The Shadow of Old Transgressions (Homeworld/Mass Effect Crossover Quest)

The Spinward Shield

System Rho Terra
Unnamed gas giant

You spent some time getting to know the crews of your two alien additions as the flotilla jumped towards the system that Minister Fiheo pointed you towards. The Kadeshi contingent is led by Praetor Yommu'Vell vas Nudin who is staying with Iuno. He seems like a fairly stoic and terse individual. Though hopefully he'll warm up to you as the mission progresses. The Reconciler frigate is named the Raawan and has a crew of twenty. The captain is Leli'Zefal vas Raawan. You get the impression she's related to Limmu somehow, but it wasn't explicitly stated.

Meanwhile on the Kushan side Iuno has made room for Warchief Zraash Sulaku. He seems very angry all the time. You're pretty sure he still holds a grudge about the Hand of Saajuk, though there's no way he was alive to witness it personally. Iuno has quietly prepared several enforcer bots in case things get physical. On the other hand the Vengeance frigate, Marduk, is crewed by thirty hulking Kushan that somehow squeeze themselves in there. Their captain is Gergal Dire who is quite friendly. It seems he fought against you in the battle of the Garden and respects your skills as a warrior and tactician. Given that he survived the maelstrom of fire without the benefits of Bentusi armor or shielding the feeling is mutual.

Both frigates are now sitting on opposite sides of Aurora's hangar with the resource tank strategically placed between them. Aurora has already begun scanning their vessels in order to be able to repair them if need be and is working on a set of schematics for both. Laverna has raised concerns about the limited space since she's heard that flicker races need room to socialize and interact. Since Aurora has nothing of the sort and Iuno is too small for the full crews Laverna work shopped a kind of living module that could be slotted into Aurora's hangar.

Ulysses objected to taking up more of Aurora's hangar space and you proposed building a separate liner instead. Things escalated and now the three of you are discussing designs for a full blown mothership with internal parks and living space for tens of thousands of people. You probably can't build something like that, but it's a fun project.

---

Minister Fiheo's coordinates have lead you to yet another uninhabited star system. You suppose it makes sense. If the megaliths were in inhabited space they would have been found before now. As it is, the Taiidan spotted this one when a routine mineral survey picked up some anomalies on a small moon.

Small is relative though. As you come into orbit you read the moon as being much larger than the last megalith. It's several hundred kilometers across and dwarfs the small research station the Taiidan built in orbit. And the station isn't some quick prefab. The Taiidan Scientific Council really went all out. From your information they only found the megalith a few months ago, but they've already built a station four kilometers across, with lots of research bays and hangars for survey craft. Maybe they towed an existing station out here. That would make more sense actually.

You spot several ships docked with the station as you make your approach and you send a standard greeting hail, but you receive no response. You get closer and repeat the message, but still nothing. Not willing to risk any security systems you stop the flotilla some distance away and send an acolyte in to check things out.

It does not get blasted out of the sky, which is yet another oddity to add to an increasing tally. You can definitely spot defense guns on the station, and you didn't get any message about being added to the white list so they should be shooting automatically. Is there someone over there or not? Maybe they added you to the white list beforehand. It's a big security risk, but it's not like raiders regularly spoof Bentusi codes. Your fellows make a point of hunting down and eradicating anyone who tries that.

To test the situation you bring your defensive fields to maximum and creep in with Ulysses and Laverna. Iuno and Aurora stay behind with the Marduuk and Raawan so as not to risk everyone in case of an ambush. It turns out it's unnecessary though. You float right up to the station. Close enough that you can see the welds on the hull, and there is still no response. Not even an automated navigational response.

It's not like you haven't seen derelicts before. But that's the thing. The station is reading as having full power, and you don't see any damage. Everything appears to be functioning, but it's totally silent. It's one of the creepier things you've seen in a while, and after dealing with the Ebony Pirates that's saying something.

At this point you're also picking up another power reading on the surface. It appears that the scientists have built a base camp and drilled a large borehole down to the Megalith itself. Again there is no response.

What do you do? (Pick Two)

[ ] Hack into the Station:
Laverna will be doing that regardless, but you can lend your expertise to the task and see if you can gain access to the station's systems. From there you check the logs and the internal feeds to see what's happened to the archeologists who were supposed to be here.

[ ] Board the Station:
Not you personally, but you can fabricate some maintenance robots to go in and see what is happening. Probably faster than hacking, but definitely more intrusive.

[ ] Go check the Base Camp:
The moon has light enough gravity that you can land near the base camp and attempt to remotely override its systems as well. Your maintenance droids could be used here, but they wouldn't be as effective in gravity even as low as it is.

[ ] Investigate the Bore Hole:
Surprisingly the bore hole is actually wide enough that you could fly down it if you wanted. You aren't crazy enough to actually do so without further investigation, but you could send a few drones down there. Resource drones would be your first choice, or maybe some acolytes if you're worried about security systems.

---

Quest Note: Just to clarify I will pick the two options with the highest votes.

The Spinward Shield

System Rho Terra
Unnamed gas giant

You float a few of your maintenance bots across the gap between you and the station. They clamber around until they reach an airlock and unlock the manual release. Entering the interior of the station is easy from there. The bots find themselves in a maintenance corridor. A long hallway that wraps around the station. Gravity seems to be working so you deploy the bots' legs to save power.

Now quadrupedal, the bots start working their way along the corridor looking for a way deeper into the station. It doesn't take them long to find a vent, and you decide to send one bot inside to start mapping the station's air shafts. The rest keep searching. Several unremarkable storage closets later they manage to find a door with a sign pointing towards "Laboratory Wing A." You leave one bot to continue checking the corridor just to be thorough and send the rest towards the labs.

Everything is eerily quiet and well lit. The station seems to be in working order, but there is no sign of the scientists. That changes when you enter the laboratory wing however. There is nothing in the first few rooms, but the third has a makeshift barricade set up from furniture and lab equipment. It appears there was a battle here, and the barricade was breached. You find blood on the other side, but no bodies.

One bot takes a sample of the blood for further analysis. The rest continue to trundle forward. As they do you see more signs of fighting. Bullet holes in the wall, toppled furniture, blood on the ground. The stains are mostly green, it seems the majority of the scientists were Salarians.

Laverna sends you a station map. She's worked her way into the systems, and is looking through the logs. While she does you decide to head directly from the station command center. Surely if anyone is left they'll be there. It's a solid theory, and the command center's doors are sealed, but when you burned through the doors you don't find any survivors. You do find your first body however. A salarian sitting in the command chair with a bullet through their head. A pistol lies close by where it fell from their hand. There's no other signs of fighting though, or a reason why this salarian committed suicide.

You do find the security settings pulled up on a nearby console however. It seems the suicidal salarian set the security whitelist to everyone for some reason. That's one mystery answered. You take control and set the security list to only recognize your flotilla. If anyone comes gunning the station itself will be on your side now. But there's still a mystery to be solved here.

On a hunch you plot the signs of battle you have found on a map of the station. It seems that the heaviest fighting was in Laboratory Wing C and thins out from there. You send your bots down to investigate. Whether the fighting started there and spread out or was the target of whatever happened it seems the most vital clue is there.

When the bots arrive they find many signs of fighting, but no barricades. It likely started here then, and didn't give anyone time to prepare. The signs say this was the xenoarchaeology wing and you find quite a few artifacts spread through the labs. The scientists were running all sorts of tests apparently. The artifacts themselves are composed of blue and black metal in almost organic looking shapes. They're interesting, but the most interesting artifact of all proves to be in the lab you have pinpointed as the epicenter of everything. There your bots find a tall obelisk with pulsing lines of light.

It's clearly active, and while the scientists might have had to piece together what exactly it was doing the hard way you have no such problems. You can read hyperspace emisions coming from the artifact. It's disturbing and not quite like anything you've felt before. It also seems to be trying to interfere with your thoughts, but you are Unbound! It will take more than that to mess with your mind. You bet the scientists weren't quite so prepared unfortunately.

You contact the rest of the flotilla and warn them to watch out for the hyperspace interference, then set the bots to work on cataloging the rest of the station while you wait for Laverna to finish combing through the logs.

---

At the same time as you are coordinating your bots exploration of the station you also send several drones down the bore hole. Bentusi are quite good at multitasking. The first dozen kilometers are just a blur of stone and dirt. What you would expect from a random moon in the middle of nowhere.

But then you find the scientists' drilling rig. It's a big platform full of complicated machinery, and there is only one good reason you can think of that it would stop here. That it reached the megalith itself and could go no further. You consider having your drones destroy the drilling rig so you can get access to the megalith, but it might still be useful later so you decide against it. Instead you have several resource drones chew a new tunnel in the side of the borehole and curve around the drilling rig.

You actually expect that they will hit the Megalith's hull, but instead they carve there way back into the bore hole. Apparently this wasn't the end after all. The drilling rig was just parked in the middle of the bore hole for some reason. You make a note to send a few more bots in to investigate it, and turn your attention back to the drones flying deeper into the abyss.

And that's where it gets strange. As your drones continue downward the walls change from dirt and stone to organic matter. Strange shapes curve out from the walls and the borehole narrows. Your drones finally reach the megalith itself, but you almost miss the transition as the tunnel continues even further downward and the growths blur the line between the stone of the moon's outer cover and the metal of the megalith's structure. You have the drones slow down and start taking careful records of their sensor logs, but you still have them move ever downward.

Eventually it gets to the point where the tunnel is closed off entirely by a meaty looking wall. You aren't going to let that stop you though, and order the resource drones to dig through it. The wall is strangely resilient, but not much can stand up to PDAs and soon the drones have carved through it. They are met with a gust of wind. There was an atmosphere on the other side of all things! You quickly have your resource drones assemble a metal patch over the hole while your acolytes dart through to explore the other side.

They find themselves in a mammoth cavern. It's a mix of the artifacts you saw on the station and the strange growths you saw on the way in. The artifacts seem to be part of the Megalith itself, and they make up the structure of the cavern, but the growth cover everything like a malignant cancer.

There's no sign of the scientists, but you do see vehicles parked around a few inflatable habitats. They've been here at least, and now you have a trail to follow. Back in orbit the other ships have joined you. Aurora has begun fabricating a larger airlock for the bore hole, and Iuno has started helping Laverna with the logs. Ulysses is staying on guard against any surprise attacks.

What is the next Step?

[ ] Push on into the Megalith:
Obviously something has gone terribly wrong. You don't know if any of the scientists are still alive, but if they are you will likely need to find them as soon as possible or they won't stay that way.

[ ] Continue your investigations into the station:
Gather all the log data and physical evidence. It seems likely that the artifact somehow altered the scientists' behavior, but you don't know that for certain yet. This may take some time to correlate everything.

[ ] Explore the base camp:
Did the same thing happen at the base camp as the station itself? You should land and find out.

[ ] Investigate the Mining Rig:
Why is it halfway up the bore hole? Did the scientists drill through all those strange growths or are they new. You can likely find some answers on the mining rig if you send a few bots in to look at it.

While you are considering the situation the Raawan and Marduk hail you asking for information and instructions. The Kadeshi are good engineers and the Kushan have a lot of raw muscle. They could assist the operation, but unlike your bots they aren't expendable. You don't want to risk them getting close to the Obelisk on the station, but there are other locations they could assist with.

What do you do with the Kadeshi and Kushan?

[ ] Have them stand guard
Having just Ulysses keep watch might not be the best idea. And you don't want to risk them getting altered by whatever affected the scientists. Have the two frigates stand watch further out.

[ ] Send them to investigate the mining rig.
It would probably be faster for them to investigate the mining rig than having your maintenance bots do it. They would be uncomfortably close to the Megalith however.

[ ] Send them to investigate the base camp.
The station is too risky, but there probably weren't two artifacts like the obelisk. See if your alien comrades can find out anything on the surface of the moon.