[Redraft] [Shattered Soul] 1 – A Shattered Soul

[A/N: So, I was not satisfied with what time period I started the story with, and decided just to rewrite it, lol]

[A/N: This time, we will start with Mass Effect 1 instead of 2 so Church can get a vested interest and be a good companion to Shepherd and his crew. It will be shortly after Shepherd and his crew leave the Citadel, meaning that Wrex, Garus, Tali, Ashely, and Kaden will be onboard the Normandy]

Shortly after leaving the Citadel, Shepard, now a Council Specter, was reassigned as the captain of the SSV Normandy. He and his crew are after the rogue Spectre Saren, who was charged with colluding with the Geth to attack a Human colony and the murder of another Spectre. The Council has assigned Spectre Shepherd to track down and take down Saren.

Standing behind the pilot, Joker, of the Normandy, Shepard was a male Human roughly six feet in height, with a highly toned body showing his fitness and combat readiness. As an N7, Shepard is one of the most highly trained and dangerous humans alive, and that showed.

As for the Normandy itself, it was a prototype ship designed by both the Alliance and the Turian Hierarchy. It was one of the best reconnaissance and stealth ships in the Galaxy, a perfect ship for humanity's first Spectre, don't you say? As for what a Specter was, it was simple: Specters are Agents employed directly under the council and are given great power above all except the Council. Their primary job is to ensure galactic stability by any means necessary, placing them above the law in most cases, with the Council giving Spectres full discretion in their missions.

"Uh, Shepherd? We're getting hailed in the comms room," Joker said to the man menacingly standing behind him.

"From who?" Shepard asked.

"The Alliance, some Admiral," Joker commented, looking down at the console.

"Alright, I'll check it out. Keep us steered towards Feros; those colonists need us," Shepard ordered.

"Aye, Aye," Joker replied, focusing back on piloting the ship.

Leaving the cockpit, Shepard walked through the command center where the galaxy map and most of his crew worked and stepped into the comms room. 

Stepping up, he clicked a few buttons, and a man's face was projected into the space before him.

"Admiral," Shepard greeted with a nod.

"Shepard," Admiral Hackett greeted back before continuing, "I have contacted you because we just picked up an SOS Signal."

"SOS? Is no one else able to respond?" Shepard asked, confused.

"They are...however, the SOS is not Alliance, nor any other known organization, but it is human. It's a short diversion from your course, and I wanted you to check it out, see if there are any survivors and what the hell is going on," Hackett replied.

"Anything I  should know before heading there?" Shepard asked, straight to the point.

"Yes. While it is human, the signal is weak, and a civilian vessel is the one that picked it up, and what they managed to pick up was...well, give it a listen yourself," Hackett sent over an audio file.

 Raising his omni-tool, he uploaded the audio file to it before activating the audio file.

"Bzzt---- ---day, I r-----, thi- -s - th- UNSC -ast Stand! W- -re going down! Mayday -ay---, I r----- we are -oing down! Need -vac! Covenant -n- board!" 

"UNSC? Covenant?" Shepard asked, confused.

"We don't know either. What we do know is that the signal is being broadcast on all Alliance military frequencies," Hackett informed Shepard.

"How come we are only just now finding out about it?" Shepard asked.

"The signal's source comes from a small system few pass by. It was a miracle we did find it," Hackett explained before continuing, "We don't know how long the signal has been there, so be careful, Hackett out." 

Nodding, the Admiral ended the call on his side, sending the coordinates to the area around where the civilian ship picked up the SOS signal.

Heading back to the cockpit, Shepard spoke up from behind Joker, "Change of plans. We have a detour we need to make."

"Where to, Captain?" Joker asked.

Raising his omni-tool, Shepard sent the coordinates over to Joker.

"Uh...captain, you sure about this? I haven't even heard about this system before, and our Codex has very little details on the system itself," Joker asked, concerned.

"Admiral Hackett contacted me about an SOS Signal coming from the system. He asked for us to check it out," Shepard told Joker.

"We have any idea what to expect?" Joker asked.

"No," Shepard answered simply.

"Wonderful, so we either are walking into a trap, or we are about to have to deal with a crashed ship full of civilians," Joker sarcastically replied.

Ignoring Joker's quirks, Shepard decided he'd brief his new...members about the changes in the plan.

...

Urdnot Wrex, one of the last still living Krogan Battlemasters, Krogans who used a mix of powerful biotics and heavy weaponry. As for what Krogans were as a species, Krogans were a reptilian bipedal race with large shoulder humps that made them appear like they had hunchbacks. They had redundant nervous systems, thick hides, and the ability to survive for years with little water, as they were forced to evolve after the ancient Krogans nuked themselves to near extinction, turning their home world of Tuchanka into a desolate wasteland. What was left of the Krogan race was hardly people who were capable of surviving great trauma and many different environments while also having a Warrior Culture, with few Krogans ever turning to the sciences or art; typically, those Krogan were shunned or died. 

The Krogan were a very...aggressive species and were uplifted in the Rachni Wars to fight against the Rachni; only when the fight was over did they turn their blades and guns on their uplifters, the Council Races, who actively prevented the Krogans from expanding off their world.

Of course, it ended up with another war, being called the Krogan Rebellion, as the Krogans fought and clawed to expand their population off-world, something that the Council Races feared as Krogans reproduced far quicker than one would assume, with a single mother laying thousands of eggs a year, as that was an evolutionary requirement for the Krogan to survive on their home world.

So, to hold Krogan back, the Council Races created the Genophage, a pathogen that greatly affected Krogan's reproduction, causing most eggs to come out as stillborn. This caused quite the tension between the Krogans and the rest of the Council races, as the Krogan were now a dying species, as they died far too quickly for how few eggs hatched and matured enough to become adult Krogan eventually.

Urdnot Wrex was a prime example of Krogan. Standing just over seven feet tall and weighing over 300 lbs, his red scales and body were covered in burns, cuts, and scars, showing just how long he had lived and what kind of battles he had survived. He had lived through the Rachni Wars and was over a millennium old, making him also one of the oldest living things in the Galaxy other than Asari Matriarchs.

"Wrex?" Shephard called out, looking upon the Krogan, who was working on a gun in the cargo bay.

"What is it?" Wrex asked, annoyed.

"We're taking a detour. The Alliance wants us to check out an SOS signal," Shepard informed the old Krogan.

"That is fine, so long as I get a good fight," Wrex answered with a menacing chuckle.

"Seriously, Wrex, we are going to help. Don't shoot at them," Shepard told Wrex, expecting the old Krogan to listen.

"Yeah, yeah, I won't shoot the pyjaks," Wrex grumbled, annoyed.

Shaking his head at Wrex's...quirks, Shepard moved on to inform the others, stopping by to talk with Ashely, Kaden, Tali, a Qurian, and Garus, a Turian.

Quarians were nomadic people who lost their homeworld to their robotic creations, the Geth, and now live on a Migrant Fleet of ships with which they roam the Galaxy. Although they were fragile people, they were great engineers, scientists, and technicians. Due to their planet having a very particular environment, the Quarians never really developed an immune system, making a breach in their suits sometimes lethal outside of their unique planet, despite the fact that they are humanoid and have exiled themselves from their planet only a few centuries ago, most have forgotten what Quarians look like under the suit, as taking off their suit can make a Quarian incredibly sickly and bedridden, or outright kill them from infections.

Turians were another member race of the Council, and their race also took a seat at the council, along with Salarians and Asaris. Humanity was trying to get a seat on the council despite only joining the galactic community a few decades prior. At the same time, other races had been member races for millennia yet still had no seat on the Council. The Asari were the diplomatic hand of the council, the Turian military, and the Salarian's science and espionage. 

Asari is eerily human in appearance, though there are beliefs that they appear to be similar to the other races to the other races, as some Turians see the Asari as similar in appearance to Turians, Salarians to Salarians, and so on. 

[A/N: There is in game-audio that supports the statement above, meaning that the Asari have some weird mind-fuckery going on if that's the case and look similar to whoever looks at them, i.e., they look similar to humans if your human, turians if your turian, and so on, though it may be different for other races]

A few hours passed, and Joker's voice came onto the intercom in Shepard's quarters.

"Shepard? We are nearing the coordinates," Joker spoke out.

"Alright, I'll be down there soon," Shepard spoke out, climbing out of his bed.

Heading through the mess hall and up the stairs, Shepard soon reached the cockpit, where Joker was waiting.

"How close are we, Joker?" Shepard asked.

"About an hour out. Uh...captain, I'm picking up an SOS Signal," Joker spoke out, looking down at a flashing light on the console.

"Play it," Shepard commanded.

"Yes, sir," Joker spoke, pressing a button.

"Bzzt---- ---day, I r-----, thi- -s - th- UNSC -ast Stand! W- -re going down! Mayday -ay---, I r----- we are -oing down! Need -vac! Covenant -n- board!" The signal called out.

"Can you trace the signal?" Shepard asked, getting a nod from his helmsman.

"Good, get us closer, keep it going. Hopefully, it'll start clearing up the closer we get," Shepard ordered.

"Aye, Aye," Joker called out, pressing a few buttons and marking a few things down before grabbing, pushing a pedal, and turning the ship with his holographic controls."

"We'll reach the signal's source in about forty minutes," Joker informed Shepard, who nodded.

As Joker piloted the ship, they soon found themselves near one of the three planets in the system. As soon as they reached the planet, they could hear the entire message broadcast with the SOS signal, and they did not know what to make of it.

"Bzzt Mayday! I repeat, this is the UNSC Last Stand! We are going down! Mayday Mayday, I repeat, we are going down! Need evac! Covenant on board!" the signal called out, but that wasn't the entire message.

"We have dozens of Covenant on board and no Spartan Personnel. We require immediate assistance! We can't let them get their hands on the artifact!" 

The message continued.

"There's too many of them! We've locked ourselves on the bridge, but they're burning through; I have no choice but to vent the ship, it's the only way we can stop them. The atmosphere of the planet we crashed on should take out everything alive on this ship except for the Grunts. The Grunts will be taken care of by what little of the automated defenses we have left on the bridge if I fail to take them down myself; this is Commander Epsilon-Church, Freelancer AI of the Blues; long live humanity, kick the Covenant bastards for me, would y'all?" 

With that, the message abruptly ended before repeating.