Introduction to "The age of Defiance"

January 25th, 2335 (Imperial Calendar)

The orbital spire rocked slightly as the mag clamps were disengaged and the space elevator began its descent. Such a marvel of Imperial engineering this thing, in one go it could ship an entire three legions worth of troopers and their equipment toward awaiting craft in a little under an hour, a marvel indeed. Billions of them awaited below at four dozen elevators just like this one, grown, built, and made into the thing they would be for the rest of their lives. Imperial clones were not recruited, they were bred as the apex warriors in this galaxy and the next. Tools to be used by the Generals and Admirals in charge of them who fleets, armies, and battle groups across the stars. On a hundred worlds these men, no these tools would be used to the best of their ability in pursuing his goals and the objectives he set out.

Three years, three long years he had waited for this army to mature and become what he needed of them. Trillions of credits had been spent, with millions of moving parts needed to obtain the genetic material, equipment, and manpower but in the end, it had been done. And now he would personally see the tools of his empire, the men bred for war. This was nothing new of course, since the beginning of the empire he had used clones in place of regular humans due to the fact they were superior in every way. No genetic deviation, built-in immunity to every disease imaginable, made from the DNA level to be the best of the best and that is what they were.

One hundred and three worlds, that was how many his armies currently faced battle on against no less than five different alien empires. The Uish and their cities of steel had held out till the last dozen planets they currently occupied, it was only a matter of weeks for their kind to last. The T45s, a machine race hell-bent on eradicating all organics, was a much larger threat and had swallowed billions of Auxilia in their great wars of attrition. Those poor bastards the auxilia, for three years they had been the ones to hold the line while his empire grew and built the tools it required to begin their conquest anew. Then there was the Bakan, an Avian race to the galactic northeast that had been encountered for the first time by his expeditionary fleet. They were an odd one, half avian, half-machine, they were a hive mind but not at the same time with blue cords of synthetic flesh molded into their former feathered bodies. A real nasty one that Imperial intel still didn't understand just what had happened other than the possibility of a machine uprising.

Then there was the mind, that's it, just the mind, a race of insectoids whose only goal in life was the consumption of all organic matter in the name of its mind. A disgusting alien race, they had already killed off a single Imperial world before HIGH COM had dispatched a fleet and dealt with their transgressions. After this show of force they had sued for peace but how long it would last was still up for debate. No alien race in the history of the empire had been at peace for too long, for war was all they knew from the beginning of time till the end of it.

Moving on his mind turned toward the darker side of things, of a war the empire had won fairly against a lesser foe years ago. The Citadel council, its members being the councilors themselves had fled without a trace after the capture of the citadel and had become a government in exile. Ever since Imperial security had been hot for any lead that could have led to their whereabouts and had found nothing for once. Now they led a rebellion that had coined the name "The army of freedom." Freedom, as if they deserved it, the reprehensible beings. The AOF were little more than pirates and gangs of terrorists in his eyes who raided Imperial shipping and conducted attacks on far outworlds with the goal of "freeing" them from Imperial tyranny. If only they knew, if only they knew why he had conquered their galaxy, why he needed the materials and arms of an entire galaxy to fend off a threat to all life as they knew it. The last enemy, and the most hated one at that, responsible for the deaths of entire worlds, they were to be feared by every Imperial citizen for they were the thing in the night. The darkness which would shroud their worlds, quite literally and end all civilization as they knew it.

"The keepers of the Shroud."

Just the name sent pangs of fear into his mind, a conglomeration of a hundred empires, their species enslaved by beings not from this space or even this dimension but rather a hellscape that he couldn't come close to understanding. Even Imperial intel were baffled by it all, the sheer weight of their being a hell dimension made of emotions and things. Those "things" being what researchers had come to call demons. Literal demons, beings of emotion and raw power that needed pain and misery to become one with realspace. This was why the keepers of the shroud were so dangerous, as when they came upon a world mass slaughter would commence to act as a conduit for this other side. The demons would then come, in the hundreds, they would leave the shroud and commence an all slaughter of every living thing possible. A dozen Imperial worlds had fallen to these hellish things, billions upon billions of people slashed and eaten by things which should never have entered this space.

If the other wars were bad then this, this was the worst of it all. An army to hold back hell itself, tens of thousands of star destroyers, close to fifty billion men under arms and it was barely enough to hold back the psionic armies of hell itself. The galactic south had been set ablaze by this war as planets became nothing but shell craters and burned-out cities with Imperials and the forces of the shroud dishing it out in open combat. One hundred empires worth of men and material would do that, their ships, their soldiers, were now nothing but plaything's to the shroud as they smashed themselves upon the imperial lines. They would die gleefully for the chance to get a glimpse upon their god dimension, before they succumbed to their essence being ripped away and eaten by hell itself.

The latest developments from the Empire had only added more worry to the old man, reports of Psionics within imperial society. Of children born with mind-altering powers, threats, all of them, a threat to every man, woman, and child upon those planets. He would never publically acknowledge it but the Imperial security bureau had been tasked with hunting down these persons and ending them beforehand.

"Docking in thirty seconds, please stand back away from the doors."

For an elevator meant to move armies, his small party looked microscopic against the mile-wide platform. The Emperor, Commander Traken, and a company of the Emperor's legion were waiting for the elevator to finish its landing sequence as the doors opened and the world came into view. With a wave of humidity, the air condition and orbit capable space elevator gave way to the temperature of this world.

A part of three legions awaited them, prepped and ready for departure the clones stood in perfect legion formation at attention as the Emperor began to descend the steps toward the Governor of this world.

"Governor, it has been too long."

334th Adri Prime Auxilia, January 30th 2332

Former Uish world of Yun.

Artillery impacted somewhere close as the bombardment entered its twenty-fifth hour. A continuous barrage of five thousand guns up and down the entire front would act as the preparatory attack, hopefully softening up the machines before the Imperial army began its assault. Lieutenant Garrus Vakarian sighed as another skyscraper toppled to the ground a mile away, its cloud reaching spires taking a full minute to finally impact the ground with a monstrous explosion. Such was the life in the Auxilia, nothing new to report, nothing new to see, just another planet where he would lay down the laws of the empire and show them the error of their ways. If only Niner were here, the poor bastard. Running his hand along the clone pauldrons on either side of his armor brought back the memories of his old officer.

"Old." He thought.

"He wasn't even fifteen yet I was calling him sir."

A year and twelve days, that's how long it had been since he;d lost his friend to a group of four T45 bots. They'd been on a recon patrol with their platoon, deep behind the machine lines they were to conduct a long-range recon patrol of an old Uish village that had recently been taken over by the T45s. Crazy to think this planet held three different empires all fighting over the same scrap of dirt were his thoughts, but here they were, Imperials,T45, and the Uish. A mile out they could see what was left of the villagers, their purple skin set them apart from their green surroundings as they noted what the T45s had done with the bodies.

"Monsters, fucking monsters all of them."

The bodies had been compiled into a field beside the village, thrown on top of each other with no regard for their former lives; the humanoid robots were busy searching the village for survivors when the Imperial heard a scream from within. As one the bots began moving toward the sound, the red beams on their head transfixed on where it had come from they moved to where it had come from. A door was flung open and an Uish child was seen running toward the pile of bodies, crying in its alien tongue for its mother as it ran with every ounce of strength it could. Garrus had his sight centered on it from here, he could take the shot so that the child didn't have to suffer what came next but Niner pushed the rifle down and shook his head before pointing to the sky. Looking up Garrus could see the reason for Niner's silence as two T45 dropships began lazily circling the village before coming in for a landing. Their platoon had the weaponry to take on such a threat, but out here, deep behind enemy lines, to alert them now would be a death sentence.

So Garrus looked away as he heard the first screams of the child, a mile away he could hear it all as the machines did what they do best and eviscerated the poor thing. Not a sound could be heard afterward, the robots didn't speak, they never did. Only through actions were their intentions made clear as one bot marched up to the bodies and used a flame type weapon to burn them to ash. This is what they did, collect bodies burn, collect bodies burn, every organic being to enter their realm would suffer the same fate as the last, death. And they were to hold the line on a former Uish world, to stop the T45s advance here and now so that a dozen Imperial worlds may prepare for their coming. In the beginning, back when he had been running with Shepard he had thought the imperial navy was the most powerful force in all of the universe. An unbeatable machine capable of making the galaxy spin to its tune.

How he had been wrong, so, so, wrong.

The first time he had seen a ship break orbit and crash to the earth he'd been mesmerized. How something so massive, so full of power and killing potential could just, fall, was just….. He didn't have the words, and the only way he could describe it was a feeling of despair. He remembered its name plastered on the side of the hull in black blocky letters, INV SORROW was emblazoned on its side as it crashed, sending up a mushroom cloud so large it blocked the sun. That fate would be the same across every ship, every fleet, and every army that stood in the way of these machines, if they did not stop them here and now. This was the planet, a key to an entire sector of forge worlds responsible for building the empire's latest weapons.

"Control this is Skav six, eyes on four fives in the village, the current population is destroyed how copy over."

"Rog Skav six, the rain is coming, bunker down and await orders over."

So they waited, the rain in this conversation was not the wet droplets of moisture most culture associated with the word but something much, much worse. It was a rain of steel and plasma, a rain meant to destroy not grow, a rain meant to end life as they knew it. Garrus clutched his now standard issue E-11 as the first shells streaked overhead and impacted the village. Four minutes of shelling rendered the village mute, all traces of its once-thriving people gone and in its place the shattered remnants of a once prosperous people. This was how you fought the 45s, no survivors, every scrap of their kind burned. On the return trip the platoon had followed a different route than before, so that the enemy did not spring in an ambush on the way back they kept low and out of the way, taking cover as soon as 45's were sighted. They were two miles away from their trench work when it started, so close yet so far, the trap was sprung.

It started with the lead member stepping on a bear trap, the plasma claws of the device cutting off both of his legs as he went down screaming in pain, and then they came. 45's in the melee configuration, close to a hundred of the robotic monstrosities sprinting out of the woods on either side of the platoon. In the place of a plasma rifle they had two sets of foot-long glowing claws capable of tearing a man in too within seconds, and they did so gladly.

"Ambush!"

Red fire met the attackers, sending two dozen down in the first minute but they kept coming. Having closed the distance they hacked away at the platoon with the cold calculated fury only a machine could have, there were pleas of mercy, screams of help, all for naught as the machines did their work. Men fought and died around him in the ensuing melee, back to back with Niner Garrus blasted away at anything that dared to get too close.

"Hold the line, hold the fucking lin-"

The weight as his back was suddenly taken away as a gurgling sound replaced the Lieutenants voice on the radio. Turning Garrus witnessed the unthinkable as one of the 45's ripped the LTs torso from his legs and threw the body to the ground, as if finished with its target the red glowing eyes it held focused on Garrus as they brought up its still dripping claws. He would have none of it, with a scream of Defiance Garrus switched his E-11 to full auto and fired off close to fifty rounds in the span of theory seconds into the mechanical monstrosity. Under the withering fire, the machine broke apart before his eyes as it died, broken and malformed due to the sheer amount of thermal energy having impacted its body. Garrus rushed to the Lts side as the rest of their forty man platoon took care of the rest, finishing off the survivors with well-placed fire.

His legs gone, the LT was busy fiddling with his Omni tool, inputting commands and speaking codes Garrus was at his side as he spoke his last words.

"Garrus, oh, I'm dying Garrus, thirteen, thirteen campings and this is how I go, Hah."

Hitting the helmet switch, Garuus pulled off the clone's helmet as his eyes met those of his dying friend. Blood was pulling on the sides of his mouth and his eyes held back tears as he looked toward his legs and then back to Garrus.

"Take this, Take it Garrus."

In Niners hand was a rank plaque, his rank plaque he had just torn off his armor.

"Do the three thirty-fourth and the Empire proud my friend, its time, its time I go meet my brothers again…."

His eyes took a glassy look as he spoke, the light in them diminishing before his hands fell away. It took five minutes for Imperial LAATs to be on scene and collect the platoon, or what was left of it. The crews were all regular humans, enlistees from all manner of Imperial worlds. They perked their noses at the aliens among them wearing Imperial uniforms and carrying Imperial weapons in their arrogance. Some even went so far as to make a snide remark until they saw the lone turian carrying a clone officer in his arms with a Lieutenant rank plack firmly on his breast.

That had all been in another world at another time, a different time. Now he was the platoon leader, a commander of forty men who called him sir. He had big shoes to fill with the death of Niner and he had tried his hardest to fill them. The clock ticked down to zero hour as the last shell impacted the front, it was time. Rising from his hiding place in the trench the turian officer activated his built-in loudspeaker and began screaming orders to the frightened auxilia around him.

"Alright, you fucks! Over the top! Over the top! Today we march for the Empire!"

It was going to be another long, blood-filled day.

Coruscant 975th Imperial Army Regiments, Former Uish world of Un.

"Over the top! Over the top!"

Across the mile-long front, the regiment took hold of this world's dirt and began their march toward the machine lines. Beams of green and blue arched out of the destroyed alien city to their front but they moved on. An AT-AT in the middle of firing off its last barrage was suddenly cut in half by a lance of yellow energy but they moved on. Fighters and bombers were cut from the sky, like flaming birds they fell to the earth among the thousands of Imperials but they moved on. Medics went to the wounded as they cried out amongst the sounds of war while the army moved on. This was the way of war when you fought machines, having to sacrifice your compassion, caring in the faces of such monsters was a requirement.

Captain Ashley Williams understood it all now, after years of service to the empire she understood why they had done the things they had done. Why they had to break her before she could reach her true potential. WHy they had to break her and mold her into the officer they needed in the wars to come. She had seen machines that tore men to pieces, avian-like creatures covered in wires and tubing that reminded her of husk back home. But worst of all, worst of all had been her third deployment to a southern galactic world that had suddenly gone dark. Every Time she thought of that day, her mind went riling sith dear, adrenaline glands pumping overtime as her flight or fight response kicked in. It had been that day she truly embraced the empire, and thanked it for the darkness it held at bay, the enemies in the night. Her new regiment, the Coruscant nine seventy-fifth had been deployed to an outer rim world alongside three dozen others in response to an Imperial naval beacon going offline, the last words of its users have been a warning about an encroaching darkness.

They had not understood it, none of them had as HIGHCOM picked the message apart for everything it had. Having replayed it again and again, picked through it components with the finest software engineers the ISB could afford, they had decided on military action. Three clone legions, the backbone of the Imperial war machine would follow eleven regular human regiments that had recently been activated on coruscant. She'd been a lieutenant then, still reeling from the action she had committed upon her induction to the empire, her first days in its service were a blur. Equipment issue, regiment issue, platoon, and company level leadership meetings on when, where, how, and why they were going. All a blur to the former alliance NCO stuck within the hierarchy of newly inducted officers. Her regiments were made up of all volunteers, those ready and able to enlist as soon as possible, and ready and able to spread the empire to the stars. Such stars they had in their eyes, virgins of war all of them, they had not understood what they'd enlisted themselves into.

She understood war, from the battle of Elysium to the hunt for Saren she thought she had understood war. How wrong she had been, oh how highly she had thought of herself as something of a veteran among the flock of newbies fresh off the homeworld. Her first meeting with an Army NCO had proved her wrong. She had attempted to communicate with the veteran, trade a few stories of her great feats of combating an Asari matriarch, or when she had fought a Kroagn one on one. The Veteran had only given her a stare as she smiled while telling her story, a cold, thoughtless stare with eyes that looked like they saw right through her. As she finished with the battle for the Citadel the veteran had nodded, with a tap of his worn and scarred armor he withdrew a small satchel that had been hidden within his jacket underneath and laid it out on the table.

"Look at that."

He had said.

"Pour it out, and you'll know what I have done."

She had thought him crazy at first, odd, but when she poured the bag of clinking metal out she understood why he had that look, why he looked at her the way he did. Why he screamed himself to sleep every night. He'd had that same look as their landing ships entered the planet's atmosphere, he;d been sitting right across from her listening to the radio as the pathfinder teams checked in.

"Whiskey one to COC, landing two alpha checking in were five by five."

"Rog."

"Whiskey two to COC, odd reading but other than that we are five by five."

"Rog."

…

…..

….

"Whiskey three COC here, status?"

…..

….

….

"Whiskey three status?"

It was a regiment wide net, all key leaders were currently keyed in as control tried to find whiskey three. Ash kept her eyes on the veteran as he started to hyperventilate.

"Whiskey three, what are you-"

"We."

Something else had just spoken on the net, something that sounded human but off at the same time. Its voice was as smooth as velvet while also the jaggedness of obsidian, what the hell was that?

"Whiskey three say again?"

"Are."

It sounded like more than one now, like a dozen overlapping voices all saying the same thing.

"Whiskey three what the hell is going on down there?"

Whiskey three had been the pathfinder team for her regiment, a hundred men sent ahead in drop pods to secure the LZ for the regiment to land. All veterans taken from other units who had fought in a dozen campaigns, they were the best scouts the normal side of the army could ask for.

"COMING!"

"Scrub channels, all units scrub channels we have a breach!"

Ash watched as the Veteran stood in the lander and slammed into the bulkhead, his face as white as a ghost, he began to scream.

"No! No they're here, they're here! Don't you understand you fools!"

He grabbed the closest man still latched to his seat, his fingers digging into the soldier uniform painfully as he screamed into his face.

"We are all going to die, not again, not again! I will not face the shroud again!"

Then her hell began, and she understood why the empire acted the way it did. Why is was so callous, why it places little care on alien life. It only made her more determined, more faithful to the nation of people who were willing to go above and beyond to do their duty.

It was why she was now crossing the mud-covered fields of this world surrounded by close to twenty thousand people as they advanced upon their enemy. She was here to fight, in the empire's name she would show these aliens the mistake of their ways.

Rannoch, the rings of Iron.

She liked watching the skies at night, watching the starships as they left the drydock, and headed off to the relay or the new "hyperlanes." Every night she would come out onto the roof of her apartment block and watch the lights of a thousands ships enter or leave the planet's atmosphere. Imperial, Quarian, it didn't matter to her as she just watched the sleek or bulk vessels burn through the atmosphere in amazing light shows. Right now here eyes were caught up in watching a star destroyer as it descended from the heavens, its gray hull marked seamlessly cutting through the clouds before it came to a stop a kilometer above her city. Amazing pieces of technology, those things were, with all the guns, crew complement, and the overall design, just awe-inspiring to her inner engineer.

But there was always a darker side to things, a picture she didn't want to remember and memories long thought shut away. Shepard carrying a disfigured Liara, Wrex carrying a crying Ashley, the screams, the horrors, all of it hit her every time she looked upon the vessels of the Imperial navy. She would not, could not ever forget those days of darkness and horror as the galaxy she knew was toppled and replaced with the new status quo.

The Empire, a government who while cruel instituted order and security in the formally lawless galaxy. Gone were the days of CItadel proclamations which only assisted the few and the mighty. Gone were the days of a lawless Terminus rife with pirates, slavers, and genocidal gangs. Gone were the governments of her galaxy, the Turian Hierarchy, the Batarian Hegemony, the Systems Alliance and so on. Desotyed, burned down, and replaced with far larger. The Empire, she could see its flag from here as it flew in the breeze, the blood-red background with a black and white cogwheel in the center. Three years ago she would have hated that flag, despised it for everything it had done to her friends, her allies, and maybe if she had been given a chance, her lover. Oh Shepard, she never did find out what had happened to him, only that he had been confirmed KIA by the Imperial army. All her friends were gone, missing in actions or deployed to long-forgotten battlefields. In the army, navy, or in Garrus's case the Auxilia. He would write sometimes, share his experiences in this other galaxy as he fought some of the worst things she had ever heard been described. Tentacled monsters, purple colored demons, and raving swarms of bugs that would eat a regiment to the bone, all of it terrified her and she had chased down Saren for spirits sake!

But those wars were far away, on their side, the Imperial side of the two galaxies. She hadn't believed the clone back then when he had spoken of an empire across a thousand worlds. She couldn't believe such a raving mad man, and had guessed it to be propaganda or lies given to him by some regime or another. But when she had seen a star map, a real map taken from an Imperial star destroyer, she knew, and she was terrified. Imperial space, now including her home galaxy, was colored a dark shade of red. Covering half of its home galaxy it was hard to see how they could be under any threat outside powers. It wasn't until the map had changed, and showcased a dozen other powers of different colors that she understood the Empire and its warlike nature. At every border, at every world even close to nonimperial space, there was nothing but war. Tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of soldiers, thousands upon thousands of starships, and the military might of three trillion people had barely been enough to hold back the tide of threats.

The auxilia had been a fresh breath of air to these embattled worlds, a hundred billions souls shipped across the entryway to two galaxies, and thrust into the fires of war. So many had died, so very many that it was hard to comprehend how any of them were still alive but carry on they did. She was just glad the Quarian people didn't have to pay like some of the other races had been required too. In blood, the Turians, Batarians, Salarians, and Asari funneled millions from their worlds aboard Imperial warships and shipped them to battlefronts across the galaxy. Some called them cannon fodder, bodies to be piled up to hold the line before real Imperial forces, the clone legions or the army came in and won the day. Garrus described it as worse than the Turian military but less rules at the same time, you just survived day by day, not thinking of the next.

No her people's price to pay their new masters was something that needed a more delicate hand, and a smarter brain to fulfill. Looking up to the stars she could see the ring of Iron as its shadow blacked out the stars with its might, how its form went from one horizon to the next with its sheer size. She would never have thought something so massive could be constructed, but here it was, orbiting her homeworld, and reminding her every day what her people's price had been for their salvation.

A "mega shipyard" a gargantuan piece of engineering meant to build entire fleets and armadas in record time by using the population of an entire planet as nothing more than dock workers. Her people were the best engineers in the galaxy, with eyesight and brainpower to tackle the toughest problems given to them. So they were put to use in what they do best, building and maintaining the Imperial fleet as it strode onward toward the stars. Twenty-three million Quarians, beside another twenty billion whose sole purpose in life was the construction of star destroyers and other weapons of war. Three years ago she would have never guessed she would work for the empire and worn an Imperial uniform with pride but here she was, Tali Zorah Vas Rannoch Nar Rayya, head engineer for the INV Daedalus. She had to go to work in eight hours, getting off the roof she quietly made her way to her apartment block and resigned herself to sleep. Tomorrow was going to be a long day.

Tuchanka.

"God damn Imperials, I keep telling them to buzz off but they just keep coming!"

Warlord Urdnot Wrex was getting annoyed with their constant patrols, the ever-present gunships which followed him every waking minute of the day. Couldn't they tell he didn't need them? He hadn't needed them when he had landed upon this rock and declared himself warlord! He hadn't needed them when he had led the armies of the Krogan people against those clans who dared stand in his way of progress! And he sure as hell didn't need them now as he ascended the steps of his throne and crowned himself the leader of the Krogan people.

For three years he had fought and bled for this position, for three years he had destroyed those which had almost driven his people to extinction with their endless wars and constant bickering. No more he thought as he sat upon his throng of stone. No more would his people commit self suicide on this radioactive ball of ash and craters.

"Lord Wrex, an Imperial delegation has landed on the pad and is requesting an audience. They say it's important."

It had to be their governor, of course, a human the empire had sent to supposedly "rule" this world. The only reason this human continued to breathe was due to the fact he would never set foot upon this world, looking to the heavens Wrex could pick out the stat fort from here as it orbited his world. That was how they did it, how they spread the fake message of rule. This governor ruled nothing more than that metal box, down here, in the first and trenches, every krogan knew exactly who was in charge.

"Let the muppets in, we shall not keep them waiting."

Ten minutes later the Imperial delegation arrived with the small "governor" leading the party. An entire platoon of troopers marched with him, their armor painted the sand color of Tuchanka they blended in with their rock surroundings as they followed this poor example of leadership.

Governor Lanton was a small man, a perfect student of political science he had entered politics years ago and rose through the ranks to become a world governor. What world hadn't been determined until nine months ago when he received the email regarding his posting. But he could play the game of politics well, like a general on a great battlefield; this seemingly unimportant human could wager entire fleets and armies behind him if he needed too, and that was how he was dangerous. The clones were an example of this danger, an entire legion of the test tube soldiers inhabited that star fort just for his protection, a little overkill but Wrex guessed he needed it out here.

"Warlord Urdnot Wrex!"

Wrex hated his voice, too nasal in his opinion.

"I bring news from the homeworld, from the Emperor himself."

That piqued his attention, earning a lock-on of both eyes towards the now sweating human staring into his own.

"Imperial scientists have cracked the Genophage, and a captured Salarian scientist helped us in diluting its effects on your people."

Holy shit, that was, that the best news he could have ever hoped to have received. By the gods, this would mean the rebirth of his people, a rise to power unseen since the rebellions and, the governor was still watching, a "but" on his lips.

"You require something in return for the rebirth of my people, spit it out, human."

The little man, and his little army of toy soldiers. He knew something bad was coming, some new law or rule that would beset his people, he could see it in the glimmer of the little man's eye as he looked around the chamber toward the hundreds of Krogan watching. Mothers, fathers, warriors all who had stood the test of time and continued their way of life as they crossed the stars. Wrex could name every single one, from former Klan leaders down to their sons and daughters, generations worth of royalty now looked upon him to guide and nurture their species in these dark days. He would not fail them.

"The Empire, in all its need, needs shock troops on battlefields where the conditions are, do I say, inhospitable."

No, no he would not dare, he would, no the empire was not that stupid. Never again had been his call, never again would the Krogan people serve a master from beyond the homeworld. But looking to the sky, and seeing that grey brock orbiting his world, he knew what would become of any rebellion. Once before, the Citadel council had come to his world asking for soldiers and the Krogan people had obliged. They had paid for this ruse, dearly as they fought the Rachni and finished off the murderous race of bugs. This victory earned them nothing, but fear, hatred, and suffering in the form of the Genophage.

He couldn't do it again, he couldn't damn his people again he just….. The cure. Looking at the mothers before him he could see their pain, from countless generations of Krogan coming out as stillborn. Piles of bodies as far as the eye could see, Krogan children, nothing but lumps of flesh piled atop one another. He knew his choice, the hardest he would make in the last three years, ever since he had abandoned his friend, ever since he had abandoned Shepard… Every waking moment for the rest of his life he would regret leaving him to die in that village, every dream was a nightmare, every moment of good squashed by the bad.

But that was over now, the future belonged to those that took life by the reigns and did good by their people. Shepard was gone, nothing but dust in the solar winds, this was here and now and he would not die like the rest. He would lead his people to greatness, beside the empire be damned.

"How many troops do you require?"

Lazarus station, Unknown location.

"Holy shit he's waking up! Go get Miranda hurry!"

Hot, his veines felt like magma, every breath he took was like a plastic bag being shoved down his throat and his eyes, oh god his eyes! He could see a blinding light, a surgical light to be exact, currently burning out his corneas as he began hearing the sounds from all around him hit his ears.

"Get the sedative, Wilson, get this shit under control!"

Australian? A female Australian voice entered now, and was yelling at the blad tech currently sweating bullets. She appeared overhead, white skin, black hair, an almost perfectly shaped face that was now contorted in anger.

"Commander, can you hear me! Commander you need to calm down, right fucking now or you will not survive. Small breaths, in and out, Wilson, how is the sedative!"

"Applying now!"

Then it was all black.