Drew Karpyshyn: Ascension

This is the second Mass Effect novel, and once again I want to thank the entire BioWare Mass Effect team for helping to make all this possible. I consider it an honor and a privilege to work with such incredibly talented men and women. Without their creativity, hard work, brilliance, and passion, Mass Effect would not exist.

The news report on the vid screen flickered with a constant stream of images capturing the death and destruction Saren's attack had wrought upon the Citadel. Bodies of geth and C-Sec officers were strewn haphazardly about the Council Chambers in the aftermath of the battle. Entire sections of the Presidium had been reduced to scorched, twisted metal. Melted, blackened chunks of debris that had once been ships of the Citadel fleet floated aimlessly through the clouds of the Serpent Nebula — an asteroid belt born from the bloodshed and carnage.

The Illusive Man watched it all with a cool, clinical detachment. Work had already begun to rebuild and repair the great space station, but the repercussions of the battle went far beyond the widespread physical damage. In the weeks since the devastating geth assault, every major media outlet across the galaxy had been dominated with the graphic — and previously unthinkable — images.

The attack had shaken the galactic powers that be to their alien cores, stripping away their naive sense of invincibility. The Citadel, seat of the Council and the symbol of their unassailable power and position, had very nearly fallen to an enemy fleet. Tens of thousands of lives had been lost; all of Council space was in mourning.

Yet where others saw tragedy, he saw opportunity. He knew, perhaps better than anyone, that the galaxy's sudden awareness of its own vulnerability could benefit humanity. That was what made him special: he was a man of vision.

Once he had been just like everybody else. He had marveled with the rest of the people on Earth when the Prothean ruins were discovered on Mars. He had watched the vids in amazement when they reported on humanity's first, violent contact with an intelligent alien species. Back then he had been an average man, with an average job and an average life. He had friends and family. He even had a name.

All those things were gone now. Stripped away by the necessity of his cause. He had become the Illusive Man, abandoning and transcending his ordinary existence in pursuit of a far greater goal. Humanity had slipped the surly bonds of Earth, but they had not found the face of God. Instead, they had discovered a thriving galactic community: a dozen species spread across hundreds of solar systems and thousands of worlds. Newcomers thrust into the interstellar political arena, the human race needed to adapt and evolve if they wanted to survive.

They couldn't put their faith in the Alliance. A bloated coalition of government officials and disparate military branches, the Alliance was a clumsy, blunt instrument weighed down by laws, convention, and the crushing weight of public opinion. Too interested in appeasement and kowtowing to the various alien species, they were unable — or unwilling — to make the hard decisions necessary to thrust humanity toward its destiny.

The people of Earth needed someone to champion their cause. They needed patriots and heroes willing to make the necessary sacrifices to elevate the human race above its interstellar rivals. They needed Cerberus, and Cerberus couldn't exist without the Illusive Man.

As a man of vision, he understood this. Without Cerberus, humanity was doomed to an existence of groveling subservience at the feet of alien masters. Still, there were those who would call what he did criminal. Unethical. Amoral. History would vindicate him, but until it did he and his followers were forced to exist in hiding, working toward their goals in secret.

The images on the vid changed, now showing the face of Commander Shepard. The first human Spectre, Shepard had been instrumental in defeating Saren and his geth… or so the official reports claimed.

The Illusive Man couldn't help but wonder how much those official reports left out. He knew there was more to the attack than a rogue turian Spectre leading an army of geth against the Council. There was Sovereign, for one, Saren's magnificent flagship. The vids maintained it was a geth creation, but only the blind or the foolish would accept that explanation. Any vessel able to withstand the combined power of the Alliance and Council fleets was too advanced, too far beyond the capabilities of any other ship in the galaxy, to have been created by any of the known species.

It was clear there were certain things those in charge didn't want the general public to know. They were afraid of causing a panic; they were spinning the facts and distorting the truth while they began the long, slow process of hunting down and exterminating the last pockets of geth resistance scattered across Council space. But Cerberus had people in the Alliance. High-ranking people. In time, every classified detail of the attack would filter down to the Illusive Man. It might take weeks, maybe even months, before he knew the whole truth. But he could wait. He was a patient man.

Yet he couldn't deny these were interesting times. For the past decade, the three species seated on the Council — salarians, turians, and asari — had fought to keep humanity at bay, slamming door after door in its face. Now those doors had been blown off their hinges. The Citadel forces had been decimated by the geth, leaving the Alliance fleet unchallenged as the galaxy's single most dominant power. Even the Council, fundamentally unchanged for nearly a thousand years, had been radically restructured.

Some believed this marked an end to the tyranny of the alien triumvirate, and the beginning of humanity's unstoppable rise. The Illusive Man, however, understood that holding on to power was far more difficult than seizing it. Whatever political advantage the Alliance might gain in the short term would be temporary at best. Little by little, the impact of Shepard's actions and the heroics of the Alliance fleet would fade in the galaxy's collective consciousness. The admiration and gratitude of alien governments would slowly wane, replaced by suspicion and resentment. Over time they would rebuild their fleets. And inevitably, the other species would once again vie for power, seeking to elevate themselves at humanity's expense.

Humanity had taken a bold step forward but the journey was far from complete. There were many more battles still to be fought in the struggle for galactic dominance, on many different fronts. The attacks on the Citadel were just one small piece of the greater puzzle, and he would deal with them in their proper rime.

Right now there were more immediate concerns; his attention needed to be focused elsewhere. As a man of vision, he understood the necessity of having more than one plan. He knew when to wait, and when to push forward. And the time had come to push forward with their asset inside the Ascension Project.

Paul Grayson never used to dream. As a young man he had slept untroubled through the night. But those days of innocence were many years gone.

They were two hours into the flight; another four until they reached their destination, Grayson checked the status of the ship s engines and mass drive, then confirmed their route on the navigation screens for the fourth time in the past hour. There wasn't much else a pilot needed to do en route; everything was fully automated while a ship was in FTL flight.