Tales of the Exodus 4

SCS Shadow

System Designate 32-Alpha

Unnamed Cluster

10th July 2787

"We can relax, Captain. No artificial signals or ships in the system."

Haywood Carr breathed a sigh of relief and wearily rubbed his eyes. Six months of exploring with barely two weeks of R&R back at the Fleet in that time had run the crew of the Bug-Eye class vessel ragged. They weren't the only Covenant ship scouring the network of Mass Relays within that part of it classified as the Terminus systems, but while a Bug-Eye could loiter for months on end with its surveillance and spy systems keeping watch on systems undetected – it was decidedly not as comfortable as other refit Covenant dropships were having. His ship had the distinct privilege of being the first KF Hyperspace drive equipped vessel to also feature an ME Core. The price it paid for both and all the other systems that made the Bug-Eye what it was, was an extremely cramped crew living space.

Given the highly classified nature of Bug-Eye missions, he could never really talk about it to anyone. Even the fact that he was Captain of such a ship was select eyes-only information. This was relaxed somewhat during the Exodus – and he was often asked by others in the Fleet what it was like. He would only answer, "Look up conditions in pre-spaceflight Terra's attack subs – its worse."

"All right," Haywood nodded at his crew in the tiny CIC. "We're off the edge of the map here people. We just mapped our first Relay. I want us to buzz each planet in this system, do as thorough a survey as we can from orbit and I want everyone to start putting their heads together on what to name this Star Cluster, system and planets. Keep us in normal space, but reduce our mass to zero, I want our journey smooth and economical as possible."

He received a chorus of acknowledgements and he stared into the small CIC holotank displaying this system.

This gateway system was quite large; it had a total of six planets and no asteroid belts. They could already see that there was a planet in the Goldilocks zone, and it had a sizable moon as well. He resisted the urge to set a direct course for it.

They reached the sixth planet within less than an hour. It would be good for nothing more than mining at best, with mass effect belts and properly refit and insulated Miningmechs. It had a rather crushing three point four gravities on its surface, only a trace amount of atmosphere and was over sixteen AU out from the yellow star and as such had a surface temperature of negative one nine zero.

The fifth planet was a hydrogen-methane gas giant, whose high gravity had nicely pulverized what had been asteroids into a ring system, though it did have a rough total of sixty six moons. The fourth planet provided quite a show for the crew of the Shadow, it was a rock planet with expansive frozen oceans, but internal magma flows boiled water underneath the ice at points and occasionally massive geysers would erupt that was easily spotted from orbit. It was within the temperature and pressure range for human habitation, its thick atmosphere largely carbon dioxide and monoxide, which would make breath masks or environmental suits mandatory for future tourists.

It was finally over the third planet that everyone started getting excited.

"I think we've got a bonifide garden world under us, Captain," Commander Morgan, the Shadow's XO grinned with a toothy smile. "It'll be a little bit cold, given that it's two AU from the star, but I'm reading equatorial temperatures of twenty five degrees Celsius. Day length calculated at thirty-seven Terran hours, atmosphere's a bit thin only point six, oxygen nitro mix – but we can work with that. The moon helps a lot too, we'll have tides in the oceans down there and there's a strong planetary EM field going."

"Gravity?"

"Estimated one point two to three gees."

"Com, have we gotten any one-time pad signals from Fleet on the other explorers striking gold?"

Lieutenant Casey double checked his systems and shook his head, "Not since we mapped the Relay, Captain."

Heywood felt a surge of triumph in his gut, "Excellent, make for the remaining planets, I want us back to Fleet ASAP. We need a ship here with proper astronomical facilities."

The second world turned out to be an orange colored nightmare. It's atmosphere was a haze of carbon monoxide and methane. It had horrible thermal fluctuations that formed a near permanent hurricane-level vortex at each pole.

The first world from the star had the crew groaning in disbelief and wearied acceptance. It was a Pegasid or 'hot Jupiter' merely point four AU from the sun. Again something that just couldn't naturally happen – the gas giant was clearly another extra-solar capture.

"What the devil is up with the damn star systems near these Mass Relays?" Heywood groused.

"Growing consensus among the Fleet astrogators is that someone played with celestial engineering in the past, it's theoretically possible, just something we would never do given the amount of time required," Morgan answered.

"Insanity, what's the point? High capacity ME FTL Drive discharge? Convenient fuel harvesting spots," Heywood shook his head. "That's equivalent of someone picking up Mount Everest on Terra and taking it with them, just so they can have a nice climb on their new homeworld. Instead of just getting on a damn Jumpship and climbing it on Terra itself. No… we're missing something, there's another reason."

"The quarians were rather amazed at Floating Ground electrical principles, and static dissipation/recycling tech," Morgan mused in thought. "It's something we always just took for granted."

"Hmmm, I hate mysteries," Heywood scratched his beard thoughtfully. "Set a course for home."

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Flag Admiral's Quarters

SCS Mckenna's Pride, Covenant- Quarian Flotilla in orbit around 3rd Planet

System Designate 32-Alpha

Unnamed Cluster

1st August 2787

It was a planet of matt dark greens arranged in large archipelagoes and islands, surrounding only three landmasses that could be classed as continents surrounded by dark blue oceans. White cloud formations lazily drifted here and there, though there was a clear storm system in the southern hemisphere at the moment. Aleksandr tore his gaze away from it and raised the holopad to further peruse the preliminary habitability and mineralogical report.

It turned out that the planet was only really habitable thirty degrees north and south of the equator – go higher or lower and it would just get too cold, and anyone trying to live there would be forced to live in temperature controlled dome cities or houses, much like living in Antarctica required. However, there was not only native flora down there, but also fauna. The biologists and Doctors in both Fleets were doing a thorough study where both were edible for levo and dextro physiologies. The animals on some islands apparently reminded them of placental mammals, while on others there were arthropods. The sheer variety of native species was astonishing and there were quite a few appreciative comments appended to the report – at least the biologists would definitely never lack for work here.

Something that made him even happier of this find was the quarian mineralogical scan. The planet below nearly had it all, while lacking in some of the rare earths, it had significant lodes of all the metals considered 'strategic' by the Citadel races; palladium, platinum, iridium and Element Zero, though its platinum content was the greatest of the four.

There was a chime from his front door and after taking a look who it was via his terminal, keyed open the door.

"Aaron, my friend."

"Aleksandr," General DeChavilier greeted boisterously before they exchanged the time-honored one armed manly hug. "I bring news from our bigheads and our first Covenant-wide EDD vote."

Aleksandr laughed, "Shouldn't the results be posted for everyone to see at once."

The General shrugged and an Omnitool appeared around his left arm, he tapped on it a few times. "There we go. It's out…happy?"

"Immensely," Aleksandr replied wryly.

"Anyway, the Docs and exobiologists say they've found nothing down there so far that our immune systems can't handle. That could change, but they're confident they could whip up a genefix immunization. As for the native food, flora and fauna – it's levo, and with proper tailoring Terran standard crops can flourish."

"I don't know whether to feel relieved or disappointed," Aleksandr slammed his hand down on his desk table in frustration. "Three fragile liveships are all that stand between famine occurring in the quarian fleet. I'm this close," he held his fingers an inch apart, "to allowing them full use of one of our Potemkins to grow more food."

"That'd certainly make their day," Aaron agreed. "But those house a large percentage of our population, for the moment at least."

"I know," Aleksandr sighed. "And as nice as this world and system is, it's only our front door and gateway. Have the explorers sent any word?"

"Nothing yet, they're still jumping along the likely impassable routes that Astronomy identified, but honestly, I don't think we can expect this to happen quickly Aleksandr. As much as Hyperspace has made space 'smaller' so to speak, it's still mind-bogglingly big at least when you're exploring away from Mass Relays. The realities of exploration in the unknown are only now really beginning to settle in to our crews. I'd frankly be amazed if we find a suitable moat and system beyond within ten years."

"Well, it'll at least give us time to build up our infrastructure here," Aleksandr looked to the planet again. "Will you look into a feasibility study for me?"

"Certainly, what is it?"

"Insulated greenhouses and eventually their bigger skyscraper cousins."

"You want to grow quarian food?"

"Yes, I want enough production to allow them to stop having to depend on those liveships, which is only one hull breach away from us having to face the prospect of six million starving quarians."

"I'll get on that as soon as I can," Aaron nodded. "So do you want to hear it from me or your terminal?"

"Tell me, dear Aaron, what names have we foisted upon the future generations?"

"The Cluster's name is Sigurd's Cradle."

"Sigurd… Sigurd that was choice number three if I recall, it's Norse?"

"Yes, named after the warrior hero of the ancient Norse Voslunga saga."

"I thought it was fitting for us," Aleksandr smiled. "The system?"

"It seems the feeling in the Fleet is that we should embrace that which is common to all of us, it's based on ancient Greek I believe, Skepsis – meaning 'thought'. The planets have gotten the names of famous scientists of the past. From first to last, Kearny, Fuchida, Watson, Darwin, Pauling, and Keimowitz."

"Watson… " Aleksandr murmured and nodded. "It'll do. Very well, tell the Fleet, the order is given. Dropships may land according to the schedule devised. Let's build our first colony."

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Scout Frigate Upanni

Fifteen Light Years rimward from Skepsis

Interstellar space

Sigurd's Cradle

18th August 2787

The holographic clock and distance counter ticked on and the entire crew of the Upanni was strangely silent and absolutely still at their various stations. Even off-duty quarians had stopped what they were doing, whether that be talking about the latest gossip on the Flotilla, which had even risen in frequency with the addition of humans and their doings to talk about. Everyone was abuzz about the Covenant announcement of the quarian greenhouses and especially the skyscraper greenhouses that would be constructed as part of the first human settlement on Watson.

But for the crew of Upanni, they were about to make galactic history. Captain Lea'Foris and Chief Machinist Kol'Xirel stood a few feet from the pulsing ME Core, at its main diagnostic station and keeping a close eye on the holoscreens. It technically didn't matter where they stood, but it just felt right for them both to be right there at the heart of their ship when the moment came.

"Ten seconds…" the voice of Hilor'Vannis echoed throughout the spaces of the ship. "Five…four …three…two…one…."

Kol looked down to the graph that measured core saturation levels and saw that it was as it had been since the refit within the bowels of the SCS Galaxy. He looked to his Captain and she walked towards the diagnostic station with awed excitement emanating from her every movement.

She tapped on her omnitool, "This is your Captain. Our core levels are stable! We have just passed our discharge point." Cheers echoed through the ship. "We've made history; it's a very nice feeling. We'll have a celebration at twenty five hundred, now get back to work."

There was good natured laughing and the crew did just that. The Captain disabled the PA and turned to him. "I still can't believe it, nor can I understand how we, never mind the entire galaxy could've missed such a solution."

Kol laughed, folded his arms and shook his head, "When the humans first told me about Floating Ground the first time, I was baffled at first too. It's one of those solutions that's really staring you in the face, but because it's so close, you can't see it or make it out. Though I must admit it's their power transformer designs that are really revolutionary and are at the heart of making this as efficient as it is. All our and the galaxy's efforts at large in increasing our FTL ranges has always focused on 'the big picture' as my human counterparts would say. We always kept trying to think of ways to juggle and dispose of the huge amount of power that would accumulate in the core. We did that with discharge stations built at huge expense and effort or trying to find convenient gas giants and planets with EM fields. Or we built bigger cores if we could afford it."

"When we should've been approaching it the other way round," Lea groused ruefully. "Deal with the charge as it's forming and prevent it from building up at all."

"Exactly," Kol nodded. "The static is channeled from the core by the transformer and is in turn connected in circuit to another transformer attached to our fusion plant. Where it's expressed as a little extra waste heat, that ruins fuel efficiency by about zero point zero three per cent."

"Keelah, every time I hear it, it makes me feel worse," Lea slumped her shoulders.

"Our ancestors and the rest of the galaxy looked at the Citadel, and just copied what was done before by the Protheans," Kol shrugged. "It's only now starting to really dawn on me that we should count our blessings that the humans didn't have eezo or Mass Relays in their native space. They're going to bring a renewal to the galaxy the likes of which it hasn't seen before; just from a tiny piece of their technology base."

Lea held her hands up, "If they decide to share that transformer tech with others."

"It'll happen sooner or later, whether they like it or not. Yes, their transformers are wonderful, something even the asari would love to get a look at, but this solution is merely a different unconventional utilization of existing tech. It'd take but a single extranet mail to an aerospace firm or university to get this idea in use all over the galaxy. Personally, I think they ought to do it on their own terms, patent the idea, put proprietary protection tech on their transformers and sell it."

"Keelah! Can you imagine the amount of credits they could charge for that?"

"I sure can," Kol breathed. "But it'd be a pittance compared to potential fortunes to be made and new resources accessible with discharge being a thing of the past. Exploration will be a hell of a lot easier, that's for sure."

"We'd still be limited by our fuel supply though, anti-proton engines especially. Not to mention crew consumables."

"Never thought I'd see the day where those engines might stop being used."

"Oh I can't wait for the day I can get a Covenant Fusion Engine," she clenched hands together eagerly.

"You and me both, ma'am."

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Garvug

Paz System

Valhallan Threshold

2nd September 2790

"Curse on them, barefaced, spiteful mercenary fools."

Like any good Turian, Tikax Herkus had served in the Hierarchy Military before entering civilian life. Then testing very well in academics, specifically biology, he had studied exobiology and was soon enough snapped up after graduation by Binary Helix. All biotechnology firms had tabs on the great Universities of the galaxy, keeping an eye on student test results and graduate papers. He had then worked for ten years in the corporate cutthroat world that was Noveria, before finally getting the prestigious, lucrative yet dangerous assignment to Garvug.

Garvug was a planet that held an interesting yet tragic and bloody history. It had hardly been ideal when first discovered; it was too far from the Paz Star to heat itself up for liquid water to be common. Only along the equator would it rise above freezing, giving rise to a narrow farm belt. Not to mention well insulated marine life in its seas. It had been given to the krogan to colonize as part of their 'reward' for helping the galaxy overcome the Rachnii menace over seventeen hundred standard years ago. No one else wanted the planet anyway.

But the extremely adaptable krogan had taken less than a century to acclimatize and bred hundreds of younglings in warm underground habitats. Then it took only another century for the krogan to completely overpopulate the planet and destroy Garvug's narrow strips of coral reef with overfishing and pollutants. The excess krogan took to the stars looking for another planet to consume. Until the Krogan Rebellions began which had finally ended with the Salarian engineered genophage. The krogan population had been reduced significantly in the war, with their growth forever curtailed and even leading to negative growth.

Of course, in this day and age, the krogan hordes were a thing of the past and they instead acted as Captains who directed groups of vorcha to attack the Corporations in the numbers they needed. It didn't matter that the krogan clans of Garvug was technically 'at peace' with the planetary government and the corporatists. The krogan would still raid the various mining outposts and arcology recovery zones, mainly for the iridium ore they could sell on the black market and more basically to plunder newly recovered coral or farm land just for more food.

The corporations didn't want that, so hired mercenaries to keep the recovery zones and mines safe. Tikax wondered if that's why Binary preferred sending turian staff to work here. They knew that if it came down to it and the mercenaries were bribed or proved suddenly unreliable that the turians could at least pick up a rifle, shoot competently and counter-attack with proper tactics.

This is exactly what had happened.

The spirits forsaken Elanus Risk Control, had decided to play a rather sick, potentially deadly joke on Binary Helix (BH). It had come as a surprise to everyone at BH – Garvug when Elanus' contract had not been renewed. Tikax had asked around as to the reason why. It turned out that the contract had been awarded to a new mercenary outfit calling itself 'Wolf's Dragoons'. Tikax had no idea what either word meant, but that was soon explained by the fact that it was a human mercenary company. Further enquiries revealed that it had been on the recommendation of the Narhu Comine to the BH Director's Board. There had been a demonstration for the Board by the Wolf's Dragoons and it wasn't twenty minutes later according to gossip that the contract had been signed.

The Galaxy had been abuzz for nearly two years after the First Contact with humans, especially the scientific community. Rumors abounded on the extranet of baffling technology, giant war machines, giant ships, huge fighters and it just devolved into the inane speculation of conspiracy theorists – there was even the insane rumor that humans had an FTL that did not rely on eezo at all. The official word from the Council was that the humans were actually all self-imposed exiles, who had left their native space from a part of the galaxy that had no Mass Relays at all. They had joined their huge fleet with the quarians – who had found them first – and were looking for a planet to settle on somewhere in the Terminus, declining associate membership in the Council.

This didn't matter at all to Tikax at the moment. All that mattered was the fact that Elanus Risk Control had left a day earlier than they should have. BH had tried to stop them with fines and threats of future reprisals, but some genius had forgotten to read the very, fine, fine print on the contract and Elanus' lawyers had successfully slipped in an artfully designed escape clause loophole. Legally, BH couldn't do a thing, but Tikax would bet half a year's pay that these Dragoons were going to get a punitive assignment mission against Elanus in the future.

He checked his assault rifle, hardsuit and shields one last time and glanced at his Omnitool – which was displaying the recovery zone's scanner feeds – an attack was probably imminent. The krogan kept all the zones under careful watch, and the suddenly vulnerable BH facilities were prime fruit ready to be plucked. He, along with two of his Turian BH colleagues were in a hardened pillbox facing outward toward the untamed thick misty wastelands.

"They could've at least left the bunkers heavy weapons," grumbled Tull Vallir, tapping his pistol nervously against his leg.

Lontur Malir flared his mandibles in a wry manner, "That would've been unprofitable for them."

"At least we sent out a distress signal to these…Dragoons."

"And they're going to hurry their schedule to arrive earlier? Assuming they even can get here faster."

"Just what is a wolf and dragoon anyway?"

"Wolf is a predatory canine pack animal native to the human homeworld," Tikax explained automatically. "Dragoon is their ancient name for infantry troops mounted on war beasts that can run at very high speeds." Both Turians looked at him strangely in response. "I looked it up on the extranet. Their history is rather fascinating – did you know that they've also had Wars of Reunification?"

"Really?" Tull's eyes glittered in interest.

"Wars? Plural?"

"Yeah, though its scale dwarfed ours by a considerable margin; our wars were between dozens of colonies who bludgeoned each other, until the Hierarchy swept in. Theirs involved bringing entire far flung star nations of their own species to heel with hundreds of planets."

"Spirits," Lontur breathed.

Tikax was interrupted when his omnitool flared and beeped a warning. "Crap, we've got incoming."

Tull and Lontur both had their rifle and automatic pistol raised and braced on the narrow firing gap of the pillbox. Tikax stood and did the same.

"Where and how many?"

"Sector three, dozens of vorcha with about five krogan riding herd. Sector six, two dozen vorcha and varren war beasts, and two krogan."

"Well, I hope these Dragoons live up to their name. They're catching us in a vice."

"Indeed," Tikax donned his combat helmet and enabled the radio com with all the pill boxes and perimeter units. "Okay everyone, they're not going to make this easy. They're trying to split our focus and numbers. I want all perimeter units to sector three. Sector six pillboxes, you're to fight until you're in danger of being overrun, and then I want you to seal your boxes. That'll likely mean letting the enemy into the recovery zone. That's fine; the zone can be repaired if it comes down to it, not worth dying over a bunch of food bearing plants and soil anyway, no matter what our employers say."

He waited for acknowledgements to come from all personnel before tucking his shoulder behind his assault rifle and squinted his left eye into the optics. This battle would have to be fought through optics and on the infrared spectrum…the mist wouldn't allow otherwise. He could see the blurry red, yellow and orange humanoid outlines of the vorcha wading closer through the cold wasteland, their krogan masters were thick bulbous forms behind them – three hundred meters distant.

"Well, at least they're slow in wading through that muck," Tull was using the visor in his helmet to make up for the lack of optics in his pistol.

"All units, I want sure, effective shots on those vorcha pests, wait for the range to come down to one twenty and open fire."

"What are we going to do about the krogan? They'll have heavy shielding."

"We've got no heavy weapons, genius, figure it out," snapped Lontur.

"Concentrated fire from multiple bunkers," Tikax answered absently, he was too busy studying the enemy, who had reached two hundred and fifty meters. "I'll give someone a year's pay for a sniper rifle about now."

A tense silence descended on the bunker and he almost laughed when he saw a vorcha fall face first into the cold muck when it's had lost its footing. His mandibles began to twitch rapidly as his own nervous energy began to reach a high point. His perception of time began to play tricks on him as it felt like in no time at all the enemy reached two hundred meters, yet it seemed to take them forever to get to one fifty. Then like the tracking function on a vid they were suddenly at one twenty meters.

He took a deep breath, sighted on the head of a vorcha and keyed his radio, "FIRE!"

A storm of razor thin slugs sliced through the air, their velocity was such that the air friction heated them and made it look like slivers of light were sweeping the entire sector. Tikax cursed as he saw his own shots zip past its head and hit the vorcha behind in the neck. He resolved that he would spend more time at the range after this, he was rusty. He corrected and fired again, downing his original target.

Lontur's fire was more accurate but he seemed unable to get headshots and his vorcha targets were just getting up after being flung to the ground from the kinetic energy transfer. His story was being repeated across the entire defense line, and they were only scoring true kills by attrition and overwhelming the vorcha regenerative ability with wounds. Tull's volume of fire was greater but it had much less stopping power and he would be missing until the range came down to seventy meters. Tikax's omnitool beeped a warning and he saw that sector six had also opened fire.

Return fire from the vorcha started to bite into the structure of the bunkers. It was rare that a slug managed to sneak between the firing slits, but they were always stopped by their own shielding.

Tikax cursed as his shield took another hit and his eyes widened when he saw a large red flare of heat from one of the attacking krogan. "Get down!"

His colleagues obeyed and not a moment too soon, as the rocket detonated against their bunker. Heat, flame and debris wafted through the firing ports. They stood again without hesitation and without Tikax having to order it, all three focused fire on the krogan responsible. They managed to get his shields down in quite quickly, but the bastard started grabbing vorcha to use as disposable organic shields until his own could recover.

The range was down to fifty meters now and the enemy fire more accurate. Tikax screamed in triumph when they saw not only their krogan go down, but another on the right flank. "All perimeter units retreat into bunkers!"

It wasn't long until three more turians and a salarian BH worker rushed into their bunker looking very haggard, out of breath and their own hardsuits showed gashes and deformities where they had been hit – though the armor had managed to do its job. Tikax kept up his fire and saw that all the defenders were in bunkers though it was already clear that there were wounded, though no fatalities from their vital signs. He waited until the enemy reached twenty five meters before ducking down and tapping on his omnitool.

The exterior bunker slits slammed closed with thick shutters before the entire bunker began to sink smoothly into the ground for two meters. Now there was half a meter of thick armor on the roof protecting them. Tikax slid down against the wall to sit on the floor and began monitoring the results of the battle.

He was gratified to note that they had managed to kill half of the vorcha horde in their sector, while the other sector had fared slightly worse, though they managed to kill three quarters of the total varren, a quarter of the vorcha horde and one krogan.

"Not bad for a bunch of scientists and techs by profession, eh?"

"Easy for you turians to say I doubt I hit a single target with this…" the salarian waved his auto-pistol.

"Holster that thing before it goes off in here," Lontur grumbled. "What are those krogan up to?"

Tikax studied the feeds before swearing, "They've got another wave coming in, our sector."

"There goes all our hard work," the salarian wearily rubbed his head tales. "They'll devastate the recovery zone, the crop will be gone, those damn vorcha – they wouldn't know the term 'sustainable harvest' even if it was beaten into them."

The assembled BH workers watched helplessly as the second vorcha horde closed in – two years of work were going to be undone before their eyes.

"Wait a second," Tikax frowned as he tapped on his omnitool. "Sector sensors just picked up something incoming… visual's crap, I think it's a dropship's… it has a fusion engine plume and it's …right on top of the vorcha!"

"WHAT?" echoed everyone in the bunker.

Tikax focused the sensors and let his omnitool produce a hologram so everyone could see.

They watched as the mist just scattered from the displaced air and it seemed as if a giant beam of plasma fire just slammed right into the midst of the distant horde from the sky. Not a moment later a large hundred meter tall ovoid dropship came into view, riding this pillar of flame to come to a landing. The wasteland would probably be glassed underneath and all the icy muddy water cooked away to throw clouds of steam into the air that even further reduced the vorcha numbers when the superheated steam was inhaled and exposed to skin.

The encrypted radio frequency BH used crackled to life, "This is Colonel Kevin Wolf, of the Wolf's Dragoons. We came as soon as we heard. Now you boys just sit tight in those bunkers and we'll take care of these roaches."

A very large and thick door opened on the side of the dropship, becoming a ramp. Tikax expected IFVs and tanks to come speeding out – what emerged was neither of those. It was nine meters tall, two metal armored arms and two armored legs joined to an armored body that imitated the humanoid form and a rounded head with rectangular eyes. It walked out with a steady gait and fluidity that had to be impossible in such a construction – when it was on the ground it sped up even further easily going a speed that would rival and exceed tanks. Its footfalls crashed into the ground and began to nearly unceremoniously wipe out the remains of the second vorcha/krogan wave.

It pointed its right arm and a massive gout of plasma flame streamed over the enemy. If there was one weakness vorcha had then it was flame. Elanus Risk Control had taken all the flamethrowers with them, but now Tikax could only wish them good riddance. The armored robot turned and pointed its right arm again, this time using a mass accelerator cannon that cut the last three krogan to ribbons.

Four more of the robots had left the tall dropship, followed by five smooth aerodynamic hovertanks which immediately sped into the recovery zone. The robots fell into a formation of sorts and began to sprint even faster around the borders of the zone.

"Well," the salarian cut into the stunned silence, not surprising given how quick their emotional response was, "at least our work is saved. Though I hope they won't use those Flamers in the zone."

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Tales of the Exodus 5

SCS Steel Shield, High Orbit of Kearny

Skepsis System

Sigurd's Cradle

2nd March 2795

Sari van den Vyfer was desperately trying to fix what she had just realized in her mind. She knew it was important but cursed her mind for now of all times to bring this up. Being entangled in the arms and legs of her sleeping lover, but she knew she had to do something.

"Damn," Her mumbled frustration nevertheless had woken the man next to her, and he yelped when she deftly twisted, reversing their positions. She reached to her bed-stand, picked up a holopad and began tapping on it furiously. "Sorry that I woke you, but I just realized something… very important, Stan. Got to go, you were great. Com me… whenever."

She gingerly untangled herself and got up out of bed with a deft shift of balance and twirl of her legs. Sari hurried to the bathroom of her quarters, still tapping away and elbowed the button to start the shower. She put the pad on the sink and stepped into the hot water stream, her thoughts awhirl with gene sequences that hovered in front of her mind's eye. Ever was she grateful that she had cut her honey blonde hair short, yet still kept long enough to form a feminine style. It greatly shortened the time needed to take care of it, and spare time was something she had precious little of these days.

Sari was done in five minutes, stepped out and began toweling herself off. She emerged back into her quarters to find that Stan was still awake, though it was clearly a battle he was losing. It was three in the morning ship-time, which was kept on a twenty four hour Terran clock, just as Watson did.

"Go back to sleep," she encouraged him kindly whilst walking over to the dresser cabinet.

"Don't wanna," he mumbled with a tired smile, his eyes taking in her form in the low light of the bedroom.

"I'd join you if my stupid brain hadn't decided to solve a problem I've been working on for the past month, and I'd never get back to sleep until I get it taken care of." She looked in her dresser pushing aside the various hung clothes – she'd probably need to go into the Clean Room…

With that in mind she reached into the lower rack of her dresser and pulled out a sealed case. She popped it open and withdrew the white suit inside. It was of asari make and took a bit of effort to get on, considering that its shoes were integrated with it and you had to almost climb into it, stretch and wrap it around you. It honestly reminded her of the fetish get-up her aunt had worn when she had worked in the Pleasure Industry. The smart white fabric sealed itself up at its seams by pressing the thin button concealed under the armpit. Feeling the anti-bacterial material quickly adopt her body heat and become very snug in all the right places she put the case back, picked up her holopad and turned to leave.

"I'd kiss you, but…"

"Yes, yes, you work in a sterile environment, Miss Director," he waved it off. "Can I just say that you look even hotter wearing that gelsuit."

"Of course, it's only natural that that be the case," Sari grinned and keyed the door open and emerged into the empty corridor outside her quarters.

Her feet carried her on the familiar journey through the bowels of the Steel towards her microcorp's headquarters and laboratories. The relative silence of the [I]Potemkin[/I] Class ship besides the hum of machinery, life support and other miscellaneous systems was something she was well used to. The Troop Carrier no longer had all the multitudes of denizens it had supported during the Exodus – now it was home to the Covenant's burgeoning microcorp sector – specifically those that dealt with sensitive and critical matters of research that couldn't take place on Watson, for fear of espionage from any of the Citadel races and other assorted undesirable external parties or that something would go very, very wrong with the experiments and negatively affect the burgeoning colony.

So now the Steel Shield was hovering over Kearny, always keeping itself hidden from view of the Mass Relay and Watson via line of sight and would occasionally even use Skepsis itself to make the job harder for any ship that would come through the Relay.

Then there was the crew of the ship itself plus the five assault dropships to augment the Steel's combat power. The Covenant did not want the ship to ever be captured or destroyed.

She entered the microcorp sector of the ship and waved a casual greeting to Director Yamada as he blearily emerged from the front doors of his company.

"Can't sleep again, Sari?" the owner of Carter Aerospace regarded her casually, carrying a briefcase stuffed with terminals and pads.

"You know me, an idea comes into my head…" she shrugged.

"Yes, well don't go giving anyone heart attacks," his hale eyes suddenly turned appreciative.

Her mouth twisted into a crooked smile, "As we said in Canopus, 'It's the best way to go.'"

He nodded, "I won't keep you any longer, good night…or morning, as it were."

Five minutes later she walked up to the headquarters of Gallis Foundation. She had managed to found the microcorp the moment word had come that such a thing could exist within the Covenant. Her initial idea had been to simply pool all the medical expertise, researchers and scientists that she knew of within the Fleet to deal with the inevitable health problems that came with contact with truly alien life and to explore medical tech among the Citadel races. That naturally led to quite a few former Canopian and Terran Hegemony Doctors and geneticists entering her employ.

It had been a surprise to receive the summons to appear before the then General Kerensky – and gave her an executive tender and goal for her microcorp. Now, after more than eight years of work, the beginning of the answer to one of the major problems facing the Covenant was in sight. The doors bearing the Gallin Foundation emblem – an elegantly and uniquely stylized letter G that she had doodled one night – blocked her way, but it was a simple matter of sending a keycode from her omnitool, waiting for the DNA scanner to verify her identity, and then speak a passphrase that was analyzed for voice recognition.

'Welcome Director,' the familiar enigmatic female voice of the computer greeted before the doors opened.

The Foundation had a large slice of the available decks in the sector. Not only necessary for the amount of employees, but also because of the numerous specialized medical equipment, some of which were rather large. They were not only Covenant, but also of Salarian make – equipment that was not just bought with foreign exchange earned but also some that wasn't available to the galaxy's commercial sector and had been traded directly. Of course, the damn stuff had to be de-bugged extensively by Covenant Naval Intel – but just in case all the Salarian equipment was housed in separate shielded and isolated clean rooms and they were used as sparingly as possible.

Sari walked past the empty desk at reception, through another secured door and down a corridor. An internal elevator took her into the uppermost deck and at this point she had to enter a hermitically sealed airlock.

She took gloves from a storage compartment that was another part of the gelsuit, a transparent helmet with integrated life support, and donned them. The airlock cycled open allowing her entry before closing again, bathing the area with various UV radiations designed to kill bacteria and viruses, before finally the inner door opened and she walked into the main lab of her company.

Everything was completely white, spotless and it was easily half a football field in size, filled with precisely demarcated lanes that circled around tables, with hundreds of computers and larger medical equipment. She easily navigated the space and found her way to an area some twenty meters from the airlock.

Here was a gelsuited figure sitting at a computer overlooking the fruit of her company's labor. He was playing virtual poker against numerous computer controlled opponents, but she was glad to see that his screen also displayed the Iron Womb diagnostic screen as well. She enabled her suit's com and coughed pointedly.

Doctor William Holden practically jumped out of his chair in fright. "Geez! Oh…Director Vyfer."

She kept her face stern, "I hope you're keeping a good eye on her?"

Holden gulped nervously, "Absolutely, Director. No deviation from norm recorded at all not since our little scare yesterday."

Her face softened, "Good." She walked up to the clear vertical cylinder, no bigger than a meter in height, with its large chrome stainless steel base and integrated systems. The cylinder was filled with a viscous pink fluid and within was the curled up figure of an eight month old human fetus.

She felt like she could stare forever at the little miracle. Sari turned around and walked to her own nearby computer terminal and began typing. "I've had an inspiration on our biotic problem."

"Oh?"

"Yes, but if I'm right we're not going to be able make the entire Covenant biotic – not without severely 'narrowing' and specializing our gene-pool to unacceptable levels in the long term. You see, I realized that in the simulations and experiments those who could tolerate eezo and accept it within their nervous systems such as her," she pointed to the Iron Womb, "had a certain group of gene codes in common." She brought the various test cases in question and a large holoscreen blossomed into being above the desk, showing twelve long DNA sequences – and certain base pairs flashed for attention. "These were all the test cells that showed an ability to work with eezo without going cancerous."

Doctor Holden's eyes scanned the screen slowly from top to bottom. "Interesting, if you're right…then it means at most, only an eighth to a maximum of half of our population could become biotic in the future. But look at this…"

"That was an alteration done during the first diasporas from Terra. It was given to colonists going to star systems with a markedly higher solar radiation output."

"Crap, that's…"

She nodded wryly, "Frustrating. Sure we could give everyone gene therapies to mimic it, and insert it into all our future children then expose them to eezo in the wombs, but we'd need decades, if not generations of research before we could even say with certainty that that's a desirable course we want to take for [I]all[/I] of us. It could very well be an evolutionary dead-end."

"Then we'll have to make do then with an eighth," Holden sighed before flicking his fingers. "Oh, I finished the other bio mapping sequences."

"Does it work?"

"Yes, if it's done gingerly and it will work with our existing population. Though it won't be as strong as it would be in the next generation, born either naturally or iron womb."

Sari nodded in satisfaction, "So I can give Premier Kerensky some good news, at last."

She walked back over to the Iron Womb and placed a hand on the warm cylinder and couldn't resist smiling at the developing child within. "You'll be among us soon, Trina. You're a herald of a new age."

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Tales of the Exodus 6

SCS Sostratos, High orbit of Illium,

Tasale System

Crescent Nebula

18th June 2795

A whistling tune filled the cavernous cargo bay three of the Carrack Class Armed Merchantman. It was packed to the ceiling with massive cargo pallets organized in neat rows nearly a hundred meters long. Anton Lynne stopped his whistling when one of his co-workers shot him an irritated look as he passed. He waited until the grouch was well away and resumed his tune walking up to a pallet and pointed his portable terminal at it. His fingers slid on the touchscreen of the terminal to interrogate the pallet's own small computer that identified what was in it, how much it massed and so forth – very important information to have when doing a Relay Jump or ME FTL.

It turned out it was heavy refining equipment and tooling that would aid in processing the Covenant's glut of raw eezo. So far they'd had to ship the stuff into Council space to get it processed and bring it back and it was driving up the cost for the near continuous refits that the Covenant fleet was engaged in. It was nice to have an entire part of the galaxy to oneself so to speak, resource wise Anton mused. The quarians were also finding it nice to be able to have a semi-permanent 'home' for their Flotilla, as they no longer had to pester other races for mining rights in their systems and compete for resources as much. They could simply pick a star in Sigurd's Cradle and go look for what they needed – then set loose their new VoidDigger asteroid Mining Mechs. They couldn't stop sending out mining expeditions to known space however; as it was never guaranteed that they would find what they needed in the Cradle, so it was most of the time cheaper and quicker to go to known lodes in the galaxy. That meant running the risk of piracy, but from what Anton heard of how that Industrial Mech was armed he wanted to be there when the first pirate tried to go after a VoidDigger and bring some popcorn along to watch and laugh.

Shaking that satisfying thought off and sent the mass data to the CIC and moved on to the next pallet.

His terminal began to interface with the pallet. It was folded up prefab housing modules for Watson. He had seen the new model demonstrated on Illium and it really was impressive what amenities and necessities they could squeeze into them. Hook up a commercial grade two-five rating fusion reactor, put it near a water source and the damn things could give a family of five a comfortable home. The only real work came if the family wanted to personalize the exterior and interior – which they would do on their own budget.

He looked at the mass reading and was about to send it to the CIC when it changed by two kilograms into the positive and settled down to where it had been, and was that a cough he'd heard from inside the pallet or just his imagination. It took a serious effort of will not react at all, and he didn't know if he was successful at all, he just continued whistling, sent the data to the CIC, but opened a redflag e-mail, typed a brief message and sent it along as well. He sincerely hoped it was just him turning out paranoid, but that zero-tolerance vigilance in the Terminus was a very healthy quarian attitude that the Covenant embraced or it would be more accurate to say re-embraced. It was no different really than when the SLDF had to operate in the pirate infested eastern Periphery of the Human Sphere.

He kept walking to the next pallet and continued the inventory. He wanted nothing more than to gather his colleagues and get the hell out of the cargo bay and lock them all down, but it was out of his hands now.

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CIC, SCS Sostratos, en route to Tasale Relay

"What? Explain."

"Captain, the crewman reports possible boarders secreted within the cargo containers in Cargo Bay One. The weight sensors reported an anomalous change while he swore he could hear a cough as well."

Captain Florencio Gainer thought for a moment, his mind whirling. "I thought all those newfangled lifesign and security sensors were supposed to detect this?"

"Clearly it isn't infallible, Captain. They work by detecting the fine neuro-electric activity of an organic being, shielding from sensors that sensitive isn't easy, but not impossible and it's not something just any pirate has."

"So someone wants to Trojan horse us," Gainer scoffed. "Sensors. Have you got anything unusual out there?"

"No, sir. Standard traffic for the system that we can see, nothing within active sensor range," came the reply.

"They won't attack within the system, Captain. Illium spaceguard would be all over them as well," opinioned the XO. "Our stowaways, if they're actively hostile would only attack once we're on the other side of Relay, in neutral space."

"How long until we reach the Relay?"

"Forty minutes, Captain."

"Send the following encrypted orders to all hands. Get all our people out of [i]all[/i] the cargo bays quietly and lock them down, prepare for emergency decompression, also alert our marine detachment, Code Bounty. All crew to general quarters ten minutes before we hit the Relay. I want us looking clueless and a sitting duck, but in reality ready to spit fire."

"Understood. Captain, I have a suggestion about the Relay transit…"

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Master Sergeant Aimee Varon held up a power-gauntleted arm to halt her platoon just around the corner from the main corridor that led to the large doors of Cargo bay one. Her Nighthawk's HUD had a direct visual feed of the cargo bay centered on the suspect container pallet. So far the CIC had reported no suspicious activity from it, or any of the other bays. That would either change in the next ten minutes or they were being rightfully paranoid and this could just be considered another drill – and Crewman Lynne would get a verbal good-boy instead of a commendation.

She held up two fingers and gestured to advance. Half her platoon moved down the corridor to guard the other way – if there were boarders they were not getting out of her vice. She keyed her radio three times in quick succession, and got two clicks in reply. Her platoon was the only ones on board with Power Armor, the other marines covering the remaining bays had to make do with Covenant issue combat hardsuits – which were essentially copies themselves of the heavy hardsuit armors worn throughout the galaxy, except using Covenant material sciences.

"Attentian all hands, Relay traverse in two minutes. Relay traverse in two minutes."

Aimee let go of her Mauser and put her left hand on the zero-g railing. She heard her squad do the same behind her.

"One minute."

At this point she didn't know whether to wish for a good fight or dread it, as she and her squad were putting themselves into the jaws of combat – there was no telling what could erupt out of that pallet and the ever real possibility of losing her people. She let her weapon dangle on its sling to tap on her Armor's omni-tool, enabling a com circuit with her platoon. "Ladies and gents, get ready. Check your angles and no matter what comes out of that crate, stay in your fireteams and look after each other's backs."

"Yes, ma'am," was chorused back to her.

"Relay in five…four…three… two… one…"

Everyone lurched slightly as the ship was flung through the corridor of massless space-time that stretched for thousands of light years. Aimee loved a Relay – none of the TDS crap and it made KF Jumps look positive pedestrian at least in terms of range.

Her eyes focused on movement in the HUD feed, a hidden door disguised in the natural seams on the side of the container opened and…

"Well, it looks like we've got some stowaways, boys. Very well armed ones too... and big surprise… they're batarian, though they've got a turian or two with them as well."

"I suggest we give them a warm welcome, ma'am."

"I agree, Corporal Cortez." The ship lighting immediately changed to a deep blue.

"All hands, battle stations," the totally unnecessary announcement resounded throughout the corridors.

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CIC, SCS Sostratos

Florencio resisted the urge to play with his moustache and smile like some cheesy villain out of a vid, so he settled for merely smoothing it out with thumb and forefinger while his eyes gleamed in mirth. It seemed he would have to write out two commendations after this was over, Crewman Lynne and his XO.

The holotank told the story.

The Sostratos had emerged from the local Primary Relay with a drift of over a hundred thousand clicks. This left the small fleet of three light cruiser ships and two dozen fighters hanging five thousand clicks z-plus relative in a trans-relay ambush position with no target.

"Someone in Illium Spaceguard gave them our flight schedule," he declared with a scowl.

"Highly likely," his XO nodded.

"Tactical analysis."

"One cruiser is a turian Eldor class light cruiser, the other two are indeterminate but the computer has a sixty percent hull configuration match to the batarian Thegon Class. These ships generally have a one three six five kms spinal gun, with one nine five kms secondary's in its broadsides. I'm getting no IFF signals. Hold one… Captain, Marines report ambush of boarders successful. They have suffered only light injuries, no fatalities."

"Understood, XO. I want a max range broadside course plot on those cruisers. AMS to fire ballistic screens on fighters."

"Captain, I would be remiss if I didn't point out that we could easily escape…"

"We could, but then that would leave these scum free to try and hit us in the future, when we might not get so lucky in seeing the ambush beforehand. And besides, the League didn't run from pirates, we burned them from the void, the Covenant will do the same."

"Yes Captain," the XO's narrowed with determination. "Pirate fleet is changing vector to intercept us."

"Passive ECM to full."

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Sostratos orientated herself and her engines went to max combat acceleration of five hundred gees bearing straight towards the three pirate cruisers. This surprised the pirate commanders. The Covenant ship was near dreadnought size, but it looked nothing like a warship and clearly didn't have a spinal gun, it was clearly a merchant ship. It's long rounded, bulbous shape clearly meant it was a cargo ship, and it would have at best have anti-fighter defenses and broadside guns meant to fend off frigates.

Their employer wanted the cargo, but their primary objective had been to try and take the ship intact and the humans on board as prisoners – the useful ones would be interrogated on technology and put to work, while the others would go on as hard slave labor. The men they had smuggled on board had clearly failed or at least they were still in the process of fighting on board.

Yet the human cargo ship was clearly approaching them on a combat vector, it was madness! Were they going on a suicide run? Whatever the case, they clearly had fight on their hands.

The cruisers oriented their bows towards the onrushing Covenant ship but the range was still way too long and the fighters would get there first anyway to deliver their disruptor torpedoes which would deal nicely with the cargo ship's barriers and allow the cruisers pin-point shots to disable it when it came within effective range.

The cargo ship stopped accelerating at this point as the fighters reached one hundred kilometers from target and… turned its broadsides to face the approaching fighter threat!

Huge bays opened on all the cargo ship's primary approach angles and muted flashes from within preceded the release of a wall of tiny high velocity slugs towards the fighters. The timing had been done perfectly. The fighters had too much closing velocity at this range and only those with the fastest reflexes managed to orient and apply engine burn to try to escape the wall. But it was too late even for them. Just like that every fighter exploded with brief flames and flashes of light in the void. Not a single craft had managed to release a torpedo.

"They clearly expected the usual short range GARDIAN array," Florencio mused.

Sostratos reoriented so its engines faced to relative port side and began applying controlled max thrust bursts.

The pirate commander swore. That was no bloody cargo ship… yet their sources on Illium was clear that the human ship had picked up nearly sixty thousand tons of cargo! It was fighting and acting as a proper warship nevertheless… and ballistic GARDIAN was antiquated! Yet these humans somehow…

Sostratos reached ten thousand kilometers distance and its course was now relative to the formation of three light cruisers that it would come no closer, but would maintain the distance for a total of three minutes before they would loop away.

The two nose bay Naval Lasers tracked their distant target at a range that would've normally been impossible against another human ship with modern Electronic Warfare as the Covenant defined it. Targets would normally only come close enough for EWOs to accurately discern shots at seven thousand kilometers. The pirates had at best turian analogues of such systems in their Eldor Class, but they didn't know how to use it beyond turning it over to computer control and let it run automatically and it only worked on the radar, ladar and microwave bands. Covenant ECM worked in nearly the entire electromagnetic spectrum, with only the high band gamma rays being as yet beyond the capability of their technology to reproduce and influence reliably on a warship platform.

Two beams of invisible coherent light stabbed through the void and hit the turian pirate cruiser first. Two plasmatic fountains seemingly just erupted for no reason from the fore armor belt and nearly four and half tons of armor vaporized and was ablated off. Sostratos brought its fore left bay to bear and two more beams of light stabbed through the night. The gunnery, being done by Amaris War veterans, was spot on and drilled further into the cruiser before utterly obliterating the fore part of its spinal gun and atmosphere started to spill out of the breaches. Now the port bays were facing the enemy and they spoke as well.

The light cruiser was torn apart from an internal explosion, and peeled apart like a bullet striking an apple. Large debris soon impacted on the kinetic barriers of its fellow, straining them quite severely. For while the velocity was low, the sheer mass of it was considerable.

"So nice of our enemies to carry such volatiles as antimatter within themselves," Florencio grinned. "And such sloppy fleet formation, tsk, tsk."

"We're being painted, Captain. Lidar and radar."

"Confuse them, and alter course."

To the gunners on the two modified batarian cruisers they were getting good returns on active systems, they were about to fire off their spinal gun slugs for a deflection shot, when radar flatlined and lidar returns were blurred.

'You still have optical and their course plotted! Fire, damn you!'

The pirate gunners were about to trigger their main guns when suddenly, bizarrely there were three, no four human ships in their optics. Even passive infrared was confused. Had there always been four ships and did they have stealth in space?

"Just fire!"

Slugs started to shoot from the cruisers, one every three seconds and at this distance they would take over seven seconds to reach the human ship or ships? It might as well have been an eternity for the maneuvering rates, decel and acceleration of mass-effect capable ships. The ten kilo slugs missed and where a hit was reported it seemed to do no damage whatsoever.

The real Sostratos within the obscuring cloud of electromagnetic radiation retaliated with a full port broadside of six naval lasers. The batarian light cruiser staggered under the combined blow as tons of armor ablated away and in one case a lucky shot managed to hit a fault in the armor belt, from where it had been modified so the ship would not appear to be batarian. The beam sheared off the entire right engine assembly, where the futilely maneuvering cruiser left it behind when its lateral momentum carried it to starboard, while the engine assembly kept its previous momentum.

The cruiser pushed itself z plus frantically to avoid its own anti-proton engine and applied opposite thrust to bring its bow back on target. The warrant officer in charge of the fore left bay saw an opportunity and used his own initiative to take another shot before Sostratos would rotate to bring it's starboard bays to bear on the last cruiser.

A single laser beam shot into the night and hit the anti-proton engine as it passed three hundred meters under the listing pirate cruiser. The antimatter annihilation of a cruiser's entire port engine pod created a massive flash of light, followed by a shockwave of particle radiation that utterly overwhelmed the ventral barriers before it crashed into the ship itself. The nervous systems of the entire crew seized up and they were all dead not a moment later as their hearts and brain activity just stopped.

By now the batarian captain of the last pirate cruiser was beginning to consider FTL retreat. They had clearly stumbled on an opponent that all indications had said would be an easy target, but it had been anything but. A human Covenant cargo ship had utterly defeated two cruisers with what had clearly been lasers of frightening power and range, weapons that barriers didn't do anything to stop.

The order was on his lips to go to FTL, but he realized with a sinking feeling as the Covenant ship brought its fresh broadside to bear that it would take the FTL plotter at least thirty seconds to come up with the most basic course, unless they blindly engaged the engines… they would have a slim chance at escape, if they didn't power themselves directly into a planet, asteroid or the local sun.

"FTL now!"

"But sir…"

"Fool! Do it now!"

Too late.

The aft bay of the Sostratos fired, followed by the aft starboard bay, then the right broadside, and finally the fore right bay as each section came to bear. The result was a brief conflagration of fire from the internal oxygen supply before even the debris of the light cruiser was further annihilated by multiple antimatter containment breaches.

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CIC, SCS Sostratos

"Bring us about and to a relative stop, launch small craft, we're to remain at battle stations. I doubt we're going to find survivors, but I want to look for any black boxes and I want evidence for analysis to bring home."

"It'll take a while to do so, Captain. Any black box that survived is surely on a delayed reaction before it begins broadcasting an 'I'm dead' signal. And the mess of radiation that's out there now…"

"I know, XO, but we have to at least try."

"Captain, I'm getting reports from sick bay that we have managed to save four of our stowaways."

"Excellent, put them in the brig as soon as they are healthy enough, I want them ready for a CNI interrogation by the time we get home."

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Flag Admiral's Quarters, SCS McKenna's Pride,

Strana Mechty

Lesti System,

Sigurd's Cradle

22nd June 2795

Aleksandr threw the holopad onto his desk in anger and glared at the image of the lush world below. He had just read CNI's preliminary findings report on Sostrasos' battle. It was the only bright spot in a veritable litany of attacks against Covenant ships. Sostrasos had been the only nominal warship that had come under attack and it had been able to defend itself superbly, but seven Covenant dropships had also been targeted. One of which had been utterly destroyed when it apparently rammed itself into the 'pirate' ship after sustaining critical damage. Others had been capture attempts that had thankfully been repulsed at the cost of nearly thirty marines. Another dropship had to be rescued by a quarian ship that had been nearby, when it had been beset by 'pirate' frigates.

"Pirates, my ass."

The weapons that the boarders had tried to use had no physical identifying markings or programming, but quarian master machinists literally redefined the word 'master' with regards to knowing everything there is to know about a machine and the elements it was made up of. It had taken such a Machinist barely five minutes of examining the various captured mass accelerator rifles to declare, "Most are from legitimate suppliers you can buy in Council space, available to anyone with the right amount of creds and a license. But there are a few special weapons here, modified to illegal levels, the internal programming, mass field generator, metallurgy – in my opinion, BSA. Batarian State Arms."

"Four eyed zerlos!" he cussed. He activated his omni-tool and enabled a link to his secretary. "Call a general meeting of all flag officers, tomorrow. Those who can't make the journey to Strana Mechty are to attend via HPG com. All Covenant ships except for the Wolf's Dragoons are to return to Sigurd's Cradle at once with best speed – give a war warning as the reason."

"At once, Premier Kerensky."