The Effect of Diaspora

Disclaimer: I do not own either the Mass Effect universe or Honorverse, and therefore am stating that I am only playing in these realms. Any original characters however, are my own.

So this is the fic that's been on my mind for the last two weeks, and I had no choice but to write it up. I have as much as ten or so chapters of pre-Mass effect history plotted out. After that, I don't know how much more I'll be doing, if I'll stop at Mass Effect I, or continue all the way through Mass Effect 3.

-TED-

Prologue:Diaspora

Admiral Williams sat back as he looked across the vast expanse of space. It had been a long time since the last great interstellar war, and definitely nothing like the Great War that had been fought not even two centuries ago.

It was sad that so many of the old veterans were passing away now. Even Fleet Admiral Faith Harrington had retired, but then again the stubborn old battleaxe was closing in on her two hundred and fiftieth birthday. Still it was sad to know that in his lifetime all the greatest war heroes the Grand Alliance had ever known were going to pass away. Being a recipient of fourth generation prolong allowed him to live up to four hundred years, whereas most of the heroes of the Great War were first through third generation recipients, whose average lifetimes topped at about three hundred years, unless you were a Mesan Alpha line. Figures like Rafe Cardones, Shannon Foraker, and even the esteemed Protector Bernard Raoul Mayhew were beginning to reach the final stages of their lives.

Shaking his head of those depressing thoughts, Admiral Williams looked at the beautiful world before him. It was a new system, fairly recently colonized. The system of Shanxi.

The Shanxi system was just the beginning of a series of new colonization ventures started by the Kingdom of Torch. The mass migrations were proved possible thanks to the discovery of the Darius-Mannerheim-Congo-Shanxi-Discovery hyperspace bridge, the longest hyperspace bridge discovered so far. The influx of wealth that the kingdom saw after the discovery enabled it to finally have a decent naval presence.

Admiral Williams frowned as he remembered what was probably the worst day of Torch's history, the battle whose losses were worse than the Yawata Strike. Because of Torch's youth as a star nation, it had to resort to being protected by the Republic of Haven and the Star Empire of Manticore and their assorted allies, of course with the formation of the Grand Alliance both star nations were able to defend Torch more freely. Unfortunately, the collapse of the Solarian League following the attempted assault on Earth's eldest daughter world Beowulf had caused Torch's position in the Maya sector to become perilous.

It all came to a head in 1928 PD when a large fleet launched by the Mesan Alignment attempted to acquire the Congo system for its uses once more. Unfortunately, the system of Congo was home to the Kingdom of Torch, a kingdom born kicking and screaming during a mass slave uprising. When forced to choose between a return to slavery or death, the Torch Royal Navy chose death. The first stages of the battle lasted an entire day, the Torch Navy had been greatly outmatched, but Thandi Palane, the Great Kahja, proved her tactical skill in keeping Torch's Navy alive long enough for reinforcements from the Grand Alliance to arrive. Unfortunately, The Mesan Alignment proved its indifference to the Eridani Edict when it bombed the planet Torch resulting in almost ten million civilian casualties. If not for the brave actions of Lara's Own Regiment, Her Mousety Queen Berry I of House Zilwicki would have also perished during the bombing.

Sadly, the cost of retaking Torch's sovereign space came at the cost of close to 3 million service personnel, and the life of Duchess and Steadholder Honor Alexander-Harrington, the Fleet Admiral of the Grand Alliance. The resulting counter attack on Mannerheim and the discovery of Darius claimed the lives of both Victor Cachat and Admiral Alfredo Yu. Luckily, the invasion of Darius managed to deal a massive blow to the Mesan Alignment, but it still took another twenty years before the Mesan Alignment finally admitted defeat. Twenty years of suicide attacks, assassination attempts, violations of the Eridani edict, and all manner of unpleasantness. But the sacrifices of those days were not in vain, for Torch was able to celebrate its two hundred thirty eighth Terran birthday this year.

Furthermore, Torch was no longer a single system star nation. The genetic slaves of Darius had voted to join the Kingdom of Torch, and it took nearly a century after Torch's occupation of Mannerheim for that system to do the same. With the discovery of how long the hyper space bridge was, Torch managed to acquire both the Shanxi System, and the Discovery system. It also allowed the Grand Alliance colonization rights to the surrounding virgin star systems, even the Andermani Empire was more than willing to pay the tariffs required to utilize Torch's termini, especially now that the Empire had a vested interest in several colonies, not as many as Grayson, Manticore, or Haven, but enough of an interest to have trade flowing through Torch's termini.

Yet even that was not the cause of Admiral Williams' presence in the Shanxi system. For the major buzz in the system came not from the hyper bridge, but what a merchant man had found after it had suffered damage from a grav-wave thirty years ago, and what it found was a pair of alien artifacts. Artifacts with similar energy readings like what had been found on Mars, before the facility had been destroyed during Earth's Final War. When the information had disseminated enough, a similar power signature had been discovered in the Sol system buried within Pluto's moon.

With Old Terra's resources poured into analyzing the artifact, something that Shanxi hadn't had the support structure for, they discovered that these Mass Relays were actually artificial wormhole termini which could connect to the other relays and create temporary wormholes. What was the most fascinating aspect of it was the fact that in order to get past the mass limit all natural wormholes had, the Relays actually utilized some sort of field, a sort of strange inertial compensator that literally made a vessel mass-less, easily allowing hundreds of ships to mass transit quite easily.

Unfortunately, the primary component required to create the inertial compensator, what some scientists had named a mass effect field, was an element without a weight dubbed element zero. Not the most original of names Admiral Williams had to admit. While the Terran League, the successor of the now defunct Solarian League, knew what sort of element was required to create a mass effect field, the design to actually utilize the element continued to elude them. The same could be said for the Grand Alliance, but transit could be made without it and passengers could just suck up the nausea like they did when they accelerated or decelerated from hyperspace. That information was discovered eight years ago when John Grissom and his science team came too close to the relay and activated it thereby discovering the relay hub in the Arcturus system. Still, the fact that these Mass Relays could connect to other Relays within their range made them invaluable for both commerce and military operations.

After all, the Charon relay had a range of only a hundred or so light years, and so did many of the Arcturus hub relays, but that was not the case for all of them. The one relay that didn't quite work, seemed to connect directly to the relays near Shanxi. Unfortunately, it seemed that while hyper-capable vessels could utilize the secondary relays, the primary one, like the Arcturus-Shanxi connection, needed the eezo compensator. This could be on the account that the prime relays were actually real wormhole termini that had been modified in order to remove their mass limit, but because of the technology involved, it also barred usage of any vessel that didn't utilize a mass effect field.

Of course, that wasn't to say that a vessel couldn't use the prime relays at all. They could, it was just that the crew had the tendency to turn into goo due to the stresses involved, but that was going to change. A Terran League-Grand Alliance project had just unveiled the first mass effect capable vessel, a new engine type that would revolutionize inertial compensator technology, and would be making the attempt to activate the Arcturus-Shanxi mass relay junction. If it worked, Shanxi would become the crown jewel of the Kingdom of Torch, if it failed than billions of credits would be wasted. Admiral Williams dearly wished that he could be there to see the historical event, but his duties at Shanxi prevented that. He would just have to sit back and envy Hannah Shepard's luck at having her squadron posted there.

He frowned slightly even as he decided to turn back to his desk and the paperwork that awaited him. All his musings weren't going to get them done, and he needed to finish them now if he wanted to travel planet side to get home in time for dinner.

-TED-

Codex Entry:

Andermani Empire: A multi-system star empire founded by Gustav Anderman. While nowhere near as powerful or technologically advanced as the Grand Alliance, the Andermani Empire is not a star nation to be trifled with. While a close ally of the Grand Alliance, the Empire decided to forego joining so that they could at times work as the Grand Alliance's enforcers should the Alliance's fleets be tied up in conflict. Their information network is quite extensive and seems to rival that of the Salarian's STG detachments.

Grand Alliance: A multi-star nation defense force created in the early 20th century PD in order to combat the aggressive and illegal actions of the Solarian League military. The alliance was also formed in order to later combat the threat of the Mesan Alignment and their allies, who were using the Solarian League as their patsy in an attempt to destroy the two most prominent members of the alliance: The Star Empire of Maticore, and the Republic of Haven. The Alliance is now one of the three major factions of humanity, with amicable ties to both the Terran League and the Andermani Empire.

Hyper-space bridge: A series of wormholes that allow instantaneous transmit between star systems across vast distances in rapid sequence. What could take years of travel could in fact only take several weeks.

Kingdom of Torch: The planet formerly known as Verdant Vista was once under the control of the Mesan Alignment. Fortunately, the genetic slaves forced to harvest medicinal plants in a highly hostile world revolted against their masters. The blood bath only ended due to the plea of the then at the time nineteen year old Berry Zilwicki. In the aftermath, Berry Zilwicki was near unanimously voted in as the Queen of Torch and founder of House Zilwicki, thus creating the Kingdom of Torch, a save heaven for escaped genetic slaves.

Lara's Own Regiment: Named after the first bodyguard that had died in defense of Queen Berry I of the house of Zilwicki, Lara's Own Regiment is the premier of the Kingdom of Torch's military ground forces. Considering their roots, Lara's Own Regiment also boasts the most physically powerful members of Torch's population. The entire regiment is made up of former genetic slaves, supersoldiers, highly trained spec ops forces, terrorists, assassins, and their offspring. Like most of Torch's population, their devotion to, and defense of, the Crown of Torch borders on zealotry.

Mesan Alignment: An organization started by the Detweiler family whose goals included determining the genetic future and supremacy of mankind through genetic manipulation. The Alignment utilized as Caste system that started with Alpha lines, the lines with the most genetic modification, all the way down to slaves genetically grown to serve their masters.

Terran League: Born from the disintegrating Solarian League, the Terran League is made up of Old Terra and her innermost daughter worlds. While nowhere near as powerful as the now defunct Solarian League, the Terran League is still an industrial juggernaut. The current population of the League stands at around a trillion people, roughly a third of what the Solarian League was once reported to having.

-TED-

Well there you have it, the prologue to my Mass Effect/Honorverse fanfic. As some of you can see, there will be very few Honorverse characters seen in the fic due to their advanced ages..or deaths. I know I might upset Honorverse fans by killing Honor already, but well Weber has stated that he plans to kill her, I just did so in a way that was in accordance to how he wanted her to die.

Please leave me reviews, I want to know what you guys think. Also, expect slow updates.