an: i got it up when i intended to! late as hell, but i did it! for once! i amaze even myself sometimes.

disclaimer: what high bars you set for yourself.

an: well, i did it didn't i? and i believe you have something to do.

disclaimer: you didn't do it with your last mass effect crossover, did you?

an: so?

disclaimer: fine. mass effect is, unfortunately, property of ea and bioware. ace combat is property of project aces and bandai-namco. the author owns none of these.

prologue: the beginning of knowledge

Milky Way Galaxy, Midgard Nebula, Sol System

Promethei Planum, Mars

Basset Space Center Mission Control Room, Osea

July 20, 2041 CE

3:17 AM Oured Time

«Basset, Prometheus Base here.»

Dead silence in the control room. This wasn't the first mission to Mars, not by a long shot, but it was the first manned one.

«Ares has landed.»

The room, the building, hell all of Basset Space Center and quite possibly the whole of Cape Blindada exploded into cheers. CAPCOM Kei Nagase, however, could only release a breath she wasn't even aware she was still holding.

She could have been up there. Hell, with her level of experience walking around extraterrestrial bodies, she should have been up there. Sure, 54 was on the long end of an astronaut's career, even with modern cybernetic and medical technology, but she was the first human to step, stand, sleep, and plant nuclear torches on an asteroid. Exploring the polar caps of Mars as one of the first humans to stand on it should have been child's play, with Mars being a good deal closer than 2010DK117 Telemachus.

And a good deal larger.

And a good deal more in possession of an atmosphere, bitter cold as it was.

Nagase leaned back in her chair. It had been a rough ride in the last year. An undiscovered asteroid had passed a little too close for comfort to the Megaptera transport Neucom had provided for mankind's first visit to another planet. Then Neucom and General Resources had, for one reason or another, come to blows all over Usea. They had to evacuate from Riass Space Center in Comona because General Resources had tried to bomb it. Then, as if that wasn't bad enough, it came to public knowledge that the whole damn war was orchestrated by a General Resources employee in an almost ludicrous bid for power, revenge, and shifting the balance of power in the corporate world.

It would be sad, if Simon Orestes Cohen didn't have enough allies in General Resources and UPEO to put up a fight even after that news was released to the world. Instead, it was infuriating. At least the Grey Men had done what they did for a twisted sense of love for their country.

This? This was just greed for power, plain and simple.

Nagase grabbed a nearby water bottle and took a long swig, watching as the helmet cams from Pilgrim XVIII (and the camera from the drone) came online. Soon, the middle of the massive screen in front of her changed from a render of the Megaptera's lander and rover to the live feed from all three cameras. There was the lander, in Neucom's signature cobalt blue and white. There was a ridge, part of the foothills leading up to the Chasma Australe.

In years to come, it would be the territorial boundary of a museum for early Martian exploration on the outskirts of the city of Qadesh, initially a research outpost meant to study what was beyond the opposite ridge. But for now, it was just a dusty, frozen, brownish-red heap of rocks.

"Suit pressure good," said Clancy Ryder, the Osean commander of the human expedition, "temperature good… minus fifty-eight degrees Celsius external temp, warmer than expected, internal temp… eighteen point six two."

«And the gravitational anomalies?» Edward Grimm, Hans's son, had detected them from up in the orbiter on approach, centered a few kilometers away from the initial landing site. Those on Ryder and Hoffman's suits couldn't detect it at that range, and those on the Adrestia rover and the Aethon MRV could just barely detect it.

But on the surface? It was loud and clear, and whatever it was, it was to the southwest.

The minutes tick by as the signal travels across the void the tens of millions of miles to Mars.

"Too far to go on foot. I'm getting the rover out," Gary Hoffman said as he proceeded to do so. Far from jury-rigged frame with a motor of the Lunar Rover, or the pile-of-boxes of earlier Osean Mars Rovers, Adrestia and Aethon were both sleek, sturdy-looking machines in blue and white, designed to be tough enough to last for months on Mars. Adrestia was just large enough to comfortably house the human-level AI and a suite of sensors, whereas Aethon was about the size of a (small) camper, with additional sensors that were just too big to carry on Adrestia. Since it was meant to be left behind, it was also a lot tougher.

It also looked like a spider-APC with windows and fold-in wheels, but that was besides the point. The point was that it could be folded up just enough to fit on a drop pod, and the glass windows wouldn't be scratched to hell by a Martian dust storm. Real windows, too, not COFFIN – less weight, fewer points of failure.

Mars had a bit less than two-fifths the gravity of Earth, but the suits were bulky enough that Hoffman still had to help Ryder up with a hup to get him the rest of the way from the ladder into the cockpit.

They rode on, for several minutes, going on half an hour. Perhaps they could have gone faster, but Ryder didn't want to stress test the Aethon until they were doing something less… risky. However risky gravitational anomalies greater than anything ever recorded on Earth outside of an exotic physics lab could be. Ryder gave regular reports, and Hoffman kept himself busy by other means – checking the sensors, running Adrestia through 'games' designed to test her ability to handle software bugs, and the like.

Their journey eventually took them to the edge of Deseado Crater, some sixty kilometers from the landing site. On the outer edge of the crater, they found a shallow cave.

Inside the cave was an enormous, greenish-black slab of metal that revealed itself to be a door as the Aethon approached. Beyond the door?

It was a vast, ancient, alien complex, buried by the eons.

In one part, artifacts within revealed an alien race's observation of humanity, with autonomous microsatellites continuing their observation right up to the Belkan Bronze Age. In another, evidence of attempts at a colony – farming techniques, computer schematics, and designs for walking machines that could shift to a 'flight mode' that could handle atmospheres from Venusian to Plutonian.

In the decades that followed, these mysterious artifacts revealed startling new technologies, enabling travel to the furthest stars. The basis for this incredible technology was a force that controlled the very fabric of space and time.

Some called it the greatest discovery of the twenty-first century, alongside human-level AI, microwave energy transmission, and the Electrosphere.

The civilizations of the galaxy called it... Mass Effect.

CODEX: Neucom: Periophthalamus – A large, roughly cone-shaped lander designed specifically for Mars, built by Neucom Incorporated. It uses a combination of a microwave energy transmitter, Aeon generators, and traditional chemical rockets to 'hop' across the Martian landscape. It can travel hundreds of kilometers at a time before it needs to recharge or refuel. The addition of Aeon generators causes a slight increase in weight, and the drives do not work outside of a planetary atmosphere, but the reduced danger thanks to smaller chemical fuel tanks was deemed worth it to early Martian explorers until ME-based drives could be developed. Like its lunar twin, it is named after a genus of mudskippers.

an: Next chapter will almost certainly be a skip to First Contact. Almost certainly.