A Krogan misplaced: Chapter 1

Light salarian freighter Turning Wheel - T'senetheni System - 1040 earth rotations after the death of Urdnot Thrax

As he sat in the dim passenger hold, it's crowded interior bustling with a hundred different sentients, Urdnot Wrex couldn't help but reflect on his life. There was in truth, little else to do to pass the time. Haptic interface programs could only be completed so many times when you had lived for over a millennia. The other passengers on the Turning Wheel offered little in the way of conversation. The mostly turian complement ignored him or eyed him warily, while the handful of asari and salarians merely gave him the occasional sideglance. Even the sole elcor mercenary and the constantly moving quarian maintenance tech payed little attention to the scowling krogan warlord.

Gone were the days when the galaxy feared the Krogan Empire. When planets quavered at the name, and entire fleets of superior ships would be sent to stop even minor incursions out of fear. Gone also, were the days when the krogan were loved. A time where they had been looked up to as saviours from the terrifying rachni. Now? Now not even anger at the atrocities committed remained. The krogan were forgotten. Distant dying and barbarous relics of the past. Who'd be extinct within a millennia and save everybody else the trouble.

Urdnot Wrex was one of the few krogan who had lived long enough to see it all happen. And yet he couldn't find it in himself to care. His people weren't worth saving at this point anyway. Thousands of petty clans and warlords. Mercenaries, thugs and pirates. Criminals. That was what the galaxy saw the krogan as. Sadly the galaxy wasn't wrong. The krogan today weren't worthy of reclaiming the glories of empire. The grand bronze throne of Urdnot. The mighty pyramids of Urunakh, and the maw-temple of Kalros the everliving. The title of his grandsire and his sire before him. These things like krogan would fade into dust. And Urdnot Wrex would fade with them.

Wrex's musings were interrupted by a loud chime from the speakers. As the ringing musical note spread throughout the vessel, Wrex lifted his head slightly to pay attention. After all, it would be something to break the boredom of the three whole galactic cycles worth of travel.

Wrex heard a slight buzzing sound as the Salarian captain who owned the passenger freighter turned on the intercom. Listening attentively, Wrex waited for the Captain to speak.

With a short 'hssst' the haptic screen which faced the passenger bay turned on to reveal the face of Thothus Idenai Mannovai. A salarian whom Wrex had the displeasure of working with before. The salarian's face was seemingly perpetually set in a scowl, and though Wrex knew that to the average salarian it would appear as if Idenai was constantly disinterested, to Wrex it just seemed off-putting.

"Passengers this is your captain speaking. In approximately 20 standard units we will be entering through Relay 618 into the Aethon cluster. From there we will stop at Irune and Oma Ker. I repeat, our only stops in this cluster will be Irune and Oma Ker, any transport you otherwise seek must be done through other transport networks. As usual I would ask you turn off any non-haptic devices for the duration of the transit. May the wheel guide us all."

The haptic screen abruptly shut off and the two hundred sentients got back to talking about themselves. Wrex just sat back, closed his inner eyelids, and listened to the meaningless babble of the crowd. It wasn't like anything important was ever going to happen to these people, so perhaps he should commit something of them to memory. It would not be worthy of the last loresinger to chant during the cold and dark nights of Tuchunka. Nor would it be something that the vast majority of the galaxy would ever care about. But memory was something important, and since Wrex would be alive long after the galaxy had forgotten everything about these people, who better to remember them?

So Urdnot Wrex listened.

The turians were a subset of Clan Arterius that had lived on Digeris, but a earthquake had levelled their homes, killing the majority of people inside the settlement. The Hierarchy had decided to resettle them as auxilia on Oma Ker, something that the Chieftain vehemently disagreed with, but couldn't challenge. The clan had thus resigned itself to what would likley be the rest of their lives, building the foundation for a city that would probably not even know they existed in a hundred years.

The asari were all from the clanless, mostly from Thessia itself but a handful had joined the ship at Illium. Their motives were many, a handful of younger ones sought to join Jona's newly revived Eclipse sisterhood. Wrex hoped Jona was doing alright, she might not be anywhere close to sane anymore, but Wrex remembered when Jona Sederis had been a normal, if bloodthirsty member of his krant. He offered a small prayer to the Everliving Kalros on Jona's behalf. She'd appreciate that.

There was also a Matron and her two young daughters, they were returning to the mothers bondmate, who was of all things, a volus. The tales of the rest varied, a handful were fleeing repercussions for actions they shouldn't have taken, some were just looking for a new life on Oma Ker. An elderly matriarch was simply seeking to visit the grave of her first bandmate, and reconnect with her daughter, who was apparently a relatively high off member of the Irune central bank.

The salarians were a band of cultists centred around a wheel priest, who had apparently decided for whatever reason that he had to be on this trip. Wrex had only met three wheel priests during his entire life, and he had learnt the hard way to respect them, even if they spouted nonsense with seeming regularity, their power was to be respected.

The elcor and the quarian had struck up a conversation on their own lives, the elcor like Wrex had been hired for a job on Irune, something that was going to pay well. The quarian on the other hand was a pilgrim, Idenai had promised the pilgrim a complete freighter engine if he worked for five years. Wrex would believe the salarian was that generous when the Turian Hierarchy ordered a general retreat. He wouldn't be suprised if the unfortunate pilgrim just got dumped somewhere. If the pilgrim was particularly unlucky then that somewhere might be out an airlock. The Elcor shared Wrex's opinion on the matter and was informing the quarian of the realities of the situation.

The pilgrim had just started to voice his disagreement with the massive mercenary when the familiar feeling of a going through a mass relay started. The 'thrum' of the the ship being dragged along the the massive eezo core of the relay was something which Wrex had gotten used to. But this time it seemed...different.

Wrex blinked several times to make sure his senses weren't deceiving him. But just as he made up his mind to ask the quarian what was going on, the Turning Wheel was shot through the relay.

Wrex stood still as the ship left the relay, craning his massive head, something that's remarkably hard to do inside battle armour, he listened for something, anything unusual. But there was noth...was that a whine?

The salarian model 8 Mannovai-Sath troop transport is notable as being one of the more durable starships created by the Union. Although almost three centuries out of date, the Mannovai-Sath is a hardy and spacious vessel, capable of transporting large amounts of cargo or crew as needed, while being capable of surviving most low level incidents in space due to its comparatively good armour and shielding systems. Unfortunately, an eezo explosion midway through faster-than-light transit is not survivable by a dreadnought, let alone a light freighter.

The explosion, followed immediately by an implosion ripped through the engine section, killing every single person in the rear portion of the vessel, and causing the vast majority of eezo present on the ship to be spread over roughly a quarter of the galactic length. The cargo/crew compartment in which the majority of passengers were present at the time was fortunate enough, along with the ships front half, to survive the initial explosion with no hull breaches or indeed any casualties at all bar an unfortunate turian who snapped his neck when the artificial gravity abruptly failed.

The explosive detonation of the engine also forced the Turning Wheel off its pre-programmed course, shooting it outwards towards the "eastern" half of the galaxy. Statistically, the freighter should have hit something, or shot through a stellar body or a black hole, which would have brought it's journey to a swift and unfortunate end.

But chance, or perhaps fate, intervened. The Turning Wheel travelled a full quarter of a galactic length in under ten minutes, as there was no speed limiter like those the end of a mass relay possessed. After ten minutes, the realities of not possessing an engine, along with numerous near collisions with gravity exuding bodies brought it into the Sol system. The ship was still fast enough that those few viewing the nights sky on the third planet could see it as a bright beacon amidst the stars.

The Turning Wheel travelled the entire length of the solar system in under a minute, before abruptly shuddering to a "slow" 450 km an hour, right outside the third planets atmosphere. It proceeded to travel at that speed directly into the third planets atmosphere on a downwards course, before striking the ground with enough speed to liquify much of the surrounding dirt. Amazingly enough, through all this, the cargo pod was not breached.

Commonwealth of Australia - Sydney - Bicentennial Park - 2nd of June 2041

Madison Toulouse nearly tripped as she rushed out of the news van. Her camera crew following after her the group rushed towards the enormous crater which had suddenly appeared in the heart of Sydney.

Most of the city had felt the impact before they heard it, the sudden outwards push of air shattering many windows and deafening, albeit not permanently the vast majority of people within a block's radius of the Bicentennial Park. Already a massive crowd of those nearby had formed and begun to assist those in need, with the help of numerous onsite paramedics. And a cordon had been set around the impact site itself.

Madison didn't know what the hell hit the park, but to her it didn't matter, this was the story of a lifetime. Setting herself and her team up directly on the rim of the crater, which in addition to being the width of a football field was easily a hundred metres deep at the centre and still smoking.

As the lights on the Camera turned on, Madison put on a radiant smile before beginning to speak.

"This just in, it was a wonderful day in the city interrupted by a disaster unprecedented and unforeseen. As you can see behind me Bicentennial Park is in ruins, we don't have any confirmed missing or dead but the formerly pristine image of Australian nature is gone. Now the exact nature of the object which caused this is a mystery, some people thinking it may even be a meteor, while some claim it was a missile or plane. Authorities have yet to issue a statement on the matter but I'm told..."

Madison looked to her cameraman Themya as the Sri Lankan man was pointing down with a trembling finger. Turning away from the camera, Madison noted that the smoke had cleared. The object in the centre of the crater, distant though it was, was evidently not natural. Misshapen and dented, it looked like a 40x40 square hulk of metal. But that wasn't what had caught her cameraman's attention, which had instead been drawn to a large figure which had emerged from a hole in the metal. Covered in strange red clothing that looked almost like a spacesuit, and almost 9ft, as the Americans would say, the figure was quite clearly not human.

Without knowing it, Urdnot Wrex raised his head to the world.

Within ten minutes, that single piece of footage had spread to the internet, as well as all other broadcasting networks within Australia. Within twenty, it was being reported in other countries and had become a trend on Twitter, Facebook and Yanya. It had been viewed six million times on youtube from thirty different sources and governments and agencies around the world had noticed. By the half hour mark the stock market had become far more profitable for space ventures and within forty minutes various leaders around the world were inquiring as to what to do. By the 1 hour mark a emergency meeting had been called for the United Nations and in less than 12 hours the vast majority of the population of a small planet called Earth, knew they were not alone.

AUTHORS NOTES

I uh... had a plot bunny? But seriously, this is my first real mass effect fanfic attempt. I give all due credit to LogicalPremise | FanFiction
Who inspired this work. And whom much of the lore and concepts (especially for the non-krogan) is drawn.