A/N: This week's winner: HumanDemon. Although many of you were very close, Batman here absolutely NAILED IT.
On the recommendation of my creative team I have decided to look for an artist to develop concept art for Enemy Returned. Should you wish to try your hand at producing art for any of the characters, aliens or ships please contact me via PM.
Just to clarify, I won't be bringing in anything from Halo or any other franchise beside XCOM and Mass Effect. Anything you don't recognise from either franchise is my own creation.
To a reviewer that shall remain unnamed - I had a good laugh at your case of chronic Maximum Murican *facepalm*
Also, slight continuity blooper in the previous chapter. Species 117 is in fact the Adraa.
Finally a big shout out to my amigos Link, Snow and Squirrel for their help with the utter depths of evil descended to in upcoming chapters.
###
CAMP SUICIDE
The best of the best of every military in the Council, and some who weren't, had been sent to the facility deep within the ever shifting sands of the Sahara, full of bluster and confident that they could soon be making waves in XCOM as the next Commander Shepard. Boruv was there to swiftly disabuse them of that notion, along with a band of Free Adraa that had reluctantly put on their old Ethereal armour to simulate the most dangerous of the Ethereal's ground troops. The soldiers piled out of their transports and looked around, seeing only an empty landing field and what looked like a cluster of seemingly abandoned buildings, then looked back as their transport planes took off again. Boruv chose that moment to pop out of cover, his heavy plasma roaring and spitting green bolts at the milling recruits. His fellow Mutons jumped out of their ambush positions, a mixture of plasma rifles and heavy plasmas opening up, bowling the unsuspecting rookies over in an utterly one sided slaughter.
Confident every last one was down, Boruv signalled an end to the barrage, then strode out onto the field, bellowing at the top of his lungs.
"ON YOUR FEET, RECRUITS!"
Once they had established that the hammer blows they had been cut down with were delivered not by plasma but by acid green paint, the various Special Forces personnel scrambled upright, falling into military lines as the Adraa drill instructor came bearing down on them.
"Congratulations Recruits, you've just learned your first lesson. An attack can come from anywhere, at any time. Welcome to Camp Suicide. My name is Captain Boruv Dar-Utah and I will be your senior drill instructor while we weed out exactly which ones of you have the rocks to become a certified XCOM operator."
He paused and started pacing back and forth, two hundred and twenty eyeballs following him.
"This first section of the training program is designed to take one hundred pieces of shit who have no idea what they got into and turn out twenty usable recruits. A full eighty per cent of you will be sent home some time within the next fifty days. Once we have weeded out the twenty usable soldiers you will be submitted to the second part of our training, which will bring you up to rookie standard. This will take another fifty days. After that, the third part of our training will split you off into your appropriate training specialisations. Those twenty of you that survive Camp Suicide will spend a full one hundred and fifty days at my mercy. Oh and by the way I lied."
The back rank of the paint-splattered recruits abruptly produced plasma pistols, letting their genetically modified tails drop from behind their backs as they hosed down the other one hundred with paint again.
"Ten of the people standing in front of me are XCOM soldiers. If they had been Thin Men you would all be very very dead. Remember, an attack can come from anywhere at any time. ON YOUR FEET!"
The distinctly displeased recruits glared at Boruv and the ten infiltrators in the back ranks as they picked themselves up again, quick-marching towards the shower block. The colossal Adraa threw back his head and barked an Adraa warcry, his men, bulls, egg carriers and women echoing it back and forth across the desert.
Boruv loved his new job.
Clearly that damn Muton had been watching too many movies, thought Recruit Simo Andronov as he stripped out of his thoroughly ruined BDUs. He had borrowed the drill instructor and apparently the showers from Starship Troopers. The showers were filling up based on how likely they were to be in the firing arc if someone started blazing through the door with a heavy plasma, which after being coated in high velocity paint twice in the ten minutes he had been here thus far was a definite possibility.
It turned out that wasn't the case. Five of the recruits abruptly walked to the centre of the room, reached down into the grating and picked out some objects. Before Simo could ask what they were doing all five had slung bandoliers of alien grenades around the room, completely coating the occupants of the room in green paint for a third time that day. The cursing recruits abruptly straightened, snapping to attention as the Captain walked into the room, the water droplets seeming to curve away from him to run down the edges of his armour and leaving his head completely dry.
"Recruits, you have just experienced your first psionic attack. Recruit Yatamura, front and centre."
One of the five recruits that had detonated the grenades stepped up, a petite Japanese woman.
"Recruit, describe for the class what you just experienced."
"Sir, it was like someone else was at the controls to my body, sir."
Boruv nodded sharply.
"Recruits, this is what we in XCOM like to call mind control. Of the hundred people in the room, ten of you carry the potential to use advanced psionic techniques like Mind Control. I guarantee at least six of those people will be among the twenty graduating this facility. XCOM has no shortage of psionics, but being a psi and being a good psi are two very different things. If you want to wear the pentagon and cross, you must learn how to resist these attacks. Once you have got the paint off your sorry selves, report to your barracks. Uniforms and equipment have been provided to you. Dinner will be served at a nice little Bedouin camp ten klicks due north in one hour. Anyone who doesn't show up on time in uniform without a speck of paint on them goes hungry. Compasses are in your lockers. I'd hurry."
Cursing under his breath, Simo hurriedly scrubbed himself down, checking himself in a small patch of mirror not covered in paint, ironically shielded by his own body, and sprinted buck-ass nude to his bunk room to put on the digital black and green XCOM BDUs supplied, a perfect fit, and grab the compass from his locker. After a moment's consideration, he grabbed the pistol belt, slinging the plasma pistol no doubt loaded with paint rounds and the canteen filled with what smelled suspiciously like sports energy drink on either side before starting his jog. According to the watch he had been given he still had fifty five minutes for a ten kilometre run, which was nothing to a hardened Spetsnaz veteran like himself.
High above Camp Suicide, Sergeant Zuhm Dar-Kelso pulsed her Archangel thrusters, reaching the waypoint Boruv had set on her HUD. Due to a rare genetic defect she had been rendered infertile, meaning she was usually thrown into the same group as the egg carriers thanks to her improved intelligence and dexterity compared to most of the males or bulls. Of course that wasn't a hard and fast rule but that was usually how the genders worked out. She sighted down her plasma rifle. Usually she wielded a heavy plasma but Adraa in Archangel armour with plasma rifles was probably the closest they could manage to heavy floaters. She smirked behind her helmet as the first of the runners hove into view, sprinting straight along the gap between two ridges of sand dunes. Humans never looked up.
She started blasting away with her 'plasma' rifle, the splashes of green paint making the recruit dive for cover behind a dune, then decide to disregard the paint and simply charge through. The unfortunate individual had assumed that the paint was the same as before however, not mixed with a significant quantity of a skin contact paralytic used in Ethereal stasis tanks. Which it was.
The next one was slightly more cautious, which didn't help him much or at all as a second Adraa appeared over a nearby dune, conveniently flanking him. Boruv had received several comments when designing the exercise that it was impossible. Boruv had affirmed that it was supposed to be impossible, at which point one of the commenters had suggested putting a reprogrammed Sectopod in the Bedouin camp to guard the food.
###
CAMP SUICIDE
It had been three days and thus far nobody had dropped out, but Simo wasn't fooled. Usually it took about a week before the first person caved, since nobody wanted to be the first one to drop out.
Simo had found himself sharing a bunk room with nine other soldiers, but he only really knew three of them. It turned out he was sharing with Asaka Yatamura, the Japanese recruit who had been mind-controlled in the shower, and the other two he talked to were Gomez Rodriguez, the biggest Mexican he had ever seen, and Joanna David, formerly of the Israeli Mossad.
"So what torture do you think Boruv will come up with now?"
The Adraa drill instructor had been the subject of intense debate about a suitable nickname since he interrupted the first meal they had since their lack of dinner with psionically induced panic attacks and paralysing paint fired from heavy plasmas. Eventually they had decided that nothing they came up with was bad enough so they simply took to using his name as a curse word. All the recruits were now carrying plasma pistols loaded with paint, regrettably of the non-paralytic garden variety, which they usually rested their hands on every time one of Boruv's minions got too close.
The man himself entered the mess hall, every recruit in the room suddenly producing a plasma pistol.
"Bad news I'm afraid. An Ethereal heavy scout is in position to bombard the camp. You need to survive the dash to the armoury to procure Blaster Launchers with which you can shoot it down. I'll be here eating a Full English. Mm, bacon. GO!"
Scrambling as if kicked, the recruits dashed out of the building. The first ten were promptly hit by a blast of plasma paint from the saucer shaped craft that was indeed hovering over the camp. Simo grabbed his friends before they could join the mad rush outside.
"Through the kitchen!"
The four of them sprinted in the opposite direction to the rest, bursting into the kitchen and rushing through the startled cooks without so much as a by your leave. Bursting out of the back door, they were greeted by a very startled looking Adraa holding a Heavy Plasma, whom they promptly splattered with green paint. Despite the full armour the alien wore the force of four simultaneous plasma pistols firing fully automatically was more than enough to knock him on his ass, where he obligingly lay still, playing dead. Rodriguez stomped over and plucked the heavy plasma off the floor, his enormous muscles straining to take the weight of the bulky weapon. Nevertheless it was some firepower that would certainly come in handy if they ran into any more of Boruv's minions.
Simo tapped Gomez on the shoulder.
"Unload that thing at the saucer."
Gomez didn't argue, just raised the unholy fusion of plasma technology and a minigun and started blazing at the ship. The saucer started to move as soon as it was taking fire, paint splattering on its gravity wave thrusters. Another Adraa flew in and the other three unloaded their plasma pistols at it, Simo dashing up to the downed creature and grabbing its weapon as well. The volume of fire doubled and the saucer staggered, then lurched as yet another heavy plasma started firing from somewhere else in the camp. Soon enough the Ethereal vessel disengaged and soared off, and moments later the base's tannoy ordered all recruits back to the mess hall and the tender mercies of Boruv.
"Gomez Rodriguez, Simo Antonov, Karim Al-Mariq, front and centre."
The three recruits that had picked up and fired the Heavy Plasmas stepped up in front of the irate Adraa.
"Recruits, explain why you disobeyed orders."
All three stayed silent, each one hoping someone else would answer. Eventually Simo decided to put his foot in his mouth.
"Sir, we didn't disobey orders sir! Our objective was to prevent the Ethereal ship from bombing the base sir!"
Boruv walked up to him and stared him in the eye.
"Congratulations Recruit Antonov. You have just displayed what I have been looking for without success these past three days. Initiative."
Boruv stepped past him and started bellowing at the other ninety seven remaining recruits.
"This isn't boot camp! All of you are here because you are the biggest baddest motherfuckers on the face of the Earth! You are the best soldiers, spies and assassins on the planet so START FUCKING ACTING LIKE IT!"
Boruv walked up to them, pacing in front of them.
"The Ethereals are master manipulators in both tactical and strategic gambits. If you let them dictate the rules you have already lost. If I give you a set of orders I don't want you to blindly follow them like the dumb knuckle dragging neck breathers in the army! I want you to analyse, divine your own objectives and timetables, take every opportunity you have to subvert the nature of the exercise! If we wanted XCOM soldiers to be glove puppets we'd genetically modify them to have five assholes. Recruit Ellington, how many assholes do you have?"
The startled SAS soldier screamed right back in Boruv's face.
"Sir, one sir!"
"Damn straight. Pull your heads out your butts and start using them for a change."
###
THE ARCHIVE
The singular stasis tank hinged open, fully twelve plasma weapons pointed at the contents as they were slowly revealed. Shepard's first thought was that it was an Asari. Then she immediately dismissed the thought, then dragged it back and examined it again.
The occupant of the stasis tank certainly looked like an Asari, at least from a distance. Up close Shepard could clearly see the differences.
The most obvious difference was the sharp change in the physicality of the alien. Where the Asari she had seen on the Citadel were almost universally slender, this one was much bulkier, blue skin stretched over a thickly muscled frame. The second obvious change was the lack of any breasts, simply two flat muscles making up the chest. Moving up, the 'Asari' had more masculine features than the other ones she had seen, the most striking change being the way the chin split into a small cluster of crests similar to those on the top of the head. Moving down, a set of reproductive organs that, although appropriately alien, were also undoubtedly male, rounded off the image of the oxymoronic alien she was staring at.
An Asari man.
"The fuck?"
###
XCOM Research Report: 12 August 2017
Head Researcher: Dr. Lieza Vahlen
Team Leaders: Dr. Kamesh Koothrapalli, Dr. Simon Cooper
TOP SECRET: ANY UNAUTHORISED PERSONNEL READING BEYOND THIS POINT SUBJECT TO IMMEDIATE PUNITIVE ACTION
THIS DOCUMENT IS RF TAGGED ALL MOVEMENTS ARE BEING TRACKED
Alien Examination: Project Codename: Duality
The aliens decanted from the stasis chambers of the Archive have proven a fascinating study. As well as a large amount of Tarch breeding stock currently in the care of our psychologists and upwards of two hundred thousand Quarians suffering from culture shock, we decanted almost half a million of what we have begun to refer to as the Dimorphic Asari, or for short the Thessians.
A separate but very closely related species from the conventional Asari, swiftly becoming referred to as the Homogene Asari or Homogenes, the Thessians are easily separated from their cousins by their more conventional two gendered reproductive system, as well as both genders being slightly larger and much more muscular than the slender Homogenes. However the most fascinating aspect of them has been the detection of psionic potential on par with Quarians and Humans, the two most powerful known psionic species apart from the Ethereals themselves.
Unfortunately none of these aliens have yet regained consciousness and the science team have been expressly prohibited from invasive scanning techniques or vivisection of the subjects, but nevertheless this new discovery could fill in some confusing gaps in the genetic history of Thessia, and their psionic potential makes them a valuable resource.
###
AEGIS MANTLE
Liara looked through the glass pane at the bizarre person lying in a hospital bed on the other side.
"What is it?"
Benezia looked across at her.
"The Excoms tell me it is one of our distant ancestors that may have lived on Thessia at the time of the Protheans."
Liara made an exclamation of disbelief, looking through the glass. Covered in a blanket from the neck down, if she ignored the utterly bizarre splitting of the chin into crests she could take it for a perfectly normal if exceptionally butch Asari. The bodily proportions were wrong as well, closer to the muscle bound Batarians than a proper Asari.
"It doesn't look right."
"It's just a slightly different looking Asari. It isn't even an alien."
Liara turned around with an exasperated flounce common to teenagers across the galaxy.
"That's just it! It isn't alien but it looks like it should be!"
Benezia shrugged, then her attention snapped back to the nearly-Asari as it stirred, then opened its eyes. Their stares met for a second, and in that second Benezia saw nothing but hate.
Before anyone could react the Asari male sprung up, the blanket falling away, and pounced on the XCOM guard, fists and head wreathed in a familiar purple light. Hit first by a psionic attack, then a flurry of punches, the woman was unable to resist as the alloy cannon was ripped out of her hands. The male turned it on the window, blasting through and forcing Benezia and Liara to bring up biotic barriers as shards of broken glass showered around them. Benezia was promptly knocked over by the alien's next leap, finding herself staring down the muzzle of an alloy cannon.
It took Benezia a couple of seconds to realise the flash hadn't been her head exploding. When she cracked open her eyes she saw the XCOM guard, upright once more with the unconscious alien over one shoulder and her Arc Thrower in hand.
"Are you okay Ma'am?"
Benezia accepted Liara's hand and hauled herself up.
"What in the Goddess's name was that about?"
###
AEGIS MANTLE
"So what have we got out of him so far?"
Shepard shook her head.
"Two hours and the only thing we've gotten is this one sentence. Coura Dariel Saani, den san fai den den tar och."
"What does it mean?"
Shepard shrugged again as she and Hackett looked through the two way mirror at the alien. She didn't have the sense that he was an Ethereal thrall, but the idea of psionic probing and then the invasive techniques the mad doc favoured was becoming more and more tempting.
"There's been enough drift from common Asari languages that our translators can't make head or tail of it, but going by the structure of the sentence and the way he just repeats it every time we say something, I'd wager it's in the spirit of name, rank and serial number."
"Are any of the others close to waking up?"
"Of the twenty we decanted he's the only one who's active thus far."
Hackett nodded again.
"Alright, I'm authorising psionic contact. Be careful though, we know this one's got psi of his own."
With a quick acknowledgement, Shepard went back into the room.
"Alright then Coura, I've just been told to go fishing in that skull of yours."
First she checked the Mind Shield around his neck. As well as providing impressive mental protection, the Mind Shields could be reversed to act as a mental shackle. Satisfied she wasn't going to get the favour returned, she took off her helmet and leaned towards him, her eyes already alight with psionic power.
Her first impression of his mind was jarring, to say the least. As soon as her mental tendrils passed the dead zone of the mind shield, they were grabbed by a surge of mental force. With supreme application of willpower she twisted them free, then counterattacked the alien's own grasping claws of psionic force. The only external manifestation of their psychic duel was an identical and simultaneous tightening of their expressions, linked as they were by a purple streamer of light. The alien was skilled, and had an impressive pool of willpower to draw upon, but when up against the most powerful human psionic in existence and the entire force of the psionic network behind her he was completely outmatched. Nevertheless it took Shepard almost a minute to batter through his defences and access her memories.
Lifetimes passed in instants and then the connection was broken, both sides equal parts surprised and satisfied with the information. After a couple of seconds the alien opened his mouth.
"I would very much like to try some of this 'bacon'."
###
AEGIS MANTLE
"My name is Dariel Saani, and I am a Coura in the Thessian Legions."
The male Asari paused to make sure none of the official dignitaries in the briefing hall were looking lost or confused. Satisfied his grasp of English gleaned from the psionic interaction was adequate, he continued.
"My kind had just developed space flight in chemical powered rockets when we made first contact with a species you now know as the Ethereals, and their client races the Sectoids and Kaamsa. They told us of a great gift our people carried, the ability to reach out and influence others with our willpower. Unfortunately our experiments into harnessing this force drew the attention of a far crueller race than the Ethereals."
There were several sharp intakes of breath. Crueller than the Ethereals was a phrase nobody ever thought to hear.
"They called themselves the Galactic Empire of the Protheans. They had their own version of the mindfire, something the Ethereals referred to as Biotics. Apparently the Prothean species saw Biotics as the mark of a species destined for greatness within their Empire, and species bearing the mindfire as threats to be excised."
At that point Dariel had to pause and wait for the outraged cries from the Council observers to die down.
"At first they approached us as friends, offering technology based on their biotic effect. The Ethereals cautioned us but we disregarded their warnings and agreed to send ten of our best from the military, scientists, engineers and leadership. One of these individuals was Mella Starno, a unique woman with the talents of a warrior and diplomat both. The only one who ever returned was her."
At this he paused, apparently getting choked up.
"They came in battleships, bombarding our military bases and population centres, then they came in troopships and we got Mella Starno back. Millions upon millions of copies of Mella Starno, her mindfire replaced by biotics, with the ability to clone herself, divide like a virus. That's exactly what the Protheans had turned her into. A plague of Mella Starnos sweeping across our planet, slaughtering all Thessians who they encountered. They were very thorough. The Ethereals didn't have the resources to intervene militarily but they airlifted almost one million of my kind off our world, froze us in cryogenic stasis and promised to help us re-establish our civilisation somewhere the Protheans and their genetically engineered locusts could never follow."
He paused and then glanced at Shepard, who nodded and stepped up to the podium.
"The data pulled from the Archive fills in the blanks in this story. After the evacuation, the Protheans took great care in removing any and all evidence that Thessia had ever held a spacefaring society. The Ethereal intelligence units monitoring the process assumed that for some reason the Protheans were intent on covering their tracks, maybe to avoid sanctions imposed by other powers or a backlash from their own public. What they didn't count on was that biology isn't very good at doing what it's told. Some of the genetic alterations they had made to weaponise Starno began to reverse themselves as the bioweapons were no longer being closely monitored, apparently just being left with the assumption they would die out fairly quickly. Some of these weaponised traits included incredibly quick gestation and maturation of offspring, but an associated reduction in lifespan, which was quickly eliminated from the genome. Other traits included the instinctual hostility response towards psionics that the vast majority of the Asari population still carries and a modification similar to our Neural Feedback that provided an active psi defence, which is still occasionally expressed as Ardat-Yakshism. A small measure of the original species psionic potential has also worked its way in as the Asari empathy that makes them so adept at manipulating other species."
Shepard paused and shuffled her notes, pretending she wasn't amused by the expressions of dumb shock on the Citadel types.
"The data also sheds some light on the Ethereals. We now know they were contemporaries of the Protheans and were in fact involved in some sort of psi versus biotic ideological war with them. There's also a gap of about a thousand years in their intelligence records that correlates with the Prothean extinction. Also during this data blackout there occurred a radical shift in the Ethereal psyche, from the benevolent benefactors Dariel knew to the ruthless bastards we're fighting at the moment. All the evidence points to the shift in doctrine being as a result of the Ethereals wiping out the Protheans."
There was a question from one of the Council observers, the Salarian Spectre. While the Asari and Turians were still reeling from the revelations dropped onto them, the Salarians had analysed the conclusions, accepted them and moved on.
"What makes you so certain the Ethereals caused the Prothean extinction?"
Shepard acknowledged the query with a head nod.
"A good question. I should imagine every Human, and probably by now every Quarian, is familiar with the principle of Occam's Razor, but for the benefit of our friends from further afield I'll explain. The principle is that if you have two equally plausible answers to a question the simpler answer is more likely to be correct. If you want to you can run the math, it's all about the number of variables and the likelihood of each occurring. In any case the simplest scenario, and therefore the most likely, is that the Ethereals wiped out the Protheans but induced this psychological change in themselves while doing so. I can't imagine participating in genocide being healthy for anyone's psyche."
Liara stood suddenly.
"I don't understand! Surely there would be some other evidence of this if it had really happened?"
Shepard glanced up at her.
"You mean, aside from terabytes of data over a three thousand year period, twenty five Ethereal scientists who may well have been involved and half a million eyewitness accounts in the fridge? We know that if we discount the anomalous technological branch we're following the Ethereals down and simply judge based on mass effect technology, the Protheans were at least three hundred years ahead of the Council by Human standards. That's closer to eight hundred years taking into account the development trends of the Council since its formation. Can you see any reason why in eight hundred years time a militaristic society with centralised leadership such as the Turians couldn't remove all evidence of prior habitation from a planet, given a reason to do so? Hell, they could probably manage it now."
Liara sat back down, clearly given food for thought. The problem with the Council was that since the Asari found that data cache on Thessia they thought nobody else knew about all they have done was copy copy copy. They'd spent so long thinking inside the box they had forgotten there was an outside.
###
AEGIS MANTLE
Newly minted Commander Anderson leaned over and shook hands with Hackett as he looked over his new command. The second of the Mantle class dreadnoughts hung in space, deceptively small as a result of the distance between her and the Aegis Mantle and the fact she was dwarfed by the nearby Iconoclast. Nevertheless she was bigger than most cities and packed to the gunwales with the meanest bastards the Human (and Quarian and Adraa) species could produce. Escorted by her three Fury class frigates, the Demon's Roost, the Winter Shield and the Warrior's Sin, she was a truly menacing sight.
The XCS Starlight Embrace was online.