Alrighty, so here is the slogging match. Also, a huge shout out must go to deitarionSSokolow for rescuing my chapter 1 of this story. Cheers again!

Shepard walks towards a thick glass window and stops just before it, outside she can see the battle wounded Indomitable and the thousands of workers that are trying to fix her up so she can once more bring hells fires upon Humanities enemies, but fixing a state of the art warship is no easy task by any means. "So," Shepard says to an eccentric man who approaches and stands beside her, the man is an odd one who loves nothing more than his own creations, and the Indomitable is primarily his design. "How bad is she?"

"She was one of a kind!" The man snaps at the Enforcer.

"Is." Shepard corrects, the ship is wounded, not dead.

The man scowls a little before adding, "Look at her, I mean, she looks like she has been chewed by a cosmic-sized dog."

Shepard allows her imagination to run free for a second before reluctantly agreeing with the eccentric man, it does look like it has been the play toy of some cosmic sized creature, but she is not here to talk about how the ship looks. "How long till she is battle ready, Q?"

The man does some mental maths before saying, "4 months - and no sooner."

"I will need a ship in the meantime, what do you have for me?"

Q Has proven to be one of Shepard's most trusted ship designers over the years and is her go-to guy when she needs a new ship built or even some gizmo for a certain task. "Will this one come back in better shape than your last one?" Q asks and Shepard simply looks at him, she will not make a promise she can not keep. "If you weren't the bloody Enforcer I would have a ban on you ever touching my ships, hell I would ban you from even looking at them." The man turns on the spot and begins to walk, "But alas, I have a prototype I think you might like."

Shepard follows the man to a transporter and soon they are at dockyard 16. Each dockyard is housing a different project that is illegal in human space, and each vessel is in different states of completion. Currently, there are an additional 5 Indomitable's in construction, each at various points of construction, and further 29 different projects ongoing. Walking to a window Shepard looks out to her new ship, but something appears off, it almost appears organic in design, and, "It's small." Shepard says with some disappointment, she liked the intimidation the Indomitables pure size could deliver.

The man mutters something incomprehensible before speaking aloud, "6km port to starboard is by no means small, now Test Project, introduce yourself."

There is a brief pause before a voice says, "Hello Enforcer, have you come to inspect me?" One could not miss the excited tone in the AI's voice.

"Yes." Shepard replies before turning to the eccentric man, "Did you really name the ships AI Test Project?" She will be seeing that it is changed when the ship is handed to her.

"Yes." The man says, "It is a concept vessel, thus its name is Test Project."

Shepard rolls her eyes at the man's eccentric ways before looking to the ceiling and the many sensors that adorn it, "Test Project, what are your specifications?"

"I am compiled of 6.8 Quadrillion nano-bots."

The eccentric man quickly speaks up after the AI, "The entire ship is made of nano-bots, and I mean everything, from the shitter to..."

"Alright, I get the idea." Shepard closes with the window and peers out and onto the pitch black ship that is currently using a vantablack coating to make it harder to see. "But, I thought we proved nano-bots could not form strong enough bonds required for armour purposes."

"We did, but imagine this, we calculate where a shot will impact, then at that point on the hull we construct 10 shield emitters. Bang, problem solved."

Shepard nods her head, with the latest generation of shield emitters that would provide one strong barrier, "Nothing much would get through, granted, but how do we power this? It would require dozens of generators, and on a ship this small, size is a premium."

"Please." The man says, "A rigid hull has permanent features. A fluid hull can change to suit its requirements. We are no longer compromised on space. Have a spa room? General quarters sounds and it transforms itself into a generator. Holodeck, now a generator or two, unused storage room? Now a generator, view deck, now a generator, canteen room..."

"Now a generator?"

"Excellent," The man smacks Shepard lightly on the shoulder, "Now you get the idea, and if you need that little weapon you been working on, upload the schematics to Test Subject and bang, change out your secondary DEW for it, or need extra defences? You no longer need your fifth primary weapon, change it to what you need. This, Enforcer, is the future battleship, this is what will win us our wars."

Shepard nods along, all this sounds good, but, "Surely if the entire ship is built out of nano-bots, then the entire ship has the ability to refuse orders, to refuse to soldier."

"True," The man replies, "But so does your bridge crew."

"I can replace my bridge crew, it's not so easy when your entire ship is against you."

The man shrugs, "Well, you asked me if I had a ship, and this is all I have at the moment, take her or leave her."

"Okay, final question then, the TX machines turned due to some fault in their programming being exploited, have we fixed this yet?"

The man's shoulders drop as he shakes his head from side to side slowly, "Those TX's were never properly tested against a true cyber attack in order to keep them secret. The nano-bots that construct this ship are the same ones that run in your blood, meaning they have been exposed to tens of thousands of years of hacking attempts and cyber warfare. This ship is as impervious to Reaper hacking as your very self."

Shepard nods along, it is true the TX's were never fully tested against a true cyber attack, but that was required in order to keep the project as secret as possible. "Then I will take her," Shepard stipulates, "But next time, think bigger, like Indomitable big, or you know, think Death Star big, I want our enemies to shit themselves at the very thought of the vessel."

"Bah," The man waves a hand in front of him, dismissing the idea, "Ship design is an art, and you never force the artist's hand. And that death star, it's as ugly as it is impractical, whereas Test Project, she is a thing of true beauty."

/.../

Meanwhile - Citadel space

Liara jumps as River drops her optical camouflage, "Ri!" The Asari says while batting the younger Asari, "I could have shot you."

River shrugs off Liara's light attack and asks, "Whatchya doing?"

Liara tilts her head slightly to the side before asking, "Do you really need me to tell you?" She knows River will have figured out what is happening by now.

River shakes her head, "Not really, your hitting the Shadow Broker." The Asari looks around the numerous Asari that are donning their various bits of equipment, including Benezzia which is unusual, typically the Matriarch of an estate would not get involved in fighting. "Mind if I tag along?"

"As long as you don't get shot this time because I don't fancy dealing with your mother again." Liara shivers at the memory of Shepard's foul mood when she discovered River had been hit by some reaper device on Thessia, "In fact, aren't you supposed to be restricted to the Indomitable?"

River nods, but smirks at the same time, "My mother will see an Asari robot sleeping in my bed," River purposefully omits the fact that the Indomitable is out of action and she is assigned to a new ship. This is because the mega vessel that is Indomitable is a beacon of morale for many, so if they found out it is injured then morale would take an unnecessary hit.

"You know she will figure it out, and won't she tell it's not you instantly due to her nanobots?"

River smirks again, "I've installed it with fake biometric emitters, meaning unless she enters my room and talks with it, I'm fine."

"If you say so," Liara says, not entirely sure that one of the most powerful beings known would be so easily tricked, "But don't come crying to me when your mother discovers you are out here causing mischief."

"She won't," River says, reinforcing the idea, mostly to herself, that her mother will be completely unaware of her actions.

3 hours later River looks around a large circular room with a dead Yahg in the middle, finding the Yahg to be the Shadow Broker was a complete shock to the Asari. "So," River says as she collapses her LDEW weapon system, "We killed it. What now?"

"Now," Benezzia says from her position overlooking the dead Yahg that had provided critical information to not only the opposing clans on Thessia that attacked her own during the Reaper invasion, but to the Reapers themselves, "We topple the empire this thing created."

"No," Liara says, turning from a monitor she is observing, "I have a better idea," turning back to the monitor she presses a button on a terminal connected to it and speaks again, "This is the Shadow Broker, the situation is under control, we experienced a power fluctuation while upgrading hardware. It disrupted communications temporarily, however, we are now back online, resume standard procedures. I want a status report on all operations within the next solar day. Shadow Broker out."

Just as Liara finishes the word 'out' there is a flash in the room and Rivers' stomach drops, she does not need to turn to know who has come to visit. "Mother," She says before turning around to face her and her impending doom, "How long did it work for?"

Shepard surprisingly does not look angry, instead, she looks amused, "I didn't notice you were gone till you fired your LDEW, and I have to give it to you, that robot had thought and effort put into it."

"Well, I had a lot of time on the Indomitable with nothing to do, so I got creative."

Shepard nods to this, "I know, I kept track of it."

"So then," River asks, not wanting to delay her punishment any longer than absolutely necessary, "What will my punishment be this time?"

"Well," Shepard says as she looks around the room, "As you have mentioned, you have a lot of time on your hands, so I need to keep you busy." The Enforcer walks to look at the dead Yahg before going on, "and I have just the thing in mind." Shepard then looks to Liara, "If you intend on running the Shadow Brokers network you will need an assistant." Shepard then clicks her fingers and all the Asari find themselves on Shepard's prototype ship, in a room filled with computers and systems that would make even the most powerful citadel computer network look like childs play. "But you're not doing it on that awful ship." Without another word, Shepard then flashes out of existence.

"Well," Begins River as she looks around the numerous systems in the room that will control the Shadow Brokers network, "That went better than I could have ever hoped for. So, what now?"

"Now," Benezzia interrupts as she approaches a monitor to read information on its display, "If we are not destroying the network, we will utilise it to serve the galaxy."

As Liara and Benezzia talk about how to best do this River searches for herself on the Shadow Brokers network, curious as to what it has on her. "Age 89 - correct." She mutters to herself, "Biological parents - unknown." River looks to Liara before typing on a keyboard, deleting 'unknown' and replacing it with two names, 'Mother - Aleena Sha'ira, Father - Amaeal Orissa." Sha'ira is well known as the Consort, and Orissia is lesser known, but still a famous asari actor, meaning it would surprise no Asari as to why the two well-known figures would abandon River on Omega, especially considering her 'condition'.

River skips over a few boring fields, before saying, "Unique features, Ardat-Yakshi, estimated grade 2." River frowns before deleting the two and replacing it with a four. Ardat-Yakshi are rated on a scale from 1-5, 1 being the tamest version of Ardat-Yakshi syndrome, with those infected only being able to cause severe trauma through melds, and level 5 being the most severe of cases - only 18 Asari are known to be level 5. Level 4 is also rare, with only a few thousand affected - Justicars would kill them on site, and those with it are strong biotics and are able to instantly kill those they meld with - Thankfully, River is able to use her nano-bots to control both her nervous system and lust when melding. Level 3 is the most common variant of Ardat-Yakshi syndrome, with its most infamous person inflicted being the criminal Mornith.

"Next, associates..." It does not surprise River to see that very little is known about her associates, other than the T'soni family, of which, "Siffeier Athetya and Benezzia T'soni have favourable relations, Liara T'soni..." Unsurprisingly, there is a wall of text here, but one line gets River to splutter, "... has asked for permission to..." River quickly stops reading.

/.../

Sparta ringworld

The Spartan ringworld is the beating heart of Humanities military, it is where its officers and soldiers are trained in the art of war, it is where war games are played, war tech designed and tested in simulated battles, and it is home to some hundreds of thousands of warships. It also has a civilian population of some 7 Billion, just in order to accommodate the soldiers that live there.

In a coffee shop, two civilians are speaking to one another, discussing the war at hand when they both stop to look out their nearest window. "Is that...?" One asks the other, unsure if he is just hearing things. Behind them, a TV screen begins to broadcast a general call to arms.

The second civilian nods, he too can hear the thunderous drums that are being beaten to an age-old tune called Grenadiers Fife. The drums have slowly beaten all war, ever since the Reapers attacked New Saharah, to a simple beat of once every six hours, but the fact the drums are now playing the Grenadiers Fife means the situation has changed, and Sparta is under direct attack.

The drums tell soldiers to mount their posts, navy officers to return to their vessels, and for civilians to become soldiers as they should prepare to mount a ground defence. The constant drumming also serves as a reminder of the War, in order to keep people focused on the end goal - humanities survival.

After a few moments to accept the new beat, the two civilians look to one another before shaking hands for an extended period, silently saying their final good bye's, afterwards, both men return home to collect their families, pick up their weapons, and don armour.

T-5 mins:

Shepard looks across the numerous monitors in front of her, the Reapers have eventually made their move against her species, and boy, have they made their move.

"14 Systems under assault," Someone says from her behind, "Total enemy forces exceed 510 million vessels."

Shepard pulls a hand through her hair, she expected the Reapers to have tens of millions of vessels, not hundreds of millions, but numbers aren't the be all and end all.

"And their numbers have blotted out the stars." Shepard says, thinking back to something a Reaper once said to her, "Send out Condition Alpha, activate all forces, power up all generators, establish all networks, prime the halo's for activation, and divert all unused processing to the Sparta Ringworld."

Within minutes, 25 Million human vessels, from the smallest patrol vessel to the largest warships are locating themselves into defensive networks across 14 systems, ready to toss 50,000 years of preparation towards their nemesis. As this happens the Sparta Ringworld begins to receive all the unused and unneeded computational power within human space and puts it to use, in order to calculate strategies and tactics. Other ringworlds, also known as 'Halos' begin to power up their secondary functions, allowing all the energy collected and stored in human space to be either fired off as an incredible weapon of mass destruction, or distributed to where needed, such as the energy networks that will be soon distributed among defending ships, giving shields and weapons that extra umph.

With initial preparations ongoing, Shepard then gives the next order, "Transport all dockyards and orbiting industries to the designated location." This will allow Humanity to continue to construct ships even if they lose all their systems - humanity will not go quietly into the night.

Shepard then breaths out and nods, everything she has done in her life has led to this moment in time, this very second, and now it is time to find out if she has succeeded in her life's purpose. "Open line to all fleet admirals."

Shepard will not give a long inspirational speech, she thinks its corny, and right now a waste of valuable time, so instead, she simply says, "Fleet admirals, time to prove your salt. You have the helm of your systems, now go give em hell."

For the next five minutes, Shepard watches as the various fleet admirals place their vessels where they want, a few chose to make a stand around their most defended world, in order to take advantage of the planetside orbital defences, others decide to move away from their planets, making the world enticing to invasion so that Reapers have fewer ships in the space battle. Then there is Fleet Admiral Thrawn, who is one crazy bastard that always does well in war games by doing things no one sees coming, and he seems to be prepping his ships for a full out assault. Well, Shepard thinks to herself, the man is living up to the saying that a good defence is a good offence.

"Enforcer!" Someone shouts, pulling Shepard from her thoughts, "We have an issue. A 50km long Reaper has arrived at our location and its blocking subspace."

Shepard frowns, she only knows of one 50km Reaper, and that is the Citadel. "Citadel?"

"Negative, shaped like a capital ship and has energy readings equalling our own, its glowing orange too."

"Harbinger," Shepard says, knowingly.

"We are being hailed."

Shepard expected as much, "Isolate a system and accept."

It takes barely a moment, but soon a large holographic image of a Reaper Capital ship is displayed in the middle of Shepard bridge. "Enforcer,"

Shepard taps the armrest of her chair a few moments before recognising the Reaper, "Harbinger, come to surrender?"

"Synthesis, your arrogance has been a constant throughout this cycle - yet we must applaud you for your attempts at resistance. We had not expected the destruction of XX6, or your ability to reverse engineer our subspace technology as quickly as you did. Our initial evaluation of your species was inherently incorrect, we will not make the same mistake again."

The communications officer quickly shouts, "It's cut the connection."

Sensors then add, "Detecting a massive power surge. We're about to be hit."

Shepard allows the captain of the vessel to take over, it is the same man who battled the Reaper fleet in the Indomitable and she has full faith of his abilities. "I want everything to shields." He quickly looks around the bridge, "Time to..."

The man doesn't finish as a barrage of unrelenting high powered shots slam into the prototype ship. The captain steadies himself as the shields and generators groan under the immense pressures Harbinger is putting them under, but most importantly, they hold.

Shepard breathes out a breath of relief as she too realises the Reaper is not going to penetrate the shields any time soon. "Captain, all weapons are on the table."

The Captain doesn't acknowledge her, instead, he simply says, "Hammer of dawn. Fire."

The second after he says fire two red arcs bridge the gap between the Reaper and Prototype, the arcs are pure energy, and immensely powerful, nothing known can withstand them.

"No effect."

"Again!"

"No effect."

"Again!"

The Reaper sustains shot after shot, amazing even Shepard. "Captain, generators are being depleted quicker than prototype can rebuild them. This is unsustainable."

Shepard is not surprised to hear this, the Hammer of Dawn is supposed to be a one-shot weapon, nothing is supposed to be able to withstand it - hell, the weapon is supposed to rip space apart by destroying the very physics of the universe at the spot they hit, so how Harbinger is shrugging the weapon off Shepard would love to know.

Captain Hood looks at the Reaper for a moment before asking Shepard, "Permission to enter human space."

Shepard nods, the legality of the Prototype ship won't matter if Humanity falls today, and so, with permission, the Prototype ship begins to withdraw from the battle against Harbinger. "Subspace is blocked for 12AU." Someone says.

It is not a problem for the captain, "Then we outrun it and jump. Get me more engines."

Soon, with the prototype ship changing its design to accommodate more engines, the vessel is jumping into New Saharah - or as close as it can get due to all the subspace jamming ongoing in the system as millions of vessels slug it out in a fight for survival.

"Hot damn." Someone says as they look towards where the Spartan ring world should be, for all they can see is a blinding light from the immense amount of ships firing their energy weapons and cores going critical.

"The fleet admiral has given permission to fire the Spartan Halo."

Shortly the blinding light that surrounds the Spartan ring world becomes even more blinding as the Spartan Halo fires its weapon and ships blot out of existence - unable to withstand the mega weapon.

"That is what we are hitting Harbinger with," Captain Hood says, "Get me the fleet admiral."

Soon Hacket is on screen. "I have little time, captain." The man says understandably.

Hood, while technically a much lower rank, is also the Enforcers personal captain, gaining him equal rights as Hackett. "We have a priority Reaper inbound needing a hard knock if you would be so kind."

Hackett looks off-screen for a moment before saying, "If we knock it out it will go supernova."

Shepard speaks up after this, "If we don't knock it out that thing will tear apart the fleets."

Hackett nods his head before turning to look off screen, "Prepare the world shield generators, they are about to get a good testing."

"They will hold, Admiral." Shepard says, "Now hit this thing."

"Preparing weapon, it will take 30 seconds to initiate." It is a long 30 seconds till Hackett says, "Firing." After which Harbinger is consumed in a blinding white light as humanity hits it ten times with a weapon that punches with the same amount of energy a red giant star will produce in a year - meaning Harbinger has been hit by ten years worth of red giant energy.

Shepard looks to her sensor expert after the weapon hits, waiting for a status report on the Reaper, and the supernova its destruction will cause "Well?" She asks, filled with hope.

The sensor subject matter expert initially nods, "Harbinger is dead in the water, no supernova detected."

"Say again, Harbinger is not destroyed?" Shepard asks in alarm to which the expert shakes his head.

"No, but I wouldn't say its mission capable, it's currently tumbling in space uncontrolled."

"Then let us destroy it now, Captain, turn this ship around and destroy that Reaper."

After making the relevant orders the Captain speaks up again, "I have to give it to the Reaper, its a damned durable thing to sustain what it has."

Shepard nods, "I hate to admit it, but they have proven to be experts when it comes to building durable ships."

Hood nods before ordering the Reaper to be hit by everything they have, and with the Reaper already heavily damaged it fails to mount a defence, meaning many of their shots do further damage. Hood prioritises the Reapers engines and subspace technologies, hoping to prevent it from running. "Alright." Shepard then says, "Its mission killed. Download its data-banks and get us back into the fight."

"Which fight?" Hood asks, "Any we enter and we will have millions of Reapers actively target ourselves to remove you. I must advise we remain outside the conflict zone."

Shepard hates to agree with the man when her species is under such an attack. "Very true Captain, but we..."

Someone speaks over her from behind, "Supernova reported in Arcturus system, planetary shielding has reportedly held."

"Then the shields did their jobs. Have we any system with the Reapers landing ground side?"

A woman manning a console that overlooks the war replies, "All planetary shielding is holding."

Shepard nods in relief, "Excellent, inform me on any change. I'm in my quarters working."

Over the next 18 hours, Shepard watches the 14 battles play out, with each battle sustaining trillions of deaths and tens of thousands of supernova's as relays are destroyed. Each supernova has Shepard holding her breath as she hopes her energy network established before the war can handle the immense strain put on it. By the 18th hour, it has come evident that Humanity has only won 8 of the 14 battles, meaning 6 systems are now firmly in Reaper hands. Many will call today a victory, but it is far from this, as no matter the system, the amount of destruction caused by the battles have left them uninhabitable. Hell, the battles have left many lightyears outside the systems uninhabitable.

But, not all is lost, when Shepard returned to her room, she ordered a fleet of 1 million vessels hidden in dark space - the same one that Adama ran into - to attack Reaper dockyards and locations, meaning yes, Humanity is in trouble, but so too are the Reapers. No longer do they have their dockyards, no longer do they have supply lines or supporting worlds, no, the Reapers have taken a heavy hit for their victory today, and if they win the war, their next cycle will be far from easy as they must start from scratch to assemble their fleets.

3 hours later, Shepard meets her admirals onboard her prototype ship, "Give me it straight," Shepard says, "How bad are we?"

One admiral looks among the others before removing his forage cap and placing it on the table in front of him, "At the moment, we are too weak to take back our worlds, but the Reapers lack the numbers to assault any of our primary systems. Our secondary systems are unfortunately out of luck."

"How many ships do they have?" Shepard asks.

A different admiral replies. "48 Mil give or take a few, we have 4 million, of which 3.5 are mission capable."

"Our calculations say it will take the Reapers 2 years to finish their harvest of our lost systems. I suspect we have till then before we are hit by their next attack." Admiral Thrawn says, "In half a year we can have our numbers at 4 million mission capable ships. In 2 years we can have a further 100,000 ships in service, but we are starting to look at serious manning issues."

Shepard takes a moment before nodding, "We will cross that bridge when we come to it."

So, as you can see we are quickly coming to this stories end. I suspect one or two more chapters at most. Cheers all.

Cheers again all.