Mass Effect: The Reclamation Effect

disclaimer: i don't own anything aside from the story, even the cover is not mine,

i read a lot of fanfiction for mass effect so i decided to do one myself, this is a what-if scenario where humanity encounters the remains of technologically superior humanity of the past that were already killed by the reapers in the previous cycles, removing their reliance on mass effect physics, also having obtained superior power sources from the said ruins.

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TIMELINE:

1972: The final mission to the moon by NASA uncovers a great discovery that is kept secret from the rest of the world, a strange ruin of some kind of a research facility is discovered on the far side of the moon which is dated to be approximately 2 million years old,

1973: Many secret flights are sent by NASA filled with the best and brightest of them to study the ruins but unknown to them, their movements are being observed by many countries that have influence in space thanks to an anonymous leak of confidential information from NASA,

1980: After seven long years of wait, the rest of the countries around the world finally confront America about its actions, revealing the startling discoveries on the moon to the rest of the world, turns out that the facility was some form of a research station created by a humanoid race called simply as 'Huma' that was focused on creating alternate power source for their race, although most of the research was corrupted due to the passage of time, they discovered the methods of creating sustained Fusion reactions along with cold fusion and plasma powered generators, there were even viable methods of exploiting zero-point energy as a power source, however, the world soon realized that the technology required to create the said power sources was still out of reach for them, although it was disheartening, something good still came out of it, the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence gave the world governments a strong reason to start cooperating with each other much closely than before to form a unified front,

2005: The first successful nuclear fusion reactor test proved to be a turning point in human history towards clean and efficient fuel system, this year also marked the day of founding for the UEG, United Earth Government, this government was only partly democratic because the people were only allowed to vote for the representatives of the countries, but the chairmen of the council itself were elected by the representatives who would vote among themselves, this was done so that the representatives would not end up using their power for their own personal gain, the chairman had the same power as that of the entire council combined, this was done so that the chairman would not abuse his power, making it so that if the entire council was against any decision made by the chairman, then it would be a stalemate and outside interference would be required to break it, this interference came in the form of a new title called as the Supreme Admiral, this person would have absolutely zero political power and would typically be someone from a military background, but if a situation arises where the stalemate between the chairman and the council of representatives occurs, this person's vote would be the deciding factor of the decision, but aside from this very rare scenario, it is outright illegal for a Supreme Admeral to involve himself in politics and had zero voting power outside of the previous situation, this form of a government proved to be a very beneficial one in the future for it allowed for a swift response to any unpredictable situation,

2010:A Great breakthrough in the Cold Fusion reactor technology allowed for the creation of the very first starship capable of interplanetary travel, this ship was build in low earth orbit, it was made from a strange Tungsten alloy that was discovered on the moon base many years ago which was then reverse engineered to be artificially fabricated on earth, it drew its power from four Cold Fusion reactors which produced 100GW of power combined when running at full capacity, this was equivalent to four Hydroelectric power stations combined, the fact that the generators only took a space that was equivalent to that of two independent houses combined was also astonishing, the ship itself was over three kilometers long and was equipped with two sets of engines, the first set of engines were fusion-powered motors that produced thrust of tremendous proportions by using sustained nuclear fusion explosions to propel the ship forward, these were the initial stage thrusters and could also be used to slow the ship down or stop it, the secondary engines were ion propulsion engines that would be used for sustained acceleration of the ship, when the ship launches towards its destination, Mars, it would first deploy the nuclear propulsion to pull away from Earth's gravity, after using Luna's gravity to slingshot themselves in the right direction, they would use the ion engines to slowly increase their speed until they were travelling at great speeds fast enough to send them to the red planet in 40 days,

2015:Another breakthrough from the extraction of data from the Moon facility recovered the designs for a functional Alcubierre drive, UEG begins its construction immediately and within a few months time, successfully conducts the testing of its first prototype which allowed the ship equipped with it to achieve speeds of 1c or the speed of light, the drives are then made official and are equipped on every UEG ship available, the only drawback of the drive was the tremendous amount of power it required to power it, requiring new ships to be build which was 6km in size and equipped with eight cold fusion-plasma hybrid generators to provide the ship with power, this new class of ships is named as Behemoth class,

2060: Fifty years after the first man arrived on Mars, it was now a fairly large colony with over 10,000 people living on it, this was thanks to the warp drive as it made possible for the colonization of the planet in a feasible time frame,

2065: Another startling discovery, this time on Mars throws the entire human race into chaos, two new ruins are discovered on the red planet, one structure belonged to the Huma that resembles the research station on Luna, and another structure which is completely alien to them, further research shows that this structure belonged to another alien race called as the Protheans, this race had constructed this research station here to study the ruins of the Huma as well as an interesting species on the neighbor planet, meaning, humans, this discovery threw the UEG for a loop as they never thought that their home system would be home to not one but two alien ruins from two separate alien species, they were further put off when they discovered a secret message from the Prothean archives, a message that spoke of a machine race that systematically wipes out all life in the galaxy every 50,000 years,it spoke of the trap of Mass effect, it spoke of how the Protheans had fought the machines, It spoke of the catalyst, it spoke of their failure, this message was enough to spark a month long debate among the council after which they came to two conclusions, 1) they need to find the home system of the Huma if they are to veer away from the trap of mass relays, 2) judging by the data in the ruins, they did not have much time before the machines came back, these two conclusions sparked the rapind industrialization of Mars as well as gearing all of Human economy towards researching warships and weapon systems long since deemed useless in this peaceful era, Humanity had once again awakened their true selves after nearly a century of peace, the masters of war had awakened,

2075: The very first Sapient AI is created by humanity, it is given the name Adam, this AI was created by using what is known as Cognitive Impression Modeling, a method in which the brain of a human is scanned and is used as a template to create an intelligence that was fully sentient, the first generation AI's soon exposed a flaw known as Rampancy where they would think themselves to death, this problem was solved using quantum entanglement to send the excess data processed by an AI into a secure vault on Earth which can be used by the AI to store unnecessary data and prevent itself from going rampant, they were also transferred from standard quantum computers to a computer system reverse-engineered from the computer systems of the Huma, it's construction and material are classified by UEG but the only thing known about them is that they are a million times more powerful than any human-constructed quantum computers, after a few years, AI has become common in human space, so much so that the AI are also treated as citizens of UEG and are granted rights just like the humans,

2100: thirty-five years after the message was discovered on Mars, Humanity had finally discovered the origin of the Huma, it was thanks to the first AI, Adam that the location to the Huma home system was discovered, the Vega Star system, work begins on the construction of a new class of ships that were smaller than the behemoth class, standing at the size of 4km but equipped with state of the art technology, these ships were equipped with an improved war drive system that could achieve speeds of warp 3, nearly 40 times the speed of light and equipped with prototype DEWs and railguns as a safety precaution, it was also much more agile compared to previous generation ships thanks to a breakthrough in graviton manipulation devices, the new class of ships were named as the Odyssey-class,

2101: After 6 months of traveling, the very first Odyssey-class ship entered the Vega Star system, but what they found left them stunned, over the course of the next three years, many human ships entered the system and started to uncover it's secrets,

2104: The complete truth of the Huma race is finally revealed, when the human ships had first entered the system they were immediately targetted by countless DEW turrets that were spread throughout the star system, it was at this time that an automated starship of Huma origin scanned the ship and scanned the humans within, it was only then that the turrets stopped arming themselves and shut down, this process would repeat itself with every ship that entered the system, the reason for this was soon revealed when humanity finally arrived at the home planet of the Huma, or what was left of it, the entire planet had been turned into an asteroid field, signifying a planet-destroying attack by unknown assailants, but then humans finally had a closer look at the Sun of the system which left them speechless, a derelict Dyson sphere, a partially constructed Stellar engine, gate-like structures spread throughout the system, Ring worlds, and many more marvels of technology spread throughout the star system, it took humanity three years to unlock all of the information from many of the computer systems of the devices but most of the information came from the systems on the derelict Dyson Sphere,

Apparently, this system was not the home of Huma, rather, it was the one and only colony system of the Huma, the Huma was a race of technologically advanced creatures that had lived two million years ago and had expanded across their birth system, their first colony was the vega system, during their golden age, they had created the Dyson sphere in the system to power their entire species in the system, they had then created stargates that were powered by an experimental power source known as a singularity engine which was based on their graviton manipulation devices, these stargates were capable of sending an object through them at speeds equivalent to 50 light-years a day, these stargates were extremely superior to the warp drives available to humanity, but during their golden age, they discovered that a race of machines was destroying every sentient race in the galaxy, it was made easy thanks to the over-dependence on eezo by the other sentient species in the galaxy, thankfully, the Huma had long since realized that trap of the Mass relays thousands of years early, making them a formidable opponent for the Reapers, unfortunately, even though they had built up a decent army, they did not have enough time to prepare a proper fleet before the Reapers invaded the Vega System, they fought for months on end against the endless hoard of Reapers but were soon overwhelmed when one of the Reapers got lucky enough to hit their Dyson Sphere and managed to criple the Huma long enough to defeat them, but their sacrifice was not in vein, for they had effectively brought enough time for their home system to remove the only Mass Relay leading to their home using a powerful starship equipped with singularity drives to tow the relay out of the galaxy using a one way stargate leading to the void, they also destroyed any and all signs of technology on their home planet and stored away their young into cryo capsules operated by Dumb AI, they then evacuated the entire star system and fled to the opposite direction of their home system, luring the reapers away from their home, they were soon hunted down and killed, effectively ending their race, but the Basic AI they left behind in the Vega System continued to carryout it's protocol of creating defence turrets and creating drone ships to scan any incoming species into the system, if any species that was not Huma entered the system, they would immediately be blown away by the combined power of the turrets, but after many eons of continuos operation, the AI ceased to exist and the product of the turrets stopped by which point the system was filled with turrets everywhere, these turrets drew their power from the small functional part of the Dyson sphere that still operated to this day,

The thing that caused the entire UEG to be in a state of shock was the home system of the Huma, it was their own solar system, and the birthplace of Huma was none other than Mars itself, it appears that sometime after the destruction of the Huma civilization, Mars was struck by some kind of calamity that rendered the planet uninhabitable, leading the Dumb AI to send the remaining children Huma to its neighbor planet which had just started to develop life on its own, resulting in the Huma becoming the ancestors of the now Human race,

2204: Nearly a century after the discovery of their origins, Humans, now called Terrans which included their synthetic counterparts, had long since recovered the technology of their ancestors, these hundred years would be later known as the ' Age of Reclamation' where countless lost technologies of their ancestors were revived, this could be easily identified by the massive Dyson Sphere surrounding the star of the Vega System as well as another Dyson sphere located in Sol, even the Stargate technology was recovered and now connected over 30 star systems that have been colonized by Terrans, thanks to the vast knowledge of their ancestors, the Terrans had major breakthroughs in many fields of research which led to the average human life span to exceed 600 years or more, even when a human is near death, their minds could be uploaded into a system making them digital beings, this made the human race near-immortal,

2220: First Contact with an alien race initiated