Drew Karpyshyn - Mass Effect 01 - Revelation

[Mass Effect 01] - Revelation

Revelation

Mass Effect - Book 01

Drew Karpyshyn

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[Mass Effect 01] - Revelation

PROLOGUE

“Approaching Arcturus. Disengaging FTL drive core.”

Rear Admiral Jon Grissom of the Alliance, the most famous man on Earth and its three fledgling

interstellar colonies, glanced up briefly as the voice of the SSV New Delhi’s helmsman came over the

shipboard intercom. A second later he felt the unmistakable deceleration surge as the vessel’s mass

effect field generators wound down and the New Delhi dropped from faster-than-light travel into speeds

more acceptable to an Einsteinian universe.

The ghostly illumination of the familiar red-shifted universe spilled in through the cabin’s tiny viewport,

gradually cooling to more normal hues as they decelerated. Grissom hated the viewports; Alliance ships

were purely instrument driven—they required no visual references of any kind. But all vessels were

designed with several tiny ports and at least one main viewing window, typically on the bridge, as a

concession to antiquated romantic ideals of space travel.

The Alliance worked hard to maintain these romantic ideals—they were good for recruitment. To people

back on Earth, the unexplored vastness of space was still a wonder. Humanity’s expansion across the

stars was a glorious adventure of discovery, and the mysteries of the galaxy were just waiting to be

revealed.

Grissom knew the truth was much more complex. He had seen firsthand just how beautifully cold the

galaxy could be. It was both magnificent and terrifying, and he knew there were some things humanity

was not yet ready to face. The classified transmission he had received that morning from the base at

Shanxi was proof of that.

In many ways humanity was like a child: naïve and sheltered. Not that this was surprising. In the whole

of humanity’s long history it was only in the last two centuries that they had broken the bonds of Earth

and ventured into the cold vacuum of space beyond. And true interstellar travel—the ability to journey

to destinations beyond their own solar system—had only been made possible in the last decade. Less

than a decade, in fact.

It was in 2148, a mere nine years ago, that the mining team on Mars had unearthed the remains of a long-

abandoned alien research station deep beneath the planet’s surface. It was heralded as the most

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[Mass Effect 01] - Revelation

significant discovery in human history, a singular event that changed everything forever.

For the first time, humanity was faced with indisputable, incontrovertible proof that they were not alone

in the universe. Every media outlet across the world had jumped on the story. Who were these

mysterious aliens? Where were they now? Were they extinct? Would they return? What impact did they

have on humanity’s past evolution? What impact would they have on humanity’s future? In those first

few months, philosophers, scientists, and self-appointed experts endlessly debated the significance of the

discovery on the news vids and across the info nets, vehemently and sometimes even violently.

Every major religion on Earth was rocked to its core. Dozens of new belief systems sprang up overnight,

most of them based on the tenets of the Interventionary Evolutionists, who zealously proclaimed the

discovery as proof that all human history had been directed and controlled by alien forces. Many

existing faiths tried to incorporate the reality of alien species into their existing mythologies, others

scrambled to rewrite their history, creeds, and beliefs in light of the new discovery. A stubborn few

refused to acknowledge the truth, proclaiming the Mars bunker a secular hoax intended to deceive and

mislead believers from the true path. Even now, nearly a decade later, most religions were still trying to

reassemble the pieces.

The intercom crackled again, interrupting Grissom’s thoughts and drawing his focus away from the

offending viewport and back to the shipboard speaker in the ceiling. “We are cleared for docking at

Arcturus. ETA approximately twelve minutes.”

It had taken them nearly six hours to travel from Earth to Arcturus, the largest Alliance base outside

humanity’s own solar system. Grissom had spent most of that time hunched over a data screen, looking

through status reports and reviewing personnel files.

The journey had been planned months ago as a public relations event. The Alliance wanted Grissom to

address the first class of recruits to graduate from the Academy at Arcturus, a symbolic passing of the

torch from a legend of the past to the leaders of the future. But a few hours before they were about to

depart, the message from Shanxi had radically altered the primary purpose of his trip.

The last decade had been a golden age for humanity, like some glorious dream. Now he was about to

bring a grim reality crashing down on them.

The New Delhi was almost at its destination; it was time for him to leave the peace and solitude of the

private cabin. He transferred the personnel files from the data terminal to a tiny optical storage disk,

which he slipped into the breast pocket of his Alliance uniform. Then he logged off, pushing himself

away from his chair and stiffly standing up.

His quarters were small and cramped, and the data station he’d been working at was far from

comfortable. Space on Alliance vessels was limited, private cabins were typically reserved exclusively

for the commanding officer of the ship. On most missions even VIPs were expected to use the common

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[Mass Effect 01] - Revelation

mess or the communal sleeping pods. But Grissom was a living legend, and for him exceptions could be

made. In this case the captain had generously offered his own quarters for the relatively short trip to

Arcturus.

Grissom stretched, trying to work the knots out of his neck and shoulders. The admiral rolled his head

from side to side until he was rewarded with a satisfying crack of the vertebrae. He made a quick check

of his uniform in the mirror—keeping up appearances was one of the burdens of fame—before stepping

out the door to make his way to the bridge in the bow of the starship.

Various members of the crew paused in their duties to stand at attention and salute as he marched past

their stations. He responded in kind, barely aware that he was doing so. In the eight years since he had

become a hero of the human race, he’d developed an instinctive ability to acknowledge the gestures of

respect and admiration without any conscious awareness.

Grissom’s mind was still distracted with thoughts of how much everything had changed with the

discovery of the alien bunker on Mars … a line of thinking that was not surprising given the unsettling

reports from Shanxi.

The revelation that humanity was not alone in the universe hadn’t just impacted Earth’s religions, it had

far-reaching effects across the political spectrum as well. But where religion had descended into the

chaos of schisms and extremist splinter groups, politically the discovery had actually drawn humanity

closer together. It had fundamentally united the inhabitants of Earth, the swift and sudden culmination of

the pan-global cultural identity that had been slowly but steadily developing over the last century.

Within a year the charter for the human Systems Alliance—the first all-encompassing global coalition—

had been written and ratified by Earth’s eighteen largest nation-states. For the first time in recorded

history the inhabitants of Earth began to see themselves as a single, collective group: human as opposed

to alien.

The Systems Alliance Military—a force dedicated to the protection and defense of Earth and its citizens

against non-Terran threats—was formed soon after, drawing resources, soldiers, and officers from nearly

every military organization on the planet.

There were some who insisted the sudden unification of Earth’s various governments into a single

political entity had happened a little too quickly and conveniently. The info nets were swarming with

theories claiming the Mars bunker had actually been discovered long before it was publicly announced;

the report of the mining team unearthing it was just a well-timed cover story. The formation of the

Alliance, they asserted, was in fact the final stage of a long and complicated series of secret international

treaties and clandestine backroom deals that had taken years or even decades to negotiate.

Public opinion generally dismissed such talk as conspiracy theory paranoia. Most people preferred the

idealistic notion that the revelation was a catalyst that energized the governments and citizens of the

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[Mass Effect 01] - Revelation

world, driving them boldly forward into a brave new age of cooperation and mutual respect.

Grissom was too jaded to fully buy into that fantasy. Privately, he couldn’t help but wonder if the

politicians had known more than they publicly admitted. Even now he wondered if the communications

drone carrying the distress call from Shanxi had caught them by surprise. Or had they been expecting

something like this even before the Alliance was formed?

As he neared the bridge, he pushed all thoughts of alien research stations and shady conspiracies from

his head. He was a practical man. The details behind the discovery of the bunker and the formation of

the Alliance didn’t really matter to him. The Alliance was sworn to protect and defend humanity

throughout the stars, and everyone, including Grissom, had to play their part.

Captain Eisennhorn, commanding officer of the New Delhi, gazed out through the large viewport built

into the foredeck of the ship. What he saw there sent a shiver of wonder down his spine.

Outside the window, the massive Arcturus space station grew steadily larger as the New Delhi

approached. The Alliance fleet—nearly two hundred vessels ranging from twenty-man destroyers to

dreadnoughts with crews of several hundred—stretched out from it in all directions, surrounding the

station like an ocean of steel. The entire scene was illuminated by the orange glow emanating from the

type-K red giant far in the distance: Arcturus, the system’s sun for which the base had been named. The

ships reflected the star’s fiery glow, gleaming as if they burned with the flames of truth and triumph.

Though Eisennhorn had been witness to this grand spectacle dozens of times, it never ceased to amaze

him—a dazzling reminder of how far they had come in such a short time. The discovery on Mars had

elevated humanity, binding them together with a new sense of singular purpose as top experts from

every field had united their resources in one glorious project—an attempt to unravel the technological

mysteries stored inside the alien bunker.

Almost immediately it had become apparent that the Protheans—the name given to the unknown alien

species—had been far more technologically advanced than humanity … and that they had vanished long,

long ago. Most estimates placed the find at nearly fifty thousand years old, predating the evolution of

modern man. However, the Protheans had built the station from materials unlike anything found

naturally on Earth, and even the passing of fifty millennia had done little to damage the valuable

treasures inside.

Most remarkable were the data files the Protheans had left behind: millions of tetrabytes worth of

knowledge—still viable, though compiled in a strange and unfamiliar language. Deciphering the

contents of those data files became the holy grail of virtually every scientist on Earth. It took months of

round-the-clock study, but eventually the code of the Prothean language was broken and the pieces

began to fall into place.

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[Mass Effect 01] - Revelation

For conspiracy theorists this was seen as fuel for their fire. It should have taken years, they argued, for

anything useful to come out of the bunker. But their negativity went unheard or unheeded by most, left

behind in the wake of spectacular scientific advances.

It was as if a dam had ruptured and a cascade of knowledge and discovery had been unleashed to flood

the human psyche. Research that previously took decades to achieve results now seemed to require mere

months. Through the adaptation of Prothean technology humanity was able to develop mass effect

fields, enabling faster-than-light travel; no longer were vessels bound by the harsh and unforgiving

limits of the space-time continuum. Similar leaps followed in other areas: clean and efficient new energy

sources; ecological and environmental advances; terraforming.

Within a year the inhabitants of Earth began a rapid spread throughout the solar system. Ready access to

resources from the other planets, moons, and asteroids allowed colonies to be established on orbiting

space stations. Massive terraforming projects began to transform the lifeless surface of Earth’s own

moon into a habitable environment. And Eisennhorn, like most people, didn’t care to listen to those who

stubbornly claimed humanity’s new Golden Age was a carefully orchestrated sham that had actually

begun decades earlier.

“Officer on deck!” one of the crewmen barked out.

The sound of the entire bridge staff standing to salute the new arrival told Captain Eisennhorn who it

was even before he turned around. Admiral Jon Grissom was a man who commanded respect. Serious

and stern, there was a gravity about him, an undeniable significance in his mere presence.

“I’m surprised you’re here,” Eisennhorn said under his breath, turning back to gaze once more at the

scene outside the window as Grissom crossed the bridge and took up position beside him. They’d known

each other for nearly twenty years, having met as raw recruits during basic training with the U.S. Marine

Corps before the Alliance even existed. “Aren’t you the one who’s always saying the viewports are a

tactical weakness on Alliance ships?” Eisennhorn added.

“Have to do my part for the morale of the crew,” Grissom whispered back. “Figured I could help

reinforce the glory of the Alliance if I came up here and stared out at the fleet all wistful and misty-eyed

like you.”

“Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy,” Eisennhorn admonished him. “Sir Isaac

Newton said that.”

“I don’t have any enemies,” Grissom muttered. “I’m a goddamned hero, remember?”

Eisennhorn considered Grissom a friend, but that didn’t change the fact that he was a difficult man to

like. Professionally the admiral projected the perfect image for an Alliance officer: smart, tough, and

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[Mass Effect 01] - Revelation

demanding. On duty, he carried himself with an air of fierce purpose, unshakable confidence, and

absolute authority that inspired loyalty and devotion in his troops. On a personal level, however, he

could be moody and sullen. Things had only gotten worse once he’d been so visibly thrust into the

public eye as an icon representing the entire Alliance. Years of being in the spotlight had seemingly

transformed his harsh pragmatism into cynical pessimism.

Eisennhorn had expected him to be sour on this trip—the admiral was never a fan of these kinds of

public performances. But Grissom’s mood had been particularly dark even for him, and the captain was

beginning to wonder if there was something more going on.

“You’re not just here to speak to the graduating class, are you?” Eisennhorn asked, keeping his voice

low.

“Need to know basis,” Grissom said curtly, just loud enough for the captain to hear. “You don’t need to

know.” After a second he added, “You don’t want to know.”

The two officers shared a minute of silence, simply staring out the viewport at the approaching station.

“Admit it,” Eisennhorn said, hoping to dispel the other man’s bleak humor. “Seeing Arcturus surrounded

by the entire Alliance fleet … it’s an impressive sight.”

“The fleet won’t look so impressive once it’s spread out across a few dozen star systems,” Grissom

countered. “Our numbers are too small, and the galaxy’s too damn big.”

Eisennhorn had to admit that Grissom was probably more aware of that than anyone.

The technology of the Protheans had catapulted human society forward hundreds of years and allowed

them to conquer the solar system. But it had required an even more amazing discovery to open up the

vastness of space beyond their own sun.

In 2149 a research team exploring the farthest fringes of human expansion realized that Charon, a small

satellite orbiting Pluto, wasn’t really a moon at all. It was actually an enormous piece of dormant

Prothean technology. A mass relay. Floating for tens of thousands of years in the cold depths of space, it

had become encased in a shell of ice and frozen debris several hundred kilometers thick.

The experts back on Earth weren’t completely unprepared for this particular revelation; the existence

and purpose of mass relays had been mentioned in the data archives recovered from the Mars bunker. In

simplest terms, the mass relays were a network of linked gates that could transport a ship from one relay

to the next, instantaneously traversing thousands of light-years. The underlying scientific theory behind

the creation of mass relays was still beyond the scope of humanity’s top experts. But even though they

couldn’t construct one themselves, scientists were able to reactivate the dormant relay they had stumbled

across.

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[Mass Effect 01] - Revelation

The mass relay was a door that could open up the entire galaxy … or lead right into the heart of a

burning star or black hole. Exploratory probes sent through immediately dropped out of contact—not

unexpectedly, considering the notion that they were being instantly transported thousands of light-years

away. In the end, the only way to truly know what was on the other side was to send somebody through;

someone willing to brave the great unknown and face whatever dangers and challenges waited on the

other side.

The Alliance handpicked a crew of brave men and women: soldiers willing to risk their own lives,

individuals ready to make the ultimate sacrifice in the name of discovery and progress. And to lead this

crew they chose a man of unique character and unquestioned strength, one they knew would not falter in

the face of untold adversity. A man named Jon Grissom.

Upon their successful return through the mass relay, the entire crew had been hailed as heroes. But the

media had chosen Grissom—the imposing, solemn commander of the mission—to become the flag-

bearer of the Alliance as humanity forged ahead into a new age of unparalleled discovery and expansion.

“Whatever’s happened,” Eisennhorn said, still hoping he could pull Grissom from his dark state of mind,

“you have to believe we can deal with it. You and I never could have imagined that we could

accomplish all this in such a short time!”

Grissom gave a snort of derision. “We couldn’t have done a damn thing if it wasn’t for the Protheans.”

Eisennhorn shook his head. While it had been the discovery and adaptation of Prothean technology that

had opened up these great possibilities, it was the actions of people like Grissom that had transformed

possibility into reality.

“If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants,” Eisennhorn countered. “Sir Isaac

Newton said that, too.”

“Why the obsession with Newton? He a relative or something?”

“Actually, my grandfather was tracing our family’s genealogy and he—”

“I didn’t really want to know,” Grissom growled, cutting him off.

They were almost at their destination. The Arcturus space station dominated the entire window now,

blocking out everything else. The docking bay loomed before them, a gaping hole in the gleaming hull

of the station’s exterior.

“I should go,” Grissom said with a weary sigh. “They’ll want to see me come marching down the

gangway as soon as we touch down.”

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[Mass Effect 01] - Revelation

“Take it easy on those recruits,” Eisennhorn suggested, only half joking. “Remember, they’re barely

more than kids.”

“I didn’t come here to meet with a bunch of kids,” Grissom replied. “I came here looking for soldiers.”

The first thing Grissom did when he arrived was request a private room. He was scheduled to address

the entire graduating class at 14:00. In the four hours between then and now he planned to conduct

private interviews with a handful of the recruits.

The brass at Arcturus weren’t expecting his request, but they did their best to accommodate it. They set

him up in a small room furnished with a desk, computer workstation, and a single chair. Grissom was

sitting behind the desk reviewing the personnel files on the monitor one last time. Competition to be

accepted into the N7 specialist training program at Arcturus was fierce. Every recruit on the station had

been handpicked from the best young men and women the Alliance had to offer. Yet the handful of

names on Grissom’s list had distinguished themselves from the rest of the elite; even here they stood out

from the crowd.

There was a knock at the door—two quick, firm raps.

“Come in,” the admiral called out.

The door slid open and Second Lieutenant David Edward Anderson, the first name on Grissom’s list,

walked in. Fresh out of training, he had already been marked for the ranks of junior officers, and looking

at his file it was easy to see why. Grissom’s list was arranged alphabetically, but based on Anderson’s

marks at the Academy and the evaluations of his training officers, his name would probably have been

right at the top regardless.

The lieutenant was a tall man, six foot three according to his file. At twenty years old he was just

starting to fill out his large frame, still growing into his broad chest and wide, square shoulders. His skin

was dark brown, his black hair cut high and tight in accordance with Alliance regulations. His features,

like most citizens in the multicultural society of the late twenty-second century, were a mix of several

different racial characteristics. Predominantly African, but Grissom thought he could see lingering traces

of Central European and Native American ancestry as well.

Anderson marched smartly across the floor and stopped directly in front of the desk, standing at

attention as he snapped off a formal salute.

“At ease, Lieutenant,” Grissom ordered, instinctively returning the salute.

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[Mass Effect 01] - Revelation

The young man did as he was told, relaxing his stance so that he stood with his arms clasped behind his

back and his legs spread wide.

“Sir?” he asked. “If I may?” Even though he was a junior officer making a request of a rear admiral he

spoke with confidence; there was no hesitation in his voice.

Grissom scowled before nodding at him to continue. The file showed Anderson had been born and

raised in London, but he had almost no discernible regional accent. His generic dialect was likely the

product of cross-cultural exposure through e-schooling and the info nets combined with a steady barrage

of pan-global entertainment vids and music.

“I just want to tell you what an honor it is meeting you in person, Admiral,” the young man informed

him. He wasn’t gushing or fawning, for which Grissom was grateful; he simply stated it as a matter of

fact. “I remember seeing you on the news after the Charon expedition when I was only twelve. That’s

when I decided I wanted to join the Alliance.”

“Are you trying to make me feel old, son?”

Anderson started to smile, thinking it was a joke. But the smile withered under Grissom’s glare.

“No, sir,” he replied, his voice still sure and strong. “I only meant you’re an inspiration to us all.”

He’d expected the lieutenant to stutter and stammer out some kind of apology, but Anderson wasn’t so

easily rattled. Grissom made a quick note in his file.

“I see it says here you’re married, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir. She’s a civilian. Lives back on Earth.”

“I was married to a civilian,” Grissom told him. “We had a daughter. I haven’t seen her in twelve years.”

Anderson was momentarily thrown off balance by the unexpected personal disclosure. “I … I’m sorry,

sir.”

“It’s hell keeping a marriage together when you’re in the service,” Grissom warned him. “You don’t

think worrying about a wife back on Earth is going to make it harder when you’re out on a six-month

tour?”

“Might make it easier, sir,” Anderson countered. “It’s nice to know I’ve got someone back home waiting

for me.”

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Drew Karpyshyn - Mass Effect 01 - Revelation

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