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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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."
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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.