Mass Effect: Reaper Dreams

The Wraiths

"The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them."

Phillip K. Dick

December 24th, 2187

Commander Susan Rizzi

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General Vakarian stood at his command post surveying the galaxy map, which flickered eerily, adding to the general feeling of unease aboard the Normandy. The mystery of the Kesh Relay had been solved. They'd found it this morning, along with several derelict Reaper husks. However, their readings indicated that the Kesh Relay and the Reaper ships had not been destroyed this past year, but over a quarter million years in the past.

"Five cycles," Vakarian said out loud, as if he were finishing Susan's thoughts.

"Yes, Sir," said Specialist Sachs. "The relay was destroyed exactly five cycles ago. The data suggests it was struck by an asteroid. It's not unlike the Alpha Relay incident."

"What about the Reaper ships, were they caught in the explosion?" asked Vakarian.

"We'd need more time to study them to be certain," said Sachs. "My best guess, based on their positions, is that five of them were caught in the system termination, but the other two were destroyed in battle prior to the relay detonation."

Susan frowned. "What about the other five systems we checked? Clearly, the Reapers were here recently and they razed every planet capable of supporting life, yet none of the worlds we checked had signs of civilization at all, let alone a spacefaring race. They were mostly burning out jungles with animals, even nuking oceans full of fish. That's not their MO. It doesn't make sense."

Urdnot Wrex, who had spent much of the past few days on the bridge, considered Sachs for a moment, then looked back to General Vakarian.

"Seems the aliens in this sector have been surviving through the cycles, even fighting it out with the Reapers. That's downright impressive in my eyes." He said.

"Were they still fighting though?" asked Susan. "What if they've been hiding and the Reapers couldn't find them, so the machines decided to just burn every world in the sector, hoping they'd eventually do the job? It's raw, brutal, math, the sort of thing a machine would do. Eventually they'd get them, though it might cost a thousand habitable worlds."

General Vakarian shook his head. "Yet they did come out of hiding in order to prey on other species. The Asari ship we found concerns me. How did the aliens get on board so easily? The state of the corpses we found... well, it brings up memories of some of our missions on the first Normandy. Cerberus was trying to do something similar with creepers and the like, using mutated species as weapons."

He took a breath, then continued with his line of reasoning. "Another thing, where did the Krogan fleet go? How does an entire Krogan war fleet just vanish? What if this race has survived out here all these cycles, fighting back against the Reapers? What could we be dealing with now that the Reapers are no longer in their way?"

Wrex grunted. "Are you trying to spook me old friend?"

Specialist Sachs spoke up. "If I may, Sir. The ruins on the moon that Lt. Sallikus is investigating indicate an extremely advanced infrastructure, which suggests a home world rather than a colony. When it was destroyed by the relay explosion, it is likely their entire civilization went with it. I can't imagine many of them were left, aside from stragglers, and I'd assume the Reapers would eventually hunt them down through agents like the Collectors."