Chapter 1: December 1st, 2187

One year, one long grueling year, that was how long ago the Reaper War ended. Commander Garrus Vakarian sat at the helm of his newest command, the Turian frigate SSV Palaven's Pride of Patrol Fleet 33. As he sat in the command chair and stared into the void, he calmly remembered every detail of the events that lead him here. As if he could ever forget.

Who could forget such an apocalyptic day, Garrus couldn't. The Reaper Harbinger burning London, the race to the Conduit, Commander Shepard's final farewell, and command. "Take care of them," was all he said, was all he had time to say. As the Conduit transported him up to displaced Citadel. Once the great space station had been the seat of galactic power, now it was a tomb that held the fate of the galaxy. Garrus remembered the next chain of events perfectly. The allied fleets rallied, the ground forces were evacuated, and the entire allied military fled to the edge of the Sol System. There they witnessed the fall of the Reapers.

In the final moments of the battle the Prothean super weapon dubbed the Crucible docked with the Citadel. Within the station Commander Shepard initiated the final firing sequence for the Crucible. Afterwards, for lack of a better term, it fired. The exact effect however, was entirely unexpected. It had been made clear numerous time by many experts, that firing a weapon that as of that moment had never been tested before, could have unpredictable consequences.

However, the energy wave emitted from the Crucible did what everyone hoped it would do. Just in a overly dramatic fashion. As the wave of highly electrified energy swept through the galaxy, every piece of Reaper technology reacted in one of two ways. The non sentient pieces of Reaper technology like the mass relays and their converted soldiers were simply rendered inert never to be used or seen again. The Reapers themselves however, died in a more horrifying way. Where ever they were in space or on a planet, whenever they come into contact with the wave they exploded in an Element Zero fueled gravity warping explosion. The effects of these explosions on any planet that even a single Reaper was on at the time were horrendous. Every world had its natural electromagnetic field stripped away, leaving those planets defenceless against solar winds and radiation. Soon all these planets including the homeworlds of the Turians, Asari, Humans, Elcor, and Batarians had there atmospheres blown away, leaving them nothing but lifeless rocks.

The Reaper War was a pyrrhic victory. With the once proud galactic population butchered and extinction by genocide seemingly traded for extinction by dystopia. Now one year later, The situation has only deteriorated. Within the Local Cluster, those who couldn't find a home on one of the surviving habitable worlds now live on gigantic refugee flotillas like the Quarian Migrant Fleet. Without the mass relays, travel and communication are extremely difficult. Another major issue exists in resources. Since the majority of galactic infrastructure was destroyed the ability to distribute the necessary supplies to uphold the surviving population has become difficult. Already rumors of famine have begun spreading through the fleets, and it is the job Commander Garrus Vakarian, Patrol Fleet 33, and dozens of other such fleets to find a way to delay the inevitable.

/

"Sir," Garrus's communications officer spoke up, "the SSV Shanghaihas ordered us out of FTL in ten minutes."

"Acknowledge the order. Prepare to exit FTL," Garrus told the navigation officer, a middle aged Turian named Prolov. Garrus swifty keyed the intercom panel on his chair,"Commander to all hands prepare to exit FTL in ten minutes." It feet good to speak those words, a month in FTL was not pleasant.

Patrol Fleet 33's current mission is to investigate a signal identified as an ancient C-SEC all-clear message from the time of the Citadel Council's founding. The signal had first been picked up immediately after the Crucible fired, but filed away and forgotten in light of the current crisis. It was only when the signal returned a second time that Communications Command of the recently formed Species Alliance took notice. The signal lasted long enough for coordinates to triangulated, and Patrol Fleet 33 was soon dispatched. One month later Patrol Fleet 33 dropped out of FTL in a previously uncharted star system potentially housing the galaxies salvation, or damnation.

AN: As this is my very first time writing something like this. I can only hope it will be an adventure worthy of your time.

Revised: 1/5/19