URL links aren''t the best functioning, and tend to randomly break and need replacing. Edit: Sorry the link doesn''t automatically become a clickable link, you should be able to simply copy it however. Act 1 Chapter 1 - Relay 314 Current date: April 13th, 2419, 25th century; In the cold depths of space, nothing much actually happens. Sometimes a star will throw a fit and throw a little extra radiation around. Maybe a micrometeor will collide with another micrometeor. A rogue planet will pass within a few light years of a nearby star, and ever so slightly shift a planet''s orbit by a few nanometers. Most of the time, this is the extent of what happens. Now, around the inhabitants of the galaxy, it is different of course, with fights in space or on ground happening, dozens of ships flying around and creating noise and radiation, and so on, but right now we are focusing on the uninhabited depths of deep space. And on most days, that would be the end of the story. A remote sensor technician would continue to dully record the nothingness, as is their job, and that would be it. However, today the routine activity is different. A turian patrol fleet, led by General Desolas Arterius, was going about as usual, making short stops at the various points of interest around the system, doing their rather boring job of making sure smugglers don''t set up camp on one of the planets, or try to activate relay 314. This, as had been happening for the past two weeks they had been stationed there, was about the only thing that happened. Desolas, of course, wanted to do more for the Hierarchy, but was still proud of his brother, Saren, for becoming the youngest ever Spectre. It had brought great honor to their family, but, alas, he was still stationed out in the middle of nowhere, wasting his talents and acting as a simple barrier to petty criminals. However, that peace was, about halfway through the day cycle onboard the ship, shattered into a hundred separate fragments. The relay suddenly spun up, and activated. Instantly, the fleet had sent out a priority alert to the Hierarchy - although a certain other group would overhear it conveniently, and began making their way to the relay at full speed. They began scanning the system for any ships, but couldn¡¯t actually detect any. They eventually decelerated near the relay, slowly growing more concerned, as they had yet to actually detect anything on their side of the relay, and it hadn¡¯t been triggered yet, outside of its activation. It was growing painfully obvious, no matter how unwanted, that they may just be in a first contact situation. --- --- --- After a few hours of waiting, Desolas grew bored again. And bored, overconfident leaders, both in and out of the military, tend to do rather stupid things. In the case of Desolas, he turned to his navigator and said the simple phrase ¡°Take the fleet through, and send a signal to the Hierarchy. We need to know what is on the other side.¡± And, as ordered, the navigator began directing the fleet through the relay, and the communications officer sent the short report of the situation to the Turian Hierarchy. And then, with all of their mass calculations complete, all the different crews at their ready stations, and barriers across the fleet flaring to life, Patrol Fleet 17 began trickling through Relay 314. On the other side, not much seemed to actually be happening. They could see a few planets around the system, and the actual relay had a small swarm of drones around it - about twenty, all of which seemed to be physically moving across the surface of the Relay, clearly attempting to interface with it, or take samples of its material back. A quick jamming signal caused all of the drones to actually die, indicating that they had been remotely piloted. However, before they could continue moving on, scanning the system for anything in it, the second planet of the system turned just enough to reveal a massive radiation signature, hovering above the planet in geosynchronous orbit. The fleet, detecting such a massive signal even on their passive scans, began directing active scans towards the signal. And right alongside their returning scans, came a scan from it. As all the bridge crews, of all of the patrol fleet, stared at their scans, they felt terror. Deep, scale blanching terror, the likes of which none had experiences for many years. The ship - and there was no argument about if it was a ship or a station, given its massive engine banks, was three times the length of the citadel, and still larger than it in its width. And it had just started turning to face them, although it had yet to move from its orbit. As they continued moving to a location they could get a better view from, and as the planet rotated more so that they could see it, they were able to begin scanning the ground, discovering what seemed like either a large colony or a small city, although they couldn''t know for sure. Their scans were also picking up a few dozen, much smaller points of interest across the entire planet, which they assumed to be mines, small settlements, or military bases. Desolas was ecstatic - whatever this new species was, the fact that they could make ships of that size was very promising if he could actually get their technology from them. Before he could continue his thoughts however, the communications officer spoke up "General, we just received a data packet from them. It also, uh, was not willingly accepted, and was simply placed in our systems even with our firewalls up. Whatever they are, they have cyber-warfare capabilities strong enough to, at a multiple light-second distance, completely bypass all of our hardened security and do what they want to our systems." Desolas, of course, decided that this was further proof of how much they needed to get this technology for themselves. "Analyze that file then, find out just what it was." Of course, to his pride, his crew immediately began working, quickly taking the mystery file, isolating it, and beginning to prod and decode it. This, to the crews curiosity, proved to be a challenge only in getting a basic translation system set up, as the file had been entirely without security on it, and only contained a short video file, and a massive quantity of word and image pairs, which they were able to use to set up said rudimentary translation. This translation system was, of course, flawed and incredibly limited, only containing common words, names, and identifications. The short video, they also determined, was a rather quickly made animation, showing one of their ships moving to a location on the massive ship in front of them, and docking, presumably for first contact - although anything was possible. --- --- --- Meanwhile, on Lifeboat Alpha, there was a mixture of controlled chaos, and business as usual happening. On the one hand, they had just become the first humans to meet life from another planet, but on the other hand, it was rather boring, mostly because after a quick VR hacking of their systems to drop off a quickly built first contact package, the bridge crew of Lifeboat Alpha were simply waiting. And waiting. It had taken the unknown ships over an hour to take images with a label in one language and give it the label of their native language, which is something that should have taken around ten minutes at the longest. And the animation for docking was only a minute long, they should have already been moving over! And yet. The alien ships had only just begun moving, and while all ten of the vessels had begun to move closer, it was still a rather disappointing affair. The ships were, while large compared to fighters and shuttles, small compared to all of their theoretical ship designs, and much smaller than the Lifeboat. They were also rather slow, as even at max speed they were only reaching a quarter of the max speed of the Lifeboat, without even taking into account the speed of things like their smaller space-worthy craft, when unimpeded by gravity or containment fields. But eventually, after a slow half-hour of waiting, the ships finally approached the Lifeboat. A few of the crew leaned closer to their controls, watching their monitors with mild interest as the aliens all floated just outside of the habitation rings, and a single ship moved towards the gap in the rings, where most of the airlocks are located. It was, for a moment, slightly stressful, as the ship nearly scraped against the sides of the rings, but it slowed down considerably, and safely made it to one of the massive, forcefield-protected airlocks. And then sat there. And for an uncomfortable minute, nobody really knew what to do, as their airlocks were meant for shuttles to enter into, and the visible airlocks on the alien ship were clearly designed to connect to identical airlocks and form a walkway for crew. Eventually, the alien ship managed to rotate and shift its position enough to align the two airlocks, and then they extended their docking tube, with it crossing into the forcefield contained environment and allowing passage. And then, the wait for a security team to arrive, and the alien contact team to exit their ship. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. --- --- --- Security officer Anderson was a bit tense. First, he had got up for the day, pulled on his body armor and extra gear, and gone to the mess hall for a quick breakfast. Simple and easy, nothing wrong yet. And then he had been interrupted by, of all things, a rogue TEK Automaton, causing some damage near one of the AI control centers, and as a result he and a few other security officers had to go out and destroy the machine, further delaying his day. And then, only an hour later, he had been ''volunteered'' to head to one of the primary airlocks alongside a whole group of security, just so that they could, supposedly, escort a ship crew to a meeting room. He knew that, as orders go, this wasn''t actually all that unreasonable, but he had woken up in pain - he suspected he was finally leaving his prime, and then had to deal with many minor annoyances, all of which has now led to this moment. Frankly, he wasn''t sure just how to react. He had just watched an alien ship dock - rather questionably if he might say so himself, with the airlock. And then he watched these weird looking aliens come out of their docking tube, all neatly hopping to the metal floor and holding their weapons in a tight, but neutral position. Anderson sighed as one of the ever smug ARK Agents walked up to the aliens, staring them down. And, the aliens simply stared back, most of them shorter than the enhanced human, even if it was by only a little bit. Anderson was still rather unsure about just what these aliens were. They were all in full body armor, but he could make out a few things. First, their chests seemed notably large compared to the rest of their bodies. Then their weird shaped heads - although it could be their helmets, followed by their... what was the term... ah yes, digitigrade legs. They also, weirdly enough, had only three fingers, but he wouldn''t judge. Eventually, the tense silence was broken by one of the unnamed, silver armored TEK Agents speaking out and saying "You will follow us. You will not leave electronic listening devices, or stray from the path. Follow now." and then turned and left, waving both the aliens and the security team forward, guiding them all deeper into the Lifeboat. Anderson could only hope that nothing bad would happen from this. --- --- --- Vice Admiral Tulius Gavrius was, reasonably so, concerned. The strange aliens in their massive ship had begun guiding him and his pitifully small team of Turian soldiers deep into the bowels of this massive ship, heading for some unknown destination. He had also, to the best of his guesses, determined them to have teleported multiple times. Teleported! There had been a few of these strange, circular pads they would step on, one of the heavily armored aliens would activate some system, and then a dome of light would engulf them all, seemingly moving them nowhere, but his transponder connection with their ship decided he had moved over a kilometer away the first time this happened, and then he went entirely out of range after the second teleporter. Not only was this concerning because, frankly, teleportation with limits - which he couldn''t even be sure this had limits, is still better than having no teleportation technology. If only, he mused to himself, the STG was here. They would have a field day just trying to guess how the teleporters work, let alone what they would do to get their hands on actual samples. Eventually, however, their journey ended. They entered a rather modest, if comfortable - by the galaxies standards of course, meeting room of some kind. There was a massive table going down the middle of the rooms length, surrounded by chairs, and it was all made of the sturdiest and heaviest wood he had ever seen, in this rather interesting dark brown color, unlike the normal blues and purples of Asari wood. He liked it. His thoughts were broken by a new alien entering the room, this one in what he assumed to either be a non-combat uniform, or formal wear of some kind. The human walked to a side chair and gestured for Tulius and his team to sit down across from him. As he sat, Tulius finally started looking at the alien. And then he paused, completely shocked and confused. The alien looked like an Asari! At least, resembled them. He - and he was almost doubtlessly a he, had a very Asari-like face, interesting green eyes, and five fingers. As Tulius watched, the alien sighed, rubbing his face with his hands, before leaning back into his chair and speaking up, his speech haltingly translated "We are... new? New stars, old ship... no... planet?" the alien paused, clearly listening to his translator repeat what it could give Tulius, before the alien grimaced and said "No... home planet. Old ship, new planet." Tulius thought, trying to figure out the garbled speech, before saying "Your home world was lost?" The alien listened for a few moments, before he said "Yes. Lost. Broken/mistake/accident." Tulius then decided to do something he probably shouldn''t, pointed at the alien and said "Follow me, bring guards if you wish, I will get you to an Asari, and then we can speak to each other properly. Maybe get you to the Citadel too." --- --- --- Anderson kept watching the admittedly amusing exchange between the ex-diplomat and the alien. From what he could tell, the translation machines that they had on hand were rather... limited. And only some critical words could be understood. Interestingly enough, after only maybe ten minutes of talking, the alien stood up, making vague gestures for the diplomat to join him and follow him. The alien marched over to the door, clearly on a mission, and then left the door... and promptly paused, looking left and right, clearly with no idea where it was or where to go. Amused, Anderson stood up as well, moving to the diplomat "What do you think the alien wants?" "Well, from what I could tell, he said something involving translation and government. I think he wishes to bring us to some meeting place on his end of things, and that he may have a superior method of translation available there. I''m getting old, do nothing useful around the Lifeboat, and have been stagnant for long enough that I think I''ll go with, no matter what. Can''t be worse than around here." --- --- --- Codex Update: Lifeboat Alpha; A massive, 152km long colony ship, Lifeboat Alpha was the very first, and only successful, of its entire class, created during the secretive Lifeboat Initiative, ran by the pre-fall Earth government called the Federation of Man. The Lifeboat Initiative was a massive undertaking, meant to create and launch an entire five Lifeboats, one on and from each of the major continents of Earth, all with the intent of saving as much life as possible from the upcoming fall. Unfortunately however, the other four Lifeboats, those being the Beta, Delta, Gamma, and Omega Lifeboats, all failed in some way. Beta and Delta, from the poor records still at hand, were never actually started, as their base locations were overrun and destroyed before they could receive their starting materials. Gamma was the next Lifeboat to fail, as it was abandoned and left unfinished shortly after its Life-Rings were finished. Omega was the last Lifeboat to fail, and it actually almost succeeded, as its Life-Rings were completed, and almost all of its supporting frame and vessel were finished, with mainly the back end being the unfinished part, and as such its propulsion, gravity, and power systems remained unfinished, preventing any hope of saving the Lifeboat. On the other hand, the only reason Lifeboat Alpha was successful was, almost doubtlessly, because it was built at the same time, but in reverse system order as Lifeboat Omega, which meant that when its launch site began to be overrun, its launch systems were all finished and the Lifeboat was able to lift off, collect ARK based passengers to supplement its missing crew, and then automatically finish itself with materials it mined in the inner asteroid belt of the Sol system. After it finished its own construction, it then pointed itself at the planned destination, entered its automated journey, and eventually stumbled across the Shanxi system, where it currently rests, floating in orbit above the Shanxi Prime colony. Life-Ring(s); A massive and advanced construction, a Life-Ring is a complicated habitation and survival system, with built in gravity, life support, power, propulsion, and all such things needed for a large scale space station to exist indefinitely. However, while able to exist on its own, each Life-Ring is designed to fit in as a pair inside of one of the Lifeboats. Each Life-Ring is designed to carry ''cargo'' from various eras of Earth, with there being one Life-Ring per Lifeboat that carries a varied cargo from every era of life before the pre-fall era, with the other ring containing pre-fall era life alongside life from a single specific era. However, much of this second rings life has been lost, as Lifeboat Alpha had its secondary ring ''corrupted'' by the mysterious ''Edmund Rockwell''. Humanity has yet to actually specify who this is. ARK(s); While little is known about how they work, primarily due to being developed and launched by a mega-corporation, ''TEK Industries'', instead of by the Federation of Man, what is known is that at their core, each and every ARK is a piece of Earth, kept intact and uncorrupted as much as possible. How, many might ask? Simply enough, they removed the pieces from Earth. Nobody really knows how or why, but TEK Industries created their ARK system, which would lift tens of thousands of tons of raw material and land out of the very planet itself, raising the chunks into geo-synchronous orbit, where they would be kept maintained by machines and, concerningly enough, AI overseers. The pieces of land would be stabilized, made artificially populated with life from the various eras of Earths past, and presumably kept in place so that each and every ARK could, after all life on Earth dies, return down to populate the planet yet again with clean life. While the information on them is classified, it is known that all of the ''super-soldiers'' of the current Federation, also known as ''ARK Agents'', all were experienced ''survivors'' or, simply put it, passengers of the various ARKs. Act 1 Chapter 2 - The Citadel Current date: April 14th, 2419, 25th century; It had taken a day of broken communication, planning, and cooperation, but the aliens had managed to get their idea of bringing their diplomat with them, alongside a guard detachment. Tulius was, in the end, simply glad that no fighting had broken out, given the fact that, despite Turian pride, these aliens were almost certainly more advanced than the Hierarchy. Why, one of them was openly walking around with a sword and shield, both of which appeared to be made out of either plasma or hard-light, neither of which had been reliably researched by anyone yet. Not even by the Salarians! And they clearly had some form of spatial manipulation, he had caught glances of multiple objects merely appearing in flashes of blue next to them. Concerns about military might aside, there was also the communication problem, as there wasn''t a single Asari around. His rather crazy idea to bring this small diplomacy group to the Citadel itself was, in retrospect, rather foolish, but at least it would allow the aliens to be brought to an Asari translation team. The frigate they were on shuddered, finally reaching the grand Serpent Nebula. Tulius sighed one final time, knowing the chaos he would be causing very soon. --- --- --- One hour later --- --- --- Anderson was, overall, very impressed. The alien station they had disembarked onto - he wasn''t sure what they called it, was decently sized, had a bunch more livable space on it than the Lifeboat did, and it seemed to be a heavily armored and fully stationary object. Although, being completely stationary is rather foolish. Granted, he also knows nothing about its defenses, or the technology of these aliens, so he wouldn''t judge. Maybe they have some technology to prevent harmful objects from reaching the station - perhaps some form of distortion field to divert the movement of comets and such, preventing them from getting dangerously close. Why, they may even be able to direct them into specific locations, and harvest them! Moving on, he pulled his thoughts away from the station they had just entered, and instead looked forward, seeing as a moderately sized security team approached, from a small variety of aliens. One of the security aliens stepped forward, with an alien crew member moving to talk with them. After a few minutes of discussions, from what he could tell, the aliens all formed up into a vague clump, with the human team in the middle. The alien group then all surrounded them in a vague circle, and one by one started walking, with Anderson and the rest of the humans moving along with them. As he walked, Anderson couldn''t help but be decently impressed by the various aliens around. So many different species, all working together peacefully! He couldn''t help but imagine them having anything other than a utopian society. Why, everything was so clean too! All of the stations whites and silvers, and their retro styled holograms with those fun distortion lines through them, he was impressed with their progress as a society. --- --- --- Tevos was sitting at her council seat, face in her hands. On her left and right, her fellow council members kept yelling and arguing about this new species. The brand new Turian councilor, Sparatus, repeated yet again "We cannot let them simply walk around with a few C-Sec officers to keep curious crowds from dying! They are a very clearly militant race who broke the law surrounding Relay activation!" On her left, the old Salarian councilor, Aehann, sighed audibly before replying again by saying "And not only have they never agreed to such a law, they also do not know it exists! As it is, they are clearly a cautious people, rather than a violent one. They have yet to do anything remotely concerning, half of them can''t stop looking around the Citadel like they haven''t seen anything like it before, and they are a race we just started first contact with! The fact that this hasn''t devolved into another Rachni war yet shows incredible promise! And think about their technology, they are clearly decades, if not centuries ahead of us in some fields!" Tevos ignored the young Turian councilors response, her two colleagues simply throwing the same statements with slight wording changes at each other yet again, and instead she pulled up her Omni-Tools interface, communicating with a few Asari she knew personally to go meet with the new species, hoping that by the time their language is translated her fellow councilors will have calmed down. --- --- --- About half an hour later --- --- --- The ambassador was, for the first time in a while, truly and totally confused. He and his escort detail had been, surprisingly quickly, been ferried across the station they were on, eventually being brought to a station full of enclosed hovercraft, where the - rather massive - group of humans and aliens were all herded into at least a dozen of the hovercraft, and then rapidly brought to another end of the station, fairly close to this massive spire that, as far as he could figure, was likely this stations control center. Why it existed as a large tower, instead of an enclosed and secure CIC chamber buried under five meters of Tek Alloy, he had no idea, but perhaps it was merely a luxury that these aliens could afford. He could also be wrong, and it may serve an entirely different purpose. Now, however, he was alone with a single other alien in a side room, standing and staring at the bizarre alien sitting in a chair at the other end of the room. It was almost... human? It could easily pass as a human woman, except for her - at least his mind labeled the alien as female - strange, blue-purple skin, and the fact that her head had strange tendrils instead of hair. The two of them kept simply looking at each other, until the ambassador eventually went and sat in a chair across from the alien. She then said something to him, but whatever it was, his already barely functional translator simply spat an error noise back at him. He merely pointed at his ears and mimed them being plugged, causing the alien to pull up some sort of holo-interface on her - he decided he would label the alien as female until told otherwise - arm, before a short little animation played, showing an alien like her and a large collection of different aliens. It then showed the alien similar to her speaking, with a little text bubble in some unknown language appearing. All of the other aliens then said other words, each in their own language. The female alien then went, and pressed her forehead against each of the other aliens one by one, before saying something again, this time with samples of all of the languages attached. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. He realized that this was some weird and, frankly, alien method of translation. He figured that it couldn''t hurt, and it was just for language, so why not. He then nodded, before leaning forward. After a quick second, he felt the aliens hands on the side of his head, before their foreheads met, and everything went black for a second. --- --- --- About forty minutes later --- --- --- Anderson nursed his elbow, looking for a brief moment at the strange female aliens in the corner, all talking excitedly and presumably working to finalize the translation of the various human languages they got access too. What a fright that had been. Once all of the humans filed into the multi-room building they were in, a few random people were pointed into different rooms, one at a time, where the aliens - apparently called ''Asari'' - had used some strange alien magic of some kind to pull copies of human language and cultural understanding out of each participants heads, allowing them to translate the various human languages - although mostly it was just English with a few slang terms here and there - and, after the first round, also speak with the next participants. Hence the elbow, as he had jumped and slammed it into the wall when the Asari he went to speak to and ''Light Meld'' with had greeted him in mildly accented english. Every humans little bit of language understanding had already been peeked at though, so at this point they were simply waiting for the small team of excited Asari to copy all of the information down to their translator programs and begin releasing updates all around, so that at least the aliens could understand the humans. He idly wondered just what had to happen for a species to evolve an ability like these Asari and their ''Melding''. Perhaps he could ask around after they finished the translation software - assuming humans ever get access to the translators, of course. Then again, if these people were as utopian as they outwardly appeared, he couldn''t see any reason for them to deny humanity access to the ability to communicate with everyone else. After a short while the Asari had clearly gotten a basic form of translation software functional, as one of them had come over and told everyone in moderately good - if monotone - english to follow her to where they would be staying. And, in his opinion, their temporary quarters were rather lavish. Lots of rooms, beds, windows that could be tinted more or less opaque, lots of fancy looking furniture. It was uncomfortable. And he could tell he wasn''t the only one - everyone else was uneasy too, unused to the soft surfaces and excessive comfort, a far cry from the conditions they were used to. In the end though, their job was to provide security for their semi-official ambassador, and if these aliens wanted to shower them with lavish gifts, he wouldn''t care, as long as it doesn''t interfere with their jobs. --- --- --- The Council Chambers --- --- --- Tevos sat between Sparatus and Aehann, pointedly ignoring how they were shooting each other hostile looks. She was, in the end, very disappointed in them. Acting like brash young Maidens, instead of the grown men she knows they are, and in such a high position. At least there was good news about the translation software - a working model had just been finished by her translation team, with a much more comprehensive update package coming along shortly. Rather interestingly, they had also reported the presence of multiple languages to these new beings, which had self labeled as ''Humans''. A rather quaint and simple name, in her opinion, which she was fine with. No real discovered meaning behind it, other than it simply being a means of identification. And yet, such an interesting species behind the name. From the incredibly basic information gotten - both from direct questions and the slight memory overflow from the Light Meld techniques the translation team used - the Humans were, interestingly enough, a rather old race, and yet their only world was their apparent colony world, with their homeworld lost in some way. She wasn''t quite sure just how it had been lost, just that it had happened, and she would offer them the chance to help them recover it - such an offer might get them to join the Council, and what a boon that would be! Teleportation technology, advanced alloys and energy production systems, some form of advanced hardsuits, the very little bit of recorded technology they have is already marvelous beyond her imagination. And then the other Councilors. Still glaring at each other, despite the fact that they should be figuring out how to cleanly invite these Humans to the Council, and get them protected against things like cosmic accidents, the Batarians, and the Geth - assuming those machines hadn''t all died out behind their veil without anyone noticing. She then got an alert on her Omni-tool, letting her know that the Human ambassador had arrived, and that he was sitting in the small lobby outside of the Council Chambers, reading up on their Codex. She was a bit interested that he had arrived so early, but she would wait, either until the time of their meeting, or until the other Councilors notice the alert. Not that they likely would, as they had just devolved to shouting again. Tevos sighed. This was a long term ahead of her. At least it would be just a blink of the eye for her - relatively at least. --- --- --- Twenty minutes later --- --- --- Tevos looked up from her Omni-tool and prepared herself for the upcoming meeting. Sparatus and Aehann had, finally, calmed down and were now looking forward - still pointedly ignoring each other - in preparation of meeting the Human ambassador. Tevos was, finally, somewhat excited. Nothing interesting had happened in such a while, that the introduction of a new species was always interesting. And finally, after such a long time waiting for all the coordinating to finish, the meeting time had arrived, and the Human ambassador stepped through the door. Tevos was very curious about this ambassador. He had this interesting fur on the sides of his head, that was this brown and gray color. And he was also in what seemed to be armor padding of some kind - although it wasn''t a hardsuit, just some kind of unknown woven material. And he did have some form of pistol on his side, but it wasn''t very obvious, and likely meant as a deterrent. He also didn''t hold himself like a politician, but rather like a soldier, or even a normal civilian, at least in her eyes. He was holding a helmet under one arm like a soldier would, but was also fidgeting with some strange, hexagonal object on his belt, which had a thin silver casing and opaque blue barriers of some kind, preventing a view of what was inside the object. It looked fairly unique, so Tevos could only assume it was some kind of heirloom or prized object. The ambassador took a breath and stepped forward, saying "Hello Councilors. I am-" before Sparatus broke in and spat "Care to explain your reckless opening of a Mass Relay?" And Tevos sighed, yet again, as the ambassador just sat there, his mouth loosely held open, as Aehann just glared at Sparatus. "Must you antagonize every being you speak with, Sparatus?" Aehann loudly said. "Well, someone has to make sure we don''t unleash a second species like the Rachni on the Galaxy, such a thing would be crippling!" The ambassador was, at this point, looking baffled as he was looking between the two Councilors glaring at each other. Tevos waved the two of them down, before turning to the Human "I am sorry about my colleagues... they can''t seem to behave like adults, even when in session with a completely new species." she glared at Sparatus and Aehann after this. She then turned back to the ambassador "My name is Tevos, the Asari Councilor. On my right is Sparatus, the Turian Councilor. And on my left is Aehann, the Salarian Councilor. And you are?" The ambassador smiled lightly "I am the temporary Human Ambassador, Donnel Udina. It is a pleasure to meet you Tevos." Status Update Just letting you all know that this story will be delayed for a bit. I do intend to return to this, but between being unsure how exactly to continue it, and given that I am in my final months before graduation, my ability to work on this has been put mostly to a stop. I will be continuing to work on the next few chapters, but it will be delayed to a rather slow rate of writing, and given that I also have another little story (that I believe will be much more viable and fun to write) just entering the works, I will be juggling my limited writing time between the two. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. Hope you all have a good day, and I wish you all good health! (Do let me know if you have any suggestions for this book - politely, of course!)