"I heard you were a biokinetic," Nihilus said to you as you watched him, trying to gauge if the Turian was nervous or thrilled to be in the same room as you. You couldn't blame him - he was both a Turian and a Specter. You nodded.
"Yeah," you say. "I was in the 5th Legion - they have two neutrals to every psion they have, if you're wondering - doing aquatic support off the coast of Florida. It was kinda fun, flaunting the Feddies..." At his expression, you chuckled. "How many Citadel Species are as...diverse as we are when it comes to governments?"
He chuckled, softly, then leaned against the wall with one shoulder. "The Volus give you a run for your money. Most species that try and join the Council, either as affiliates or as merely clients, have singular planetary governments before they manage to attain the industrial capacity to go into space. The species that don't make that level of unification a priority tend to leave nothing but radioactive cinders for the rest of us to find and 'tsk tsk' over." You nod at that, frowning slightly. "Not many of us leave what appears to be a dictatorship festering over a major continent."
You sigh. "The issue with the FSA is that they grew up when the rest of the world was rebuilding from the Aberrant War and they have enough weapons of mass destruction to make outright invading them..." You clicked your sharp teeth together. "Dicy."
Nihilus nodded.
"Hopefully, the fact they don't give a shit about space will bite them in the ass," you say, standing up. "Still, right, when I was in the Legion, the genetic scans picked up my latency, and some testing showed i had a serious biokinetic aptitude. So, I shipped down to Sudamérica and the Norca let me borrow their biokinetic tank for a bit."
"The Norca being one of the..."
"Psi Orders, yes," you say.
"I don't understand why you don't combine it all into one unified organization," Nihilus grumbled.
"Come on, where would the fun in that be?" you asked, not wanting to get into the complicated web of competitions and alliances and feuds between not just the Psi Orders, but their founders. It made
your head hurt sometimes, and you were trained to deal with it.
Nihilus snorted.
"So...is it true you've killed Aberrants?" you asked, figuring he'd asked a question, you could ask a question.
"I'm a Specter, aren't I?" Nihilus said, lifting his head. "But yes, three. The first was a classification C, morph type, a little wriggling ball of tentacles that had been dropped off on one of our mining colonies by the Class-A threat that you say is called the...Colony, yes?" You nod, frowning. The Colony was a real son of a bitch. Almost a hundred and ten years old, he'd erupted from baseline to Aberrant back in the 21st century and from the fragmentary records that had survived from that time to now, he had begun as a major
bastard back then and only become more and more of a bastard as time went on. He was now able to gestate and launch entire armies of sentient sub-Aberrant freaks to use as shock troops, while being personally able to fold space-time with his mind and rip battleships in half with his tentacles. Ugh. Nihilus continued: "I pinned the Class-C down with some biotics, then shot it to death. Relatively simple."
You chuckle. "Still, impressive for a lone agent. Let alone someone without psi powers. Without psi powers, we'd have been fucked. What about the other two?"
Nihilus regarded you with his painted features and his dark black eyes. And for a moment, you swear he was actually smiling at you.
"How about later?" he asked. "After the shakedown cruise, we can swap war stories in my quarters?"
Holy shit...is this guy hitting on me? you think. You flash him your shark teeth smile and see his mandibles parting ever so slightly.
He thinks my teeth are hot!
"It's a date."
***
The SSV-sl
Normandy swept towards the Mass Relay at the edge of the SOL system. The ancient systems within pinged the ship, immediately measured its mass down to the most exact nanogram, then calibrated the Relay's internal systems. An element zero core the size of a small football field swirled in a nimbus of energy as electricity was pumped through it by solid state generators that had been standing for nearly fifty thousand years, releasing their pent up energies in a heartbeat.
For approximately half a second, a tunnel of space tens of thousands of light years long and six kilometers wide - a needle, from the vastness of interstellar space - had effectively zero mass. The speed of light approximated infinity.
For the crew of the SSV-sl
Normandy it felt like a faint tug and shudder, the sensations of the beginning and end of the journey.
By the time it was done, they had dropped out of space within half a million kilometers of another relay, pointed back at an angle, towards the cluster of stars that was their destination.
The fusion thrusters on the
Normandy's elegant, squidlike frame began to burn and she shot towards the other relay.
Making good time.
But not nearly good enough.
***
"I swear, it moved! You gotta tell her, Doc!"
You were stirring some of the curry that Normandy had fabricated for everyone today into your equally fabricated rice, when Private Jenkins dragged the only vitaekinetic within several hundred thousand lightyears to your table. Dr. Karin Chakwas was aging gracefully in the way that only a dyed in the wool member of the Æsculapian Order could - lots of people thought vitaes were just healers, but you knew better. You'd seen Chakwas in the gym and knew she could bench press nearly five hundred kilos when she pushed herself.
Yeah, you'd checked the readout twice when you'd seen that, and decided to never, ever, ever miss any of the doctors orders. Even if it meant eating those disgusting chalky micro-G supplement pills. Like, Doc, the ship had a gravity web, it wasn't like you needed to worry about bone loss.
"What moved, Doc?" you ask, putting your fork down as you looked up at the two. Jenkins was practically vibrating.
"I was giving the private his weekly check over and he bumped the table with his arm," Dr. Chakwas said, her voice dry as she brushed a gloved hand through her silvery hair.
"I did not!" Jenkins said. "XO, you gotta believe me, I've been saying for ages, I'm a latent."
"Your genetic screening-"
"Those things are only 95% effective!" Jenkins says, hurriedly. You snort, quietly.
"Okay, Jenkins. Latents can sometimes exhibit powers. Move this spoon." You pick up the unused spoon from your cutlery - a little bioplast scooper that was going right back into Normandy's guts once you were done using it.
Jenkins put the fingers of his left hand to his temple and thrust out his right. His brow furrowed. His warm, brown face began to darken his his body trembled and he strained as hard as he could.
The spoon shuddered.
Quivered.
Jounced!
"See! SEE!" Jenkins gasped as you managed to hide your grin - and lower your knee from under the table.
"Shepard," Chakwas said, her hands on her hips as Jenkins rushed off to go tell his messmates. "That? That was cruel."
"He's UNMC, I gotta put him in his place at least a little," you say, chuckling.
"I thought we were all part of one big happy System Alliance now," Chakwas says, sitting across from you as you begin to scoop curry into your mouth, chewing on it as quickly as you can. Your tastebuds burn with the delicious sizzle of it. "You know, I was always under the impression that a Commander in the System Alliance Navy was a bit above pranking her subordinates."
Jenkins, in the distance, sounded as if he was trying to pass a kidney stone. His messmates were getting increasingly hysterical.
"Everyone's got a different touch," you say. "I-"
Your minicomp chirruped. You pulled the ruggedized rectangle of computer from your pocket and see a message from the skipper.
Briefing Room, ASAP. We have a problem.
You stood. "Dr. Chakwas, if you have any psi effects pending," you say. "Drop em. You're going to need all brains on deck for whatever just happened."
Chakwas nodded, looking grim.
***
You came into the briefing room. Captain David Anderson stood in it with Nihilus, looking grave. Anderson was the best captain you'd ever served with, full stop, period. Some people in the crew had muttered about him being a neutral - but being in the Legion was the best way for that kind of shit to get drummed out of your brain. Legion made it very clear that without neutrals, it didn't matter how hard psions fought. They just didn't have the numbers, the training, the expertise that neutrals could bring to bear on problems. So, you'd made it very clear to the grumblers - and now, you were pretty sure the entire crew was ready to follow Anderson into hell.
You were too.
And from the expression on his face...you thought that might be a possibility.
"Skipper," you say, giving him a nod. "Nihilus. What's wrong?"
"Five minutes ago, a portal opened on this ship - approximately an inch wide," Anderson said, frowning. "It's from Bullseye - they sent a radio message through it over thirty seconds, and then the portal shut. We believe it was the secondary aptitude of one of the Legionaries assigned to Bullseye, one Staff Sergeant Ashley Williams." You nodded. Some people, even after being put into a Prometheus Chamber, could exhibit very minor powers from the other aptitudes. You couldn't, but it had clearly come in handy for this Williams guy.
"What did we get?" you asked, sure that whatever it was...it couldn't be good.
Anderson gestured to the screen and it flared to life - showing the gray-black sweep of Bullseye's desolate surface. Men in Legion blue were withdrawing away from streaks of gunfire, tracers kicking up puffs of smoke in the thin, barely sustainable atmosphere. "Fall back! Fall back!" A voice shouted as one of the Legionaries was struck in the back. His kinetic barrier flared and he stumbled to his knees, which bought enough time for a few more shots to tag him.
The barriers dropped. More shots slammed him into the ground.
He pushed himself to his hands and knees.
His head exploded.
Something gray and fast skittered at the edge of the camera - which was swinging around wildly, clearly attached to a helmet sight - and then the camera swung around, showing the colony's life support dome. Smoke roiled form one of the corners, and panting filled the speaker. "This is 5th Marine Battalion, we are under heavy attack by unknown forces!" She was sounding steely and calm. "Falling back to defensive...holy
shit."
A ship had appeared above the dome. It looked like some vast, undersea creature - unsettlingly similar to humanity's Leviathans and their space frames - but it was larger than anything you'd ever seen put to space, let alone in an atmosphere. Red lightning crackled around its frame, discharge from a massive ME field that it had to be emitting to keep itself aloft against the pull of Bullseye's gravity. Energies cracked and hissed and buzzed and then the frame filled with static.
"Do you recognize that ship?" you asked Nihilus.
"I don't," Nihilus said, then glanced at Anderson.
"Shepard," Anderson said. "I had planned to tell you this later...but it seems that we're going in hotter than I expected. Bullseye wasn't chosen for no reason. I wasn't assigned the
Normandy for nothing."
You frown. "No offense sir, but, I figured both of that..."
Anderson nodded. "The dig on Bullseye found something. A previous archeological expedition. One...that was more than fifty thousand years old."
You frown a bit harder. Something about that number tickles the back of your brain. Your gills snap open in shock. "The Protheans?"
Anderson inclined his head. "Exactly," he says.
"Whatever wiped out the Protheans, it happened across the entire galaxy. Their extinction remains one of the most baffling mysteries in the galaxy," Nihilus said, his arms crossed over his chest - you noticed he was in his combat armor. "It's possible that whatever did it, or whatever the did to themselves, or whatever faction led to their ascension or exile or whatever it was that happened missed this place."
"An out of the way archeological dig..." you say, rubbing your hand against your chin. "Yeah. And now, mysterious bad guys are here to kill everyone and take their stuff."
Anderson nodded. "This isn't how I expected...this...part of the mission to go. But we were also going to, after Bullseye, head for the Turian Exclusion Zone...and see if you could pass the trials that the Citadel Council's Specters must undergo." Your eyes widened even more at that.
"Wait...you want me to be a Specter?" you ask.
"You're one of humanity's best and finest," Nihilus said. "The offer is quite an honor."
"Honor, yeah, just...unexpected!" you say - and wonder who at Section Minerva had pulled strings to get your name up on the lists. You'd have to find out who and either buy them a cake or punch them or fuck them, depending. "I...I take it, we're shifting proving grounds, huh?"
Nihilus chuckled, softly. "I always heard that your best talent was your adaptability. Specters work in teams, I want you to select a squad. Keep it light, mobility matters more than numbers."
"This isn't my first Aberrant hunt," you say, quietly.
---
Team time! Pick two
[ ] Lt. Kaiden Alenko (Telepath, former Ministry of Noetic Affairs, currently UNMC)
[ ] Private Richard J. Jenkins ("Latent" - UNMC rifleman)
[ ] Private Sarah Patel (Neutral - UNMC grenadier)
[ ] Private Vadim Rolston (Neutral - UNMC drone rigger)
[ ] Dr. Karin Chakwas (Vitaekinetic - Æsculapian Order Emergency Response Medic)
Also...
[ ] Go quiet (No Mako)
[ ] Go loud (Mako)
If you go quiet, you can request your mako be dropped by the Normandy at any time - but it may take a while to arrive, especially if you're inside. 
