Prologue
"*static* This is mining team Alpha reporting in, we found something, over"
"Hauler to Alpha, what exactly did you find?"
"Dunno it's some sort of... *STATIC*"
"Hauler to Alpha, your signal just got lost, come in Alpha team"
"*static*"
"Hauler to security, team Alpha has found something and has gone dark, head to their last known location"
*****USERNNAME: A&E
*****PASSWORD: ********
*****USERNAME AND PASSWORD MATCH, WELCOME BACK ADAM AND EVE
*****Search: Mars Dig
*****SEARCHING
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****THE MARS DIG IS AN ARCHEOLOGICAL FINDING WITHIN THE CAVE SYSTEMS OF THE RED PLANET, FOUND ORIGINALLY BY A MINING TEAM SEARCHING FOR RARE ELEMENTS FOR USE IN THE FACTORING OF SARFIF INDUSTRIES AUGMENTATIONS AND ROBOTICS. THE CACHE CONTAINED SEVERAL UNKNOWN ALIEN RELICS, MANY OF WHICH APPEAR TO BE ARMOR PLATING, WEAPONS, AND RESEARCH DATA PERTAINING TO AS-YET UNKNOWN TOPICS, MOST PERTAINING TO CUTTLEFISH-LIKE CONSTRUCTS, DATA STILL IN THE PROCESS OF TRANSLATION. WHAT HAS BEEN TRANSLATED HOWEVER WAS KEY TO THE PRODUCTION OF RAPID FIRING RAILGUNS FOR STARSHIPS, PLASMA CONTAINMENT FIELDS, AND ENERGY SHIELDS. THESE NEW TECHNOLOGIES ALLOWED OUR VESSELS TO USE PLASMA BEAM ARRAYS AS THEIR POINT DEFENSE WEAPONS AND MASS ACCELERATORS CAPABLE OF FIRING THIRTY KILOGRAM OBJECTS AT 0.1C EVERY FIVE SECONDS. ALSO, THERE HAVE BEEN REPORTS OF CONSTRUCTS KNOWN ONLY AS 'MASS RELAYS' TO BE TRAPS MEANT TO CUT OFF SYSTEMS FROM EACH OTHER; HOW, AND WHERE THEY ARE LOCATED HAVE YET TO BE DISCOVERED AND TRANSLATED. MASS RELAYS CONSIDERED PRIMARY TARGETS FOR DESTRUCTION TO PREVENT TRAPS FROM BEING USED.
*****Log Out
*****LOGGING OUT, HAVE A NICE DAY
115 BFC: Alien cache discovered
103 BFC: Mass relay in Charon discovered, work begins on deconstruction of the Relay, individual known as TITAN becomes known
102 BFC: Colonial efforts for colonizing all of Sol continue as scheduled, colonies on Mars, Venus, and Luna prospering
101 BFC: Mars and Venus colonies begin terraforming operations, TITAN releases Exsurgent virus on a Mars colony, killing all but a couple hundred of the ten thousand souls
100 BFC: Hydrogen fusion becomes viable, is installed in warships due to the efficiency and availability of it
99 BFC: Helium 3 mines over Jupiter and Saturn provide fuel for most of the outer system colonies, Exsurgent virus and TITAN vanish after another outbreak on a Lunar colony, again leaving only a handful of the thousands there
98 BFC: FTL drives become real, using the Alcubierre method all ships from then on become equipped with the drive systems
97 BFC: Mass Effect discovered, Charon relay deconstruction halted and all civilian ships are requipped with Mass Effect FTL systems
96 BFC: Element zero deposites found on Titan, Rhea, and Dione, corporations flock to these moons to establish mining claims
95 BFC: Breakthrough in Brain scanning technology allows for rudimentary 'death defying' brain saves, pulling out all information stored in the brain and saved to a whet drive at the base of the skull
94 BFC: Humans begin experimentation on uplifting animals, success in dolphins, whales, gorillas, monkeys, and parrots
93 BFC: First robotic 'morph' constructed, scientist downloaded into the skeletal machine nearly goes insane from the mental trauma
92 BFC: Uplifting is now tested on Cats, dogs, and various other species
91 BFC: Human Genome mapped, allows for experimentation and selection of genes, people with the cortex drives flock to genetic mapping institutes to help fund artificial creation of humans
90 BFC: Dolpins, Monkeys, Parrots, and Gorillas are now almost completely uplifted, with most house cats and dogs joining the list
80 BFC: Humans now replacing their old bodies with new, genetically perfect ones, many debilitated patients given a lease on a new life with the technology
78 BFC: Robotic morphs becoming more common in the mines, Psionics start showing in some newly born and/or created individuals
76 BFC: Robots now almost totally phasing out organic labor due to their low price, immense strength and durability, and near infinite stamina
70 BFC: First psionic dies of heart failure, reactionary reflex collapses the floor under his feet
60 BFC: Eezo found to cause insanity in psionics, many evacuate from around the mines to protect their children, extrasolar colonization begins
40 BFC: Mass Effect technology replaces civilian-acquired weaponry, military still uses firearms and mass effect-augmented tech due to tactical flexibility
20 BFC: Planet of Shanxi colonized, terran world where private security firms are cropping up everywhere to provide protection from local wildlife and pirates
15 BFC: Remains of unknown probe found on Mt. Mangekyo south of the city of New Hengsha, Shanxi's primary spaceport
10 BFC: Construction of a new Mass Effect railgun round underway, codename 'minor'
9 BFC: 'Minor' round test fired at a meter-thick armor plate layered with powerful kinetic screens, round decelerated just under detection speeed and buried into the armor, digging all the way through and exploding on the other side, shrapnel promptly tore through heavy body armor and de-limbed many test dummies, including several that were disembowled
5 BFC: Project minor replaces most other rounds for cruisers and above, HESH-SFI shot still loaded for use against frigates*
1 BFC: Major Jane Sheppard is born, found to have eezo nodes but no clear sign of psionics, put in for observation
0 BFC: Contact is made with alien life
*HESH-SFI: High Explosive Squash Head- Semi Fragmentation Incendiary, meant to overwhelm kinetic barriers through excessive force and size of the object before fragmenting with the brittle glass core to penetrate the ship while the explosives charred the hull
Project Minor: Technically a repurposed drilling probe, Project Minor is a variable yield railgun round for spinal-mounted starship cannons, with a rotating drill and retrograde thrusters mounted forwards, with a gyroscopic stabilization module behind the drilling rig and the 10 kilogram warhead in the center of the armored shell, along with a tiny mass effect core and a rear-facing acceleration thruster. Due to the design of the projectiles it requires the barrels to cool longer than usual (about 7 seconds instead of 5 to fire), but they are much faster than standard HESH-SFI and HEF-SAPI used previously. The drill head would fragment into dozens of large metal flechettes after acheiving penetration and explosion, not only blowing a big hole into the side of the ship but also shredding the lightly armored insides
HEF-SAPI: High Explosive Fragmentation Semi-armor piercing, the precluded round for use in combat against bigger ships, comes equipped with an EMP generator to fry shields to allow the round to pass through and burrow into the armor, whereupon it works similarly to the project Minor round. Not as effective due to the complicated systems in making the EMP generator make it almost impossible to work properly but absolutely devastating when it works
Technology:
Human ECM: Unlike the council-based ECM systems humans instead used a far less invasive technique that would at first seem counter productive: broadcast a wide spectrum jamming field that makes non-organic sensors detect false readings, with the closest analogy being from a synth morph who underwent the procedures, claiming it to be similar to a massive drug trip on LSD or Acid
Hydrogen Fusion: Hydrogen and Helium 3 are the most commonly available and used fuels in human-controlled space. Hydrogen's natural inefficiency offset by the sheer volume that can be produced to be burned in the hungry fusion reactors and is most commonly used fuel source by the civilian population due to its clean fusion, power, and pricing, with a 1 liter tank filled with 100-atm of hydrogen can be bought on only a few credits and a license confirming the purchase
Human armor plates: Early on transhumanity found out that metals would not protect well against the hypersonic velocities of the rounds using Mass Effect technology, turning to concrete and ceramics due to their porous and brittle nature. The new armor plates are meant to break apart, deforming and ruining the shape of the penetrating round to forcefully expel the energy, not to mention ease of repair due to easily pouring the liquid ceramics in and waiting for it to cure rather than cutting out the damage plate, hoisting a replacement into place, and then welding it in.
Human propulsion: Unlike most races who use antimatter-based engines, humans rely on a mixture of fusion-based plasma and ions to propel their ships, utilizing an ingenious system of turning the force of the reaction into the power of the ship, literally creating a self-powering engine with the use of several impellers in the propulsion unit, and makes for an extremely hardy system as long as the engines are still operable. Along with the availability of fusion products, the hydrogen fusion is stone cold in comparison to antimatter-based reactions, reaching only tens of thousands of degress compared to the millions that antimatter anihiliation causes.
Human shielding: Full stop, human energy shields are weak but they are comparible to council race's shielding, the difference being that the human's much more liberal use of plasma and laser-based systems means that they not only block kintetic blasts via a similar emergency kinetic barrier system, but also plasma with a hard 'light' based shield, which completely blocks energy blasts altogether, kinetic, thermal, or otherwise
Human ships: Mainly consisting of frigates and cruisers like te council's ships, though they also have the devastating and fast battlecruiser, the light and potent fighter-grinder corvette, the dedicated frigate killer destroyer, the devastatingly powerful multiple gun system of the battleship, and then the game-ending Titans.
Titan: Exceedingly rare with only two built so far, each of them being twenty kilometers long and massing enough that they almost pulled the moons they were built on around them. These monsters on the space plane have no spinal mounted guns and strongly resemble battleships, but their main turrets use the spinal guns of their kilometer-long dreadnaughts in triplicate housing, with four each on the dorsal and ventral side it has enough firepower to plow through an entire fleet, and have enough hangar space to store a small fleet with room for several squadrons of fighters to spare.
A/N: Well, here's the introduction to my story, as stated at the beinning I will be attempting to make a Deus Ex/Eclipse Phase fusion with a Mass Effect crossover fic, constructive criticism is welcomed