. . .

Human Space (Fala's Story) (I)

. . .

JOHN

. . .

"Winner: John Shepard, 13, Republic of Mars."

Raising his fists overhead, John acknowledged the clapping from onlookers and smiled slightly for the cameras. Only a couple hundred people were present, but more than fifty-four million were expected to be watching this segment of the Combat Acclimation Series across Confederation Space. The numbers would really spike once the adults hit the stage, but even the Junior Level was quite popular… more on Mars than anywhere else, but that was to be expected.

Mars hosted the 'CAS Games' every year, an outgrowth of the martial tradition there that stretched back to when XCOM first took over and settled around Cydonia to guard it. At the highest levels – the ones most non-Martians came to see – adults tested new weapons, armor, psionics and battlefield tactics in simulated and real combat exercises. Teams from various corporations, countries, partnerships, even individuals all came to show their stuff.

Most of the CAS in the modern era was really a huge trade show: a massive month-long convention for all things military. Millions of people flocked from around the Confederation to attend, filling up hostels and hostels across five cities. Only MELDCon on Titan could really compare. This year John had noticed more and more biotic and Citadel-inspired tech entering the scene, including a few corporations advertising research into biotic amps. Humans didn't even have any biotics as far as John knew, but every mega-corporation and artisan co-op seemed to be preparing for the inevitable day when they made formal contact with the 'elusive asari' and their Citadel allies. If the Corps had their way, contact would've probably been made years ago.

That was for the adults to deal with, though.

The Junior Level of the CAS was a competition between gifted youngsters: marksmanship, tactics, psionics, combat performance in all levels… this was how the CAS had really begun, before it bloated to become the convention it was today. Martian schools and academies across the planet all competed with one another, year-round. The CAS had originally just been the final championship series, a sort of private Olympics held on Mars for Martians. As other colonies grew to prominence and power, though, and their children graduated from Martian academies, it began to take on an ever greater interstellar and then intergalactic flair. These days, almost every country sent people to represent them.

Shaking his head to dispel the tangential thoughts, John extended his hand downward to help up his opponent. Another boy, also thirteen, took John's hand and rose up to his feet with a groan.

"Madre de dios," the boy spat out his mouthpiece and wiped blood from his lower lip. Still a bit groggy from the hit that had taken him down; it took a moment for him to recover enough to stand.

"You alright?" John asked, and the other boy nodded quickly.

"Fine," his former opponent winced again. "Yeah."

They quickly shook hands, and the visiting teen gracefully acknowledged both his defeat and his ability to walk it off on his own. Like everyone here, his innate genetic modifications meant he could spring back from even a jaw-rattling blow much faster than a human of the previous century could. One day, likely, their MELD mods would make them ten times as resilient.

Up on the holographic display projected overhead, Michael Diaz, United States of the Americas, dropped down and out of the CQC competition. Making his way back to his classmates from the USA, they patted him on the back and offered platitudes and promises of revenge. They might get it, if the US advanced into the finals in their age and gender group. They had to go through the Chinese and the Valhallans first and the Valks were no joke.

"Nice one Shepard!"

"Good job, Shepard."

"You flattened that Earther, man! Very nice!"

John smiled at the mental pats on the back from his own classmates as he returned to their booth, less physically expressive greetings and congratulations than Diaz has enjoyed but still heartfelt. They were boys John had known and trained with for a year now and a lot of them were former rivals from other Martian cities and academies. Rivalry was notoriously fierce between certain academies, Chiron's biggest rival being Telamon, and then there was the renewed fighting between Pegasus and Crystal Tech…

Still, every Martian put their internal squabbles aside when presented with the opportunity to beat outsiders, especially if they happened to be from Titan or Earth. John nodded to Jason Demers, a fourteen-year-old colossus still in their competitive age bracket – less than a year ago, Demers had humiliated Chiron by taking down their top three students in CQC, a crushing loss by a prestigious academy to the relatively obscure Actaeon Institute. All that was forgotten, at least for now, and John felt a warm thought project into his psi-net on behalf of the big bruiser.

It was like that for all his mates. They were all deeply enmeshed in the same psionic network, all the better to function as a well-oiled team. It didn't affect anything in these one-versus-one bouts, but when the team contests began, it would be essential to their victory. Mars expected them to win. Mars expected all of his teams to win or at least to give a damn good showing. They were the teams to beat in human space and everyone was gunning for them.

Grabbing a sanitary towel to wipe off his face, John exhaled and fell back onto a seat to watch the rest of the show. After a little more ribbing about the handful of blows Diaz had gotten in before he fell everyone went back to examining the next match. The games alternated between the age groups and between the simplified male and female brackets.

The girls were up next, a match between Japan and the North Atlantic Union.

"Laura Thorning… she isn't bad." Leaning forward and narrowing his eyes, Adrian Gaudette examined the pair of thirteen-year-old girls. A lean teen, he was the type who tried to out-think a potential opponent as much as out-fight them. In CQC, he was mid-ranked among the 13-14-year age group boys.

"Thorning's not bad at all for a NAU girl," Jason agreed, nodding in agreement. Thorning was a brown-haired girl, probably from Denmark, and she took a loose stance in confronting her opponent: a smaller girl from Japan named Yuri.

Just like the boys, the girls started by raising their hands and showing the weapons they brought to the fight. The CQC competition wasn't just hand to hand combat training or testing. According to Martian tradition, combatants were able to bring equipment to the fight to better simulate an actual close combat experience. In most cases, this was a mockup knife of one design or another and a holstered sidearm, also a mockup designed to stun rather than kill. Both girls were armed the same and showed their weapons to all watching before putting them away. Hidden weapons weren't allowed, though obviously in a real fight that would be a thing.

Kaori showed her blade – a short and rather typical combat knife – and that she was keeping it by her hip, opposite her pistol. Thorning had hers strapped to her chest and her pistol by her hip. The girls then stepped back into their designated spots and a buzzer sounded, signaling the fight to begin.

It was quick.

That was how it almost always was: Kaori went for her sidearm first but Thorning closed in, quick with her combat knife. Kaori parried, sidestepped, tried to get distance, Thorning closed in aggressively. Both girls were quick, but Thorning was the quicker by degrees. In a moment, she had Kaori's wrist, disarmed her. The Japanese teen tried to parry, blocking the first knife thrust with her arm, and the second, too. The knife wasn't razor sharp but it did have an edge and it drew blood that flew through the air as the pair moved. In seconds, it was over, and Thorning stood with arm extended, knife buried in her opponent's throat. It would've been fatal in a real fight with real weapons. In this case, meeting sufficient resistance, the blade softened instead of hardened doing no real harm.

"Winner: Laura Thorning, 13, North Atlantic Union."

The two girls parted at the announcement. Kaori bowed and Thorning then shook her hand. The Japanese team looked upset, though, more the boys than the girls as more than a few groaned. Kaori must've been quite the favorite on the Japanese team. John had actually considered her quite good – her ability to parry those knife thrusts in such a short amount of time especially – but Thorning was just bigger and faster, with better reach. The NAU teen tossed back her long brown hair and pointed back to her team as she jogged back to them, a smile on her face.

"The NAU girls are good this year," another Martian boy grumbled.

"Mars always takes it in girls CQC, across the board," Jason assured him, confidently. "Annika Engel is in the 14-year girls, don't forget. She's like a machine."

"Engel versus Thorning," another mused and whistled. "That'll be something."

"Annika's a beast. No way she loses to an Earther, especially an NAU scrub."

"You planning to use that raging Annika-boner as a weapon in your next fight, Terry?"

"You know it! I could kill a muton with this baby!"

The Martian boys chuckled and joked and soon the next fight began. It was boys' turn again, but this time it was the next age group up: their seniors in the fifteen to sixteen-year bracket. The messing around died down when the older teens took to the hexagon. This time it was a brown skinned, confident looking sixteen-year-old from Titan, representing the SU or Saturnian Union, and a much darker fifteen year old from the Second Federal Republic of Greater Nigeria. Both were unknowns.

Naturally, everyone in John's group cheered for the Nigerian. Saturn was Mars' perennial arch-rival in most things, so all else being unknown, one rooted for the Titan to lose. The fight lasted longer than the one before it, coming down to an extended knife fight as the pair broke apart and then finally wrestled to deliver a killing blow to the other. Superficial wounds just didn't do it. With the MELD physiology almost every human soldier had, a blow either needed to be solidly incapacitating or killing to have much effect. The judges would determine what was which.

Eventually, after an extended effort, the Nigerian teen got the blade into the Titan's eye: a killing strike. The exhausted pair came apart once the victor was announced, spent a moment catching their breath, and shook hands.

"Hey, Shepard," one of the Martians nudged him and pointed back to the SU booth. "See that guy in the middle there?"

John narrowed his eyes. The Titans were welcoming back their teammate, but he could see the individual in question: a pale, serious looking teen with black hair. He didn't look like much: medium build, the kind of grace that came with certain innate gene mods, not tall or broad or anything remarkable. The guy was pretty ordinary, really, at least by their standards.

"That's Kaidan Alenko."

"Really?"

Alenko had blown away the competition yesterday in the Tech Skills Battle. It'd be interesting to see how he did in marksmanship and CQC.

"Alenko?" Another Martian overhead them and snorted, unhappily, "I hate that guy... damned Sats. Cost us the gold in TECH. Again."

"He's up against a lightweight from the EU, some Russian kid, so maybe we'll get a chance to take him down today."

"I hope."

"Gnea Vigfússon, 16, Valhalla," the announcer heralded the next girls' set. "Miranda Lawson, 16, Lawson Investment Group."

Another pair of girls entered the hexagon. Vigfússon was a champion from the old thirteen-fourteen bracket and she's gotten away with fourth place in the fifteen-sixteen bracket last year; no pushover in any sense of the word. She was one of the Valhalla Renaissance kids, part of the big time eezo colony making a push to rival Titan and Mars. With bright gold hair woven into locks that flowed past her shoulders, she stood a head taller than her opponent, a dark-haired girl with similar Caucasian features. Both girls wore plain shirts under combat vests that did little to conceal certain endowments both teens shared in common.

Predictably, the booth full of thirteen year olds were at rapt attention; gene mods or not, some things were universal.

"Gnea," one of the Martians said with relish. "So badass. So deadly."

"You know what I'd love to see? Gnea versus that asari chick, Thanoptis."

"Biotics, man. You saw that last upload she did?"

"Yeah, biotics are tough… unless Gnea closes the distance."

"That Lawson girl's pretty hot, too."

"Cloned girls are a turn off."

"You think so?"

Shepard listened but kept quiet. The two girls in the hexagon were going through the ritual of showing their weapons so they had a few more seconds before the match. John looked over to the Lawson booth where two other near-identical girls were watching their sister. According to info-prompt overlays, they were Selene Lawson, 18, and Ariel Lawson, 14. Miranda was the middle sister, 16. They were all clones, according to the entry data, daughters of an industrialist named Henry Lawson. John actually remembered the name. His grandmother, which was to say his oldest grandmother, Doctor Vahlen, had mentioned him a few times.

Before he could think on it more, the fight started and John focused his attention down at the ring. Vigfússon was strong and quick, highly skilled in hand-to-hand and close range engagements. She came with two sidearms and two knives to Miranda's one and one. Both girls tried to finish it with a snap shot while closing in to block the other.

Their arms blurred as they fought for dominance and position, shifting left and right with cat-like agility. Arcing beams went wide as they fired, missing only by millimeters as they attacked one another's wrists and hands, aiming for joint locks or reversals. Vigfússon lost her sidearm first, a ploy she used to grab hold of Miranda and slam her down into the lightly padded floor. The dark-haired girl was just barely able to counter, sweeping and then locking up the Valhallan's ankles before she could draw her backup sidearm and finish the fight.

The pair wrestled on the ground for a couple tense seconds, trying to lock-up or neutralize one another's arms or legs. At some point in the confusion the knives came out and they came apart and clashed again, passed, turned and re-engaged. John found himself at the edge of his seat. These were two top-tier girls in their age bracket… and there was something else, too.

Something about the way this Miranda girl moved.

He couldn't quite put his finger on it at first. It took a few very long seconds for it to sink in with the way Miranda moved so lightly on her feet, more like an acrobat than most fighters male or female. Watching her bring a downward heel kick down on the momentarily prone Vigfússon, he realized what it was: Miranda moved like an asari, or more specifically, an asari commando.

Every human in the Confederation knew about asari, of course, but very few knew just how deeply enmeshed humanity and XCOM had become in Citadel space. In a bit of a privileged position, John had not just seen real asari commandos in action, he had watched one – Ilena Thanoptis herself – train with his grandmother Anna.

All that Miranda was missing was… the biotics… but that was im—

"Winner: Miranda Lawson, 16, Lawson Investment Group."

The winner didn't celebrate her hard-fought victory, nor did she extend a hand to help up the glowering Gnea Vigfússon. Instead, she simply began walking back to her booth and her sisters. Half way there, she stopped, turned slightly, and John could've sworn she was looking in their direction. Probably, she was trying to intimidate someone on the Martian girls' team… that was the most likely answer. Whatever it was, a second later and she resumed her slow walk back.

"Looks like Vanaheimr got trounced!" Jason chortled, eagerly pounding his fist into his hand. "Look at them squirm over there. They can't believe Vigfússon lost!"

"I can't believe Gnea lost either!" Another fan lamented, shaking his head in dismay. "To a corporate plant! How can that be?"

"Just goes to show you anything can happen," John warned, sighing softly. A quick look up at the stands around the arena showed one seat, reserved for family, was still empty. 'Mom… I hope you're at least recording all this... wherever you are.'

. . .

HANNAH

. . .

Pain.

Agony.

A spark of fleeting memory, pulled forcefully back from the dark abyss.

"Dreadnought barriers are down!"

"Enemy cruisers angling to acquire us at one-twenty by one-eighty degrees!"

Consciousness.

Confusion.

"Keep us out of their cone of fire!"

"Yes, ma'am!"

Disorientation.

Fear.

"Show me what happened."

A command, a power, a face, a name, cutting through the fear, dampening the pain…

Shepard.

. . .

Hannah Shepard stretched languidly as she stepped out of the shower, running both hands through her dark sherry-red locks. Fitting a brush-like clip into the palm of her hand and toggling it to medium, she went through the near-daily routine of drying her hair and then tying the back of it into a neat bun, five wavy strands left to habitually fall loosely over her cheek and forehead.

In a world where anyone could have almost any physical feature they desired, red hair was more commonplace than ever before… but natural red hair, acquired through the vagaries of inherited genetics rather than precise allele manipulation in vitro, was still striking and distinct. Despite some claims that people could tell the difference, it really wasn't a difference anyone could see with the naked eye, but one that would and did show up on both her public and private biohistory.

Hannah didn't think of herself as a particularly vain woman, too proud of either her rare psionic abilities, her ambition to rise in the ranks of the navy, or her looks. But she did have an unabashed soft spot for her hair.

Her mother, Annabel, had a darker copper hair – more brown than red – but her father had possessed natural tawny-red hair and a pair of very light eyes though not as green as her own. Hannah had never met the man, of course. He had died on Akuze while she was still in the womb, but she had seen video of her father and inherited and experienced memories of him provided by friends and family. By all accounts he had been a bright star, smart, funny, popular and outgoing, in many ways the opposite of the woman he had gotten so close to: Hannah knew her mother to be prickly, standoffish, dour and more prone to growling an order than cracking a joke.

Checking the time, a display appearing in the corner of her eye, Hannah took quiet note of the time she had left to get ready for another forty-two hour duty rotation. In the days of her great grandmother, the esteemed Doctor Vahlen, humans typically slept eight hours out of every twenty-four. By the time of Annabel's generation, genetic engineering and other enhancements meant that most people slept half as much as their grandparents, just eight hours out of every forty-eight. Hannah herself could semi-comfortably go up to a week without sleep if she truly wished to or truly needed to.

Having dried herself off Hannah strode across the single room of her private quarters, grabbing a raspberry-flavored microalgae-protein bar along the way from a dispenser in the wall. Clenching the bar between her teeth and standing nude before a mirror she stretched a bit before putting on her skin… her 'second skin' that was. At her mental command, a small pair of gray hands reached up to help affix the initially loose garment to her back and then her front. Holding out her arms, Hannah let the hands smooth out the silk-like fabric over her natural skin.

"Begin."

A tiny electric charge initiated the integration process, and the second skin began to tighten and constrict, conforming to the shape and curves of Hannah Shepard's body. At the same time, it interfaced with her cybernetics and her MELD reservoir, tiny micro-filament hairs seamlessly penetrating her skin and connecting to her nervous system. The HUD in her eyes displayed the progress made, moving quickly from ten percent to ninety. Mere seconds later and she felt the familiar 'test tingle' as the second skin ran a warm-up diagnostic.

Lowering her arms, Hannah saw herself in the mirror: her second skin was a dark navy-blue by default, though that color was entirely customizable at any time, form fitting but not tight in the normal sense of the word. It was based on the same technology that was used to graft second-skin onto Mutons. It didn't feel like wearing a tight-layer of cloth, like a leotard or jump-suit or anything of the sort. It felt like skin because, in most ways, it was your skin: an artificial layer of it on top of and integrated into the epidermis. Some people, Hannah knew, never took their second skins off.

Those who wore their second skins permanently suffered no ill effects from doing so except a certain loss of pigmentation beneath the surface. Even biological functions were no complication. The skin was a bio-responsive mimetic, and at a thought different parts could expand or recede just as they could soften like jelly or harden like leather. Only the face was, in almost all cases, left natural and exposed. In XCOM and most militaries in human space, the cut-off was around the neck. A few, like the PRCSF, also kept the hands exposed, but they were the exception not the rule.

The rest of the duty uniform followed on top of the second skin: a buckle belt and webbing over the hips and outer thighs, all plastic, and a silver mantle that clasped around the neck and hooked over the shoulders like a pair of hands. The latter, once in place, interfaced with Hannah's implanted psi-amp. Just like the second skin, the mantle ran a diagnostic, this one entirely psionic. Her eyes flashed with purple for an instant before fading back to normal.

'There we go,' she thought, satisfied with what she saw in the mirror. As one last touch, a ripple passed over the skinsuit creating patterns of light in the navy-standard deep blue and pearl white. Rank insignia highlighted over her shoulders and upper left collar.

"Now let me see…"

A tiny tingle, an echo of her own feelings, reminded her of the other presence in the room. Looking down, she took note of the small gray creature that waited patiently by her side. The sectoid was looking up at her with wide black eyes, unblinking and emotionless but still attentive and above-all obedient.

Hannah knew her great grandmother still disliked the things despite learning to live with almost all the other species of servitor. Many First Contact Era humans were disturbed by sectoids, far more than they were hulking mutons, serpentine thin men or even the human-aligned ethereals. For humans of Hannah's generation, however, there had never been a time when sectoids weren't there in the background, just being what they were programmed to be.

As for what they were, exactly?

Sectoids, the normal ones, were simply extensions of the will of others… like those ingenious omni-tools imported from Citadel space. Nothing more and nothing less. Some sectoids, the Commander variant, were more independent and could have names, but most were just extensions of the human who controlled them. Hannah's sectoid was simply part of Hannah – a part of her that could not survive without her. One didn't give a name to one's fingernail or the strands of one's hair, no matter how much one fussed over either.

Chewing idly on her algae-bar, Hannah Shepard finished the rest of her morning routine, including checking the news services for any updates on the CAS Games, and began the process of getting back to work. First, she tapped back into the psionic networks that spread throughout the crew of the BB-5016 Kilimanjaro.

Every human on the ship was connected in an over-network, it could be thought of as "BB-5016-Chat" or "Kilimanjaro-Group." It was also the loosest psionic network on the ship, intended for use in emergencies or ship-wide alerts. Below it were the more intensive networks with the most mental traffic. These were aligned with the major subsections of the ship: navigation, operations, weapons, engineering, and supply or support. In other words: NAVgrp, OPgrp, WEAPgrp, ENGRgrp, SUPgrp. As XO of the battleship, Hannah had free access to any and all of the specific psionic networks on the ship and it was part of her responsibility to serve as an intermediary between the networks of the crew and the Captain himself. Likewise, she was also responsible for the reverse: representing the Captain in the interests of maintaining ship's efficiency and ensuring network coordination.

Passing by a few other humans on her rounds, Hannah sent them a mental ping and received one in return.

To most potential visitors to a human ship, what might surprise and unnerve them the most was the quiet. Humans, in their own company, did not speak except to entertain or engage others in a recreational way, especially in non-restrictive groupings. Humans still enjoyed hearing other human voices on an emotional level but with widespread psionics, most casual and professional conversation was handled entirely mentally. Human ships were thus eerily quiet. People passed one another without saying a word; pairs and small groups in the mess hall ate in total silence, carrying on private conversations in their heads; it was common to see two humans standing around, gesturing and being animated as if in conversation, but without a word being spoken.

After checking in with her CO, Hannah's rounds began with a mental check-in over at WEAPgrp. The department head Weapons Control Officer for the Kilimanjaro was Lieutenant Tola, an Earther from the East African Confederacy. He passed on his reports entirely over the psi-net, a typical run down of the status of the ship's weapons and ordinance. Tola was responsible for the maintenance and of all onboard weapons systems, from the Citadel-inspired GARDIAN laser network and kinetic barriers to the more conventional particle, fusion and pulsed-laser systems. He also oversaw the ship's compliment of drones, cyberdisks, and the MAM and nuclear ordinance. WEAP was one of the larger departments on the ship, with over twenty humans under his aegis spread throughout the ship and twice as many servitors.

The smallest department was next: the NAVgrp. The chief navigator for the Kilimanjaro was Lieutenant Mason Hu, a Chinese-Belter with a family on the new research colony of Shanxi. The man never failed to complain about the air on Shanxi (or any planetoid for that matter) and like many Belters was a spacer through and through, happiest on a ship in deep space. He and his sectoid 'Mickey' – a commander variant – ran the servitor-heavy Navigation department like clockwork. They handled all the general navigation and piloting on the ship, plus flying the pair of non-marine shuttles. Hu and his team also oversaw the maintenance of the navigation and hyperwave equipment without which the Kilimanjaro would be not just deaf and blind but stranded as well, with no means to connect to the Beacon Network.

Like every Head Navigator on every Battleship in human space, Hu was also a high level psionic certified to operate a Gallop Chamber. Said chamber was kept in the heart of the ship some distance from the bridge, and Shepard met Hu there for a brief talk while they went over some of the new navigation and charting data. The Gallop was shielded from intrusive psionic interference; if not for the sensitive nature of it, the chamber would probably have been a popular spot for people to rest and relax. As it was, the garden level had to suffice for that need.

Hu was genial as always, a pleasure to work with, but the way he actually talked to his servitor was something Hannah always found strange, nevermind that sectoids didn't have ears or vocal cords. They couldn't hear anything in the human sense of the word. That sort of anthropomorphization was apparently a common trait among navigators. They worked very closely with their servitors and accorded them a high level of independence.

"Any word on how close we are to getting a lead?" Hu asked when they were finished with the usual check-up and check-in. He was sitting on the base of the Beacon Platform, the rhythmic pulsing of the purple orb behind him giving off a soothing aura… at least to those used to it.

'Anticipation!' Mickey thought-projected, for lack of a mouth to form words. It punctuated the thought with a rather human nod of its head. 'Excitement!'

Hannah's own sectoid, a regular gray, remained motionless and silent behind her.

"Word is we picked up something interesting the other day," he went on to say with a wink. Leaning in closer, he rested his elbows on his knees and grinned. "Come on, Shepard, at least drop a hint!"

Hannah shook her head but smiled. "You'll find out when, and if, the Captain sends the word downstream."

"We've been out in dead space for months on this thousand-year-old wild goose chase." Hu sighed. "At this point, any news is good news."

Hannah knew Hu was far from being the only one to feel a little anxious about their cruise into the unknown. Naseem Modi in Ops brought it up, too when Hannah checked in on her department. The fact was that the Confederation had dedicated explorer ships designed for long term voyages into the unknown – ships built from the ground up to survive and operate near-indefinitely in deep space while mapping out new star systems and even establishing new navigation beacons.

The Kilimanjaro was not that kind of ship; it was a warship.

It was also a warship with one of the most advanced Citadel-type mass effect drives fielded by XCOM giving it exceptional strategic and tactical mobility. Time was of the essence and there was also an ongoing concern about safety. Apparently there was intelligence about the Recipe for Hate and the Dreaming Ethereal being active again and the possibility of a run-in with that godforsaken Temple Ship had everyone on Arcturus on edge. Even the other ethereals were nervous. Still, the job needed doing. The universe couldn't sit still because one sleepy alien psychopath was stretching his legs looking for coffee.

Hackett wanted Dilinaga found and that was what they intended to do.

Scuttlebutt was that they had a new lead… and for once, the ship's rumor-mill was blessed with a grain of truth. Having seen to her more routine duties about the ship and after another mental conference with the Captain, Hannah Shepard headed down to the medical ward.

Captain Aydogan was waiting for her there along with Doctor Ewa Hoyle. Aydogan was an Earther, former Commander of the destroyer DD-3061 Coventry during the skirmishing with the Temple Ship Reckoning Day. Dusky skinned with a salt and pepper beard and a square jaw, he was skilled in a Captain's chair but less so with a psi-amp. Not that anyone expected a Captain to need to engage in many psionic duels but high psi-strength was always a plus in pretty much every occupation. Of course, that was another reason why she was here.

"Captain," Hannah said, sending and receiving a mental greeting.

"Shepard," Aydogan replied, hands clasped behind his back.

"Lieutenant Commander," Doctor Hoyle greeted her with a dip of her head and a friendly psi-ping.

Hannah returned the gesture. "Doctor."

Hoyle, blonde haired and blue eyed, wore a perfectly white second skin under her labcoat. She soon escorted the two officers through the medical ward to the containment and experimentation facility. This was a quarantined section of the medical bay where certain sensitive duties could be performed… safely and discretely.

"As requested, we have done all we can to restore the subject to a serviceable state," Hoyle explained, sharing additional information mentally even as she summarized things with the spoken word. "Damage to the body was substantial due to decompression, to say nothing of the physical trauma and internal injuries. Luckily, that same decompression and exposure to vacuum, combined with being trapped in a cold-spot away from sunlight and direct radiation exposure, means that what we have to work with is incredibly well preserved. Of the four bodies we recovered this one is our best bet. "

"The information we gathered from her ship has already proven invaluable," Aydogan mused, reaching up to scratch his bristly beard. "Shepard. You're certain you feel up to this?"

"Sir, I am rested and as ready as I will ever be," Hannah assured him, and the trio stopped before a raised stasis tube. It was extended out of an alcove and lit up with physiological displays and monitoring reports superimposed over the glass or projected in holographic form into the air. Within the tube floated a female form…

An asari.

"She's been dead a thousand years," Aydogan marveled and chuckled to himself. "Since the First Crusade, almost. Imagine that."

Hannah mentally commanded the second skin around her hand to peel back, unclasping from around her fingers and curling backwards to form a ring around her wrist. The exposed skin crackled with purple energy, a psionic artifact visible only to the naked eye.

"No need to imagine, sir," Hannah said, nodding to Hoyle to open the tube and reveal the asari within. "Reanimation is my specialty; give me a few minutes and I'll find out what she knows."

. . .

"Dreadnought barriers are down!"

"Enemy cruisers angling to acquire us at one-twenty by one-eighty degrees!"

"Keep us out of their cone of fire!"

"Yes, ma'am!"

Despite the yelling, the bridge of the AML Splendid Huntress was no bed of maidenly chaos. Every asari was a veteran of the newly renamed Krogan Rebellions (formerly just the Krogan War) and this was far from their first taste of combat. Captain Imrea sat overlooking the bridge crew around her, eyes up on the master display and letting her subordinates do their jobs.

On the display, the krogan fleet was still visible though in considerable disarray.

Dilinaga had caught the bastards flat-footed trying to refuel and discharge their drive cores. The battle had thus been joined, here, around an unnamed and unmapped gas giant in a nameless system on no navigation chart save their own. Theirs was not a battle likely to ever be recorded in the Citadel archives. Every proud asari huntress in Dilinaga's expedition was an exile in all but name; the new Council writing them off and hoping for them to disappear into the darkness without further hassle or trouble.

For most of the galaxy, living in their safe little bubble, the Krogan War had ended when the salarians and their new turian war dogs unleashed the genophage. It was far from the truth of things. The genophage had been unleashed on Tuchanka and a number of major krogan breeding worlds, that was true, but it could and did not spread to include the krogan fleet… a fleet that was substantial, even now. Years of fighting had followed the use of the genophage as that once titanic krogan fleet gradually whittled down in a bloody war of attrition, hurling itself at Citadel worlds in impotent rage or splintering apart under the leadership of feuding Warlords.

Those un-infected fleets were still deemed a potential threat that needed to be hunted down.

This was where Dilinaga and her so-called "militant faction" in the Grand Asari Republic came in. The Matriarch of the Fleet had been openly critical of handing over the reins of protecting Citadel space to the upstart turians. It was a mistake that would, inevitably, lead to a repeat of the Krogan War another thousand years down the line. Dilinaga argued that it was the responsibility of the asari to lead – a duty handed down to them by the Protheans themselves. The other matriarchs, however, could not see the wisdom in Dilinaga's words.

Officially, she and her followers had been tasked with hunting down the remaining Krogan War Fleets that were attempting to escape Citadel space and rebuild their power base in un-mapped space. Once closed relays had been forced open by the fleeing Warlords and their handful of un-infected females, a tiny few who had not been on the breeding planets of their race. Within generations, they would return to wage war anew. This could not be allowed, so Dilinaga accepted the task to hunt them down to the ends of space.

All her followers knew the truth: it was a sentence of exile.

The asari of the New Galactic Order did not want their militant sisters around, disturbing the peace and harmony won by the Asari-Salarian-Turian Tripartite. Their mothers had fought against the Rachni and daughters against the Krogan. War had become their bread, the madness of battle their butter, and few knew how to make that fit back into the matronly mold of asari society. So off they went to fight, to die, to explore, and to disappear into memory until the day came when they crawled back to the Republic begging forgiveness.

Chief Gunnery Officer Fala Tyrani's fingers moved across the hapatic interface of her battle station. "I'll have a targeting solution in four seconds!"

"The krogan ships are as slow as ever!" Next to her, Kora Barsi manned the helm from her navigation station, maneuvering their cruiser out of the cones of fire of the enemy. "You'll have your shot! Wait for it!"

Fala grinned in anticipation, warming up the Splendid Huntress's quartet of heavy mass accelerator cannons. The nimble battlecruiser had a punch just shy of a dreadnaught, speed to spare, and the maneuverability of a ship half her size. Her armor and shields were thin as the Consorts' undergarments, but that was why they had the best navigators in the fleet.

In the silence of space, the razor-thin streaks of enemy mass accelerator rounds shedding heat and particles like tiny comets punched above and below the Splendid Huntress. The krogan cruisers came into their frontal cone as the Huntress twisted, lining up for just a split second with the calculated ordinance projections. Fala toggled the first spread and the ship around her lurched perceptibly at the abrupt discharge of murderous tungsten and iron.

At one percent of the speed of light, they had seven seconds before possible impact.

That was seven seconds for the krogan navigators to save themselves. A second and a half later, the Splendid Huntress cycled another quarter of rounds, squeezing through bracketing fire from the cruisers and laying down a short-lived barrage of her own. Even in their ponderous spear-tip shaped ships the krogan scattered to avoid the rounds from the Huntress. Time was on their side but predictive gunnery wasn't.

One of the krogan cruisers opted to dodge along just the path Fala had anticipated, intersecting nicely with the Huntress's barrage. The cruel vagaries of combat at these long ranges meant that a ship could have the luxury of seeing its doom coming – the navigator and the officers had all of four or five seconds to contemplate their fate as it sped towards them, inevitable and unstoppable.

The enemy cruiser buckled and splintered like firewood as the Huntress's fire ripped through it and exploded at three thousand kilometers per second. A second enemy cruiser, avoiding the arrows of the Huntress, ran afoul of one of her sister battlecruisers nearby. The tracking devices on the rounds identified their source moments before they plowed into the front of the krogan cruiser. The front of the enemy ship vanished in a flash of nuclear fire and fury, the rear half tumbling like a beheaded fish for seconds before the reactor went critical and incinerated it from the inside out.

"Good kill, Midnight Maiden," Fala congratulated her opposite number on the fleetwide comm.

"Good kill, Splendid Huntress," the other Gunnery Chief replied with a dark chuckle.

"Helm," Captain Imrea ordered, "Take us about to thirty by thirty degrees."

"Aye aye!" Kora replied, repeating the order as given, "Positive thirty by thirty degrees."

That was up and to the right. In space, asari didn't fight using a uniform set of battlefield coordinates. Instead, each ship operated with itself in the center; all movement was with respect to the ship, three hundred and sixty degrees along either the vertical or horizontal axis. Fala could see what the Captain intended, already. They were lining up to put some burning holes in the enemy dreadnought.

IFF quickly lit up the potential target: krogan dreadnought 06-012. It was a Type-Six dreadnought, number twelve of its production run. The name that came up on file was the KWV Big Gun. Fala sniffed in disdain at the name. It wasn't quite up to asari standards as far as names went, but it left little to the imagination and most importantly it was accurate. The Big Gun, like all Type-Six krogan dreads, had a very, very, very large gun with a bit of warship tacked on to the sides of said gun as an after-thought. It was one of the old krogan "planet killers" designed to siege fortified worlds and batter them into submission. This was when the krogan didn't just try and drop an asteroid or de-orbit a small moon.

"Incoming transmission! Filtering!"

"Assssaari!" a krogan roared over the open comm channels normally used for surrender. "We will crush you all! The Supreme Warlords will destroy you! Your worlds will burn! Your maidens will be our slaves! None can-"

The transmission abruptly cut off.

"Warlord Brath," a calm, authoritative voice said then, and every asari on ever ship in the fleet listened. It was the Matriarch! "Your time has come. For your crimes against the Citadel, the sentence is death."

That was all she said, but her words sent a shiver down the spines of her followers. Captain Imrea leaned forward in her chair, ever to draw more enemy blood. Fala glanced quickly at Kora at the helm, in the seat next to her. They nodded to one another, and quickly went to work. Dilinaga had pronounced her sentence. It was up to the Fleet, her Fleet, to execute it.

"Helm! Take us in! We go for the throat!"

. . .

Pain.

Agony.

. . .

Smoke choked the confines of the ruined bridge, dull red emergency lighting and flickering orange hepatic displays highlighting the acidic haze. A screaming siren pierced the dull ache and Fala Tyrani groaned as she slowly came-to. Coughing, blue blood filled her mouth but it didn't quite hurt as much as she'd imagined it would.

Her hands drifted down to the jagged spear of Thessian steel sticking out of her stomach.

Trying to push herself up and out of her seat, Fala realized she was pinned in place, like a flutterfly. Her soft-suit was compromised beyond recovery and the alarm was screaming about loss of containment. Vacuum was getting in and air was going out, a trade-off that didn't bode well for those still inside. Right arm flailing, she managed to nudge Kora next to her. The asari matron's head lolled on her shoulders and broken neck, half her face and most of her forehead a sticky blue mess. Droplets of blue blood and brain matter floated in zero gravity and Fala felt her own stomach lurch.

"Kora," she whispered the name of her friend, the asari she had shared so much of her life with over the last ten cycles. They were even from opposite ends of the same city back home. Now she was gone.

"Bridge! Bridge! This is engineering! Bridge?"

Fala painfully managed to turn, look over her shoulder. The Captain's chair was buried under tons of rubble along with half of the rest of the bridge. Engineering wasn't going to be getting a reply anytime soon.

"Bridge! Be advised we are abandoning ship! Automatic distress beacon is active!" Someone down at engineering was still talking instead of running. "Bridge. We've done all we can down here! You still have maneuvering thrusters and one round in cannon-three. Good luck and may the Goddess watch over you."

"Warning! Warning!" the computer cried, crackly over the intercom. "Atmospheric seals failing!"

Grimacing, Fala relaxed into her seat and re-initiated her console interface. Additional warnings quickly popped up, informing her of registered failures contacting navigation, command, and communications. With the physical connections severed by battle damage, she was free to route some of their functions through her own station. A new display projected, showing the battlefield with the crippled Splendid Huntress in the center.

The krogan fleet was smashed… every last Warlord and dreadnought…

No matter what else happened, they had done it. The last fleet of the Coalition of Warlords was gone, just like the Citadel wanted. Only a few enraged stragglers were fighting on, trying to draw as much blood as possible before the end took them. After the battle, Fala knew, Dilinaga and the rest would make a sweep for escape pods and anyone else with distress transponders and intact hard or soft-suits. What was important now was to make sure the surviving crew of the Huntress had the chance to get away.

Plotting a course away from the fighting, limping and sputtering, she made sure to keep the bow of the ship pointed towards any possible threats. A flash of bright light caught her attention then as a badly damaged asari frigate went up in flame. The explosion was nuclear, too, it had to be. Coughing up another wet trail of blood, Fala managed to identify the source.

A krogan frigate was sweeping through the wounded in the squadron, blasting life pods with her GARDIAN lasers and firing off nuclear flak charges into damaged ships. Fala's jaw clenched and her stomach constricted tight like a knot. Words failed to even describe the kind of scum that had to be on that ship. They were murders and carrion-crows, picking off the wounded, long after the battle had even been lost.

"One round," Fala said to herself, quietly lining up the shot.

With her left hand, she clenched the metal piercing her gut. With her other, she acquired her target.

"One round is all I need, you fuckers."

. . .

Consciousness.

Confusion.

. . .

It took a moment for Fala to realize the screams were her own.

Like in a dream... she found herself floating over her own body, immaterial and otherworldly, bereft of sensation. Yet she could see: she was half-in and half-out of some sort of medical device and there were aliens around her. The aliens weren't krogan or salarian or even turian. They looked like pale asari, or at least two of them did. One of them looked… male? These couldn't be asari, could they?

"Ninety percent extraction," one of them said, and Fala found she could understand its language.

This alien had strange red cloth or hair or something on her head, but more striking than that was the tornado of black and purple energy swirling around her. Tendrils of it were woven through the air into Fala's thrashing, screaming body, leaving it clouded in a mist of purple smoke.

Within that strange cloud, Fala's body bucked and jerked violently, only barely restrained by its wrists, waist, and a set of clamps holding the head in place. Under any other circumstances, Fala would've assumed it was some sort of torture. Her body was howling and screaming in agony, her blue eyes flashing with arcs of purple light, blood trickling out of her nose and ears.

The other aliens just seemed to be standing by and watching. The one in white was monitoring something on some sort of omni-tool and research pad. The other, the darker skinned male-asari, had one hand behind his back and the other stroking some sort of fuzzy growth on his chin. The red-headed one was doing the rest, using… Fala wasn't even sure… it was like Ardat Yakshi Magic or something. How was it she was even having this strange delusion? Had she passed out aboard the Splendid Huntress?

'I got that last shot off… saw that damn ship blow up and… and then…'

It began to truly dawn on her then, looking down at her tortured body.

'Didn't I die?'

"Done," the red-headed alien said, stepping forward to hold Fala's head between her hands. "I'm reconstituting her now."

"Do watch out for feedback intrusions," the alien in white warned. "Psi-reanimation can be tricky."

"This isn't my first time, Doctor." The red-head's eyes opened wide, purple fire wafting out from between her pink lips. "There we go… one more push, and..."

Like being sucked out an airlock, Fala's immaterial form was suddenly sucked downwards and into her body. It all happened in an inexplicable rush, a vortex of purple light and alien power. For a time, the strange sensation was replaced with numbness… only for that numbness to recede and become a distant ache. Long forgotten pains made themselves known like a laundry list of grievances, reminding her that she was still alive.

Still… still alive?

"Ohhh." Forcing her eyes open, Fala Tyrani coughed and sucked in a series of ragged breaths. Yet there was no tangy taste of blood on her tongue, only a strange and sugary sweet aftertaste like tooth-paste. Everything was still a blur.

For just a moment, then, she entertained the notion that it had all been some strange dream. Maybe someone in the fleet had cut her free while searching the Splendid Huntress for survivors. Maybe she had been taken to a dreadnought for treatment. It was the only possibility that made sense. The Goddess had been watching out for her after all…

Then her vision became clearer and she saw the alien, that asari-like face and body in a tight soft-suit, that strange red mane, and Fala knew she wasn't on an asari dreadnought in the Fleet of Dilinaga. Stumbling over her words and her tongue, Fala needed a few practice slurs to finally remember her voice and how to speak. Her body felt like it was putty, like it had been stretched and warped and bent until it almost lost shape.

"Fala Tyrani," the alien said, leaning a little closer. "Can you understand me, Fala?"

"Who…?" Yet, somehow, she also knew. She knew this alien's name. "Hannah. Shepard."

The alien leaned back again, as if to survey her handiwork.

"Lieutenant Commander Hannah Shepard," the alien said, stern and commanding, like an older matron unused to being questioned. "I have reanimated you, Fala, so that you may lead us to the lost fleet of your matriarch."

"R-re… re-animated…?" Fala squinted her eyes. Her vision was fading in and out, her body feeling weak and disoriented. The clasps holding her head in place loosened and released, allowing her to shake her head and flex her neck. "I don't understand… am I… alive?"

"Alive?" Hannah inquired and shook her head in response. "No. You are animated, not alive. You can only exist as long as I will you to exist."

"Only as long as…?" Fala never finished her sentence. Keeping quiet, she could feel it: a pressure in her mind and a connection, like a melding, but different. It was a tether... a tether of the mind connecting her to this Hannah Shepard. By the Goddess. What were these aliens? Were they even aliens or… or some sort of mutant asari space monsters?

"Mutant Asari Space Monsters?" Hannah asked, blatantly reading her mind. "You could call us that, I suppose. It sounds like a cartoon my Johnny used to watch when he was younger."

Johnny. John. John Shepard. A child. Offspring. Male. My son. A newborn in my arms, small and vulnerable and precious. Then a young man, smart and capable. Pride. Love. A matron's feelings. Fala felt faint at the onslaught of them.

How did she knew these things?

How could she feel these things?

"As I said, you exist as an extension of my will," Hannah explained, again, with the mind reading. "To a degree, our connection runs both ways."

"Am I your slave?" Fala hissed, feeling herself claw back to the surface. Even if she had died, even if she was dead, she was still a warrior and huntress of the Dilinaga the Great. No krogan, no batarian, no warlord or monster could hold her in thrall!

"Can you exist without me?" Hannah asked, simply.

"Can I?" Fala asked, but already knew somehow, already understood. The answer was no, but… there was something else, too.

"To answer your question: you aren't a slave," Hannah went on to explain, crossing her arms over her chest. "I won't force you to obey me... but at the same time, you can't exist without someone or something continuously animating your body. Right now, that's me." She smirked, or at least it was a smirk by asari standards. "Aren't you curious what happened to your comrades after that battle? To your matriarch? To Dilinaga?"

"…a little," Fala admitted. She narrowed her eyes at the alien… the human, though that term didn't mean much yet. "But what do you want with them? You aren't with the Citadel?"

Hannah answered the question with an observation. "It was my impression you weren't very fond of the Citadel and the asari back home."

"What do you think? They exiled us! Sent us out to die!" Fala snapped, bearing her teeth in a snarl. "We bled for them! Died for them! Sacrificed everything for them!"

The rage was so easy to give vent to, the frustration and anger and hurt. Maybe death had freed her of a few inhibitions? Either way, it just felt good to be so candid with her feelings for once. Back on the ship, the officers were all supposed to keep their personal enmity towards the Citadel in check for the good of the crew. Everyone was supposed to focus on the mission, first and foremost, but that didn't make the simmering anger go away. Not by a long shot.

"Damn the Citadel," Fala hissed. "How long has it even been? Did they send no one to find us?"

"Over a thousand cycles have passed since you left asari space," the bristly male human said, sounding fascinated by what was going on before his eyes. "We found you following the trail of an archaeologist who was likewise fascinated with Dilinaga and the lost fleet. You should know, though: we are not with the Citadel."

"You're not?"

Hannah leaned in closer again, brushing a lock of red hair away from her right eye.

"You see," she explained, smiling amiably, "the reason we're looking for your fleet, for the lost colony of Dilinaga, is to see if you want to join us."