2394: Mass Effect: The Worst Bore — Chapter 3

Title: Mass Effect: The First War
Author: ProfFartBurger
Media: Video Game
Topic: Mass Effect
Genre: Adventure/Sci-Fi
URL: Chapter 3
Critiqued by AdmiralSakai

Hello hello all you patrons, and welcome back to Mass Effect: The First Mass Effect War: A Mass Effect Story: Mass Effect.

Last time, the quarian and human first contact teams finally got around to learning each other’s languages and setting up a face-to-face meeting. Then the quarians freaked out because the humans had an AI with them. And that was literally it.

CunkToad might have been willing to give this story more of a pass because there are long stretches where there is little to nothing technically wrong with it, ranging from basic spelling and grammar all the way up to the logical justification of characters’ actions. I, however, am not, because those passages also don’t accomplish anything worth reading about. We do not need to see all of the minutiae of the humans and quarians arranging a face-to-face meeting (and why they even need to do such a thing at this early stage instead of just using Space Skype remains a mystery to me); if nothing particularly informative about the story’s larger objectives or themes happens during that meeting we can just skip over it and everyone will assume it went fine. In fact, we’re some twenty thousand words in and I still don’t have the faintest idea what its larger objectives or themes even are. Other than sucking off the humans and ripping off a bunch of stuff from Halo with worse names, I guess, since we lit up the HFY Bingo Board pretty effectively, but even the standard HFY ship/gun/exposition porn was pretty thin on the ground most of the time. It’s interminable.

A/N:
O.o

WTF? Lol.

What is it with the Quarian hate, folks? Seriously, I’ve gotten at least four people outright demand that I slaughter some Quarians…

Well, you live by the HFY sword, you die by the HFY sword.

Don’t those bloodthirsy cretins know it’s only OK to slaughter the non-sexy races?

Like… Really? Do you guys hate ’em that much?

These are HFY authors and the quarians are aliens, so, yeah, probably.

What’d they do?
I always thought they were kind of kick ass… To be honest. A lot like us, in a few ways: No matter what the hell, who the hell throws at ’em, they just keep getting up and dusting themselves off. An admirable trait, actually.

Actually, that’s kind of true of intelligent civilizations in general. The quarians just have TEH SADS slightly more than many others.

Anyways, it IS called The First War for a reason, but that DOESN’T mean the second something CAN be bombed, it WILL…

That sentence took me a while to parse. I kept looking at “the second something” as a noun with an adjective just like “the first war” is a noun with an adjective. It turns out it actually means something like “that doesn’t mean everything will be bombed as soon as possible.”

And of course not everything is going to be bombed as soon as possible. The ‘fic would need to spend three chapters on shipping the bombs from the warehouse and the briefing where the pilots get their target location first.

Oh yeah, and YOUR various forms of SPONTANEOUS emphasis really aren’t DOING you ANY favors, Mr. MILLER.

Anyways, I’m ranting,

Just a single week after release, Mass Effect: The First War has garnered over one HUNDRED followers, EIGHTY TWO favorites, and over THREE THOUSAND views!
Just for two chapters!
I can honestly say I didn’t see this coming, and that I’ll be working thrice as hard from here on!

How.

It’s just another bog-standard HFY wank-fest where the only thing that’s halfway unique about it is that it’s really, really slow.

Thanks a lot, and I hope you enjoy the chapter!

Without further ado, we’re off!

Chapter 2
August 19th 2201

“GETH!” Hurriedly shouted a panicked Quarian, as he roughly grabbed the Quarian representative and dragged him behind the five marines,

Wait, I thought the meeting parties were supposed to be five Marines plus a single diplomat. Who’s this other guy??

as they all raised their weapons, making ready to fire.

Unfortunately for them, with this action they had threatened the life of the Human ambassador, and the warriors to his side would not let that fly.

Oh, so the Spartan-ripoffs are ‘warriors’, now. Their mothers must be so proud.

Almost faster than the Quarians could even perceive, the five soldiers on the Human’s side of the arid field reacted, “contact twelve!” Screamed one, with a deep voice that was synthetically filtered through his helmet, making it so the end result was a loud, frightening voice cascading from the massive Human.

I don’t usually think of voices as ever ‘cascading’. Puts a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘word vomit’, doesn’t it?

More than this ‘fic in general does, I mean.

Immediately after the man’s declaration, the two soldiers that hadn’t been looking forward spun around, guns raised; the soldier standing closest to Locke had his own rifle magnetically locked to his back in an instant, and had the ambassador grabbed in a bear hug, before he turned one hundred and eighty degrees, completely covering the Director with his heavily armored body, as the Quarians opened fire. Locke and John could feel the bullets slam into John’s armor, but neither of them felt the bullets penetrate their bodies, John’s HUD was even going so far as to say that his armor integrity was only slightly compromised, if at all. It was as if they were shooting them with sling shots, John noted.

Because of course they are.

It always does kind of surprise me, though, how the authors of these HFY ‘fics never actually seem to want to portray their OP  guns as super-powerful, or their armor/shields as super-durable. Instead there’s always this weird implication that the ME-based weapons are uniquely inferior to all other projectile weapons.

Regardless of what the Quarians were shooting them with, the Human soldiers were all but completely unharmed, and after the briefest of pauses, the Humans returned fire;

As you do when the situation is just a weird misunderstanding with people you are trying to make peace with and also the enemy poses no real threat.

though at the urgent behest of Locke, the soldiers went for non-lethal take-down shots and simply injured the Quarians.

Always an easy thing to do with a species whose physiology you literally know nothing about.

They shot at – what they humans assumed to be – the Quarian’s knees, thighs, and calves, incapacitating each one.

1: That’s a good way for anything with humanlike anatomy to bleed out really quickly.

2: They assumed those were the quarians’ knees? They’re joints in the middle of the quarians’ legs, what else would they be?

Once the Quarians were stunned, four of the human soldiers immediately sprinted forward, in the blink of an eye they had crossed the distance between the Humans and Quarians and, upon reaching the Quarian Marines, they slammed their rifles into the Quarians’ faces, intending to knock them all out with as little effort as possible.

Literally adding insult to injury.

Also, head trauma is another thing that’s really easy to gauge the effects of on a completely unfamiliar species.

I am really at this point just wondering whether it would have been better for the humans to have opened with the blunt trauma instead of gunfire- but really, they should have just picked one or the other and both is just gratuitous.

Also, this is still the chapter where the author reassured us he wouldn’t be curbstomping the quarians.

All of the affected Marines’ helmets and face-plates grew immense spider-web cracks as a result, but one’s shattered entirely when the butt of an Alliance Hydra-model shotgun was slammed into it.

Always a great thing to be doing to a species where literally the only thing you know about them is that they wear sealed environmental suits at all times.

The human soldier had a moment to look at the Quarian’s face, and was admittedly intrigued at how human it looked, it had pale, almost sickeningly gray skin, and milky-white eyes that seemed to glow. The soldier could see a few locks of hair in the marine’s – male in appearance -f ace,

WTF hyphens?

and some sort of line-like tattoo extending from the outer-edges of his eyes and down his forehead; these details would all be hidden from the Human when the Quarian, eyes wide in sheer terror, screamed in fear and in pain, and fell to the ground as he tried to hide his face from the elements.

I would just like to remind you all once again that these are supposed to be the good guys.

“On your six!”

The human soldier spun around and had his head slammed into by a Quarian shotgun; the soldier slammed into the ground and he heard the gunshot, immediately he felt the bullets tear through his abdomen.

Oh so now the mass-effect guns work.

The soldier responded quickly, distancing himself from the pain as he’d learned to do so during ‘The SIGMA Seven’, he spun on the ground, using his left hand as a pivot, and swept the Quarian’s legs out from beneath it. The human leapt to his feet, the ground shaking slightly on impact, and slammed his foot into the Quarian’s head in a punting motion, knocking it out cold instantly, if not outright killing it, if the sickening sound of bones bending breaking was any indication.

Ack! Annoying alliteration!

Also, so much for nonlethal takedowns.

Also also, I am left to wonder exactly what these soldiers have been fighting all the time to get so much apparent actual combat experience before the aliens even show up.

“Joseph! Status!” Demanded the soldier’s ally, Joseph nodded, kicking up his shotgun from the ground and immediately pointing it at the other Quarians around him.

“Compressors are working, I’ll be fine.” Said Joseph, as he felt the Skin Suit he wore under his armor grow around and in to the wound and press into it, to halt the bleeding and make him ready for combat, and more ready for medical attention.

Ok, so, on one hand, the story doesn’t directly rip off Halo’s biofoam. On the other hand, the alternative it comes up with is really, really dumb.

The soldiers kept their guns on the Quarians, and when John let go of Locke, Locke took the opportunity to speak.

Not entirely sure who ‘John’ is, here… possibly this ‘Joseph’ SPARTAN SIGMA dude was literally supposed to be the Master Chief before the author changed his mind.

So after that the humans are like “dude why’d you shoot us” and the quarians are like “dude why’d you shoot us” and take that as their cue to go over the whole AI thing (which I’ve just realized is an especially weird justification because shooting the humans wouldn’t even harm the AI because it got put on the quarian’s omnitool last chapter). Then they explain the Morning War and how it got them to wok dis empty stret on da bolevrad of borken dremz.

And then we get a Pronoun Lecture.

In a ‘fic that last updated in 2014.

This thing truly is a trend-setter in all the very worst ways:

“Okay… Admiral, I’m going to take out Nikola – Humanity’s first AI, he -“

“It!” Audaciously, angrily,shouted a marine, as he stood up shakily, and made his way to the sick Quarian.

Locke resisted the urge to roll his eyes, it had taken AI’s a very long time to get accepted enough to be given gender monikers, it was a sign of disrespect to refer to an AI as ‘it’, it was as if the person who said it considered the AI to be an object, a thing, not a living being. “

They bring the AI back out and it/he/que/xe/whatever gives a speech:

“Greetings, Quarian Admiral, Sri’Zoran of the Migrant Fleet. My name is Nikola, I chose the name after one of the smartest and most innovative human minds in Human history, Nikola Tesla.” Began the AI,

Really! And here I thought he was named after the incomprehensible antagonist of the Left Behind series, Nicola Carpethia!

respectfully inclining his head to the Quarian, before he continued. “I was created on a human planet – which shall remain unnamed for the time being –

For some reason. Even though just the name ‘Earth’ really doesn’t confer any sort of strategic advantage in and of itself. Unless the Alliance is worried alien threats are going to attack Earth with voodoo-type magic spells.

Except they already gave the name out to the quarians in one of the interminable first-contact videos, so it’s doubly pointless.

as the Alliance Advancement Task Force tried to create anything that could give humanity an edge over any possibly hostile Extra-terrestrial forces, otherwise known as Aliens.

Oh, and here I thought ‘aliens’ referred to a type of footwear!

I am not saying that we, or I consider you or your kind hostile, nor do I believe you to be harboring hostile intent. I have been listening to the entire exchange between you and Director Locke, and I believe your goals to be genuine. Regardless of my beliefs, however, we – that is to say, the Human race – have feared alien attack ever since we looked to the stars, and when we reached to the stars, became extremely conservative when it came to colonization, but very liberal when it comes to military development.

I am pretty sure the author has no idea what either of those words mean.

Then again, neither do most political scientists, apparently.

I, my fellow Synthesapiens, and the Cybernetic Culture of Synth-humans

Oh my god did that name get longer since it was first introduced?

*Checks back in the first chapter.*

Oh my god it did!

are a direct result from that liberal development.

“Hence the pronoun obsession.”

We have – over the course of fifty one years – been integrating ourselves within many aspects of Human Society, working to gain the trust and companionship of our makers, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, the Wise Man, the Humans.

“They Who Receive Unnecessary Titles.”

Also this implies the AIs believe synthetic life cannot be wise.

I myself was once crucial to the survival of the Human race, as I once detected a possibly apocalyptic asteroid heading for the homeworld. Needless to say, the threat was eliminated, and thanks to my actions, AI’s have become as close friends to Humanity as dogs would be.”

And this, in turn, implies that AIs are domesticated.

Blah blah blah the Migrant Fleet is falling apart and the quarians want to meet on Earth and the Alliance higher-ups aren’t really sure if that’s a good idea for mostly sensible security reasons when they are informed by the contact party. Although the description of how this conversation occurs is really, really strange:

Long after the events on the planet beneath them, John Locke found himself standing within the Piked Shield‘s communications center. The Shield, like all Alliance Flagships, was designed as a mobile command center, and a connection to Human Territory. To this end, its communication centers were designed almost exactly like a Deep Space/Communications Satellite, which itself was what allowed communication between Human planets, essentially meaning that any Alliance Flagship could connect to the Alliance Capitol on Earth, to receive updated orders and give out situation reports. This is what made Flagships invaluable to their fleets, because without the Flagships connection capability, an entire fleet could leave Alliance space with outdated orders and have few – if any – ways to get them updated, this had been why the unnofficial motto of the DS/C program had been ‘Miscommunication Kills, Proper Communication Doesn’t.’

This idea of FTL communication being relatively difficult and not something most warships are  is also something ripped off from Halo. If this wasn’t an HFY ‘fic I’d say this would be an interesting limitation to place on the humans compared to the rest of the galaxy where FTL comms are pretty easy to get ahold of, but I know this will somehow be set up to be superior to the rest of the galaxy.

Also the conversation is with the UN and involves people like

the Prime Minister of the Unified South American States,

so I guess this story is carrying over that really weird bit of lore from the first game where the Alliance governs all these offworld colonies and negotiates with alien powers but Earth itself is still broken up into a bunch of squabbly little nation-states for some reason. I never was really clear on how that was supposed to work, but arguably that’s a problem with canon and not the ‘fic.

Then it’s off to the quarians to… gush about how god damn amazing the humans are!

“A new race! A new undiscovered, sovereign race!”

I’m not really sure why it matters that the humans are ‘sovereign’… are the quarians trying to set up a tax haven or something?

Actually, I’m not actually sure if the humans are sovereign, as they have not been recognized in any official capacity by other species.

Declared Admiral Tierz’Shein, Sri’Zoran

Wow, all of these OC quarian names are really terrible. I don’t know why it took me this long to notice it, but they really are.

knew him as an opportunist, one that would take any and every possible advantage the Quarian people could have, his enviro-suit reflected his personality, primarily black with dark red highlights.

His personality was primarily black?

Also,

His niece, ‘Daro’Xen’ was no better, Zoran would even go to say she was even worse, but thankfully she was a long way away from even having the chance to become Admiral, she wasn’t even close to Pilgrimage age yet.

And then Daro’Xen gets bashed for no reason.

They talk about the exact same preliminary diplomatic boilerplate the humans just talked about, and they vote on sending a proper delegation in a really weird way:

“I concur. All in favor?”

“I” Said Sri.

“I” Said Talo.

“I” Said Jorran.

“I… See I am outnumbered.” Said Tierz, “So I have no choice, I.”

After that the humans contact them and relay the logistics of the negotiation, which the humans already told the UN guys the quarians had agreed to. I’m not sure if this scene was somehow intended to be happening before the previous scene, or if the author just forgot. But it all amounts to jack diddly in terms of accomplishing anything relating to the story.

So the quarians come aboard and are surprised that the humans Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Relays. And it turns out the human ships are antimatter-powered because…. I guess we get to rip off Star Trek too from time to time??

“It runs on several anti-matter based engine units, which all work together to provide amble energy, which powers the ship, and it’s warp drive.” Locke responded, vaguely.

“You see, the secret to FTL travel is that you can’t try to go through space too quickly. You just have to sort of… amble.”

“How in the name of Keelah have you managed to tame anti-particles as a fuel source?” Asked Jorran’Zorah, a dark green suited Quarian, with brown cloth, “not even the Salarians have been able to do so!”

That’s not how the word ‘keelah’ works. It’s also not that hard to ‘tame’ antiparticles since a Penning trap is more than sufficient to contain more than you would ever concievably want. The quarians probably meant to be surprised by how the humans managed to produce usable quantities of antimatter at a net energy gain.

Or, I dunno, maybe they mean how the humans got antiparticles to stop agitating for the right to vote, who knows when it comes to the science in these ‘fics??

“To be honest, the science behind the Anti-engine is beyond even me…” Locke seemed the slightest bit angry when he said that, but as soon as it appeared, it vanished, “From what I understand, it’s got something to do with magnets, overly-positively charged metals, constant vigilance and AI’s built to monitor the engines every moment of every day.” He explained, “the discovery of anti-fuel was crucial for the warp drive’s continued success.”

So the secret to economical antimatter production is the New Age, and synthetic slave labor.

Makes sense.

They talk about how great the human engines are for the rest of the chapter. Which, mercifully, isn’t much. Then it’s over.

Codex Updated:

STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHP.

Artificial Inteligence:

AIs, ironically enough, do not possess Spell Check.

A product of the Alliance Advancement Task Force, an Artificial Inteligence is a simulated, completely artificial mind created via the melding of several scanned and processed human brains with notoriously high IQ’s, and hyper advanced super computers. AI’s have, in their short existence, integrated themselves with many levels of human society. It is said that, behind every wealthy man, lies an AI devoted to him. AI’s have become a main-stay in Alliance Vessels, used for cyber-warfare and navigation, among other things.

And we are only hearing about these now because……..?

Warp Drive:

The McGraw Wormhole-Cutting FTL Enabling Engine, commonly known as the ‘Warp Drive’, is the only way Humanity knows how to break light speed. By working on the ‘rope theory’, the Warp Drive creates two worm-holes, and takes the distance between them, and shortens it. Turning a [For example] twenty-four hour journey, undertaken by normal engine travel, and turning it into a fifteen minute travel through warp-space.

Based on speed tests undertaken during the early 2140’s, Warp Drives were estimated to have a maximum speed of 1,738 light years per day.

Christ these are bland.

Anti-Matter Fueled Engine Units

Created by the [Now] worlds-renown scientist, Christopher McGraw,

Gosh, I wonder what the author’s IRL name is…

the Anti-Matter Fueled Engine Unites [Also called ‘Anti-engines’] are engine units that are fueled by anti-matter.

REALLY now! And here I thought that the Anti-Matter Fieled Engine Units Unites would be fueled by the goddamn Rainbow Power.

While the scientific community [More specifically, his father] ridiculed McGraw for his idiotic fantasies, they all quickly ate their words when McGraw and his AI found a way to cheaply and efficiently produce large amounts of Anti-matter, and a way to store said materials safely.

“And everyone really liked all his fan fiction, too!”

[McGraw even went so far as to create a series of AI specifically designed to focus and protect the ship from an engines failure. The engine units have a one-way connection with the void, and in the event of an emergency power failure, the engine units can all be vented and the AM Fuel Cells will be thrown to the void, to save the ship \’7bBack up, nuclear generators are activated immediately upon Anti-matter ejection, and Captain/ Acting Captain clearance\’7d.]

I’m not entirely sure what ‘the void’ even is in this context. Maybe he just means “space”?

Also those weird escape characters (the \’7d things) are back. I really have no idea what program they are supposed to correspond to.

Anti-Engines are particularly known for creating [A minimum of] ten times more energy than the fusion based nuclear engines that were standard issue before Anti-engines.

And some of the information is still in [angle brackets] for [no goddamn reason].

These engines have allowed Alliance Ships to do thrice as much [On a low average] as they could do before.

They could do extra stuff, and additional things!

The engines allow the main thrusters of a ship as large as a Dreadnought to hover in-atmosphere for at least fifty minutes, before gravity will overcome the ship and it will be forced to warp to the void.

Which is totally better than mass-effect-based levitation. I mean… fifty whole minutes?!

Rumors are that McGraw is working to weaponize anti-matter, and possibly use it to further ship-based Rail Guns [Blueprints of the Mk. VI were leaked at one point, but when questioned, McGraw laughed.] However, it is well known that he rarely receives [Or accepts] funding from the AATF, instead using his own money, made from the patents to the Anti-engines and other, lesser known devices, to fund his scientific exploits.

…

I hereby christen thee DR. STU!

A/N:
Now… Before folks go calling me a hypocrite… I didn’t kill any Quarians, I merely wounded some.\

TECHNICALLY, he said that maybe one died.

…

And boke one’s mask, but hey! If Kal’Reeger can survive a punctured suit, this guy can survive a mask destruction.
-(I hope.)-

You hope??

If you’re so invested in whether or not this quarian survives, why not just say he did?

Is that enough to satisfy those who lust for the Quarian’s blood? XD

Knowing this fandom, almost certainly not.

Hope you all enjoyed the chapter!

Don’t worry, I didn’t.

Next one’ll be up next monday!
Be sure to check out my profile for updates/polls regarding my stories!

And that was Chapter 3. Or Chapter 2, I guess, he did that thing where he says the first chapter was a ‘prologue’. It’s… a complete no-op. Just like the others before it.

Seriously, if I was the one writing this story… well, the first thing I’d do is stop, but assuming I had some actually good story in mind that required first contact to be with the quarians and not just HFY jizz, I’d devote maybe a few paragraphs to the humans actually encountering the quarians, and just skip entirely over all of this preliminary shit and head right to the middle of the serious diplomatic negotiations because the preliminary shit contributes nothing other than some extremely unnecessary HFY flexing.

Although, now that I think about it, the serious diplomatic creations will probably just be unnecessary HFY flexing too.

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