Chapter 1
Note: All units have been translated to Earth standard units.
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War profiteering has already begun. – Dr. Liara T’Soni, 2186 CE
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“Have either of you heard of the Great Rift of Klendagon?” the asari asked, leaning back in her chair. A slight smile played on her lips. She couldn’t have been more than 200 years old, with her cerulean skin and slight build.

Both of her companions nodded from across the table, in the dimly lit interior of the corvette. Most of the ship’s power had been transferred to the element zero cores and the fusion drive in order to speed up their journey, and so, only one weak light shone down on the three. The krogan, an 8ft tall armored reptilian biped, kept silent. The turian, a slightly shorter avian, sighed. “Yes, Riana, but what's that got to do with this planet we're going to?”

Riana sighed, and then clasped her hands together. “The Great Rift was the result of an impact from a mass accelerator round. The weapon itself was ancient – 37 million years old – and, most importantly, it’s close to this system. But the weapon is defunct – in fact, we’re not here for the weapon at all.”

At this point the krogan looked up from cleaning his Striker assault rifle. The yellow, scaly hide on his fingers were slick with a mixture of oil and dirt.

Riana smiled. “That weapon was massive. Ground-based, multi-kilometer long induction motor. Of course, the larger the station the more resources you need to keep it running. Fuel, maintenance, you know?”

The turian piped up again, leaning forwards conspiratorially. Under the weak light, his dark carapace turned his face into a pool of shadow. “37 million years isn’t kind to buildings. They’d be dust by now. Or collapsed. Crushing everything inside.”

At this, Riana smiled thinly. “Normally you’d be right, Levin. Not this time. When I got pictures of the weapon, it looked, well, not too bad. A bit dusty, but that’s it. I had the images verified by three different specialists. Thing is, whatever material they used doesn’t degrade easily.”

Levin raised one eye-plate. "I really hope you're right."

After making a quick gesture, he pushed himself away from the table and walked over to the cockpit.

This time, the krogan spoke. “What are we looking for?” His deep baritone voice would have made his speech nearly incomprehensible, were it not for the translator chip in Riana’s omni-tool.

“Resources. Old relics, old tech, some refined eezo at the very least. I’ve cross-referenced every piece of info on and off the extranet and I’ve narrowed the location of a large ship-base to this system. Could even be homeworld. Trust me Sev, I’m thorough.”

Eezo, or element zero, was a rare material formed under the energy of a supernova. By passing electric current through it, mass could increase or decrease in a localized field.

“And no one has thought of this before you?” Sev asked, snapping his weapon back together.

“We’re deep in the Perseus Veil. To anyone else, it’s geth space. Grudges run old. To us it’s a goldmine.” She leant back again, to observe his reaction. There was none.

Sev chuckled. “If I had a credit for every time …”

Levin’s voice over the intercom interrupted the conversation. “We’re here.”

The three walked over to the cockpit “window”. Because actual windows were sources of weakness in spaceships, cameras were linked to the outside of the hull to relay images back to the crew members on the ship. In essence, the “windows” were large, very high resolution screens.

Riana and Sev met up with Levin, who was in the pilot’s seat. Levin was engrossed in some holographic display that the other two could not decipher.

The view of the window shifted from pitch black to a depiction of a star system as the ship decelerated to under light speed. The star was a small orange sun, seemingly in its early middle ages. There was only two planets; a stereotypical garden world with one fairly large moon, and a gas giant out in a further orbit. Riana could immediately see a connection between this system and the human homeworld system of Sol. All that was different was the lack of a few planets – and humans.

The corvette maneuvered between the moon and the planet, in order to start the scanning process. With the basic scanner on this ship, Riana could look forwards to hours of looking at a console display for telltale spikes and anomalies in terrain structure. Even in this age of faster-than-light travel, planet scanning was still so slow...

Sev had turned away whilst Riana was admiring the view, and was in the process of checking all of his armor and weapons. His companions’ gear was their own responsibility. He grunted as the ship suddenly shook under and around him, and he held the weapon bench to steady himself. Piece of shit ship. “The fuck?” he yelled to the cockpit.

Levin neglected to answer. His smile vanished as soon as no less than five warning lights flashed up on the display. He skimmed the warnings. High mass field. EEZO core compensating. Power loss to main engines. A-grav disabled. Shielding at 12% power – CRITICAL. Shit. Well, nice knowing you, universe.

The three of them could feel themselves becoming weightless instantly as the mass effect field in the flooring disappeared. Levin was strapped to his seat, so he didn't notice a thing, but Riana had to grasp at the console in front of her to keep herself upright. Sev pushed himself against the wall as the fluids in both his stomachs tried to enter his esophagus.

And then everything went back to normal. The whole ordeal must have only been around 5 to 10 seconds. The ship returned power to auxiliary systems and Riana and Sev both crashed downwards, onto the floor. “The fuck!” Sev roared.

“We must have triggered something,” Levin replied, still jittery from the adrenaline flooding his bloodstream. “The quicker we finish this the better.”

Sev quickly encased himself in his hard-suit, eager to put another barrier between himself and space. Riana rebooted the scanner module – then frowned, and glanced at Levin. “Is the scanner OK?”

“There are no problems with it, if that’s what you want to know," Levin said, and then he paused. "At least that’s what it says. The mass field could have messed with the electronics. I’ll have to go down and calibrate them again.” He pushed himself up from the seat, and disappeared down a crawlspace into the maintenance areas of the ship.

Sev glanced at Riana and shrugged. He probably wouldn’t understand what was wrong anyways. His job was to provide security and muscle, not to take care of the ship or to pore over graphs. Those were Levin’s and Riana’s jobs respectively.

Levin popped back up. Or, more specifically, his head did. “Scanner was working when I got to it. It didn’t look broken. What did you see?”

“If it’s not broken, the planet must be made of eezo. Look at this!” She gestured to the projected holographic display. Eezo radiation readings spiked off the charts, and the interference, even at this range, scattered artifacts amongst the image.

Levin turned to peer at the console screen, and let loose a slow, bird-like whistle. "Sev, prep the shuttle."

Sev nodded and walked into the cargo bay.

-&-

“I’ve sent you the co-ordinates,” Riana said as she and Levin clambered into the shuttle. Sev glanced back from his seat in the cockpit – both of them were clad in lightly armored, environmentally sealed suits. Sev flicked a switch and the shuttle’s side-door slung downwards, sealing the three in.

“What was all that upstairs about?” Sev rumbled. He started up the shuttle’s systems and disconnected it from the repair dock. The pilot’s console lit up in a sea of orange.

“Ridiculously high eezo radiation readings. Mass anomalies. You’d expect those kinds of readings off of a neutron star, not a planet. Still, anything’s possible,” Riana said. Levin nodded in agreement.

“So the ships are dust. Along with their tech, artifacts and whatever valuable shit they had.” Sev shrugged.

“The eezo itself is still worth a lot of cash.”

Got to agree with that, Sev thought.

“Not scared of pirates, Levin?” Sev asked as he ran pre-flight checks. Nothing wrong.

“This deep in the Veil? I’m surprised they think we’re still alive. Besides, no one would be stupid enough to attack a warship – even a small one.” Levin’s voice betrayed a sense of smugness, even though his face did not change. Sev noticed his mandibles flicking.

Actually, I’m not sure whether turians can smile. Their faces are too inflexible…

“How’d you manage to get past the geth?”

“Long story. Involves some ops I used to do during the war.”

Sev snorted, but didn’t press for more. He piloted the shuttle into the airlock. The three could hear the muffled clunk of the inner door sealing, then a low whoosh as the pumps sucked air out of the chamber. Then silence.

Sev looked out of the black strip that served as the window. The outer door was open. He nudged the throttle and cleared the immediate vicinity of the ship, then turned until he could see the planet through the window.

Typical garden world. Water and life. Probably hostile life. Some things never change.

He looked back to the passenger compartment. “Are you sure you want to come? Eezo’s mutagenic. Get any of that in you, you’re probably dead. Hell, definitely dead, this far out.”

Both of the passengers looked at him and then one another. “Sealed suits. We won’t take them off.”

“Your lives, not mine.”

Sev turned back to the pilot console and directed the shuttle to the specified co-ordinates. Then, he turned back and watched the corvette hanging in orbit behind them, becoming as small as one of the stars in the sky as the shuttle hit the stratosphere.

-&-

“At approximately midnight today, I felt a disturbance in the sky. A magical disturbance. This coincided with the appearance of that, that thing up there. I don’t know what it is, but we should take necessary precautions.” Celestia paused, then closed her eyes and sighed. So soon after the invasion. Lucky us. She took a deep breath to quell her rising anger. Getting angry won’t help anypony. “General, prepare a detachment of guards to meet our guests. Meet Princess Luna in the observatory. She’s been tracking them all day. She can tell you where to go. The Elements of Harmony will be waiting for you in Ponyville. We may need all the help we can get.”

The general nodded, saluted and then walked out of the room, closing the door after him. Celestia glanced at the door, and then shifted her gaze to the nearby window. There, in the sky. A speck of black against the reddish-pink of sunset.

“We do live in interesting times,” she muttered.

She started to compose a letter.

-&-

“Scanners?”

“Eezo radiation is too high. Any high-def scanners are going haywire. Thermal shows signs of wildlife.”

“So we’re flying into an unknown world blind.”

“It’s your expedition. Second thoughts?”

Riana paused at Sev’s question. “No.”

Sev 'hmm'ed in response. He turned back to see out of the window. The shuttle was breaching cloud cover—

The shuttle shook. The three could hear the sound of the hull scraping against something, and then they were clear.

“Careful with my shuttle. I paid for that,” Levin deadpanned.

“Then you drive.” Sev made to get out of the pilot’s seat and went into the passenger compartment, then strapped himself down into one of the seats. Meanwhile Levin had already maneuvered into the cockpit and started to buckle himself down to the seat.

The passenger compartment had no windows, so Sev busied himself by checking his omni-tool functions. That didn’t take too long, since his omni-tool was a basic model. With that done, he closed his eyes and thought the two teammates he had been hired to protect.

Levin was the one who had contacted him and met him at a Citadel bar with a job in talon. It seemed simple at the time – protection for a salvage team. The pay was good as well. Sev had an ability, honed after centuries as a mercenary, to size someone up at a glance. The turian had seemed nervous, and had been constantly shifting his weight during their conversation. Sev suspected that he wasn’t used to dealing with mercenaries, which meant that whatever operation he was running was amateur or small-time.

Fair enough, he’d thought at the time. That means they won’t dare to double-cross me. Or if they do, they shouldn’t be trouble.

He’d met Riana on the corvette. She was supposed to be the brains of the operation, what with a degree from some Thessian university Sev had never heard of. From what he gathered, those two were the entire operation. And he’d said yes!

Sev still didn’t understand why he’d accepted the job instead of walking out. Was it wanderlust? A death wish? Perhaps—

“I can see a clearing. We’re 1 click out from a cluster of the old hulks.” Levin’s voice came out over the shuttle’s intercom, mixed with static but still decipherable. “Large heat signature nearby, probably wildlife. Sev, that’s on you.”

Sev grunted in response, and checked the Striker one last time. He slid a thermal clip into the heatsink and then flicked the catch off the safety.

Riana glanced at the weapon. “Isn’t that an old-model Striker? You don’t need clips for that.”

“It’s upgraded,” he said, rolling his eyes.

“Oh.”

They sat in silence until the shuttle bumped, once, and then Sev could hear the thrusters and eezo core turning off. Levin’s voice crackled over the intercom. “Sev, try to clear us a landing area near the hulk. Riana, go with him and scout out the wreck. Good hunting.”

Sev acknowledged his request and checked the seals on his armor. They were solid. Out of his peripheral vision, he saw Riana doing the same. Smart girl.

Sev thumped his fist on the cockpit door twice. Levin got the message and unsealed the shuttle’s side door, letting sunlight and eezo-contaminated air flood the passenger compartment.

They’d landed in the middle of a forest. Surrounding them on all sides were coniferous trees. Life was present, as evidenced by the many alarmed squawks that they could hear.

Both he and Riana hopped out from the shuttle’s metal flooring onto earth; real, green and fertile earth. Sev kicked the ground to make sure it wasn’t a façade. The topsoil flew away in a cloud of brown, revealing rich humus beneath.

Riana meanwhile was checking her omni-tool. “That way,” she said, pointing towards the deeper part of the forest.

Sev brought his rifle up to rest its butt against his shoulder. They walked in silence for fifteen minutes. Sev guessed they were out of radio range of the Kodiak shuttle. “You trust him enough to leave him with your only way offworld?”

“Yes.”

Sev sighed, shaking his head. The things I do for credits.

Then he saw a flash of movement somewhere off to his right, deeper in the forest.

He signaled to Riana, and at the same time switched on the flashlight in his omni-tool. The light could only penetrate a few meters into the dense forest foliage. Sev could hear his hearts pounding in preparation for a battle. He switched on his kinetic barrier, and by his side he could see Riana’s biotics flare up, covering her skin in a blue glow.

Biotics were the abilities for some living creatures to create and control mass effect fields due to element zero nodules embedded in flesh. Those nodules activate when electrical impulses travel through the nervous system, allowing the biotic to levitate and throw objects at a distance, amongst other things.

Sev’s helmet VI warned him of two sources of concentrated biotic power. The first, by his side. Riana. The second, 25 meters in front of him and closing at a measured pace.

Fuck it. Better safe than sorry.

He pulled the trigger. Explosive shells spat out of the muzzle, into the foliage, and detonated, blooming into flowers of orange and white. A screech ripped through the air and he stopped firing.

According to his VI, the source was no longer moving. Sev waded through the foliage to get a closer look at his target. He kept his rifle up, just in case.

It was a cross between a bird and a reptile, lying on the singed ground amidst smoldering clumps of dead grass and branches. Parts of its body were missing, and in the wounds Sev could see organs expanding as its body tried to heal. There was a pool of blood around it, growing with every passing second.

Sev pulled out a knife and slit the creature open beak to tail, searching for the eezo within. A scan by his omni-tool showed that it was held in cavities in the neck. He plucked out the small silver-blue substance and put it in one of the compartments in his armor.

Riana was waiting for him when he emerged from the undergrowth. She looked at his blood-covered hands. “I guess it’s dead then.”

He shrugged. “Maybe. It looked pretty mangled.”

She shifted her weight onto her other foot. “That blood will attract every predator within a kilometer radius. Wash it off.”

Sev glared at her, but the effect was somewhat negated by his helmet. Riana would just see yellow circles facing her. Nonetheless, she was right, so he wiped his gauntlets on the dirt on the ground. “Done.”

They proceeded to the designated area in silence.

-&-

The general sat in the back of the chariot as it flew from Canterlot to Ponyville. He’d requested a few more to carry his troops. Once they were dropped off in Ponyville, they’d be forced to enter the Everfree on hoof, since the tree cover was too dense. He sighed mentally. Already the skies were beginning to darken with the onslaught of night. He decided to wait until daybreak before trekking into the forest. Undoubtedly, he’d lose fewer ponies when they could actually see in front of themselves.

The general’s reverie was broken when he felt the sensation of falling in the pit of his stomach, and he heard one of the pegasi pulling the chariots swear. How unprofessional. He was about to deliver a reprimand when the chariot turned, revealing a column of black smoke rising from deep within the Everfree. Orange flames licked near the bottom and around the edge of the smoke, giving the scene an otherworldly quality. He shivered, despite himself.

-&-

“Really? A flamethrower?”

“Unless you were planning to shoot the trees down, and burn off all your clips, this was the best alternative!”

Sev was grateful for the environmental scrubbing systems in his armor.

“How can Levin land in the smoke?”

“Collision avoidance systems.”

“Oh, this I have to see.”

“Shut up, Sev.”

The krogan shut up. Angering his employer wasn’t the smartest thing to do, even if he could probably kill her. The credits in her bank account died with her, after all. With nothing to do, Sev slumped against a tree that wasn’t burning. They’d found the first hulk, now covered with 37 million years’ worth of mud and plant growth. According to the shape of the hull, the ship had impacted the ground at an angle and a slow enough speed that it didn’t disintegrate on impact. Rather, it had been sheared in two, and the frontal section had flipped over, whilst the engine section had continued to tumble until it finally stopped about 3 kilometers away.

The frontal section was about 600 meters long, and lay at a slight incline. The ship had been roughly bisected widthwise, and Sev could see the 6 decks that of the ship that lay open to the elements. Hopefully the relics inside were undamaged enough to get him a decent commission.

Even over the crackling of burning branches, the shuttle’s deep thrum was audible, and grew in volume with each second. Suddenly it roared overhead, bursting through the column of smoke dramatically, and then took a wide turn, before slowing down to approach the clearing.

Beside him, Riana muttered “Show-off.”

Sev had to agree.

The shuttle’s thrusters disengaged and the body of the shuttle hit the ground with a whump. The door swung open, and Levin hopped out.

“We’ll start searching now. Everyone has flashlights, yes? Sev, take point in case the wildlife made their home in the ship.”
The ship was still intact enough that the sunlight could not penetrate the inner holds. Whether they searched in daytime or not wouldn’t make much of a difference.

Sev looked at the sky. The sun had set already, and the moon was moving up in the sky to take its place. That’s odd. Is the moon moving at different speeds? He shook his head. Not important.

-&-

Even at this range, Twilight Sparkle could sense the flare in the field of magic. She sensed its location in the Everfree, coinciding with the appearance of small lights above the forest – 8 orange jets that seemed to splay randomly across the sky. It disappeared a minute later, and the flare of magic subsided, leaving Twilight a bit shaken.

This normally didn’t happen. Twilight was used to being in the company of powerful magical beings and the effects of latent magic. She shivered, more out of fear than anything else.

Rarity had felt something similar as well, but she wasn’t as affected, and trotted over to Twilight. “Dear, did you…”

“Yes,” Twilight replied, shaking her head. “It’s not just you. That was—powerful magic.”

Twilight had sensed magic of that magnitude before - her own emissions were as powerful as the one she'd felt from the alien object. But that wasn't much solace. After all, she knew she was an abnormally powerful unicorn.

Rarity shivered.

The general overheard the conversation, but did not interrupt. He had felt the pulse of magic surge as well. Unicorns were uniquely attuned to the magic field, allowing them to influence it through the use of their horns. Earth ponies and pegasi also possessed magic; after all, cloud shaping and flight would not be possible without it. The main difference was that unicorns’ magical abilities could be used consciously, whilst pegasi and earth ponies were restricted to using magic as a crutch.

The general looked about the tent-city that had been constructed outside Ponyville proper – it was in between the town and the Everfree. His guards did not look enthused at rushing into the forest, filled with dangerous creatures already, to face a possibly even deadlier enemy.

Nor should they, he mused.

Now, he could do nothing but sleep and wait until morning.