It has been two years since the Reaper War ended Early October of 2087 , and the first human Spectre Commander Jane Shepard sacrificed her life for the sake of the rest of the galaxy.

The galaxy is slowly rebuilding, and in some cases taking full advantage of the chaos to expand their sphere of influence. In all of this COMM Specialist and Samantha Traynor, Shepards girlfriend and having just been transferred to Admiral Hacketts persona staff got an encrypted message from an unknown source on the second anniversary in early October of 2089 of the end of the Reaper war and the death of Shepard. This message included a video of commander Shepard amongst a bunch of rubble taking in a quick breath before the video goes black.

Traynor tried to go through channels but got no results, so she decided to skip channels and contact the only other person she could think of that would be able to cut through the red tape was Spectre Major Ashley Willams. Ashley Willams was willing to listen to Traynor and believed her, so she went to the Citadel council and Shepards mother the human councilor Hanna Shepard.

Ashley was able to convince Hanna Shepard that her daughter just might be alive, and trading in on her status as a hero and a Spectre, Ashley was able to get permission from both the Council and Admiral Hackett to take Shepards own ship The Normandy SR-2 and was able to transfer much of her old crew as well. Ashley was told it would take six months to get the Normandy back into fighting shape. Looking at the crew roster she realized the crew would work at keeping the Normandy operating and deal with the day to day operations of the ship but she would have to get more specialized individuals to deal with the ground operations, just like Shepard did.

So with the help of Shadow Broker and Traynor she took the six months she had for the Normandy to be retrofitted for the mission, she went about recruiting. Over the next six months she contact and visited dozens of individuals, and found the five individuals she wanted for this mission.

She made sure to let them know that this was not going to be easy, but hopfully in the end it would bring back one of the galaxy’s greatest heroes Spectre Commander Jane Shepard.

Ashley let her recruits know to meet at Docking Bay D24 at 0500 hours on the morning of April 4th 2090, and that she would meet them there.