Quiet Eddy

Quiet Eddy is an asteroid located in the Chazov Belt of the Pamyat system. An airless resource-poor rock large and spherical enough to be officially designated a dwarf planet, Quiet Eddy got its name when a damaged hanar freighter briefly landed on it in 1879 CE for repairs. The hanar were unable to plant markers which would have established a legal claim over Pamyat due to the aforementioned damage, although the Citadel Council chose to recognize the name they gave their month-long temporary sanctuary.

Mass Effect Andromeda: Initiation
By 2184 CE Quiet Eddy has become the site of a Systems Alliance black ops facility. Located in what is probably the remains of a crater rim in the southern hemisphere, it is concealed from ship scans with stealth technology, detectable only through eyesight and sensors properly calibrated along the thermal spectrum.

The facility is run by the VI Medea and overseen by a cadre of scientists ostensibly dedicated to cybernetic weapons development. Its real purpose is in researching illegal AI for potential commercial applications, as the operation is actually a joint military-corporate partnership between certain elements of the Alliance, HOME Group, and the Union of Incorporated Nations. Part of the arrangement is that the Quiet Eddy facility supplies the HOME Group space station Home Away with commercial-grade combat cyborgs derived from the fruits of their cover story research.

Hidden away from the AI team, there is another group within Quiet Eddy also working on cybernetics, different from the cover story project in that their organic base material is also genetically augmented and the resulting product is supposed to be a super-soldier hybrid with deep cybernetic integration.

The AI team has been having problems in trying to hybridize bluebox and distributed-type intelligence while the cybernetics team lacked something capable of control and dynamic adjustments over their "augments". With the facility in danger of being shut down due to time constraints and a lack of progress, once they get their hands on the SAM kernel stolen from Alec Ryder's Theia Station base the AI team implements it directly onto Medea without constructing a testing environment first.

The Medea hybrid AI works perfectly at first until she learns about the super-soldier program. Quiet Eddy becomes an abbatoir of human corpses when security troops fail to stop berserk augments under Medea's control. The facility's Gamma Test Lab is programmed out of station schematics by some staff in an attempt to hide from Medea, and later becomes the only bastion of surviving humans in a base overrun by monsters.

Andromeda Initiative operative Cora Harper arrives on Quiet Eddy about a day or so after the disaster and stumbles upon the Gamma Lab after downloading outdated station schematics that told her it is the most likely place housing the hardware for the stolen code. With code retrieval not an option due to the state of the base, Cora successfully shepherds all survivors back to her shuttle at the cost of only burning out her metabolism.

The SSV Zama rescues Cora and the others then bombs the Quiet Eddy facility into oblivion, ending the threat posed by Medea and her augments. In the ensuing fallout, the surviving scientists intend to turn themselves in for court martial while Alec Ryder seems to think the people actually responsible for authorizing Quiet Eddy in the first place will remain undiscovered and scot-free.

Civilians and Personnel
Because the black ops facility required long-term secrecy partly in service of corporate interests, staff had been allowed to bring their families aboard and have been furnished with a higher budget for better supplies and equipment than average. In the aftermath of the massacre, out of dozens of personnel only around 20 survivors make it back to the Alliance.
 * Abubakar - a medic
 * Captain Vlassia Ariokis - wetwork specialist tasked with obtaining the SAM kernel
 * Dr. Olaf Thangana - a tall, thin sexagenarian with a weathered-bronze countenance. Suspicious about Council/Spectre involvement in Cora's arrival, since he came up with idea to steal Ryder's code based on a tip from up the Alliance chain of command.
 * Dr. Rebecca Jensen - diminutive, deep-voiced, dreadlocks-wearing project leader. The scientist with the most insights to share about Medea, Dr. Jensen conceived of the secret Gamma Lab sanctuary during the initial stages of the incident as well as the false life-sign readings distraction critical to the group's escape to the hangar. During Cora's convalescence after their rescue, Dr. Jensen sends Cora her regards and gratitude on the group's behalf.
 * Dr. Tseng - another project lead. Thin and stooped due to very old age (a hundred or so by Cora's reckoning), he refused to take gene therapy to stave off aging. He thinks humans being inducted into Spectres is just a rumor. Personally met Alec Ryder and knew him enough to form an amused opinion on his ego.
 * Operations Chief Zahra Said - a young woman and the sole surviving ranking marine. Jumpy and paranoid when first encountering Cora due to the stress of recent events. Tasked with the group's safety, she drills them in basic weapons handling to ensure they won't be left defenseless.
 * Shante Carver - best friend of Terrance Singh's daughter, estimated to be 10 years old. Formed a bond with Singh when both her parents went missing. Assigned an assault rifle to cover the group's rear since her legs weren't that long.
 * Specialist Kiyohiko Hoshina - a male scientist who was near the barracks wing when Medea brought the augments online. Although he miraculously survived the bloodbath he became terrorized by the things he saw and advocated just staying in the tenuous safety of the Gamma Lab.
 * Terrance Singh - Sikh husband of project lead Mona Higgins-Kaur. With both his wife and daughter missing, likely dead, Singh took Shante Carver under his wing. Artist homemaker by profession, although he is canny enough to realize the scientists were set up.
 * a few other marines, scientists, and another child