Captain Yuhi'Raemos vas Shiram
QCS Shiram, Hylactor-class Frigate
Council Calendar: Day 12, Year 2657

Yuhi'Raemos vas Shiram sat pensively at her chair, leaning forward as though she was ready to jump out.

"Sensors are clear, captain," her sensor officer chirped back.

"Good," replied Yuhi, "Navigation, bring us in range of the relay." She leaned back a bit, a weight lifted off of her shoulders. The Citadel Council had made it illegal to open mass relays to unknown territories and the offense was punishable by penalties such as life imprisonment or death by Turian patrol group, but her people needed new mining grounds to sustain the massive migrant fleet. If she died here, it would be another necessary sacrifice for a people who had sacrificed nearly everything already.

The Quarian Conclave Ship Shiram was an angular vessel shaped like a hawk. Towards the back, two wings angled away from the top and front of the ship held additional thrusters and edge mass effect field generators giving the Shiram fantastic maneuvering capability, at least compared to ships of the era. Moving forward, its blocky bow tapered slightly with a single barrel surrounded by almost a full two centimeters of heavy, starship-grade armor at the front for protection.

The Shiram was found scuttled in a Terminus system under its original Turian military name, "The Furious Fist," too heavily damaged for a council race's use but a perfectly salvageable and workable vessel for a Quarian.

The Shiram's military-grade fusion/antiproton engines began to light up, first a dim blue, and then a warm violet as the 205 meter-long vessel accelerated towards the 15 kilometer long tuning fork-shaped mass relay. Onboard the frigate, the gentle warble of the engines and din of the reactor filled the deathly silent cockpit with noise, each person onboard understanding the gravity of the situation.

The mass relays are a system of faster-than-light gates scattered across the galaxy bridging vast distances in the blink of an eye. Built 50,000 years ago by the enigmatic and long since extinct Prothean Empire, each is 15 kilometers long, has an upper and lower spine, and in the center are concentric rings orbiting a massive core of element zero. Normally, the core glows blue, but when a relay has not yet been activated, it gives off no light.

Yuhi's frigate slowed down in front of the relay. The captain tensed up before she gave the order. "Activate the relay. Let's see what's on the other side."

"Roger that, captain. Sending commands." The silence in the bridge was deafening as the rings of the relay began to spin up. Moments later, the navigation officer spoke up. "Relay is active. We're clear to go through."

Yuhi'Raemos vas Shiram took a deep breath before giving her orders. "This is it. There's no turning back. If we're lucky, we find new resources for the Migrant fleet to maintain ships. If we're unlucky, we find another genocidal race of insectoids. Take us to combat status. Hunn'Vuras," she turned to the pilot below and to her left, "take us in."

The rings of the relay began orbiting faster and faster as the core began glowing a brighter and brighter blue. The Shiram drifted next to it before being flung into the void.

In a system thousands of light years away, the Shiram was spit out of another, identical mass relay surrounded by debris in a different system.

"Drift is 4 kilometers. We're here, captain."

"Good job Hunn. Liru, what do we see?"

Liru'Fusal vas Shiram was the sensor officer. She studied Astrogeology at a university on Palaven, graduated near the top of her class, and returned to the migrant fleet with a sizable amount of element zero in a cargo hull for her pilgrimage gift. "Central star is a white dwarf. The relay itself appears to have been encased in an asteroid but activating it cleared it out. Nothing but a massive asteroid belt and a gas giant further out. The sensors don't have the resolving power to figure out the composition of the aster-wait, I'm picking up a strange reading on the outside of the system."

"What is it?" asked Hunn as he read the minds of everyone onboard.

"I-I don't know." Liru's worried stuttering only further built up the tension in the room. "It's big and it appears to be metal. Some kind of station? There's some debris near it, also of the same material. I can't say for sure without getting closer to it. Whatever it is, it's definitely alien."

The officers on the bridge turned to the captain. "Alright, let's check it out. Hunn, plot an FTL jump to a point 20k away. I want the barriers, reactor, and engines to full power. Keep the main cannon powered off. We may need to get out of here very quickly."

Thirty minutes later, in the observation deck, the crew convened their next course of action. On the display. a huge, gray series of smaller hexagonal prisms, each one smaller than the previous, hung eerily in the foreground, with the thousands of stars of the Milky Way providing the background. The largest of these hexagonal prisms faced the Shiram with multiple cylinders protruding slightly from the prism itself. Breaking up the prisms were blocky and angular shapes, each as large as the Shiram itself.

The captain sat upright at the ship's dining table with most of her crew in attendance. "Alright, let's go over everything we know. This ship," she pointed to the holographic display, "is unlike any we have ever seen before. It's over 1.5km in length, making it as large as the Xedorn, our dreadnought, but our eezo sensors put it at over 80 percent greater mass. Our sensor officer thinks it's from a massive amount of this armor, more than 3 meters thick in places," Yuhi continued amidst a few gasps of disbelief, "which we calculated from the massive tears in the ship and our gravitic sensors. Probably battle damage. We suspect this is some kind of super dreadnought. We have detected no element zero onboard, but it's giving off a small amount of latent heat, suggesting the reactor is still on. Engines, or at least what we think are the engines," she pointed to the cylinders on the aft of the ship, "are off, though. They appear to be purely fusion-based, like modern civilian craft. It doesn't look like anybody is left." Even under Yuhi's mask, it was clear her face radiated only business as she turned to Liru, the sensor officer. "Did I forget anything?"

"No sir," the sensor officer practically wilted under the view of the entire crew's stare.

"Good." The captain turned to the display, admiring the strange vessel for a moment. It looked heavily damaged but still radiated fortitude and majesty. Whoever built this thing built it to last. "We're going to be taking a look around that ship, first from the outside, and then from the inside. Our mission is twofold. Firstly, if there are any survivors, make first contact before the council gets a chance. Secondly, if there are no survivors, capture the ship for study. It goes without saying that this is an extremely dangerous mission and as such, I'm asking for volunteers to join me."

The old Actina-class shuttle launched from the shuttle bay of the Shiram with a half-dozen marines, the captain, and two translucent sensor drones hovering in mid-air. Other than the focused marine trying avoid to pieces of errant debris, everyone was staring out of the window at the target. From their approach, two squat, massive cylinders and four much smaller, similarly built cylinders dominated a large, flat portion of the ship, likely the aft.

"Those are the engines," the captain pointed out.

"How slow do you think it is?" the marine leader asked rhetorically, "I mean, if these are just fusion drives, and the ship is that heavy, it must be built for defense, right?"

All across the port side of the ship, smooth, blackened tears in the armor presented themselves, almost as if the gray metal had flowed off of its original location and straight up burned in others. The aft of the ship, in particular, had sustained what appeared to be structural damage from massive amounts of heat and concussive force. What had to have once been meant to be flat was now slightly wavy.

As the shuttle moved over the top of the strange ship, melted metal gave way to a shattered observation deck and dozens of what appeared to be small weapons.

"Point defense? Maybe for missiles?" asked a marine.

"Probably," said another.

As the shuttle moved towards the front, the large, hexagonal superstructure gave way to more complex, geometric shapes as the hull tapered to a smaller hexagon up front. Angular structures, likely to deflect enemy weapons, made the entire ship appear almost like a very high-tech cone. The front of the ship was dominated by two barrels of enormous size, the muzzle almost as large as the shuttle. The entire crew stared at the things in silence.

"Let's check out the starboard side."

"Yes, captain," the pilot responded, his tension obvious. The maneuverable shuttle pulled a hard left turn and moved to the other side, the side not visible from the Shiram.

"That must be their race's symbol," someone pointed out.

"It looks like a bird. Maybe they'll look like the turians, but hopefully friendlier," said another.

"A ship like this doesn't exactly scream friendly," the captain reprimanded her crew. "Stay sharp. Stay focused."

A chorus of "Yes sirs" echoed through the small team.

"Though I bet that's the name," she leaned over the back of the pilot's seat and pointed to the strange glyphs. The letters UNSC EVEREST dominated their views and, through the sensor drones, the view of everyone watching onboard the Shiram. "It probably had the same text on the other side but damage to the outer hull removed it. I wonder what it says?"

Author's note:

I've read a few Halo/ME crossover fics and either they didn't do it for me, they were seemingly abandoned, or they really lacked in space battles. I'm trying my hand at my own, especially since I have so much time to kill in planes, trains, and automobiles. I've rated this M since I expect to someday write some depraved thing involving ONI, the STG, and/or the flood.

On a related note, I have a degree in Physics and work as an Artificial Intelligence Researcher so I promise that when I come up with something that sounds like magic, I'll cite it with an academic paper. Additionally, if you have any questions about how something worked in a chapter, I'll do my best to respond with something educational.

Let me know what you think of the story (or don't; it's your choice, really). This is my first time releasing anything I've written so constructive criticism is very much appreciated. Additionally, if you're interested in being a proof-reader/beta-reader/editor, feel free to let me know. I have a number of stories in backlog.