Ch 2: Eden Prime

——pov Shepard—-

"I knew this wasn't a simple smash and grab," said Shepard. "Missions involving Spectres always have a catch."

Yes, the data in the Prothean Beacon we found could possibly bring us as much advancement as the ruins we found on Mars" said Anderson.

"There is also the matter of your candidacy for Spectre status, Shepard. But first, let's see the transmission." said Nihlus, as the trio entered the comm room.

The transmission went up on screen, showing the colony being attacked and a large, squid-like ship of unknown origin descending.

"The situation looks bad. Shepard, rally up Alenko and Jenkins. You're going in to investigate. Maybe we should get the help of our newest guests." said Anderson.

"I don't know if that's a good idea…" said Nihlus "We don't know if what he said was the truth and whether or not he could be trusted."

"If half of what he said about his abilities were true, he would still have far more abilities than the best Special Forces team or Spectre of any race. We may need those skills if our enemies are after the beacon." insisted Anderson

"Fine. But he goes with Shepard's squad. I work better alone." said Nihlus

"Your funeral. An immortal super soldier who specializes in everything military would be a welcome addition to my squad." said Shepard, heading towards the medbay.

A minute later, Shepard walked into the medbay. "Eitri, right? You wanted to help, right? We got a colony under attack and the Captain decided we could use your help."

"Sure, I was just getting bored. I finished reading the data I was given. Let me suit up." Eitri said, transferring into his warframe and standing up. "So any knowledge about the enemy? Armaments, armor, weaknesses, number? Because that will determine which weapons I use."

Shepard was startled when Eitri seemed to merge with the warframe, but decided to ignore it. "Everything is unknown other than a giant squid-like ship descending on the colony. Our original goal here is to retrieve an artifact that was dug up at the colony."

Eitri opened a small rift to his pocket dimension "Okay, so an asset recovery mission inside a civilian zone with hostiles present. Probably want to minimize collateral damage, so no explosives or fire… might need to do some long range attacks… so Rubico Prime/ Tenet Cycron/ Skiajati I guess." Eitri said, pulling a large sniper rifle, a strange pistol that looked like a rectangle attached to a disc, and a long, katana-like sword.

"Is… that a sword?" asked Shepard, confused.

"A nikana to be precise. Standard Tenno armaments. Primary weapon, sidearm, melee. We're basically space ninjas with guns, though recently many of us prefer going in loud from the start."

"Okaay then… I'll bring you to meet the rest of the squad." said Shepard.

Shepard guided Eitri to the drop zone where Kaiden and Jenkins were waiting.

"What's with the giant magician?" joked Jenkins.

"Huh. Guess I am technically a magician. Wanna see a magic trick?" said Eitri, playing along.

"Sure. You gonna pull a rabbit out of your hat?" Jenkins said

"Close. Shepard, what is your favorite type of gun?"

Shepard knew where this was going. "Sniper rifle"

Eitri took off Limbo's 'hat,' opened a small rift in it, and pulled out a Vectis Prime. Eitri had long removed excess decorations on his guns and added sights and scopes on them. "For the pretty lady."

"Normally when someone tries to flirt with a girl, they give her flowers." Shepard smirked, taking the gun. "Huh, this is a lot lighter than I thought it would be."

"Wouldn't know anything about flirting, ma'am, but I did hear that women like big guns. The female Tenno I knew just reinforced that, as they ran around with rocket launchers or literal cannons whenever I fought with them. As for why it's so light, it was made for use by a Tenno's true body, before they learned we could use warframes as proxies. Would still be classified as an 'anti-material rifle' on Earth, though."

"Wait, what the fuck?! How did you do that?" shouted Jenkins

Eitri chuckled and put his hat back on. "A good magician never reveals his secrets."

"Okay, both of you quiet down. Eitri, this is Lieutenant Kaiden Alenko and Corporal Richard Jenkins." Said Shepard, chuckling.

At that moment, Anderson entered the room with Nihlus. "Glad you got acquainted. Your mission is to help acquire a prothean artifact we found on Eden Prime. The colony has been hit by an unknown force, and the colony's status is unknown."

"What about survivors?" Asked Jenkins.

"You can secure any survivors, but your priority is the artifact." Said Nihlus

"Nihlus? You're coming with us?"

"You'll only slow me down. I'm scouting out a different route."

"You should at least take Ordis. He can generate stealth fields and provide cover fire. Trust me, not having backup will hurt you in the end. Last time I did a mission, I denied someone who wanted to back me up and went on ahead without Ordis. Guess what happened? I got distracted by someone I knew and got literally stabbed in the back. I was the best of my kind, and felt invincible. Don't make the same mistake." said Eitri

"Fine. But he has to follow my commands." said Nihlus.

"As long as you don't intentionally give me orders that would risk death of either of us, I will happily comply" said Ordis.

"Is that an AI?" asked Jenkins.

"Ordis is a cephalon, a human mind uploaded into a synthetic body." said Shepard.

"Isn't that still illegal? Robot uprising and all that?" asked Kaiden.

"He's… not Alliance."

"We're nearing drop point 1. Shepard's squad, get ready to disembark." said Anderson

The Normandy reached the drop point and the group jumped a couple of feet to the ground. Jenkins landed a bit awkwardly and fell over.

"First mission?" asked Eitri, helping him up.

"Yeah. I also grew up in this colony, so I'm kind of nervous."

"Okay squad, follow me." said Shepard and they advanced, coming around the bend only to see a clear ambush spot. Jenkins was about to move ahead when Eitri stopped him. "Let me go first."

Eitri walked into the clearing and was instantly shot at several times by a few drones that came out of hiding. He shrugged off the blasts and sniped all of them down.

"You just saved my life! Are you okay, Eitri?" exclaimed Jenkins.

"Don't worry about it, I'm fine. My shields and this warframe have taken far worse than that and came out fine." said Eitri.

"Even so, thanks."

The team continued towards the dig site, destroying more drones on the way. Coming over the hill, the team saw a lone soldier fighting against some humanoid robots. Eitri and Shepard made short work of them and went to check on the soldier.

"You okay miss…?" asked Shepard.

"Gunnery Sergeant Ashley Williams. Yeah I'm okay, but the rest of my squad didn't make it. Are you here for the beacon?" said Ashley.

"What were those?" asked Eitri.

"I'm not sure, but I think they're Geth," said Ashley.

"The Geth haven't been seen outside the Perseus Veil since the Morning War." objected Kaiden.

"I'm just telling it how I see it." said Ashley.

"Geth or not, they are still better equipped than you guys are. Remind me to get you guys some real guns when we get back to the ship," Eitri says, tossing one of the Geth's rifles to Jenkins, who gladly swapped it for his rifle. Shepard glared at him, and Eitri shrugged. "What? You don't take weapon upgrades from downed enemies? They have better weapons than you except for the rifle I gave you. I'm going to see if I can modify it to be more powerful." Eitri said, throwing one of the rifles into a rift.

"I… honestly can't argue with that. They're technically not corpses, so it should be fine." Shepard admitted. "Williams, we could use your help."

Ashley picked up a Geth rifle. "Lead the way."

"What are those, anyways?" Eitri pointed at the spiked devices that the Geth had impaled a colonist on.

"I don't know, but the Geth were impaling everyone they caught on it." said Ashley

"Passed a residential area. Lots of bodies." said Nihlus over the comm.

They continued towards the dig site and ran into more Geth. Making short work of them, the team found the dig site empty.

"It must have been moved." said Shepard

"By the colonists or the Geth?" Asked Kaiden.

"Who knows."

"Change of plans, Shepard. Saw a small spaceport. Going to check it out." said Nihlus

The team climbed up the hill to the residential area to see more of the spikes with people on them, except the people were turned into what could only be called husks, covered in cybernetics. As they approached, the spikes lowered and the husks jolted to life and attacked them.

"God, they're still alive! What happened to them?!" shouted Ashley.

"Looks like a cybernetic version of the Infestation, but more minimalistic." Eitrisaid in disgust, sniping a husk in the head, killing it. "They seem to have had all liquid sucked out and replaced with cybernetics. They're already dead, just mummified puppets controlled by the enemy."

After killing the last husk, they found one building still intact and locked. Hacking into the door, they found a pair of researchers, one female and one male.

"Thank God, humans! We're saved!" Said the female researcher

"Nobody's been saved! This is just the beginning of the Apocalypse!" said the male researcher

"We have cleared out the immediate area, but you should stay locked in here until the rescue team comes. We were sent to retrieve the beacon you guys found. Do you know where it is?" Said Shepard

"We brought it to the shipyard for retrieval. The silver turian told the others to bring it there. We were doing research in here when the Geth attacked and we locked the door." Said the female researcher

"Wait. Silver turian?"

"Yeah. He was covered in cybernetics, said he was a Spectre"

—- pov Ordis —-

As Nihlus and Ordis snuck towards the loading dock under Ordis' stealth field, Nihlus saw a silver turian looking around.

"Ordis, wait here." said Nihlus moving ahead

"Nihlus, wait-" Ordis whispered in protest.

"Saren?" said Nihlus, addressing the other turian

The other turian, now known as Saren, turned and noticed Nihlus. "Nihlus."

"What are you doing here? This is not your mission"

Saren walked past Nihlus, patting his shoulder. "The Council decided you needed assistance."

"Didn't expect the Geth to be here. The situation's bad." said Nihlus, looking out at some of the destroyed colony.

"Don't worry, I'll take care of it." said Saren, drawing his pistol and aiming at Nihlus' head.

It was at this moment that Ordis made his move. He supercharged Nihlus' shield and fired his laser at Saren. However, Saren managed to fire a shot before he was disarmed, knocking Nihlus into a coma, before retreating towards the shuttle. Ordis continued firing at Saren until Geth started to appear and fire at Ordis, forcing Ordis to fight back in order to protect Nihlus.

By the time Eitri and Shepard's squad came to the loading docks, there was a circle of destroyed Geth surrounding Ordis and Nihlus.

"What happened here?" Asked Eitri.

"Operator! When we got here, there was another turian that Nihlus called Saren here. They seemed to know each other and Nihlus dropped his guard and got shot in the back of the head by Saren. I managed to stop most of the damage and drive Saren off, but Nihlus is currently in a coma. He also commands the Geth." said Ordis.

"You scanned some of the Geth, right? What can you tell me about them?"

"They are strange. Their programming is ingenious, and allows for increased efficiency the more programs are in a certain transmitting radius, making them 'smarter,' while not being a true hivemind. They communicate in short bursts of binary that are spoken too fast for most organics to understand. The most interesting thing, though, is that these units all seem to be under various stages of corruption by an ancient but hyper-advanced virus. Operator, the corruption is similar to what happened to Jordas."

"How can you tell the program is ancient? And who or what was Jordas?" asked Shepard

"If you know what to look for, you can find a program's creation date and usage history, even if the type and language of the code is unknown. The virus is definitely not Geth, and was created several hundred million years ago and has been used on thousands of different synthetic species, each use separated with an interval of around 50,000 years. Last usage was 50,155 years ago. As for Jordas, he was a -PAIN IN THE ASS- ship cephalon like me whose ship got infected with the Infestation, turning it into a semi-sapient creature. The Infestation managed to infect and corrupt his core, and he was forced to be its voice as it lured in and infected scavengers and rescuers. Operator and I responded to his message and ended up having to -ANNIHILATE- destroy Jordas." Ordis said, bringing up a video projection of Eitri fighting the Jordas Golem on his archwing.

(AN: the code history and carbon dating thing is almost certainly bullshit as far as I know, but this is a Sci-Fi multiversal crossover fanfic and I'm the author)

"What is that… figure flying around shooting at it?" asked Jenkins

"That was me. I hadn't rebuilt the railjack yet, so I had to fight it using an archwing and archgun. Warframes don't need to breathe, so we became interceptors ourselves by attaching space flight harnesses and giant guns and swords and flying into battle" said Eitri

"That's badass as hell." said Jenkins

"We can talk about this later. We have a Spectre in a coma here and his shooter is after the beacon. Jenkins, you will stay back and protect Nihlus while the rest of us continue to the spaceport." said Shepard

"Aw, come on! Why do I get the boring job?!" complained Jenkins

"You know what Jenkins, you keep Nihlus and yourself safe and I'll get Eitri to make you a new gun. Fail, and you change your first name to Leeroy." said Shepard

"I will make sure Nihlus makes it back to the ship safely, ma'am!" Jenkins exclaimed, straightening up and saluting.

The rest of the crew went to the spare cargo tram and headed to the spaceport. When they reached there, they found the Geth setting up several nuclear charges.

"Fuck! Eitri, Ordis, Kaiden! You disarm the bombs while Ashley and I take care of the Geth!" Shepard yelled as she started sniping at the Geth and using her biotics to crush some when they got close. Ashley joined her and Kaiden, Eitri, and Ordis ran/flew towards a bomb. Eitri and Ordis made short work of theirs and moved onto the last one. They finished just as Kaiden finished his and Shepard killed the last Geth sniper.

Eitri started putting the bombs into his pocket dimension, only to be glared at by Shepard again. "What? Saren just 'lost' a couple nukes. We need to make sure to 'give' it back to him. In all seriousness though, he just tried to nuke a colony. I wanna make sure he gets a taste of his own medicine."

"You know what? Fine. Leave a couple here for evidence, but deactivate them permanently."

"I recorded the Geth activating the bombs, o that should be fine as long as we provide one of the bombs to the Alliance." said Ordis.

Just then, they saw the giant squid-shaped ship fly into the air.

"Look at the size of that ship!" exclaimed Kaiden

"If that's Saren's ship, we're in trouble." said Shepard

They went up the stairs to where the dock was and saw what was obviously the beacon, which was emitting some kind of biotic field.

"It wasn't like that before. Saren must have done something to it." said Ashley.

Eitri walked towards the beacon and beckoned Ordis to scan it. As he neared it, the field it emitted started to pull him in. Shepard noticed and pushed him out of the way, getting caught in the field herself in exchange. She floated off the ground as emery seemed to flow into her. Then the beacon exploded, launching Shepard backward into a crate.

"Fuck. She probably panicked and forgot I'm basically immortal. Ordis, did you complete your scan?" cursed Eitri.

"Got the blueprints Operator. We can repair it. It appears to be a communications relay and was relaying a message that is being transmitted on loop to all the beacons. We can repair it on the ship and it will probably retain the signal." Said Ordis

"We'll, let's collect what we can and extract. I'll get the beacon fragments." said Eitri

"How will you…" Ashley started to ask, trailing off as Eitri opened a spacial rift and started moving parts of the beacon into it. "Didn't know you could do that."

"I got a whole dimension all to myself. Technically it is the space between dimensions called the Rift, but I can access it anywhere, manipulate it, and even move through it at will. Nowadays I mostly use it for storing things. Got my personal railjack in there. It's about twice the size of the Normandy, but built for war and a skeleton crew of 1 pilot, 2 gunners, an artillerist, and a cephalon."

"Ah yes, the Tempestarii, the -GHOST SHIP- railjack you modified that became the boogeyman of both the Corpus and Grineer." said Ordis nostalgically.

"Wait, you own a ghost ship?!" exclaimed Kaiden.

"I mean, technically not a 'ghost ship,' per say. But it was an experimental railjack that was lost in a space storm and spent the next thousand years appearing whenever a space storm occurred, piloted by the Shadow of its pilot, who was looking for the pilot's body and destroying any ship it came across that answered its call incorrectly." answered Eitri nonchalantly. "It even got some awesome void armor and effects. Kinda like the thing I have, now that I think about it."

Kaiden and Ashley shivered imagining it.

"It was technically classified as an interceptor as the only smaller space units in the Tenno fleet are warframes on archwings and transport ships, and they could technically only needed a crew of 1 to fly. With the Alliance's specifications, though, it would be a frigate-class dreadnought because of the artillery and railgun Operator attached to it. After his modifications, it became the strongest and fastest ship in the Origin systems, able to outgun and destroy several 2km-class dreadnoughts and galleons that were able to destroy entire colony stations in a single shot." said Ordis

"And you can just… pull it out of nowhere whenever you want?" asked Kaiden hesitantly.

"Yep." said Eitri, popping the 'p' as he finished collecting the last of the beacon fragments. "Ordis, can you scan the area to make sure there aren't any more Geth or husks? Kaiden, can you call for the Normandy once Ordis gets the all-clear? I'm going to get Jenkins and Nihlus."

""Okay/Roger""

Eitri took the tram back to the loading dock, where he picked up Nihlus and then came back with Jenkins. When he got back, there were a few more husk bodies on the floor.

"There were a few husks nearby, but they have been taken care of. I called the Normandy, and they should be coming down right abouuut…. now." Said Kaiden as the Normandy landed nearby.

"Jenkins, Ashley! Can you two carry Shepard to the medbay? I'll take Nihlus. Kaiden, you can debrief with Anderson." said Eitri.

Anderson met them on the loading ramp as the group carried the wounded up it. "What the hell happened? Where is the beacon?"

"Kaiden can give you the situation report. As for Nihlus, I believe Ordis probably recorded what happened. Unfortunately, I think there is a law of some sort about recording Spectres without consent or something, and you'll see why I said that. First, we need to get to the medbay. Shepard was caught in an explosion and Nihlus was shot in the back of the head." said Eitri

"Fine. Alenko, Ordis, come with me."

""Yes sir!/okay"" said the duo and followed Anderson to the comm room for debriefing.

Eitri, Jenkins, and Ashley brought Nihlus and Shepard to the medbay for examination and recovery.

(AN: just finished two finals. I really hate taking summer classes. Worst part is, one of the classes I was supposed to take this summer was canceled twice and now I have to take another full year of college to complete my degree due to it being a prerequisite to the first half of my capstone. I might be better off anyway, as I would have needed to take 4 other classes with each capstone class, which was extremely discouraged by the teachers and other students. Worst part is, it's not even my chosen major, because the college doesn't have a game design major, only a minor 😭)