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/-/ 3rd March 2183 /-/ Milky Way /-/ Arcturus System /-/
/-/ Primary Hangar of Pan-Human-Union/Xcom "Survivalist" Class Frigate "Omaha" /-/
Shepard watched through the front and rear entrances of the Omaha's hangar bay; each entrance would normally be sealed by alien-alloy drop doors several meters thick from the sheer difference of the air pressure, humidity and valuable oxygen needed to survive and the empty void beyond.
Today as the troops within prepared for combat surrounding the trio of Skyranger Mark VII transports he could see past the kinetic shields that protected his soldiers from the elements beyond in Eden Prime's atmosphere and down into the cloud layer as the 800 meter long ship coasted just above visual ranger of the burning fields and townships below. Every so often he could look past the very edge of the floor underneath his feet and see the bursts of gunfire below, sporadic and uncoordinated. Whoever had original assaulted the planet had left a token garrison behind to drive out any remaining forces of the original defenders and to harass any newcomers arriving to re-enforce them.
This was a bad sign; not even the Batarians would abandon their own unless they absolutely have to, and this force had willingly abandoned their own to prolong the fight without backup or retreat. Few forces John knew of from his extensive combat training operated this way, if any – and with the mission to recon and retrieve both beacons would get even messier beyond the Winter Contingency call if there where willing suicide soldiers to fight for every inch of dirt out of sheer bloody minded spite.
As he turned he was surprised to see Nihlus behind him, taking in the same view of the ground situation below them.
"I think I see what your seeing, not many ground forces willingly abandon their own. Not without good reason." Nihlus spoke as he attached a pistol to each of his magnetic weapon hard-locks along with several council issue grenades of Shock or Concussive variations.
"Shepard, I see you have your transports and your . . . men ready and waiting" Nihlus spoke as he turned to look at one of the three wedge shaped Skyranger transports as he turned to give glancing looks at Corporal Richard Jenkins – one of three MEC troopers attached to the PHU Omaha from one of the three Factions within the Pan-Human-Union government known as "The Reapers". The young man was full of life, practically exuberant for someone who was effectively a quadruple amputee.
The Council races, Shepard knew took a dislike to the use of both MEC and SPARK units and the only reason why they where not another massive point of contention between the two sides was purely down to the fact that SPARKS where not full AI based units, but a specialised VI unit enhanced with the connection to a local MEC trooper as a hub, courtesy of tech Shepard vaguely knew of from the XCOM arm of the Andromeda Initiative and their research bases out near Jupiter. Anyone serving within the Reapers could opt to undergo the procedures to become a MEC trooper but it was generally frowned upon to take the procedure without loosing at least half of the living limbs first (and due to the Reapers regular missions against Chrysalids and the Lost it would never be that uncommon).
Out of combat MEC troopers such as Jenkins would opt for the use of alien alloy prosthesis due to the fact their new limbs would be lightweight and sturdy enough to still do PT with their fellow soldiers. The other reason was that said limbs would probably out-live their users. The friendly jokes amongst the crew where always joined by Jenkins, especially when he would offer to "Lend a hand" to help someone by actually detaching his arm and handing it to them, or the one time he offered to "Cosplay as someone from the Addams Family" for ship parties and shore leave, most of the crew where imagining an Uncle Fester suit and instead where horrified when he detached his left arm with the Wi-Fi connection enabled, put a fake glove on it and had the hand walk into the mess hall in his wake.
Preparing for combat however Jenkins was a different man. Inside his MEC-7 Vindicator suit he was a 3 meter tall slab of death capable of running at 50mph while mounting shoulder based Plasma Grenade launchers, active launch Jump-jets and a pair of incredibly oversized Subcoiler SMG's that had been adapted to his MEC sized hands along with several thousand rounds of ammunition for each.
He moved between his SPARK units whilst adapting their own weapon load-outs, switching them out for either their MEC/SPARK sized Coil-based cannons, extended ammunition stores and a combinations of either Blaster Launchers or Enhanced Shredstorm cannons.
Shepard noticed how as he moved between them the SPARK units became slightly less jerky and machine precise and a little more fluid and almost organic in places – the SPARKS where connecting to the MEC processes and by extension Jenkin's own mind, "borrowing" the "CPU cycles" of the human brain to enhance their own code, giving them opportunities to passively learn in combat and limited intuition, never enough to become fully sentient but more than enough to ensure a SPARK unit within his command would utterly paste any VI based equivalent. Jenkins in turn would be able to "see" through his SPARK units eyes and "hear" through their external microphone arrays. The primary reason for his MEC/SPARK unit wasn't purely down to the fact they where all mechanical, but logistical – his MEC if damaged could seal his torso and head within an extra shielded cocoon and launch it away from the MEC chassis whilst his SPARK units could be replaced on a 1-for-1 basis by fresh models built from the Omaha's own Omni-gel reserves and internal fabricators.
Shepard watched as the final holographic displays started to appear in front of Jenkins vision, some static and others following the direction of his eyes before he finished his own preparations and the armoured hood unfolded from behind Jenkins neck and sealed around the sides and front of the armoured collar – Jenkins was now sealed within his suit and covered by several inches of alien alloy plates and kinetic fields, seeing the world as a 3d holographic display projected in front of his face for the remainder of the mission. Seeing Shepard's interest Jenkins gave a short MEC height salute followed by a thumbs-up with a fist the size of a 20 litre jerry can.
Shepard returned the salute as Jenkins pounded his way into the Skyranger's rear hatch – the other reason for the MEC/SPARK unit operating separately was due to their sheer weight at almost 2 metric tons each the combined unit took as much size and space as a light tank and needed their own insertion equipment and extraction gear in case everything went south, so the lone trooper was a one-man-army with 7 equally dangerous drones that would be dropped like bombs directly through the chute system of their specialised skyranger in a high speed low altitude insertion directly outside the most heavily combatted fields of Eden Prime and moving in from the south towards the Primary site. Shepard didn't doubt it would be an easy mission but considering the Corporal had lost limbs fighting against Chrysalids he didn't doubt the younger man's ability to survive and watched as the jutted wedge of the Skyranger transport lifted from the hangar bay floor with its Ethereal-tech-based Anti-gravity thrusters without as much as a whisper and glided out of the bay and away to the port side of the ship before it activated its main engines and shot away from view.
Nihlus returned his gaze to John and asked "I take it you are going straight to the source of the entrenchment, and if my guess is right our beacons are there . . . mind if I tag along during the insertion? I'm going to drop early and see if I can scout out what's going on down there."
A brief surface level mind-scan from John's behalf confirmed this was the case, but also confirmed Nihlus's suspicion that John wasn't entirely trustful of the Council spectres plan, most psychics could get away with feeling the emotional chaff coming off of others, words and phrases – bursts of uncontrolled emotions are common, often forming together a layer of noise most Psionics learned to filter out in their childhood years because otherwise they would go quite undoubtedly insane.
To actually use the Gift as the Ethereals had called it on others, was an active use of their skills – to push their intention and will into as the very least an intrusive act on others or the space around them. It left an unmistakable footprint in the minds of others with even the most casual of scans, and Nihlus had indeed felt the Commander's scan, and was either telling the truth or was hiding his true goal under so many layers of emotional armour that it could not be found without actively tearing the Turians mind apart to get to it.
"Commander, I get it – we have pride and respect for each other at least even if as nations and councils we don't. I get it." Nihlus sighed "But I'm here for the mission, not to steal technological secrets from each other whilst a world beneath us burns. So with your permission?"
Shepard stood back for a moment and then apologised "Yes, of course. I'm sorry. You have my permission to scout ahead, god knows we'll need the Intel."
With that discussion over Nihlus turned to the Skyranger and stood in the entrance with his hand holding to the rail above as the PHU marines, a mixture of Human and Skirmisher troops with varying items and weapons boarded around and behind Nihlus and Shepard, and minutes later the second Skyranger with it's team lead by Kaidan Alenko took off in it's own whisper silent aerial ballet before being joined by Shepard's own Skyranger a minute behind them.
Minutes later, before they had even reached the ground things had gotten more complicated – the Skyranger closed for a moment and Nihlus jumped effortlessly from the rear of the ship and dissipated from sight, no doubt safe from some form of Council tech Jump-jets within his armour but Joker was now on a channel feeding Intel directly to John via his TEAMCOM system and omni-tool.
"I'm telling you commander the moment we appeared from the relay we say what looked like a ship leaving, a massive one with an unknown silhouette" Joker said as John overlooked the partial scan of what looked like a massively out-proportioned sea creature turned into a 2 kilometre battleship or dreadnought scaled behemoth "We also caught two massive psionic spikes the moment we entered atmosphere, one centred on the dig site and the other looked like someone was psionically teleporting along the planets surface until they reached the Eden Prime central star-port and this is when things get fucky."
"Explain 'fucky' Joker" Shepard explained, slightly exacerbated by the Pilots less than apt description of what he had seen.
"Well it looks like whoever it was boarded a short range shuttle while we where taking orbit" Joker carried on, a series of images showed the passing of three figures surrounding a forth with fuzzy details as they boarded an inter-system shuttle, a variant of the Council "Kodiak" design that couldn't even achieve FTL travel – and after the four together boarded it the craft disappeared in a globe of purple energies.
"It then re-appeared here, just off the bow of the Utah" Joker changed the view to that of the Normandy's external sensors following her sister ship the Utah before the shuttle disappeared again, and the image was replaced with a total system view marking Eden Prime, it's star and several other small worlds and asteroids of note as the purple blip continued to move away from the world – it's jumping pattern doubling in distance each time until it reached the Eden Prime-Beta relay and somehow achieved Mass Relay Transit out of the system.
"I take it the Normandy and Utah already have these files?" Shepard replied in turn.
"Yes sir"
"Good, Joker I want you to send this across to XCOM command with my routine code. I don't know what we are looking at here with everything else going on but I am sure someone else will be able to piece this together" Shepard finished.
"There is one more thing" Joker added as he finished the task "There was another psionic marker at the dig site – and from our own sensors and cameras we picked up this."
The image, far more stable this time caught several frames of a woman in burnt, tattered armour lying on the floor between the two relays unconscious, before she was approached by several more figures who appeared to have hunched backs and some form of high powered torch on their helmet armour being followed by what looked like a group of human sized snakes.
The woman with red hair and burned armour was awoken – and tore the whole group apart in a series of psionic bolts, in total a firefight that only lasted seconds before she had passed out once more.
What shook John to his core was the image before the firefight – he zoomed and enhanced the image as best he could.
In his mind he pieced together what he was seeing, snake like creatures with expanded "hoods" around their heads, two arms carrying what appeared to be the same blue-shifted plasma weapons as their allies but that 3 to 4 meter long tail on each of them was the tell tail sign.
Creatures not seen from, and considered extinct from the events of the Second Ethereal War.
Vipers.
Once known as Thin Men their species was considered the most malleable of all the races encountered by the Ethereals but also the most useless for such as task, and so they where used at first as infiltrators and then as coldly intelligent cannon fodder – whoever assaulted this world somehow had Vipers amongst their ranks which meant either a Third Ethereal War on the horizon or their much alluded greater threat. Either option filled John's mind with a moment of dread.
"Joker, send this along to XCOM Command also, with the code-names ADDER and REBIRTH. Then get the Omaha, Normandy and Utah on full combat alert – every weapon hot and loaded and if we are lucky, we won't have an orbital battle before we get a response."
"Done" Joker replied, his voice cold, distant and professional.
Shepard cut the connection on his end as he then motioned to open another channel with Alenko and Jenkins and passed the Intel through to their Omni-tool with a slightly revised set of landing coordinates.
Moments later the first of the three Skyranger's "touched" down as Jenkins and his SPARK unit where launched through the Skyranger's launch tubes for a direct insertion and then continued past to provide fire support whilst Alenko's Skyranger Flight Lieutenant Martin "Brains" Theakston dropped their team on the outskirts of Eden Primes arcology towers to make their way in to the primary site from the East whilst attempting to find and rescue any civilians as they went.
Finally, Johns own skyranger pilot Keuin "Hard Time" Metov was pushing the craft into a hard turn and dive as the rear loading door opened and the team dove out, making their ways towards cover whilst scanning the horizon with their weapons shouldered and searching for targets.
Instantly Johns senses where bombarded by the smell of burning fields and flesh – the air itself felt heavy and tinged with the iron of freshly spilled blood and in the distance he could hear gunfire and the occasional scream of either pain or death from beyond his line of sight.
The scene became real as he dove for cover and sighted the horizon for targets and the lower edge of his vision was filled with the HUD displays holographically projected onto his irises as he was the map of the original colony appear followed by the markers of the individual members of each team.
"This is Jenkins, Approaching from South – relative vector 187 degrees from Target marker north. I have movement ahead." As he spoke various sub cameras appeared along Shepard's and Alenko's HUDs as squad leaders – watching as the MEC trooper and his SPARK units moved ahead in a loose crescent shape, stealthy but fast with their points moving into flank positions as the camera feeds ignited into violence as the SPARK units where fired upon by unknown Mechanical units roughly the size and proportions of a tall Turian . . . or possibly Quarian, with low hunched necks that linked their foreheads into one solid mass that extended from the torso and ended in one single glowing eye on each head. Locking into the image Shepard's mind recognised the silhouette of the enemy soldiers but the name evaded him until he heard their mechanical chittering coming down from the SPARK unit's transmissions.
Geth.
Whoever this enemy was, they fielded Vipers that had not been seen in 150 years and Synthetics not seen in over 300 – and Shepard watched as the SPARK feeds suddenly cut off and Jenkins voice shouted down the comm lines.
"We're intact but my SPARK units have had to perform a partial shut-down, these robot bastards tried to hack my feed into the SPARKS and use them against me" Jenkins continued "COME AND GET ME YOU LIGHTBULB FUCKHEADS!" he yelled aloud and the 3-round bursts of each Subcoiler could be heard.
"Jenkins and squad 3 here – we're here and no casualties taken. Taking the fight to them" and Jenkins closed the channel at his end.
Somewhere towards the south John could hear the chattering of Jenkins Subcoiler and the detonations of Plasma Grenades and Blaster Launchers.
Swiftly John gave out a series of orders with hand gestures for his squad – to stick together in their five units of three soldiers each and move together, engage as necessary but otherwise move fast and stealthily towards the enemy.
It didn't take long before John encountered the Geth for himself, as the squad moved past a slow moving stream flowing gently across his right hand side and through an apply grove leading into another series of conjoined habitat units that was surrounded by the corpses of their former inhabitants.
The Geth where being led by a Viper, who was directing the sentient machines to take the fallen corpses and place them upon strange round objects with three legs. Once a fresh corpse was placed atop these objects – a spike would erupt from a hidden mechanism within and impale the corpse high into the air like some form of horrific psychological warfare.
The viper however, on closer inspection was nothing like the ones he had seen in his induction videos from XCOM years ago. The normally yellow/brown skin was coloured in a deep Gray and blue with faint blue lights underneath the skin, it's normal armour was nowhere to be seen and the chest which normally would be disturbingly close to that of a real woman's breasts where deflated and sagged – with tendrils filled with blue luminous fluids seem beneath the skin of each deformed mass.
One arm looked to be replaced entirely with some form of plasma weapon fused from the elbow down into the creature with a series of dark blue metal tubes and veins and the other, had wickedly long blades fused into the end of each finger.
In those fingers it held a human arm, completely detached from its long dead former owner, and the viper opened and distended its mouth to hideously long proportions, far further than any Viper on record could do so, and in a sickening display forced the entire limb down it's throat from the stump first – and Shepard watched the fingers disappear last with the glow of sickening blue light from within the Vipers gullet as it swallowed the limb down in jerking motions.
Finally satisfied he had enough footage, Shepard toggled his Coil rifle into full auto and tapped his throat-mic three times whilst lying prone mere metres away from the enemy, and knowing the rest of his squad was following behind him, he prepared to muster his Psionic power and in a split second he both pulled the trigger of his Coil rifle and unleashed a Psionic vortex towards the opposite end of the enemy squad.
The Viper dropped under a barrage of combined Coil-gun fire, rather than the orange yellow blood that Vipers had been known to bleed, this creature instead slowly oozed a thick black slime that seemed almost metallic in nature.
The Geth where also torn apart by a combination of both the Vortex forcing them out of cover, or outright annihilating any units not quick enough to escape the radius of the blast and the Alpha-Strike on behalf of Shepard's team gave them time enough to police the bodies with a shot into the head of each one before moving on through to the next orchard patch on the far side of the habitat structures.
As they grew closer to the Beacon site however it became more and more apparent the barbarity of the forces who had invaded the Pan-Human colony and in their hall-mark style how hard the Pan-Human forces had fought in return, devastating their invaders. It also became more and more apparent that at the very least one person was keeping up the defense.
Nihlus Kryik was also keeping up his advance into the colony. Opting for further stealth rather than direct combat he had snuck between Geth patrols and their accompanying cyborg snake creatures he had made it deep into the outlying township beside the beacon site which was when he ran into a face he would never expected to have seen in a place like this.
Stood some distance away from a group of Geth drones that seemed not to notice him was a Turian in off-white armour with a strange cybernetic arm. The figure, his former mentor seemed to be swaying from side to side and whispering to himself as Nihlus stood forward and placed a series of precise shots in the head of each Geth drone and the machines dropped as they attempted to draw fire on Nihlus. Within seconds it was over but the fellow Turian seemed not to notice his presence until Nihlus placed his hand upon his shoulder.
"Saren?" Nihlus questioned as he pulled Saren around to face him. Only then did Saren's eyes seem to focus on the face of his former apprentice as he continued muttering.
"Nihlus, Turian, Council Spectre designation . . . threat to mission minimal" Saren uttered as the light within his eyes seemed to be moving in from a great distance, Nihlus looked into his tutors face confused – he had seen Saren in many states of thought or being before, but never once classed him as the kind of Turian who could suffer from PTSD.
"Saren, it's me. The Geth are here and the situation is bad. I don't know what you mean by mission but you'll need to come with me if you want to survive this. Nihlus said trying to reassure the other as he turned for a moment to scan for targets.
"Mission. Yes. Survive? No." Saren continued as his voice seemed to strengthen with renewed vigour.
"Don't worry, I've got this under control" Saren motioned mechanically towards the pistol on his hip and disarmed the safety and moved to point the barrel directly at the back of Nihlus's head.
Nihlus moved but too slowly, he could almost feel what was happening – tell that he was about to die.
And as Saren's finger squeezed the trigger, it was at this moment he saw the PHU marine running down the hill to his left screaming "GET DOWN!" whilst firing three shot bursts from her plasma rifle whilst another human in scorched black armour and red hair was screaming maniacally and preparing to fire off a Psionic Null Lance from each hand, without a Psi-Amp.
The first plasma shots provided a distraction and Nihlus moved instinctively away from the pistol barrel, but the weapon still went off and took a sizeable chunk of his facial plates with it.
Saren seemed to hiss animalistically as he bolted away from the Null Lances being launched from the second woman as she prepared Lance after Lance without needing to "cool off" like most human psionics did so – and every other lance was followed with psychotic archaic swearing as Saren turned and dropped to all fours an bolted past and into cover as Nihlus dropped to the floor in shock.
The first woman with the plasma rifle dropped to his side and started to produce a medigel reserve and apply it to the wound on his face from her omni-tool while the second stood over them like some kind of demonically possessed mother-figure.
"Names Ashley Williams, PHU marine" The one applying the medigel said as she continued the procedure.
"Nihlus Kryik, Council spectre" Nihlus spoke aloud as he turned to look at the other, but Ashley spoke for her
"Don't know who she is – I found her not far from the dig site we where supposed to be protecting, crushing Geth and Vipers apart with her mind whilst screaming the word Shepard over and over again." She spoke, moving in closer to finish applying the medigel to his face "Don't know what the hell that means but she's one mean hell of a Psionic and I'd be dead without her by now."
"SAREN NO BOOM PLACE YOU FUCK!" The redhead in the burned armour screamed as she ran in the direction of the other council spectre and left the other two behind, enhancing her running speed with infused psionic energies.
"SHEPARD!" she screamed as she vaulted over the low level cover that had once been buildings and almost out of their field of view.
"And if she does that, she kills something you normally want dead" Ashley went on as she shouldered her rifle and moved to raise Nihlus to his feet.
"Well, let's not let her get too far ahead of herself" Nihlus said as he opened a comm channel to the only Shepard he did know.
"Shepard, I've just been given a parting gift from a hostile council spectre on site and heading towards the star-port. Suggest all three teams converge. Also found survivors from the local garrison and one local . . . survivor . . . who seems to know your name, I'll cover more in the debrief but right now she seems to think the Geth and their allies are about to blow up what remains of the colony" He briefed as he started into a slow run behind Ashley and his other survivor.
Jenkins and his SPARK unit had learned the hard way about what would be waiting between his landing and the central colony, he had fought through waves of Geth and cyborg Vipers and captured active footage of the spikes that the two races had been putting human corpses on lowering down and the dead reanimating into horrifying cyborg corpses that then lashed out at anything they could strike at in ways that felt far too much like the Lost for his liking. Between the twin Subcoilers and the varying levels of high explosives his unit had levelled a path leading north from his landing zone that was his very own private path of destruction.
Which was when a Geth drop-ship roared overhead and deposited even more Geth in his way before moving down to collect a Turian in white armour. Frustrated at his lack of any real progress he aligned the target sensors on his SPARK units and slaved them to his own sensors as he motioned a path of destruction using the SPARK units shredstorm cannons. A second later the combined units unleashed their wave of death against the Geth vessel which would normally be a death sentence for smaller vessels but instead provided a display of ineptitude as the vessel remained unscathed and intact behind it's barriers.
Which was when something he never expected came running and screaming into his field of view, quite literally as a woman with red hair and burnt black armour came running at full pelt over the edge of a low lying building and slammed onto the hull of the Geth ship using her psionic abilities to enhance her abilities to punch holes in whatever metal the Synthetic vessel was made of.
"Well that's just fine and fucking dandy and totally unfair that some mad woman can break the ship and I-" Jenkins continued as he armed the Plasma grenade launchers.
"-Fucking-"
He set all their fuses to proximity blast on detonation.
"-Can't!"
All 7 SPARK's and his own MEC launched their Plasma Grenades in salvo fire mode and impacted on the hull, creating some dramatic burn-marks but doing little to actually damage the vessel.
It turned and fired it's hull mounted mass accelerator cannons at the group of MEC and SPARKS, dropping three of the SPARK units and damaging Jenkins own MEC suit to the point where the MECs own safety protocols kicked in and force ejected Jenkins within his own armoured cocoon and fired it upwards into the air away from the range of fire saving Jenkins life in the process.
"BAD ROBOT NO ZOOM FLY!" the half-mad redhead screamed as she attempted to force more of her sheer hatred and capacity for forced will upon the universe into each hammer-blow, until the Geth ship started to turn and the utterly deranged woman lost her grip and started to fall from the side.
Somehow managing to arrest the momentum of her own fall the three squads converged on her landing point to find her sat, covered in dirt, dust, muck and blood cross-legged and somehow serene.
As John Shepard approached the other he could sense waves of laughter and hatred rolling off of the mysterious woman.
"Hehehe . . . found me another Shepard . . . no I'm the Shepard. Am I the first? Are you the first? Oh Who the fuck even gives a shit?" she continued muttering to herself in a half giggling state whilst a smile of pure innocence crawled across her face in stark contrast to the imperfections of ruin that had been pained upon it.
"I'm Commander John Shepard, I'm with Xcom. Are you okay? Are you hurt? Can you tell me your name?" John began as he dropped to one knee in front of her and started to produce medigel from his Omni-hooks reserves in case he needed to perform any first aid.
"Master Sergeant Jane Shepard XCOM X-12031986. By the way. Colony go boom now." she half-laughed out of her addled remains of a mind as she raised her hands in a clapping motion and a psionic barrier raised around the three squads within it's radius and the charges Saren had his Geth and Viper underlings plant much earlier in the assault detonated, wiping the central colony of Eden Prime off the face of the planet in a 10 Megaton blast.
/-/ A Moment from Scythe himself /-/
I never thought I'd be doing as much as I have in one day, especially since chapter 9 was 12 pages long and chapter 10 is 14 (not including this update section) but the primary intro of Jane to John – yes, for now she really -is- that mad considering she was trapped for what may or may not have been an experience of thousands of lifetimes condensed into the singular point of not-time where she dropped in and dropped out of reality again.
Nihlus isn't dead but is now sufficiently "Garrus'd" in the face.
Jenkins is alive, but started the story as a MEC trooper – and with his SPARK underlings he'll be around for much longer. For Alenko and Ashley they will be playing a greater role in the next chapter as everyone pieces this clusterfuck together and the events that came before it, as well as the events that will happen after it.
Yes, Vipers are back - how in the hell did they end up amongst Sarens forces alongside the Geth - especially as Husks? Many questions to be answered another time.
Replies and Reviews will of course be appreciated, as I've been really surprised so far at the levels of acceptance I've seen since I've started writing this – thanks to you all who have done so far.
Tarrah for now.