This is a Mass Effect-Battlefield 2142 crossover, so heads up. Because the Mass Effect-Battlefield crossover region has barely any stories, I chose to post it here to reach a larger audience. I hope you enjoy this prologue, I don't want to explain my theories on how the Salarians were able to discover Voyager One but this is in the story. Contact me if you wish for a more detailed response through PM or review. I appreciate all the support, read and review. Plus check out my other stuff. I've got a lot of things going on so I'm unlikely to update often. Give me a break alright.

Hope you guys like it, read and review!

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Welcome to RiptideZ's "The Council's Snowglobe," a non-profit fan-produced fiction product under the ownership of set penname: RiptideZ.

DISCLAIMER:

All copyrighted items mentioned or used in this work belongs to their rightful owners at Bioware, Dice, EA, and other brands mentioned below or later under terms of Fair Use. The author only owns their own creations. This author is an adamant supporter of Constructive Criticism, please read and review, be mindful however, this author will delete your comment if it is considered of ill-intent or overstated such as being already stated more than a few times. If anything is wrong with the writing piece, contact RiptideZ through the Review section, or Instant Messaging."

…

"We should have expected this, we knew it was coming; our own destruction. We had assumed it would be by fruits of our own labor, but it seems our Mother had planted the Seeds of our fall long before we even stepped out into the light. Extinction is now what we face head on, our legacy, everything we built is now being undone." – Anonymous, Canadian speaker

…

["Extraterrestrial Origin"]

[2139 AD (Human Year)]

[Unknown Location – Beyond Sol]

…

"Ensign Ralon, why was I woken up at the crack of dawn?" A voice spoke within a dimly lit communications hub.

"Sir, that signal you've been wanting my team to keep an eye on since last November, the one coming from interstellar space. Its transmission frequency has dropped significantly since about three Citadel-standard hours ago. It's still transmitting from the Void but the clarity has begun to decrease significantly." One figure spoke, one listening operator, Ensign Noban Ralon rubbed his hands together nervously.

His commanding officer, in the shadows, tilted his head and a snort of annoyance was heard, "I'm still grievously tired, I don't need an update on changing signal patterns, if it's going away or dying out, find out why and get me back the audio by the morning. Possibly 8, when my shift actually begins."

"Yes sir, of course sir. However, that was not why I called you. It's like a miracle—I, we've, found that the lack of passing dark matter in the region—it's allowed us to pinpoint the object's location in space within 10 parsecs."

"Show me. Now." The commanding officer, a Captain Otann Uzik, said.

The lower-ranking officer quickly moved to his work console, a holographic workstation with two holographic-projector screens and a keyboard, all of alien design, he quickly flicked at a few switches and brought up his data stream.

Rather than shown in lines of code or statistical data or complex charts. Simple diagrams with alien hieroglyphs and complex designs including a complete three-dimensional diagram of the galaxy, the Milky Way Galaxy appeared.

A spot relatively near the middle orbit of the galactic center highlighted in red, along a glowing region, a galactic arm, marked the sight of the research base the officers were currently stationed. Another spot, highlighted in yellow revealed an object located on another arm and pointed in in the direction toward the previous red dot marking the base.

"Data shows the projectile, whatever it is; is likely to pass within our region of space in the next 100,000 years at relative speeds. We assumed at first it was a unusually fast extrasolar space rock, when we first caught its varied signal, we just took as part of the Universal constant Cosmic Noise, but several layers of long range scans by our furthest-from-us, closest-to-the-target satellites, the object compared to the Cosmic background noise, we found a rounded 7.38984% difference. We would have let it go if the signal didn't loop again every 47 minutes. Plus it was exceptionally difficult to lock onto the frequency, the lack of eezo readings made the finding discouraging."

The higher-ranked officer looked at the data and the complex, composed report on the second screen.

"It says here the object's estimated speed is around 20,000 meters per second and is constantly increasing. Currently, its location hasn't gotten far from its projected origin, Star System W34-Z1, yellow star, average size, relatively young, the likelihood of finding a planet there supporting life is around 63 percent. You and your team are sure?"

"Yes, sir. The presumed, collective group has estimated that the object is of extraterrestrial origin is highly encouraging. It's more optimistic than the other 237 possible objects we've been investigating in this section of space. The region is an eezo-dead zone, mostly, but the region has been detected with at least a dozen or so definite planetoids. If a species could foster growth anywhere, this would be a good place due to its relatively distant location from any known relay networks making them unlikely to be discovered and with the seemingly slow speeds the projectile is moving at, we're to assume they are a young race if they do exist."

"Hmmm… Ensign, what would be your course of action based on your current findings? All ideas are welcome since you and your team have made a good development."

"Sir, I would immediately contact Sur'Kesh with the findings and move forward through STG for an officer to meet with the Council to discuss further choice of action."

"You do know that we're not legally allowed to explore unknown space due to the decree since the Rachni Wars."

"Yes sir, but due to the seeming primitivism and lack of relays nearby. I would say this is good experiment for the Council to begin reopening itself to the unknown of space."

"Good idea. I'm going to go grab some stimulants and I'll go begin a report, I'll make sure to find some time to get you a promotion, you've done your job well. Now get your team together and finalize the data, someone at command is going to be presenting that stuff after all; you know we have to spoon feed the politicians the information."

"Yes, sir we'll get right to it."

The commanding officer and his subordinate, both Salarians nodded to one another and moved back to their respective stations in the large chamber lit only by the holographic workstations, about 30 silent frog-like aliens worked away at their stations, the only sounds being made were the beeps and clicks of moving machinery and parts.

…

[2 Citadel-standard years in passing…]

…

Space was all that the eye could see, darkness passing by the window dotted by flakes of light, glowing white and blue and everything in between. The tendrils of matter skimmed passed the high quality television, window-like screen and obscured the patterned darkness. Space, this was the final frontier.

Now Corporal Noban Ralon, the communications intelligence officer of the Special Tasks Group, managed by the Salarian government based on Sur'Kesh, was traveling at super luminous speeds in real space to reach "the Voice from the Void," as ridiculously dubbed by a member of a secretary from the STG's Internal Affairs Office.

It had been two- nearly three long years since its initial discovery, today would be a fatal day in Citadel history, the first discovery among many artifacts from a new species.

Within a few seconds they would drop back into real space and they would meet the object.

It had taken much discussion between the Council to decide whether exploration to the object was safe to go ahead with. In a final verdict, it was chosen two-to-one that the opportunity was to be explored. The Asari had voted against but both the Salarians and Turians had both agreed this was a good time for a different approach to policy of alien first contact.

In Ralon's personal opinion, shame on the Asari for their long lifespans, while some argued it made them much wiser, it made their reaction times and ability to adapt significantly lower, it was a wonder that they managed to advance so fast with such long life spans that made it difficult to change their ways. While the other races had gotten over the Rachni generations ago, it seemed the primer asexual species had yet too.

Anyhow, the expedition was green lit and by then Ralon had been promoted, now he was the primer signals expert on the artifact on board the SUSV Nujao, a Salarian frigate outfitted for a long-distance trip and equipped with primarily scientific gear rather than combat systems. For the most part, the warship was only armed with standard, light forward combat guns. Along with the Nujao, there were another three Salarian frigates, a Salarian Flotilla Leader, and a small Turian taskforce of three heavy, combat frigates armed to the teeth and several extra, external fuel tanks for further distances.

"All hands, brace for deceleration." The intercom boomed, a female Salarian voice, Captain Opol Pizze, Ralon's current superior.

The frigate shuddered and the full view of real space, a blank, black sheet dotted with stars staying still became noticeable and against the blackness in the light of the ever-bright Council vessels who had all decelerated to this point, the object a metal contraption moved quickly, matched by the vessels' speeds creating the illusion of the warships and object being still.

It was thin and spiny, there was a lack of fashion beyond functionality based around communication it seemed.

The main body was a large, white dish, several large appendages along its sides were noticeable. One long one curiously appeared to be a primitive antennae, another appeared to hold a large camera. The rest of the body was a small, hexagonal box colored also in a dull gray and metal supports held the entire body together. A primitive, long-range satellite.

"Anyone detecting signals?" Pizze's voice came into his audio piece.

"None, ma'am. It appears that the signals ceased some time ago." Ralon stated going over his recovered data from over 2 years of observation. "It appears that the thing stopped transmitting a long time ago but due to our long distance and time dilation, we still received the signal for years because of the signal's slower-than-light speeds, it's a surprise we even detected it. In all rights, we really shouldn't have."

"Noted, anything we can discern from its body now."

One unknown voice, a possible Turian captain spoke, "It's functional?"

"Well isn't that obvious, Dr. Revelation!" Pizze replied with mock annoyance, but genuine satire.

"I see something." Ralon stated as he stared at the real time feed of the moving contraption.

"I see a rectangle with… 50 stars in blue, 13 stripes in red and white. I see a complex symbol with 4 digits of an unknown dialect engraved in the circle of blue with stars and a notable orbit. There is also some other markers, what appears to be a name for the vehicle or a functional marker of some kind but it's in big, bold letters."

The reading on the side was clear, not that anyone understood its meaning. Voyager One.

An extraterrestrial satellite. One from an unknown location, an unknown species, and for an unknown reason.

"I found something." Another turian voice said, evidently feminine.

An image appeared on the Corporal's feed, an image of a circle inscribed in gold and bronze, what appeared to be a two-dimensional design of a planet. The first glance of the specie's homeworld. Whatever it was, this was monumental.

Rolan made the decision to name the hypothetical world now, "New Ground."

He didn't know that his name was ironic, for the locals referred to it as, Terra Nova. Earth.

…

Kudos to cipher100 for his noticing of my error. I meant to say Voyager One, not Explorer One.

For you history junkies and those that need a fresher on human achievements, this is for you. Voyager 1 was a long range research satellite launched in the 1970s by the American NASA program to research the planets beyond Mars, specifically Jupiter and Saturn, but has become the fastest man-made object in Human History and has become the farthest traveling man-made object in Human History and is currently exited the Solar System, the first of hopefully many to come. Voyager 1 actually is the second Voyager module as Voyager 2 was launched a few years prior but at a slower velocity with Voyager 1 having already passed it in the last decade.

The Explorer 1 module in comparison does not hold any grand achievements beyond being America's first satellite to achieve a successful orbit around the Earth and make it into space. The first man-made object would instead go to Sputnik 1, the first satellite to reach space in Human History, put up there by the Soviet Union.

Thanks for reading guys and I'll try to get on to getting more chapters out, however, if you guys are looking for unique story pieces similar to this that cover hard science fiction or realistic settings, I would also suggest my Halo in-universe autobiography, End of War: The Rainforest Wars. It follows the story of a Marine Captain during the Interplanetary War that waged for several years between the United Nations, terrorists, a large private military corporation known as Misriah, and a neo-Fascist and neo-Communist uprising in the 2170s.