In the year 2185, humanity lives in a golden era of interstellar travel.
Our discovery of ancient alien ruins on Mars propelled our understanding
of science and technology ahead by thousands of years.
While many now enjoy the newfound freedom and challenges of
exploration in the Milky Way, others look to even more distant stars.
For the hundred thousand adventurers embarking on this one-way voyage,
the future begins in…
Mass Effect
Andromeda
(fixed)
Prolog – Awakening
Light was the first thing he saw. It wasn't bright, but it still hurt in the eyes – like being awaken in the middle of a long, deep sleep. He groaned, while his eyes tried to adjust to the lights shining on them.
"Are you well?", a voice asked, sounding unfamiliar, but his eyes only saw a blurred silhouette. It took him few seconds to start seeing better, recognizing the sympathetic, brown face of an Initiative-Technician, wearing the jobs typical grey-blue uniform.
Instead of answering he focused on his body, forcing his arms and legs to move. First he lifted his upper body up, getting into a sitting position, before pulling himself out of the pod he was lying in for who knows how long. It was harder than expected and after his feet touched the ground outside of the pod, he needed to gasp for breath first. It took him only few seconds, when a realization hit him and he started to smile, saying with a certain relief: "We made it…"
He got into a more comfortable sitting position, realizing that the technician wasn't alone: a female technician was close by, wearing a similar uniform to her partner but instead with white as dominant color, similar to his own uniform. "Deep breaths. You're gonna want to take it easy.", the first technician warned him, sounding sincerely worried.
"I've been taking it easy for 600 years…", he replied with an amused smile, looking up to the technician, although he needed to admit, that he still felt the efforts of leaving the pod in his muscles – as if he had ran a marathon.
"Ryder, Scott, Recon Specialist, Pathfinder Mission Team.", the other technician starting reading from a pad, with a very monotonous sounding voice, before her partner commented it with "Pathfinder Team, eh? The ones finding us a home.", sounding quite happy about it.
"Can you make it somewhere tropical?", the female technician joined in, sounding really hopeful and joking at the same time, "Nice warm ocean…summer year-round..."
"How about we get him a cup of coffee first?", the male technician stopped her from further describing her dreamlike new home, before both of them took an arm of Scott and pulled him up. Together they started to leave the Pod Chamber, although Ryder couldn't stop himself from looking around, seeing all the pods, still active, still working. We really made it…he thought and started to smile once again.
"The selection process saw…", was heard from the Vid-Screen in the background, showing right now a tropical looking place, "…the Andromeda Initiative evaluate thousands of potential habitable planets within the galaxy.", before switching to an image of a drifting asteroid close to a planet and a moon. Scott looked in this direction and needed to smile again. So much to see…where no man has gone before…
"Scott Ryder?", his train of thoughts was interrupted and he looked up to see a blue-skinned Asari Doctor. Her species looked almost identical to humans, with three exceptions: their complexion tended to reach from blue to purple; they didn't have hair on their heads, but instead semi-flexible, cartilage-based scalp-crests looking awfully close to tentacles; and finally they were purely female – no men needed for reproduction.
She additionally had a straight, thin, white line drawn from her lips to her chin and she wore the job's almost white uniform with red lines here and there. "Let's get you checked out. Look here.", she instructed with her well-spoken voice, moving her hand from one side to another, while at the same time looking at her Omni-tool, where data was displayed on a holographic window.
"After discovering an unusually high ration of potential candidates, or 'golden worlds', the Heleus Cluster was selected as our destination.", the vid screen continued, showing now a vale with lakes and surrounded by high mountains, before showing a desert world looking like in the old Western-Movie-Vids, "Now you are a part of the first wave of arks arriving in Andromeda: our new home for humanity."
In the meantime the Doctor checked Ryders chin and neck with her gloved hands, before taking a pad close by to check the data there. Scott looked at the screen again, before the Asari commented it with "Makes it sound so easy, doesn't it?"
He looked back to her. "I hope not.", Scott disagreed, sounding casual, "I signed up for a little adventure before we settle down."
"Well, buckle up.", the doctor replied, sounding a little bit amused, "Sounds like you'll get your wish."
That surprised Scott. "Yeah?", he asked curiously.
Instead of answering, the Asari lifted her free arm and the corresponding forefinger, ordering Ryder: "Over here.", whereas he looked there without problems, so that she could start moving the finger slowly, while his eyes followed it. In the meantime she answered the question: "The Pathfinder wants you all on your feet right away. He said 'mission-ready within the hour'."
"Any idea why?", Scott asked again curiously, while the Asari inserted the data into her pad.
"No.", she answered without looking up, "But I'm guessing that's where your 'adventure' comes in."
Scott's smile returned and the feeling of excitement started to rush through his body. "Okay, everything checks out.", the Asari finished her examination, going to a terminal beside him so that Scott could look straight ahead to another former, pod-sleeping member of the Initiative – he had brown skin and black, short Rasta hair, while his clothes were white, black and blue – sitting on another bay bed, "Just one more thing before I send you on your way…", the other guy smiled and greeted Scott with his hand, while another doctor checked him out, "Let's test your SAM implant. SAM, are you monitoring?", no response was heard, so she repeated, "SAM? Are you online?"
"Yes, Dr. T'Perro.", a computer-like voice answered suddenly, "Good morning, Ryder. Are you feeling well?"
Scott was surprised first, having completely forgotten about the ship's Virtual Intelligence – or in short VI – and the monitoring implants inserted into his body, which allowed SAM to see what he sees. He looked back to the Holo-Image of the VI, projected down from the ceiling and looking like a mess of bluish circuits. He needed a moment, before he answered: "I just need a second to get my bearings.", he took a breath.
SAM replied in the meanwhile: "As the team's mission computer, your well-being is my primary concern."
Ryder needed to smile about that, while shaking his head. "I'm ready to get to it.", he replied finally, feeling still odd with this VI implant inside his head. Hopefully it's worth the while…
"Readings confirmed.", SAM explained with his matter-of-fact voice, "I detect an increased level of adrenaline in your system. The neural implant is functioning properly."
"Caffeine always did make me jumpy.", Scott commented on that grinning lightly.
"You're all done.", Dr. T'Perro said going back to Scott, while he put down the empty cup, where his coffee was few minutes ago, "Let's get you on your way.", before helping him up. To his relief it didn't feel as exhausting as the last time – actually it felt like he never slept in this pod for nearly 600 years. That's promising…he thought satisfied, while the doctor added: "Though you may want to hang around, while we revive your sister."
Ryder looked there, where her forefinger pointed at: another cryo pod close by, where the same technicians, who woke up him, were working right now. He didn't need to think long about that, answering: "Sure."
Dr T'Perro answered with a satisfied smile first, before starting to explain: "It always helps to see a familiar fa-"
Suddenly everyone heard a noise, as if metal was bending. Everyone started look around, uncertainty written on their faces. "I don't like the sound of that.", Scott commented, while the lights started to flicker. Everyone started looking up, when all of a sudden they were thrown down, reacting to something, which felt the ship hit something. Wha-….?!, Ryder thought surprised, while landing on his hands and knees, trying to prevent a broken nose. Everyone looked shocked and some even cried out, while falling down.
As quickly as it came, the ship restabilized and Scott was trying to get up as everyone else. When he heard a noise, he looked up and saw how a cryo pod sliding right at him and Dr. T'Perro. Shit…his last thoughts were, before he closed his eyes, expecting the impact.
But it never came.
The artificial gravitation has stopped working and the pod started to float at the right timing: it passed the two above them, missing them by a narrow margin, before bumping into the next wall. Relieved Ryder started to lose touch with the ground as well, while the Asari asked confused: "What's happening?"
Scott's training on Arcturus Station kicked in and he tried to calm down, trying to assess the situation, while floating around in midspace like everyone and everything not screwed on else. "Just hang on!", he commanded, looking around, but finding nothing of use.
"Engineering, report!", was heard via the loudspeakers from an obviously female voice, while Ryder tried to move in zero gravity.
"Gravity in cryo bay is offline!", came the answer via loudspeakers, while Ryder's efforts to move ended up fruitless without anything to push himself off close by.
"I'm almost inside! Hold on!", another, more vigorous sounding, female voice replied in the loudspeakers, seconds before the bay door opened and a woman with short, pale-blond hair within an undercut hairstyle, parted on the left side, entered the room, floating as well. She wore another Inititative-uniform, similar to the guy from earlier with black as dominant color.
"This is Cora!", she said so loud that everyone and especially the Intercom could hear her, "I'm at the cryo bay! Brace for a reset…", before typing something into a terminal and few seconds later gravity was back online – everyone fell down to the ground, gasping and moaning. "Everyone okay?", Cora asked afterwards to everybody around, trying to smile in an assuring way.
"I think so.", Dr. T'Perro answered.
"What happened?", Scott added looking around once again, if everyone was indeed okay.
"We're not sure.", Cora answered, the only one on her two feet right now, "Sensors are scrambled. But it's good to see you're up.", she added, after Ryder got on his feet, "Feels like centuries since we spoke."
"Ha, ha…", Scott answered with a dry laugh about this unnecessary joke, right before a new, male voice could be heard via the loudspeakers again: "This is the Pathfinder. Mission teams, continue preparations. Cora, Ryders, report to the bridge."
Dutifully Cora replied only: "You heard him, let's get-", right before the male technician from earlier interrupted her: "Uh, we have a problem over here."
Everyone looked to one of the cryo pods, which looked a little bit damaged. "It's Sara Ryder.", the technician confirmed, which surprised Scott above everyone else. With a worried face he, Cora and Dr. T'Perro ran instantly to the pod.
"What's wrong?", Cora asked immediately.
"I don't know. Have to check it out.", Dr. T'Perro answered activating her Omni-tool.
"Give it a second for the processor to sync.", the male technician added.
"Did the seals break?", Dr. T'Perro asked, sounding quite focused.
"No. Physical integrity looks good.", the technician answered, reading from a pad.
"Is my sister okay?", Scott asked with a worried voice, looking down at the pod.
"Sara's fine.", Dr. T'Perro answered few moments after lowering her Omni-Tool again, "Her vitals are strong, but the revival procedure was interrupted."
"When can she wake up?", Ryder asked and sounded obviously relieved.
"We don't want to rush it.", Dr. T'Perro answered, before activating her Omni-Tool once again, "SAM?"
"My connection to Sara's implant was suspended.", the VI answered as robot-like as ever, "However, her pulse, respiration and brain activity are all normal.
"To be on the safe side,…", Dr. T'Perro began, while Scott crossed his arms, "…we get her out of the pod cautiously, keeping her in a low-level coma for the beginning. Then stop doing that and let her body regain consciousness naturally.", and after seeing Scott's worried face again, she added: "She'll be fine."
Ryder still looked a little bit worried, but still said: "Glad to hear it.", before taking a breath.
"Thanks, Lexi. Keep us updated.", Cora interrupted further talking, using Dr. T'Perros first name, before her further words were directed at Scott, "Ryder, we need to go. Your father is waiting."
Scott nodded, while following Cora to the door. Passing Lexi and the technician he eavesdropped. "How do you want to handle this?", the technician asked.
"Keep them in the pod for now.", Dr. T'Perro answered, sounding like she was considering first, "Round the clock monitoring. We don't know if they're in true stasis anymore."
"Right.", the technician agreed, "So parts of the body could be waking up."
"But others aren't.", she added, "We can't be sure just yet."
He couldn't hear the rest properly anymore, although he overheard that the topic was providing the bodies with the necessary foods and meds in their current states. Passing the cryo bay he noticed the technical damages shown by small sparks here and there, as well like the other awakened crew members, who weren't as fine as he was yet. Above all the guy with the Rastas looked still quite pale, talking about 'the world turned upside down' or about 'arrived and already crashing the car'.
Cora and he reached the door finally and after opening it, they saw how a group of crewmates were running to the left side, shouting at each other. "What's wrong?!", one of them asked.
"We've got a surge in power readings!", another answered and sounded flushed. Only one moment later something exploded, only few stairs upwards. Damn…Scott thought, protecting his eyes from the explosion few steps ahead.
It didn't take long till another engineer, standing right on the damaged machine itself explained: "Whatever hit the ark fried everything! We have to balance the power load or it could explode!"
"But we don't know where the fault is!", the male engineer from earlier explained, still flushed.
"Ryder could find it – he has a scanner!", Cora explained, before ordering him, "Quick, Ryder! Use it to locate the fault!"
"On it!", Scott replied dutifully and was already on his way to the already smoking machine.
"I'll try to get readings on the second conduit.", Cora explained and went right instead of left.
Ryder activated his Omni-tool and its scanning program. He screened the machine, where the first sparks were seen, while the male engineer explained: "Try scanning the whole conduit." He scanned the Phase Coil and the Axial Coupling, but SAM informed him, that these parts were working properly. Not before he scanned the Compensator Relay, SAM explained: "Relay 2-C shows damage from a temperature spike."
"Found it!", Scott replied and went to it to reset it. Connecting his Omni-tool with the machine itself remotely gave him access to the grid, resetting it successfully. "The grid is recovering!", one of the engineers yelled with relief in his voice. "Thank god. That could've been the end of everyone in the cryo bay.", another explained taking a breath.
"Good job, Ryder. Now we can get to the tram.", Cora explained returning to him, before going the stairs up to the next door. They opened it and entered quite an empty corridor, with one decorative plant in each corner only, while doctors were checking some hurt crew members here and there. "That was close.", Cora added, while passing the corridor, "Barely in Andromeda, and we're already scrambling."
Scott slapped on a fake smile, replying: "The adventure begins.", right before they reached the door on the other side of the corridor. Behind it a small chamber was found, with a big screen right ahead of them, showing the whole size of the Ark Hyperion – the ship they were traveling right now.
"Not sure your dad will see it that way.", Cora answered, while entering the chamber, which turned out to be the tram. Scott followed her, while she pushed some buttons on the screen. "Hopefully it looks better on the bridge than here.", she commented right before the tram started moving.
They reached their destination few minutes later. Cora opened another door here, entering a bluish dimmed room. "Helm control, report!", the voice of a bridge crew member was the first thing the two of them heard, while another one ran from the left to the right side of the room.
"We're drifting!", another voice replied, sounding stressed.
"Flight controls aren't responding!", a third voice added, sounding rather professional than stressed.
"First priority is stopping these outages!", a female voice commanded, coming right from ahead of Cora and Scott. The woman with the short, black hair, oriental looking face and an uniform dominated by dark-grey and white colors was standing right at a railing, few meters in front of which a wall-sized screen was found, showing…
What the hell...?, Ryder thought seeing this orange-brown-grey-whatever grid-like looking thing, drifting right in front of the Hyperion – in the middle of space! It looks like…I don't know…a monster? A net? Nebula? A cloud?
"Mainline power's been knocked out!", another bridge crew member replied, "We're on reserves, Captain! They won't last!"
"What's our position?", a deep, authoritative voice asked, coming from another person entering the room from the left. He looked older, wearing a black-grey beard, but also collected and calm, while looking at the screen like the captain. "Unknown.", she answered his question, "We lost telemetry!"
"SAM.", the older man commanded, talking to nobody in particular, "We need eyes out there."
"Attempting to adjust sensor array.", SAM answered as factual as ever.
"Alec, please…", the captain turned towards him, sounding a little bit emotional, "You may be Pathfinder, but this is my ship."
The Pathfinder stepped towards her. "Captain, the protocol's clear: in absence of communication with the Nexus or the other Arks, we proceed to our appointed golden world. Solid ground.", he explained factually, as calm as before.
"If it's even out there.", the captain replied, swinging around her arms, "Nobody said anything about running into an energy cloud – and that's just a wild guess what we hit."
The Pathfinder didn't give an answer to that, but instead looked at the screen once again. "Alec, I need to assess the damage.", the captain continued, "Stop the bleeding. We've got 20.000 people asleep on this ship…", she took a breath, "Let's give them a chance to wake up."
"Can you blame her?", Cora whispered to Scott, who was listening to the conversation as well like she was. He thought about an answer for a moment, before saying it so loud that the other two could hear him as well: "My father's got a point though. Solid ground's sounding pretty good right now."
Cora wanted to answer that, right before Alec interrupted them, turning his head towards the two: "'Pretty good' isn't good enough."
Cora and Scott immediately started to stood more like at attention. "Yes, Sir.", Scott replied.
The Pathfinder looked at his son, but before he could add something else, the captain reported: "We're coming through.", before adding, "My god…"
Everyone looked back at the screen, where a planet with a wide ring appeared right behind the cloud. "Is that our golden world?", the captain asked not very sure.
The Pathfinder replied confidently: "That's Habitat 7. 'New Earth', if we're lucky.", right before leaving the elevated platform of the bridge with its railing, to go down to the control panels further in the front, downwards and closer to the big screen. Scott and Cora came closer to the railing, while the Pathfinder continued explaining: "All of our long-range scans told us it was in the green zone. Perfect for human settlement.", he reached an activated holo-projector, where he used his hands to show a projection of a planet.
"It doesn't even look the same.", Cora commented comparing the projection created by the former scans and the actual planet shown at the screen.
"She's right.", Scott agreed, "It looks pretty dicey from here. Are we sure about those scans?"
"It's a good question.", the captain joined the two.
"Things can change.", Alec replied, looking bad to the three, "It's been 600 years. SAM?"
"The energy from the phenomenon is damping our sensors.", the VI replied, "Planetary conditions are unknown."
The Pathfinder looked at the projection and the planet on the screen once again, before turning back to the platform. "We're marooned.", he said to everyone on the bridge, looking around, "Twenty thousand souls adrift at sea. And when the power runs out and stays out…", he started pointing at the projection and planet at the same time, both of them in line right behind him, "We need to know if that's safe harbor."
"And if it's not?", the captain asked, sounding worried.
As confident as before, Alec replied: "As Pathfinder, it will be my job to find an alternative. It's what we trained for. But if this goes well…", and he looked at the projection again, "…we're already home."
The Captain looked at him for a while. Finally she answered: "All right. Just make it quick."
Without hesitation the Pathfinder came back up, ordering Cora: "Harper, the rest of team should be awake by now. Have them spin up two shuttles. Planetfall in thirty."
Dutifully Cora replied: "Yes, Sir.", before giving Scott a meaningful glance and then following Alec, who left the bridge.
Scott remained on the bridge, still looking at the screen. "A stubborn one, isn't he?", the captain asked, having come closer to Ryder in the meantime.
Scott shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine.", he replied, "We may be related, but I still haven't figured him out."
"Just as long as he knows what he's doing.", the captain continued, "It's not like the cavalry's coming to save the day.", and then she turned away, ordering her staff: "I need an ETA on our sensor repairs. We're blind out here."
Scott turned back to look at the screen. He took a deep breath, right before his Omni-tool reacted. "Ryder, here?", he answered the call.
"Scott, where are you?", a female, and very familiar voice asked.
Scott's eyes got wide open. "Sara, are you awake already?", he asked her.
"Yeah, still a bit groggy though.", she replied via Intercom, "What happened?"
"I'll explain it to you.", Scott replied and turned around to leave the bridge, "I'll come over to you. Something big happened and you'll be really angry, that you didn't see it before me.", he added with a grin.
"Mass Effect Andromeda", all copyrights reserved for Bioware and Electronic Arts
Author's comment:
Well finally I started doing it. I thought about writing a "fixed" version of Mass Effect Andromeda for quite some time already. And right now I have the time and the creative potential I want to use, so I have done it.
Perhaps people who know the game will notice, that most of this chapter is copied from the game itself – that shouldn't surprise you. This Fan Fiction will do this quite heavily, because I want to change as little as possible. Except, of course, for minor changes thanks to the fact, that this is a story, not a game; except also for changes out of creative freedom; and except above all the "fixing" I will do in this fan fiction, changing some minor and major issues I had with the game itself. I have an idea where this should lead us, but not planned everything out yet.
One of these major issues I had you can see here, right at the end of this chapter: the Twin. I think Bioware Montreal wasted quite a potential with getting rid of the Twin right at the beginning of the game, only to add it at the end. May it be because they wanted to produce the game as cheaply as possible, were simply lazy or had major development problems during the five years of development so that they worked on this game effectively only a little bit more than a year – which, as a matter of fact, was the case, when you check out the internet for this – they still wasted this potential. So I want to reimagine the Twin-Part in this Fan Fiction. I hope you agree with me with this part and that I get it right. After all I am reimaginating a full game as big as Mass Effect Andromeda for the first time. ^^
Another thing I wanted to explain right away is customization. All the Ryders – the Twin Ryders direct and Ryder Senior indirect – had a customizable appearance in the actual game. I decided to deal with this by simply not describing the Ryders at all – except for being male and female. In the case of Alec Ryder I stick to not describe really many details. In this way every reader can imagine his or her own Ryder. Also I am using the default first names of the two. I hope this works for you.
Well when other explaining is needed, I'll come to it when I write about it. Apart from that I hoped you liked this chapter and want to review it – I would like to hear your opinion on this matter. ^^