Goddamnit, Lizbeth.
This was why you secured civilians on the battlefield, Shepard reminded herself as she met Jeong's wide brown eyes steadily, ignoring the pistol muzzle in her face, ignoring the ExoGeni thugs behind him, pointing their rifles at her people. You secured them so they didn't blow your cover and run to their mothers.
That wasn't entirely fair - Lizbeth had a functioning moral compass, which was apparently rare enough in ExoGeni, and your mother being threatened was enough for most people to lose their cool - but frustration burnt in her chest, underneath practiced calm.
More than the gun being waved in her face, Jeong had put her crew in danger. She didn't want to think about what would've happened if she hadn't left Alenko - calm, even-keeled, biotic Alenko - in charge.
The man in front of her had no idea what danger he was in. Even if he pulled the trigger on her, Williams or Wrex would kill him. It'd turn into a slaughter, with all these scientists and workers caught in the middle.
No time. Jeong had made a mistake. He should've pulled the trigger the moment he pointed a gun at her. Instead, he'd hesitated, grandstanded, in the hope that they would blink first. She almost pitied him.
The moment stretched like cheap plastic, then snapped as she made her decision.
Shepard was a Marine, a N7, a killer, and she didn't hesitate. She pulled her pistol free, raised it and pulled the trigger in a single flow of movement like the gun was part of her body, part of her arm. Distantly, and not for the first time, she thanked the drill instructor at ITB that had forced an eighteen-year-old Vanguard to practice and practice and practice point shooting.
The bang echoed through the tiny room, drawing gasps and screams that she barely registered through her focus. She lowered her M5 and Jeong slumped to the ground, missing part of his chest, blood pooling on the dusty floor.
She whirled to face the ExoGeni security guards, flaring in preparation to throw them against the wall before they could open fire. But Ashley and Wrex had already cornered them, assault rifles raised.
"Wanna be next?" Williams asked, aiming right at the nearest one's head.
"Please do," Wrex chuckled darkly, "I have some ammunition left."
The four of them clearly decided they'd prefer to live and dropped their guns before raising their hands. She ignored them since they were no longer a threat and stepped forward, kicking Jeong's pistol away from his hand. She didn't bother with the medscanner once she got a good look at him.
Dead as a doornail, not that she'd expected otherwise. The M5 Phalanx had been developed to put down krogan and armoured targets alike. An unarmoured human…Jeong's torso had been shredded like tissue paper.
"First the geth, now we're shooting each other?" Julia Baynham whispered, rubbing her face.
"First rule of not dying like a fuckin' idiot," Williams said sharply, "don't point guns at a Marine."
"But what will we do now?" she asked, wrapping an arm around her daughter. "If ExoGeni pulls funding..."
"They won't," Shepard said, voice flat. "Not after I give Colonial Affairs all the files and vid footage I have."
"We still have to get to the Thorian," Tali pointed out, "and find out what the geth wanted with it."
"The colonists won't let you near it," Lizbeth said very softly, staring at her feet. "The Thorian controls them now. They'll die first."
"If that's what it takes," Wrex rumbled, with harsh, pragmatic philosophy in his voice.
"We can't just kill them all!" Liara said, with surprising ferocity.
"It's not like we brought rubber bullets," Williams muttered regretfully, still eyeing the security guys suspiciously.
"There has to be another way," Lizbeth exchanged glances with her mother.
"Maybe there is..."
Fifteen minutes later and some modified gas grenades later, they were back in the Mako and moving again, the only exciting moment during the drive being when Dubyansky used the Mako to ram an Armature off the side of the skyway. A man after her own heart, the Corporal.
"Remember," Shepard said, "gas grenades first, flashbangs and fists second. I don't want anyone - colonist or us - getting shot. Liara and I will try to keep a barrier up for added protection, but we need to move fast and avoid getting pinned down."
They all got out of the IFV only -
"Contact?" Tali's voice was questioning.
Frowning, Shepard turned, shotgun raised. "It's either a contact or not - what the fuck."
She could only describe the thing as a twisted mockery of a human, a corpse creature with a skull-like face and dark pits where eyes should be, with skin of pallid green. It roared and lept at the quarian with claws instead of hands.
Shepard fired. Half the thing's face sloughed off, dribbling goo, but it kept coming with that guttural sound reverberating from what was left of its horrific, grinning mouth. She pushed in front of Tali and lashed out with a Shockwave. The creature was thrown back and into the edge of the garage wall - and more or less splattered.
Shepard wrinkled her nose. She wasn't wearing a faceplate so she could smell the resulting mess, and it was worse than the swamps of Yamm under the midday sun - and that was saying something.
"More zombies," Williams' voice was that of a woman who had seen far too many zombies lately. "Plant zombies. Ma'am...I think we're in a horror movie."
Shepard nodded very solemnly. "This means Wrex or I will be the first to die. The authority figure or the krogan is always the first to die."
"Yeah, I'll just hide behind Liara."
"Uh...what?" The asari looked between them. She was sweet and shy enough to be the surviving protagonist of a horror vid. Though none of the ones Shepard had seen had protagonists capable of crushing geth with their mind.
"Human horror vids. Don't worry about it. Stack up." They stacked up on the door behind Wrex. "Just remember, shoot the zombies, don't shoot the humans."
Wrex didn't deign to respond. He just keyed the door open and rushed forward, a bullet sparking blue off his shields.
Sub-Lieutenant Dariush Sherazi's panicked breaths filled the dead silence of the mess hall. Kaidan tried his best to breathe through the stabbing pain burrowing into his skull, flecking the edges of his eyesight with tracers. He locked his gaze on Sherazi - and on David Al Talaqani, standing behind the naval nurse, with one arm around the Persian's chest and the other holding a scalpel to the man's throat.
He'd overdone it. He'd used his biotics sparingly during the initial fighting and the counter-attack to drive off the geth, knowing he could split the burden of biotic support with Wrex and Shepard. But when the colonists had flipped, that hadn't been an option. It'd just been him, and four people he was responsible for getting out alive. He'd felt the migraine coming on, but he'd thought it'd be fine, that he could just go lie down and hate the galaxy for a bit, secure in the knowledge that Garrus, Ling, Hodgins, and Waaberi were safe.
But now David was holding a knife to the throat of an Alliance officer.
"Put it down," he said through gritted teeth.
"Don't want to...hurt anyone," the man said jerkily, "can't...think..."
Alenko breathed in deep, through the pain, and executed a crisp mnemonic. David and Dariush both were suddenly frozen in place by a stasis field, coated by biotic power.
"Someone needs to get the scalpel," Kaidan through clenched teeth.
"Got it!" It wasn't a Master-At-Arms or a Marine who darted forward, past the line Kaidan had instructed Vakarian and Bravo Team set up - it was the young Yeoman, Hector Emerson. Carefully, Kaidan opened a small hole in the field, and Emerson pried the scalpel out of Al Talaqani's hand, cautiously avoiding the vulnerable skin of Sherazi's neck.
"Okay, when I drop the stasis, Hodgins I want you to restrain Al Talaqani. Emerson, can you pull Sherazi away from him?" Kaidan asked, a metallic taste in his mouth.
"Got it, LT," Hodgins said, stepping right up to the field.
"Yessir," Emerson's bright blue eyes didn't move from Shezari's face.
"Dropping the field." The stasis field flickered and faded away, releasing the two men.
Hodgins roughly pulled David away from the Sub-Lieutenant, handcuffing him quickly before he could resist. Even restrained and overpowered by a gene-modded, fit space Marine, the colonist kept fighting - against the flex cuffs binding his wrists, and against Hodgins' grip on his shoulder and arm.
"Stop that!" the Lance Corporal growled, smacking him in the back of the head.
"Hodgins," Kaidan said sharply, and the Marine gave him a scowl but contented himself with restraining the man. "Put him in the brig. At least one guard watching him at all times - and I don't want anyone putting a mark on him. I don't think all this was his idea."
"Aye aye, sir." Hodgins began hauling Al Talaqani away, ignoring his attempts to resist or strike at the Marine's armoured face and chest. After a moment, Waaberi trotted after him.
Sub-Lieutenant Sherazi was sitting on the floor, one hand pressed to the red mark on his neck, shaking. Yeoman Emerson had his hand on his shoulder, face creased with concern. Kaidan had an infantry Marine's nonchalance about danger, but Sherazi was a naval nursing corps officer, not a Marine. He gave the other man a comforting smile, and he and Emerson helped the nurse to one of the mess hall's benches.
"You okay?" Emerson asked, and after a moment added, "...Sir."
"He nearly killed me," Sherazi said, disbelievingly, "I...didn't even see it coming."
Kaidan sighed, pressing a hand to his temple like he could force the pain away. "I'm sorry, I should've had a Marine stand guard on him."
Sherazi shook his head. "It's alright, sir. No way any of us could've guessed Zhu's Hope would turn on us like this. I've never seen anything like it."
"Neither have I," Doctor Chakwas, crisp as always, arrived, kitbag in hand. She gently pulled Sherazi's hand away from his neck and checked the scratch. "You'll be okay, Dariush. I'm very sorry this happened."
"I was just taking obs," he said quietly, "And he just - attacked me."
Alenko wanted to be deaf and blind. Listening to the conversation was like sitting still while someone drove knives through his ears and into his brain.
Chakwas touched his arm. "How is your BSL, Lieutenant?"
"Suit says it's fine now," he said thickly.
"Go lie down and take your medication. I'm sure Sergeant Draven can handle anything further."
"...yes ma'am," Kaidan mumbled and stumbled to his feet and found the medbay blissfully empty and dark. The thought of going down to the armoury to put away his gear was too much, so he simply shucked his gear in as near to a neat pile as he could manage, careful to make sure the safeties were engaged and the ammo blocks pulled out of his guns. Dressed in just the tight-fitting body sleeve the Marines wore under their hardsuits, he swallowed the pills and collapsed into one of the beds.
All he could do was wait. Wait for the medication to maybe work or more likely, wait until the migraine finally passed on its own.
Ashley breathed hard, bruised ribs pressing into her mesh with every pant. They'd gotten through the colonists quickly enough using the grenades - and a few flashbangs. Every time she struck a colonist, she'd prayed they'd be okay, that she hadn't killed or severely injured them - but it was a chance at life, unlike a bullet to centre mass from a military grade mass accelerator.
Then they'd descended into the tunnels beneath the remains of the Borealis and shit had gone straight to hell. She hadn't felt like laughing since Shepard's quip about needing bigger guns, a good half hour before.
"I hate this planet!" she shouted, blowing the head off one of the plant zombies. Couldn't they go back to the days of just shooting batarians and pirates? How many varieties of zombie did one galaxy need?
Shepard focused on severing another one of those (gross) bulging nodes holding the Thorian up within the carcass of the old Prothean tower. Ash, Shepard, and Wrex had been taking point as usual, with Liara and Tali providing biotic and tech support, and Ashley had to admit to herself that she was starting to feel a bit battered after the firefight with the geth, colonists, and now plant zombies.
"Williams," Shepard said, after the Thorian's scream had faded, "protect Tali."
They moved forward, practically wading through a horde of the plant-things and the occasional asari-plant-zombie-that-could-talk. Shepard had said to protect Tali (and to be honest, she'd have done so anyway - she liked the kid, and a single suit breach could be fatal), so when one of the zombies sliced at her with its claws, she stepped sideways - and into the blow.
She gritted her teeth against the burn of pain across her bicep and used her other hand to pull out her combat knife and jam it into the creature's face, again and again, until it fell, head well and truly mush. She spared a wry thought for hey, got that knife kill finally before more of them were on her. She shot the next one, and the next one.
They were fighting in narrow ledges and corridors and stairs, with no way of retreat until the Thorian was dealt with, and now the creatures were attacking from behind as well. Shepard resorted to having Ashley take up their six, while she and Wrex charged their way forward.
God, the smell. Because Ash definitely needed nausea to go along with the bruises and exhaustion.
Fuck Feros. Fuck Exogeni. Fuck the Thorian. She punctuated each thought with a blast from her shotgun. When the heat sink hit capacity, there was no time to reload, so she just used it as a bludgeon, smashing the creepy little shits with the stock. It felt...wrong. No give of flesh or bone beneath the metal. Just plant material and sludge.
They were all covered in it. Disgusting, vile liquid either from bludgeoning the plant zombies to death or from when they threw up on them. Ash was never eating again, at this point.
The first sign of another of the asari thralls was the distorting air as biotics twisted gravity. The second sign was when Ash felt herself get picked up and flung across the corridor, armour and all. She hit the wall hard, seeing stars when her helmeted head bounced off concrete and slid to the floor, reaching for a shotgun that wasn't there. A hazy, sickly green figure rose above her, glowing blue.
She had time to think huh, not exactly how I would've picked this ending, then the asari-thing stumbled, courtesy of a shotgun blast (Tali, by the shout of "bosh'tet!"), her fingers found her Phalanx, and she pointed and fired. The thrall's hand was blown off mid-way down the forearm by the round, falling to the floor in a mass of kelp-like matter.
C'mon! Garrus will never let me live it down if I keep missing. Some sniper, Williams. She readjusted and fired again, blasting a hole in the thing's chest, but then a field of dark energy struck the thrall and it was flung right off the edge of the cavern.
Liara T'Soni peered at her. "Sergeant?"
She couldn't help the laughter. "Holy shit. You just fuckin...shoved her off..."
The asari looked concerned, "Are you...alright?"
"Yeah, yeah," she bit down on the cry of pain that wanted to escape, and forced herself to her feet, blinking as her head spun, "Thanks for the assist."
"Good to go, Williams?" asked Shepard, a hint of sympathy in her dark, focused eyes.
"Aye skipper. Let's get this fucker already." She found her shotgun on the other side of the corridor and slotted a new heatsink into place. "I gotta beat Wrex on points."
"You're welcome to try, pyjack."
"I'll show you, you old dinosaur. Youth over old age."
"It's called experience, Williams."
"Williams," Shepard said dryly, "stop antagonising the krogan and let's go."
She tossed the skipper a haphazard salute. "Ma'am, yes, ma'am."
Shepard tilted her head, looking at Shiala. She wasn't sure she liked the idea of a stranger poking around in her head, but if it turned the nightmare into some kind of message…
"We're letting asari who've popped out of trees and rambled about mind-controlling dreadnoughts into your head, ma'am?" Williams was steady on her feet for someone who was almost definitely concussed, and she was glaring steadily at the asari, hands lingering near her gun.
Unfortunately, the Marine's willingness to shoot Shiala wasn't going to get Shepard the Cipher.
"I'm not very fond of the idea either," she said slowly, "but I need to - understand the vision if it can lead me to the Conduit."
"Might also scramble your brains," Ashley muttered. The Marine was afraid for her, Shepard realised.
"Maybe," she shrugged, with a half-smile and turned back to the asari, gaze sharpening. "Alright."
Shiala stepped closer to her and her eyes were a clear green and very sad. Shepard tried to imagine seeing your own hands do terrible things, unable to stop them. A few months ago, she would have scoffed at the thought of mind control. Now, she tried to regulate her breathing and not flinch away.
Shiala murmured soft things, siari things that Shepard didn't quite believe but tolerated.
Mission first. Before her life, before the lives of the crew, before even the sanctity of her own mind. She imagined it must be easier, with an asari you trusted and loved, but Shepard could feel nothing but vulnerable, against something she didn't understand and couldn't combat.
"Embrace Eternity!"
Her skull began to pound from the inside out, as if it was being forced open, to widen beyond human limits. Information surrounded her, suffocated her, was forced inside her until a shard of her own thoughts feared that Emilia Shepard might cease to be, overwhelmed by everything burning into the circuits of her brain.
I am Emilia Shepard.I am a Marine, I am a N7, I have served the Alliance since I turned eighteen. I have a mother, a kind stepfather, a brother, I am-
Tvad Amasek is a Lawbringer, and a Lawbringer can have no mercy in his heart lest he blocks out justice. The history of the Prothean Empire is survival - survival against the tempest of their homeworld, survival against each other and survival against the scourge of machines. To fulfill the cosmic imperative, they must preserve the strength of the whole, and this means destroying weakness wherever it appears like the cancer it is.
Tvad knows this, has lived this for two hundred years, across a dozen worlds, many just like this one. He walks the skyways, feeling the pistol bump against his thigh, and above him, rain drops against the city-shield and is deflected.
He will spill blood tonight, for the Empire. He is an instrument of righteousness and his hand will not falter.
Human. Human, she can feel the tatters of what that means, just brushing her fingers, she has to hold onto - human -
Amiviri is this place. She was born here when the Empire was strong and healthy and the only concerns of a warrior were the imposition of peace and unity. But that was very long ago before the Empire fractured like brittle stone, and a warrior's duty became vengeance.
Once, she had thought she would see the Empire victorious as it always had been. Then death had come for her brothers and sisters in arms, one by one, defeat by defeat. She had held the killing knife to the throats of two of them, held their cooling bodies against her.
And now the enemy is coming for the planet she belongs to. Sometimes, a warrior must stand. Some of her lineage still lives, and so she has sent them with the sanctuary ships, seeking the last worlds of their people. Her brother had pleaded with her, begged that she come with them, live.
But sometimes, a warrior must stand. A brother must obey the head of his lineage, for all that he had played with her in the shadows of the towers that now burn.
A warrior must stand.
Kiliii'saro has not obeyed. He is the last of their battle kin, and he says he will not leave while she still lives. The densorin have such long, thin faces and not enough eyes, and once she would have been repulsed by him. That was very long ago. Sometimes she finds herself wishing to lay her hand upon his face, read the essence of him, the soul of him.
There is no point to the things he wants. She tells him so. He tells her, gently, sadly, that she is Prothean to the end and to a fault. Sometimes she feels that, after all these years, he can read her without a touch.
It doesn't matter. The city burns. Her wounds bleed onto the floor of her childhood home. Soon, very soon.
A great black ship hangs above.
I am-
Shepard gasped and choked on the breath. She was lying on the floor, with someone's arm around her shoulders and their hand on her stomach, holding her up. Her head hurt as if the bones of it had all been cracked and tears burned in her eyes, her chest aching with loss.
A thousand lifetimes had passed. Vengeance, the ghosts murmured, insisted. She understood very suddenly that she would never be able to shrug the Cipher off or ignore the deep imprint it had left. She had experienced the essence of the Protheans that had lived and died here, and the fury of a dead race had seeped into her very bones.
"Skipper?" Williams was looking down on her, whiskey brown eyes sharp with fear, and the grip on her tightened.
"I - fuck," she groaned, grabbing her head and finding only helmet.
:"You fell," Liara explained, kneeling. "Sergeant Williams caught you."
"Thanks," she said, voice rusty.
"I'm sorry if you suffered," said Shiala, sorrowfully, "but it was the only way. The ancestral memories of the Protheans are part of you now."
"What did you see?" asked Liara, eagerness tempered by concern.
"I'm...not sure. Something. It's still...confused." Her head lolled back as she fought against unconsciousness. The back of her helmet met Williams' armour and she realised that their position possibly wasn't...professional. "I need to get up."
Williams helped her to her feet, and when Shepard stumbled, steadied her.
"Let's get you back to the ship," she murmured, and Shepard gave a weak thumb's up, and allowed the younger Marine to drape Shepard's arm across her shoulders for support.
"And what of me?" asked Shiala seriously.
Shepard waved a hand, nearly smacking poor Tali in the face, "If the colonists will have you, go for it...I don't fuckin'...execute people. That's against the UCMJ and shit. I should go."
Ashley hurt. Her head throbbed and her vision swam, and she was pretty sure something was busted in her shoulder or bicep from that creeper smacking her in the arm. But none of that was important - she was on her feet, and she needed to get her Commander back to the ship safely.
Because frankly, she didn't think Shepard was going to be able to do it on her own. She was sagging into Ash's side, close to dead weight. Her bloodshot eyes jumped around, unable to focus.
"What did she do to you?" she worried, adjusting her grip on the officer (despite the slime on both of them). She shot Shiala a venomous, suspicious look.
"Not her fault, not really," Shepard mumbled, taking a woozy step forward. "Protheans, fucking around in my head. Let's just...go."
The climb back up the stairs seemed to take an eternity. Shepard was heavy against her side, silent with the effort of movement. The colonists were clumped together in a dispirited crowd when they emerged, practically radiating guilt.
Arcelia Silva Martinez, the ex-Army soldier, turned corporate rent-a-cop, approached. She'd lost her rifle in the struggle and her face was a riot of bruises. "I'm...so sorry. I was trying to fight it, but every thought of my own was excruciating."
Shepard stared at Martinez woozily. Williams realised that the officer was focusing all her energy on staying conscious and upright, which left Ash in charge by default. Wrex didn't care, Tali and Liara were too shy to take the lead, and she was at least ranking Alliance.
"It's alright," she said through the ringing in her ears. The whole descent into the Thorian's pit was a jumbled mess in her head, hazy. Probably the concussion. "We need to get back to the ship. We can sort everything out in the morning."
"Scientists," Shepard murmured, a reminder.
"..Right." She keyed her comm. "Baynham, Zhu's Hope's secure."
She waved off further self-recrimination and gratitude from the colonists or any more questions, promising tomorrow, tomorrow.
Ash fixed her mind on that one goal: getting to the Normandy without falling over or letting her Commanding Officer fall. She'd never been more grateful to hear Bitchin' Betty say, "Stand by, shore party. Decontamination in progress."
They gingerly stripped out of their corroded and dented hardsuits and Ashley told them all to just shove it in a biohazard bag for now. She had the grim expectation that all the gear the four of them had used during the fight against the Thorian was well and truly ruined. Half the plates looked cracked and when she inspected her knife, the blade looked wrong, patches gone brittle.
She liked that knife.
"How are you feeling?" Shepard asked quietly after they'd staggered past a concerned Pressly.
Ashley contemplated that - the sharp pain in her head, the swollen, lurid red of her bicep on an arm that wouldn't fully extend now, the amount of gear she was going to have to write reports about losing and replace.
"Like I don't get paid enough to get covered in zombie guts."
Shepard half-smiled as Ashley helped her down the stairs. "So, I should try to limit the giant, talking plants?"
"It'd be appreciated. A pay rise would be great too."
"Sure," Shepard said dryly, "I'll get right on the comm to the Commandant."
Chakwas came to meet them, eyeing both of them critically. "Injuries?"
"Prothean bullshit for me," Shepard said, wiping at her face. "Williams hit her head and got struck a few times. Might want to monitor all of us for fume inhalation."
While Chakwas attached neurological monitors to Shepard, the nurse sat Williams down on one of the beds. When Sherazi was finally done with his assessment she was allowed to go grab a shower and then lie down on a bed in the medbay.
Sleep came quickly, warm and dark.
CODEX ENTRY
Human Colonisation:
(Excerpt from 'A New Atlas: The Evolution of the Systems Alliance' by Professor Alice Gao)
When Maria Petrovsky became the first Prime Minister of the Systems Alliance in 2160, she became the head of a newborn 'super-nation,' still struggling to define itself in the face of a suspicious Citadel Council and a sometimes outright hostile Earth. Petrovsky was a combination of idealism and political ruthlessness; a former Russian Federation diplomat who had 'jumped ships,' and she deeply believed a strong Alliance was integral to humanity's survival on the galactic stage. She was integral, as part of the so-called 'Blue Conspiracy' alongside such figures as Admiral Kastanie Drescher and Han Ling, to securing a range of powers for the Alliance, powers that perhaps exceeded what Earth nations had intended to give, by utilising the widespread fear of alien invasion post-First Contact War.
The new Prime Minister was preoccupied with nation-building, ensuring the independence of the Alliance and overcoming what she saw as the greatest threat to its future survival - a lack of extrasolar colonies. The Alliance was at a disadvantage as it attempted to establish itself on the galactic stage, as the human population and industrial base were concentrated on Earth. This was in stark contrast to the other players on the galactic scene, who had had centuries to build up their colonies into economic centres.
Petrovsky was deeply concerned by the idea of being hemmed in between the Hierarchy and the Hegemony, commenting to other members of the newly formed United Conservative Party that the Alliance must 'expand or die.'
Her solution to the long-term 'entrapment theory' was the New Futures Initiative; a second, more aggressive colonisation wave into the theoretically unclaimed space of the Traverse, in particular, the Verge. This included tax breaks for colonisation companies and corporations, ad campaigns encouraging migration, assistance in setting up colonisation drives and charters by prospective colonists and generous funding. The aim was to secure multiple garden and resource-rich planets en masse, rather than waiting for colonies to be well established before moving on.
This fell under one of the first acts of the new government: the Colonisation and Colonial Administration Act. If a world wished for the protection of the Alliance Defence Force, they had to play by its rules, which restricted the establishment of corporate governments and corporate ownership of planets. Some colonists and companies would find these restrictions abhorrent and formed 'wildcat' colonies in the outer Traverse and Terminus systems, but Petrovsky was unconcerned.
This effort resulted, in the decade between Petrovsky's election and 2175, in the establishment of twenty colonies.
The effects of this were numerous. It's likely that it did ensure the economic success of the Alliance into the future. However, the military was stretched to the breaking point and many colonies were left without adequate defences, as the budget struggled to build orbital defence platforms, anti-ship turrets and shielding for all the planets that required them. While the Army and Colonial Defence Forces did establish units on new colonies, the equipment for these units was often outdated and lacking.
In addition, it deeply angered the batarian Hegemony, which had been exploring and settling the Traverse itself. Batarians and humans require similar liveability conditions, meaning they were competing for the same garden worlds, a finite resource.
In 2171, the Citadel Council decided against the Hegemony in its challenge of the Alliance's colonization in the Skyllian Verge, and in protest, the Hegemony closed its embassy and withdrew from the Citadel Treaty Organisation. While the Alliance was pleased with the outcome, the decision ensured that these two species, both of which were considered potential threats by sectors of turian and asari government, and who had both fought Council governments, would become increasingly embroiled in a bitter dispute over colonisation. This tension would eventually lead to the bloody Traverse Conflict.
Definitions:
UCMJ: Uniform Code of Military Justice. The laws and regulations that apply to military personnel.
Author's Note: As always, thanks for reading! I hope everyone is still enjoying the fic.