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Marked Effect (AFF Edition)	By : unrealuniverse Category: +M through R > Mass Effect Views: 22186 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Mass Effect characters, species, locations and the universal setting are owned by Bioware and not myself. Any other brand names mentioned are property of their respective owners. This work is and always will be free for anyone to read.

Chapter List
- 4
- 5
- 6
Chapter 5 - Light up
23rd December 2016
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Sam sat up in bed as if he had just heard a gunshot going off. He looked to his bedside table and glared at the alarm clock which was merrily mocking him to wake up. Turning off the alarm he headed out of his room towards the shower. The warm water certainly did a good job of removing the tension that the alarm had built into his body. He quickly dried off and got changed before he walked downstairs for breakfast, turning on the TV as usual on the way to the kitchen to see if there was any more news on the flare. He nearly missed pouring cereal into the bowl on the table as he heard the main news headline. "A second larger, and faster moving, solar flare is now heading towards earth. Scientists say GPS, Mobile, wireless communications and air travel are highly likely to be affected to some extent and disruption to power and communications infrastructure is possible." Sam quickly added milk to his cereal before seating himself on his favourite seat with his cereal in hand.
"That is so unlikely to be impossible," he muttered to himself between mouthfuls of cereal. "The weather today is looking windy with plenty of sunshine, max temperature 4°C. The clear skies tonight should give a good opportunity to view the Aurora Borealis caused by the solar flares although wrap up warm as the temperature will drop to as low as -8°C in more rural areas. Tomorrow will be fine in the morning with a band of snow arriving later in the afternoon, max temperature 1°C." Sam was just lost in his own thoughts given he was unconsciously trying to shovel the cereal, from the now empty bowl that was in hand, into his mouth. He looked down and smiled when he saw the empty bowl and the spoon half way between it and his mouth, then realised he was going to be late for work if he was not careful.
He quickly washed his bowl and then headed to the bathroom to brush his teeth. It was only a couple of minutes before he was in his car and heading to work.
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Work was less busy than usual given that there were probably a few who were suffering from the Christmas party. Around everyone else that was in work there was a distinct nervousness with various people wondering how relatives travelling by air would be affected by any air transport disruption and whether they would make it in time for Christmas.
"How many more problems are people going to have with their computers today?" Tony was seemingly a little grouchy this morning.
"If you hadn't drunk as much yesterday then you would be feeling much happier this morning."
"What is a party without drinking to excess Sam?" Sam gave no response as he did not know whether it was rhetorical or not. "It is nothing, I just wish there was some cure to the morning after."
"I am not saying anything about judging your tolerance better the night before."
"I did not have that much Sam."
"If you count seven pints and ten vodka shots as not much then you are correct Tony." Sam could only laugh at his bewildered expression. Imogen from sales was always the approachable friendly character even if she was a little eccentric in keeping her desk precisely sorted.
"I cannot remember drinking that much Imogen."
"I sat at the bar and I have a decent memory, trust me Tony, you did. Anyway I think there is a problem with the server as I keep getting request timed out messages." Sam quickly opened the monitoring software to find that indeed one of them had failed.
"Tony, server seven has failed to restart."
"Ok I will go and fix it. If I haven't fixed it by two then I am leaving it until after Christmas." Sam nodded a look of disappointment on his face. He would rather be downstairs in the server room than up here but given Tony was the head of department he could not argue.
"We appreciate you coming to tell us Imogen. Most people today would rather twiddle their thumbs and wait until home time given it is the last day before Christmas."
"It is funny how you should say that, people have been unplugging keyboards, inverting mice and other silly things like that this morning to try and get out of work."
"That would explain the amount of computers I have had to fix already." Sam takes a look at the time on the computer. "Nice, lunchtime."
"I best get some lunch so I can start work as soon as the server is back. Have a good Christmas Sam."
"You too Imogen." She left as Sam dug out a sandwich before doing a bit of searching around on the internet. Current estimates on the flares were putting the estimated time of them hitting earth at about six this evening. Sam left the desk to go down to the server room, his sandwich in hand.
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"Bloody thing." Tony seemed annoyed at the fact the servers RAM had failed for the second time in a week. "Sam, I thought I said I would handle this?"
"You did, however while I was having my lunch I did some searching around on the flares that are to hit. I would guess it would be better if we disconnected all of the office computers and non-essential servers."
"What time is it to hit?"
"About six." Tony seemed to contemplate a few things as he swapped the broken memory for new ones.
"Well as you know I need to leave at two so you will be on your own to disconnect what you need to. Can you label where all the cables go though as you remove them?"
"Of course, that would take longer than an hour to do though." Tony pressed the on button on the server which made it burst back into life.
"Right that should be ok in an hour or so as I assume the RAID array will need to rebuilt. I will speak to John about closing the office earlier for Christmas." Sam nodded and the pair went back upstairs.
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John was a fairly good boss but he liked everything doing to the book which got on quite a few peoples nerves. It was just approaching the end of the lunch break when he walked out of his office and stood in the middle of the building where everyone had a good chance to hear what he was to say.
"Everyone, I have an announcement to make." The floor fell silent with just the fans in the computers producing a low level noise. "As you all probably know we have a couple of solar flares heading towards us this evening. To ensure that none of the equipment is damaged we need time to disconnect it. So, as of three o'clock you are all on Christmas holidays." As is usual there was one or two who were overenthusiastic enough to shout "whoop." It did however seem to cheer everyone up even if it was only an extra two hours off.
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"Shiala, is there any particular reason you set a course for our next region to be mapped instead of one that was known?" Kriana stated in a slightly confused manner looking for the first time at the map on the cockpits console.
"If we could save the ship then why not continue with the mission. Also most of the mapped systems that we were close to had no decent planets for resources."
"What resources will we need to get the ship back to citadel space and get it repaired?" Kriana seemed to be thinking ahead now to what will happen.
"We could do with a space dock, but water is about the only essential item that we need. We can get any wire that we need from the damaged systems in the ship if they are not too difficult to get at or damaged beyond use." Adrasta chimed in given there was nothing else to do as everything was practically dead.
"We could do with splitting into two teams then. Shiala and Adastra you can have the job of water finding and collection. Emala, Fosanta and myself will take the wiring." A childish excitement seemed to start building in Emala and she could hold it back no longer.
"Does that mean I get to rip panels off the walls mother?" A big grin plastered on her face.
"Possibly, but no promises Emala. Does everyone know what they are to do?" Everyone nodded to Kriana before going back to twiddling their thumbs, unable to do anything until the ship was stationary. The ships computer estimated just over four hours before they would drop out of FTL.
"I just wish the time went faster given there is literally nothing to do in a nearly dead ship in the middle of nowhere." Everyone else nodded in agreement to Adastra's comment.
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5:06pm 23rd December 2016
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The Asari brace to drop out of FTL as the Enlightens computer counts down, 3, 2, 1. The five crew saw a solar system suddenly appear out of the cockpit windows.
"Oh that..." Adastra cut herself off as she checked something on the console. "Shiala can you try and work out what is causing the shields to shimmer."
"That light is the shields?"
"Yes Kriana. If we have just landed in a system with high coronal activity then we have an interesting problem."
"Interesting in what way?" Kriana did not like the sound of that.
"Well if the shields fail then the ship, and possibly ourselves, will be subject to high energy radiation." Fosanta looked at the screen which Shiala had brought up with interest.
"I think we are ok in the Enlighten Adastra as long as the shields have not suffered badly in the core discharge. We will however be unable to start repairs until the activity subsides as we will need to disconnect the fusion core." Adastra nodded in agreement to Fosanta.
"Adastra, the planet you can see to your right out of the window looks like a garden world."
"That is the best news I have heard since the attack Shiala. Fosanta, would a shuttles shielding protect us from the flare?"
"It is a guess but you should be fine given the size of the star and the current readings if they are accurate."
"Kriana is it ok if we leave now?"
"Yes, just be very careful and be prepared for anything as we do not know if there is life on the planet or if the readings are even correct." Adastra nodded before looking towards Shiala. The pair of them stood before walking to the lift to go to deck three.
"Kriana, there is going to be no way we can stay in contact with them even if we get the short range communications array working."
"Is that because of the flare Fosanta." She nodded to Emala who seemed content to just sit around for now.
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Sam was running around the offices turning off and disconnecting all the computers and network equipment, labelling each as he goes. He was just disconnecting the final few machines in the corner of the building when out of the corner of his eye the dusk sky started to display brilliant opalescent streams of light. After pulling the last cable he decided to wait for the second flare to hit in about twenty minutes.
"Well it looks nice but I could do with going home." Sam mused to himself noting it was eleven minutes past five. He pulled out an office chair placed it facing the window before sitting down.
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"Estimated time to landing twenty five minutes Shiala. It seems the flare has peaked so we should be ok."
"I am glad to hear." Shiala hoped that it was to be an easy ride. Adastra tried using the shuttles sensors but she could get no readings on anything given the interference from the flare.
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The Enlighten's shields glow a brilliant orange lighting up the whole of the inside of the cockpit. "Goddess, what caused that Fosanta?"
"A larger flare behind the first. I hope Adastra notices it coming."
"Can you... Oh." Kriana suddenly remembered that the communications array was fried.
"I see you realised the problem." Kriana nodded to Fosanta before taking a seat in the pilot's chair.
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"Shiala, we have a problem."
"What is it Adastra?"
"There is life on this planet, I see satellites." The inside of the cabin lights up a bright yellow before dimming. "Goddess." Adastra moved as much power to the shields as possible to keep them stable. "We are going to have shield failure shortly."
"Can we not get back to the ship?" Shiala really did not want to have to wait on the planet if Adastra had indeed seen satellites.
"No it is further to get back to the ship than it is to land. If this planet has life then it should have some natural protection from such flares so we should only be a few moments more before we are also protected to some extent. We will however have to wait the flares activity out before we can return."
"Have you forgotten about the life on the planet?" Adastra smiled to herself at the oversight.
"Yes. I would however rather risk first contact than dying from radiation exposure."
"As long as you can land us somewhere as quiet as possible."
"I will see what I can do."
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Sam continued to look out of the window of the office towards the wispy coloured glow of the night's sky. The calm before the storm. A few seconds later the town dropped into darkness as he sat there with the glow of the aurora on his face. He waited about a minute before the diesel generator in the basement began to provide backup power to the building and the strip lights flicker back on. Sam stood up and moved the chair back to its usual position before going to the basement to see how the servers coped with the outage.
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Shiala heard a warning beep emanating from the front of the shuttle. "Adastra could I ask what that beep is?"
"It is just warning me the shields have failed. I hate to be the bringer of bad news but the flare has also destroyed some of the sensors and one or two drive systems."
"Can we still land safely?"
"Well it is too late to back out now as we have fortunately entered the atmosphere. The backup systems and the working ones give me fairly good control so landing should not be too bad. The good news is it seems to be water so if I do mess up at least we are not guaranteed to die."
"You are really the best person to have around in this sort of situation Adastra."
"You know you like having me around really." Adastra smiled to herself as Shiala shook her head in a disapproving manner.
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Notes.
More will be posted shortly as leaving it here is a little mean.
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Marked Effect (AFF Edition)