- Prologue -

Summer, Earth Year 2065 AD

These are the accounts of Captain David Anderson, United Mankind Space Command.

"And so our Turian Overlords brought me there, shackled and bound, too the seat of their power. Too their Citadel. A space station, beyond all our imaginings in its vastness, guarded by battleship upon battleship, fleet upon fleet. The vastness of their power, the futility of our struggle, laid bare for all Mankind to witness and despair. And as I stared upon it, all hope left me."

" ...if only we had known. If only we had known about the Charon relay. If only we had known that it was not a planatoid, or a moon, or any other natural body of the cosmos, but rather a gateway to Mankind's undoing. Even with our meager instruments of destruction, if we had known, everything would have been different. A few decades before, we could have sent a missile with a nuclear warhead to destroy the Charon relay, and cut off the Sol system from the rest of this wicked Galaxy. To preserve Mankind's dominion of our own star system, until the end of time."

"The Turians claimed that they came in peace, even after they destroyed our fledgling Starfleet. The finest military institution in Mankind's history, along with Earths defences and all mayor national military forces wiped out by the aliens in less than seven weeks. They cited the laws of their "Council", that no sentient species would be allowed to wipe itself out, nor destroy a "Garden World" as they call OUR Earth. Our homeworld. Now Turian troops stand guard all our great monuments, from the Pyramids to the Great Wall, as if it were theirs. Thank God they never found the Lunar landing site. All that remains to commemorate a free Mankind is a plastic flag, and a dead man's footprints in the dust."

Spring, Earth Year 2065 AD

General Adrien Victus carefully regarded the human soldier in front of him.

Field Marshal Zhukov, Commander of the United Mankind's Combined Terrestrial Armed Forces. The human was obviously an elderly man, even given Victus's limited familiarity with the appearance and life cycles of humans.

Was it Sukof? Zookov? Spirits be damned!

He had no idea how to pronounce the human's name, and his omni-tools translation suite provided no help on the matter.

The human's wrinkled face was as if set in stone, betraying no emotion whatsoever. Not that Victus was in any way familiar with human emotions. The man's strange uniform only served to accentuate his grave appearance.

Unlike Victus and his troops, the human and his entourage of officers wore no armor at all. Instead the old man wore an archaic looking uniform of olive green color. Atop the human's head rested a distinctive piece of headgear, a wide saucer shaped cap that rose to a peak at the front, bearing a gilded plate with a stylized emblem depicting the human homeworld. Tall, narrow black boots reaching up to the human's knee-joints, followed by a pair of trousers that widened sharply above the knee and then narrowed up towards his belted olive green tunic, which reached halfway down the humans thighs. The tunic itself was buttoned up tightly all the way to the collar, a plethora of medals pinned to the left side over the human's chest.

A fellow veteran. Victus thought to himself.

No doubt this human had fought in numerous campaigns.

Most likely against his own kind. Victus suppressed the urge to shake his head at the strangeness of it.

With one swift motion, the human drew the elegant blade he wore at his hip. Victus could almost feel his soldiers tense up, but they all knew this event was already carefully choreographed beforehand. The human military had expressed their wish to present their surrender according to the traditions of their people, and Victus figured it was the least he could do.

Field Marshal Zhukov then bowed his head deeply, raising his blade with both hands in front of him, offering it to the Turian General.

Reaching out with both arms, Victus gingerly took the blade in his talons, and studied it carefully. The long, curved blade gleamed brilliantly in the pale sunlight, but Victus could still see that it was very old, the wear on the hilt obvious. It was no doubt a precious heirloom, possibly handed down through generations of the human general's family.

Examining the beautiful weapon one last time, Victus carefully handed it back to the human.

Zhukov's head snapped up abruptly, his ice blue eyes widened and his jaw dropped almost imperceptibly for a split second before his stony visage returned as quickly as it had dissipated.

With almost forced calm, Victus spoke:

"We accept your surrender, Field Marshal. You may keep your blade. No doubt you and your house has done much to deserve it."

Victus waited for the brief lag until his omni-tool translated his words to the human language. His fellow general's face still betrayed no emotion, but Victus could have sworn that he noticed a tiny amount of moisture in the old man's eyes. Inwardly Victus prayed to the Spirits that his gesture had not in some way offended the human's traditions.

Weather or not the moisture he thought he saw in the Field Marshal's old eyes was due to his act of kindness, or simply because of the fact that the old human soldier was surrendering on behalf of his entire species, he could not know.

The aging human general simply sheaved his blade, made another bow, then turned on his heels and marched back to his officers.

As Victus regarded his human counterparts final retreat, he could not help but feel a twinge of sorrow in his gullet. The old soldier would no doubt never know another victory in his lifetime, and he sincerely wished that the poor Marshal Zhukov at least would be able to live out his few remaining years in peace and comfort. Spirits know he deserved it.

Throughout the Hierarchy's campaign to conquer and subdue the human homeworld, humanities forces under Zhukov's command had fought with a tenacity and valor that could rival even the finest of the Turian Legions. Despite their vast technological disadvantage, relying on primitive firearms using chemical propellant, most of which were unable to penetrate the turian soldiers kinetic barriers unless with sustained fire, many human regiments literally held their positions until the very last soldier was slain.

And then the were the suicides. A staggering amount of the human soldiers, rather than surrendering against hopeless odds, chose to end their own lives by any means at their disposal. Blowing their own brains out with their sidearms in front their would be turian captors, or entire human squads, blowing themselves to pieces with their own hand grenades.

Victus recalled with horror his own surveying of captured human bunkers and fortified positions, walls covered in red human blood, floors covered with entrails and body parts, not made by his own troops, but rather of the humans turning their own weapons on themselves. All simply to deny their enemies any intelligence advantage they might gain from capturing live human prisoners. Victus had even received reports of some human officers committing some perverse form of "ritual suicide" by disemboweling themselves with their own blades.

The prisoners that the turians actually managed to take alive were hardly a better story. Most of the captive human soldiers, even when restrained, would spit, flail, bite and claw (albeit with their pathetic vestigial talons) at their captors, even as turian medics did their best to apply medigel to their wounds or provide them with some hydration. When forcefully fitted with translation devices, most would utter nothing but profanities. And once one of their human captives could be calmed enough to realize their situation and speak in coherent sentences, a disturbing number of them would simply voice heartbreaking pleas to kill them. It was, apparently a widespread conviction among the humans that quick death was the very best that they could hope for. The alternatives, as most of the humans seemed to imagine, invariably included sadistic torture, brutal slavery, and there were even quite a few of the human prisoners who honestly believed that the turiens intended to use them as a source of food!

At its face these macabre fantasies almost staggered belief, but with closer consideration Victus knew he could hardly blame them. From the propaganda that the turiens had intercepted, it was clear that the human governments were doing whatever they could to stoke their populations into an insane frenzy of hatred and fear at what would happen if the 'aliens' succeeded in their conquest of the human homeworld. One particularly grotesque propaganda vid even depicted what was supposed to be turian scientist dissecting live human prisoners. It was of course a crude fabrication from start to finish, but it had none the less succeeded in its intended effect on the human populace and soldiery. It certainly went a long way to explain why so many of the human combatants chose pointless suicide, rather than an honorable surrender after a fight well fought against impossible odds.

A child race. Victus thought to himself.

If ever there was a client species that needed the Hierarchy's firm guidance to progress into civilized galactic society, it was these humans.