The Humbling River- A Mass Effect and Transformers cross over.

I.

"Freedom is the Right of all Sentient Beings" -

Optimus Prime.

Commander Shepard was thinking.

He looked forlornly at the picture on his desk. A picture of a young woman in her twenties, with a bun of golden-brown hair at the back of her head, a smug smile worn on her face sat on the desk. This was the face of Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams, now Operations Chief Williams, who that same day, Shepard had run to on a mission to the colony of Horizon. The Collectors had taken most of the colony. The elusive enemy had struck again. But more importantly for Shepard, his former lover, girlfriend, whatever one would call their relationship had ended. Ashley no longer trusted Shepard just because he happened to be working with Cerberus.

That straight, blunt truth was not something Shepard could easily handle.

And with that being said, he took the picture and threw it in the small wastebasket underneath his desk.

Shepard knew he was being too emotional; too emotional by a soldier's judgement anyhow. He knew that he would return to strict professionalism before long. But it was too hard; coming back into the world, being told you have been gone two years, and how not too much has changed but enough had that it made him feel like the outsider. It was a hell of a recovery, a hell of a wake up.

Shepard would probably have sat there for another hour, but he was interrupted by the sterile voice of the ship's Artificial Intelligence, the Enhanced Defense Intelligence, also known by most as EDI.

"Shepard," said EDI, her physical "body", a blue sphere construct appearing on a small square terminal on the wall, "The Illusive Man would like to speak to you at your earliest convenience."

Shepard sighed and said, "Yeah I'll be there in a minute."

He took the elevator down to the CIC, and walked into the Comms room. The now all too familiar feeling of his physical form being turned into a hologram representation occurred and he was now in contact with the Illusive man, the mysterious, ruthless benefactor of humanity.

Shepard didn't trust him completely; not with the background his group had. Shepard still remembered the dessicated, husk-like bodies that he found at the Cerberus Facility on Binthu when he had gone searching for Admiral Kahoku. That kind of thing didn't easily fade from memory. But he and the Illusive Man had one thing in common; they knew how to get the job done; no matter what the cost.

"You called?" asked Shepard dryly.

"Yes, I have something you may want to hear," said the Illusive Man. The Illusive Man was nearing old age. He had a widow's peak with combed back gray hair above it. He had a strange quality to his eyes, they seemed riddled with blue markings similar to glyphs. The Illusive Man pressed a button, creating a map of the Milky Way before Shepard's eyes. "Today was an eventful day, for our intelligence against the Collectors, as we already discussed. I would like to give you a day of rest and preparation, but with news this hot, I don't think we can afford to miss another opportunity."

"Alright," said Shepard, his patience already waning, "Just tell me what it is."

"Right, well, we intercepted a distress signal from the Alliance Colony, Bedouin, out in the Traverse. Its a backwater planet with only one settlement, where they mine Iridium. According to them, they said that a meteor of massive size was crashing into the planet. This was unexpected, strange even to me, but I wasn't going to contact you, I had planned to send a relief operative team, with the primary objective of finding out why such an event would have taken place, but then, something else happened."

"What?" asked Shepard, interested.

"Apparently the Collectors happened to be in the area, and went to go check it out. For what reasons I'm not sure. However, listen to this..."

The Illusive Man pressed another button on his chair's console and a Collector voiced began to speak. The Collectors had no emotion to speak of, so that explained why the Collectors were not more frantic. However, the Collector was cut off in the middle by a strange, robotic, eerie noise. It reminded Shepard of the Geth's stuttering, but louder, like a power tool. And then the clip stopped playing.

"I'm guessing you have no idea what that noise was."

"If I had to guess, that's what a Reaper sounds like. But, as we know there are no Reapers in this galaxy yet, and it also wiped out the Collectors, which we know work for the Reapers."

"Right," agreed Shepard, "So whatever made that noise, that signal, is not a friend to the Reapers."

"Indeed. It doesn't mean they are a friend to us, but...It would be worth checking out don't you think?"

"I agree," affirmed Shepard without hesitation, "I'll ready a team and go down there myself."

"Good, but be cautious Commander, we could be dealing with things more powerful than us."

"Don't worry, I won't squander my usefulness for you," and with that Shepard walked out.