Once again, I must warn of some relatively heavy content in this chapter. Again, nothing particularly graphic, but if you're sensitive to this kind of thing you've been warned.

September 5, 2089

In an empty red dwarf system at the edge of batarian space, a small fleet of human ships emerged. At first glance, it might not appear to be a war fleet, as the majority of its ships are of a civilian model. The centerpiece of the fleet is two enormous human super heavy freighters. The ships themselves are essentially a big flattened hockey puck with engines at the back, with a nearly kilometer long metal framework jutting out from the center of the puck. Normally, that framework would've been loaded with thousands of standard cargo containers, transporting the products of Earth and her colonies throughout human space in bulk.

For this mission, however, the two ships have each been fitted with a pair of enormous pressurized habitat modules, capable of carrying many thousands of people each. Accompanying these massive transports are over a hundred batarian ships of various makes and models. Most are of a civilian model, but a collection of commandeered military ships is also present, lead by a certain light cruiser taken as a prize ship early in the war.

Escorting this fleet are fifty interceptor class vessels. Twenty-five of them are of the Myeongnyang class, the line of ships made a household name by their now famous sister Samar who could be counted amongst the twenty-five Myeongnyang ships present. The other twenty-five interceptors are of the older Lightning class, possessing superior space firepower, but lacking the Myeongnyang's agility within a planetary atmosphere.

This collection of ships has reached the end of a months long journey. It began at a relay system just outside of the boarder between batarian space and the unsettled Skyllian Verge. Were they a normal convoy of ships, they would have taken the next relay in the chain and found themselves in Hegemony space within a few hours at most. However, the other side of that relay is heavily guarded, just like all of the border relays in Hegemony space. To attempt their journey through a relay would be suicide. So, they took the long way around.

Using conventional FTL, and a lot of disposable extra fuel tanks, the fleet made it's long trip through the gap between Hegemony space and the Verge. Their intel on batarian space, scavenged from captured batarian nav computers, outdated Council records, and the rare public release from the Hegemony, was spotty to say the least. The frontier worlds of the Hegemony were a well mapped section, but information on the core colonies of the Hegemony and Khar'shan itself was carefully controlled by the Hegemony government. Even when the batarians had been part of Council space they had jealously guarded the information on their territory.

However, the information the fleet did have would serve their needs well enough. An attack on the core worlds of the Hegemony would be suicide. While damaging the batarian economy would help the war effort, it was a secondary objective. The real objective of the mission is far more basic: people. Specifically slaves. The overall operational goal is simple: rescue as many educated, skilled slaves as possible, steal anything useful (and destroy what can't be stolen), and have the various disparate elements of the fleet steadily make their way through the Hegemony's frontier to a predetermined rendezvous point. Once the fleet has regrouped, it will break out of batarian space through a "back door" relay into the terminus systems. From there they make their way home, hopefully laden with highly qualified (and grateful) slaves who can contribute to the war effort. It was all made possible thanks to the generous (and highly secret) contribution of the Quarians, who had shown humanity all of the various trails their more primitive ships left behind and how to mask them.

With the arrival to the predetermined entry point into Hegemony space, the core fleet moves along its planned route, with small detachments breaking off and making their way towards secondary objectives.

Operation: SPARTACUS could finally begin.

September 7, 2089

The slave awoke next to the lightly snoring form of her master. She exited the bed, and began her usual routine. Unlike most of her past masters her current master didn't eat breakfast, so she need only put a kettle of tea on. Her latest master was a creature of habit. Her stirring would've woken him, like it always did, and by the time he made his way into the kitchen the tea would be done, like it always was.

With the tea on, the slave made her way out the door and headed down the very small streets of the colony-dome. She walked with a slight limp. The same limp she had been walking with for five hundred years. A limp caused by an injury sustained from her capture so very, very long ago.

In that time she had had many masters of varying degrees of quality. Her current master was one of the better ones, largely leaving her to her own devices and not feeling any particular inclination towards violence. Her previous master had been a property broker trying to sell the ownership of the dome-colony. He had included her with the deed to the colony to "sweeten the deal", as it were.

In the early years of her captivity, she'd thought about ending things. On her own terms. The implant made things difficult, but there were ways around its influence. Provided you were determined enough. One night, she'd come close. She'd circumvented the implant, and all she'd had to do was find the will.

But it hadn't been there.

Ironically, as time wore on, the prospect of it became more and more distasteful. To have endured this hell for so very, very long only for it to end like that? It would be a terrible waste of her own perseverance.

That didn't make it any less hard. Routine was what kept her sane, what gave her some control over her life. Which was why when she heard the raid alarm she briefly considered ignoring it and going about her day. Raids were a fact of life outside of the core worlds in Hegemony space.

If it wasn't a rival clan, it was pirates, or some terminus warlord coming back from his adventures to found a new clan and carve out a fiefdom in the homeland. So long as official Hegemony territory was left alone and the violence was restricted to the clans' private forces and not the military, the Hegemony allowed such behavior. Raiding was, after all, an integral part of batarian culture.

The slave had been taken by one of her worst masters in a pirate raid, and her desire to not have that fate inflicted on her once again finally overrode her desire to make lunch, and so she made for her master's home and the shelter there.

Senior Chief Ranger Amancio Paulo led his ranger team to its objectives. Overhead, he could see through the dome the distant light of the pair of interceptors the rangers had came in as they destroyed the last of the meagre orbital defenders. The ranger teams had two objectives in this raid: disable the dome's industrial and mining equipment, and rescue high-value slaves for the war effort.

The second half was an objective that didn't sit well with Amancio. It didn't sit well with any ranger that remembered his oath. To rescue some and leave others on the basis of their value to the war effort made the most logical sense, but that didn't mean he didn't still feel like garbage doing it. If the goal was to win the war at any cost, then they'd be better off just cracking the dome open with a k-bomb and killing everyone inside. If that was over the line, then why wasn't condemning people to a lifetime of slavery because they weren't useful enough to be rescued over the line? It was a question that bothered Amancio.

Amancio was glad to be able to focus on the first half of the objective instead. While other teams went for industrial centers and mining equipment, Amancio's team was going for the local administration. Destroying the administrative buildings could halt production too.

There first target was what looked to be the batarian equivalent of the office building, which apparently housed the local bureaucrats that ran the place. Sweeping that place was a piece of cake. All of the armed batarians Amancio and his rangers had encountered thus far in the colony had been thugs and bully-boys, used to beating on implant-crippled slaves, not trading shots with professionals.

The rangers made mincemeat of the batarians that hadn't been smart enough to throw down their weapons, and hog-tied the rest with disposable restraints. They had no interest in prisoners, but the batarians would still need to be prevented from taking further hostile action, and rangers didn't summarily execute POWs for the crime of being inconvenient. They had no qualms about visiting some small measure of the humiliation that these batarians had inflicted on their slaves, however. Hence the hog-tying.

To his surprise (and relief) Amancio didn't find a single slave in the office. Apparently, batarians didn't let slaves do bureaucratic work. A surprisingly merciful policy, in Amancio's paperwork-hating opinion.

The rangers made their way out of the building, destroying anything remotely important looking and leaving their prisoners behind to be discovered by any batarian clean-up crew in the aftermath of the raid. The next target was the governor's mansion.

The slave was surprised to encounter her master's corpse upon her return to the mansion. It filled her with little grief, but plenty of fear. He was her only source of protection. With him dead, it was open season on her.

"Ah, I was wondering if you'd find your way back here."

Speak of the devil.

Another batarian strolled out of the living room and into the entryway. The slave recognized him, some middle-manager or bureaucrat always kissing her master's ass. How strange that he'd be the one to end up murdering him.

"I've been waiting for the opportunity to put this old fool out of his misery. I've been poised to take over the colony for months now. All I needed to do was wait for the right moment. This raid was that moment. It is unfortunate that our beloved Governor was killed by those dastardly raiders, wouldn't you agree?" he said with a feral smile.

No point not playing along. "I agree." the slave lied.

The feral smile grew more feral. "I'm so glad to hear it. Now, in addition to inheriting the colony from our late Governor, I'll also inherit his possessions. That means you. I don't like to wait too long to break in a new slave, it gives them too much false hope. It's just needlessly cruel. So what's say the two of us head on down to my so very recently acquired Governor's shelter and keep each other company?"

"Why do they always try to pretend I'm their girlfriend and not their sex slave?" the slave mused aloud, hand to her chin, feigning deep thought. Damn it, why do I always have to run my mouth.

A very familiar and very expected pain came next as her implant was activated and every nerve-ending in her body cried out in terrible anguish. Her entire body buckled as she instantly collapsed to the floor, screaming until her throat was raw. When her senses returned to her, her new master was crouching next to her.

"Why do they always try to pretend they're a real person instead of an unusually intelligent animal?" her new master mused aloud, feigning deep thought himself.

He brought his face right next to hers, her master gracing the slave with his delightful breath as he spoke. "We really have it so easy these days, modern technology is really a marvel. In my ancestors' days, you had to beat a slave for hours to remind them of what they are. Now? It's just a button-click away." The slave's screams nearly blew out her own eardrums as her master furthered her education on the fundamentals of slavery.

She took a little longer to come to this time. When she did, her master was sitting in a chair in front of the door, smiling wide.

"You and I are going to head down into that bunker. By the time I'm done with you I'll hear you beg." he said.

In spite of herself, the slave let out a ragged chuckle.

Her master seemed more amused then annoyed, which probably wasn't a good sign. "And what, may I ask, is so funny?" he asked.

Slowly, painfully, she raised her head up to look at him, still chuckling. "It's...it's just that...you're like the seventh person to say that exact same sentence to me!" She lost herself in another round of chuckles.

He seemed genuinely amused. "Oh? And, these others, did they succeed. Did they make you beg?"

Her chuckling was shifting to full-blown, hysterical, desperate laughter. "Yes. Oh, Goddess, yes. Every time. I bawl like a baby too, every time. And the hilarious part is, it never gets easier!" She exploded in more laughter, her master joining in now.

"Every time is even harder than the first one!" she bellowed, laughing, tears pouring down her face.

Her master smiled again. "Well, I'm glad you can be so philosophical about it."

Then the door exploded and splattered him against the wall.

Amancio and his rangers flooded into the room, securing every point with perfectly drilled precision. Only when they'd finished their training-induced reflexive movements did they stop to take the building in.

Ah shit, we made a mess.

He looked over at an asari woman laying on the ground, clutching her face and laughing hysterically. He gave her a brief visual examination for injuries.

Covered in dust, but otherwise fine, by the looks of it. She looks like she's taking the situation well, too, judging by the laughter. I hope.

The slave looked at the odd group that had so soundly ended the life of her dearly departed master. They were an odd bunch, a mix of batarians and...asari?

"What are you, some kind of merc group?" She looked at the asari. "Goddess above, never thought I'd see another of my kind that wasn't a slave ever again."

The asari pointed her rifle at the ground, her other hand on her hip. "You're the second person to say that to me, now. This war is turning out to be great for my self-confidence. I haven't felt this attractive in years." She unclasped the seals of her helmet. "However, I am not an asari." She pulled off her helmet to reveal...something that was, indeed, not an asari. The slave squinted at the creature. It vaguely reminded her of a quarian, from before they'd collectively shot themselves in the foot and got sealed away in those suits. Emphasis on vaguely. The only similarity that would hold up under scrutiny was the creature's hair, a light brown color. Hair exclusive to the head was a trait that only the quarians were known to have until this moment.

Ever tactful, the slave spoke. "The hell are you?" Nailed it.

They all snorted. The batarian at the head of the group who appeared to be the leader spoke. "Like she said, she's not an asari. And, before you ask, no-"

He took off his helmet too. "I'm not a batarian. We're humans. We're...new."

She eyed the group, with their strange, primitive gear that looked straight out of a historical drama. "I believe it. So, how new is 'new', exactly. I've been out of the loop for, oh, five hundred and thirty-seven years, so I'm a little behind."

"We made first contact less than a ye-did you just say you've been a slave for over five hundred years?" Amancio said.

She started chuckling again. "Yup. Isn't it hilarious? I can barely remember how to write my own name, but I can tell you exactly how many years I've been in this shithole of an interstellar civilization." She was laughing again.

Amancio felt ice water flood through his veins as the implications hit him. When the Americas were still almost mythical to the outside world, when Europe squabbled amongst themselves, when the Chinese Empire had still stood strong and Africa remained largely uncolonized, this woman had been captured.

When the slave trade had carried their human cargo around the world, from Arabia, Africa, and Europe to even the new continents across the Atlantic, this woman had already been in chains for an entire human lifetime.

When young men stood in line to massacre each other by the tens of thousands in the war that would end slavery in the United States, when Princess Isabel signed her Golden Law which brought an end to slavery in Amancio's homeland of Brazil and freed his ancestors, when brave people the world over had begun to fight in the court room and on the battlefield the world over in the never-ending war to see that no human had to live in bondage ever again, this woman had been a slave for centuries. With no one to fight for her.

This woman, who was older than modern industrial civilization, had been held in chains for almost as long. And she was but one of the victims. The scale of the atrocity was difficult for Amancio to wrap his head around. So, instead, he asked her a question.

"Well, uh...what is your name?"

The slave was a little perplexed. "What?"

"Well, you mentioned you can't write your own name, so I was just wondering what it was." the big alien said.

The slave smiled in amusement. Genuine amusement this time. "Yinlari."

The man smiled back. "Well, Yinlari, do you want to get out of here?"

She smiled again. "Yes. Yes I do." the free woman said.

Tim was mildly amused as he saw the flotilla of hijacked batarian ships leave the colony. His rangers had, predictably, taken a liberal interpretation of what constituted "essential for the war effort" in their slave-rescuing efforts. The medium sized freighter-turned-passenger-liner that the Samar and her partner were escorting was not intended to accommodate this many people. Because the rangers were only supposed to rescue high-value personnel, not empty out the slave pens.

They'd probably done almost exactly that, gathering together what slaves they had found and offering them freedom-provided they had the courage to take it. After all, the path of Operation Spartacus was not going to be safe or easy. It would be wrong to try and force someone into it, even for their own good.

He sighed. At least they'd had the sense to..."acquire" extra transport instead of just trying to cram them all into the freighter.

"Ah, well. No plan survives contact with the enemy." he said aloud. Privately, he felt his spirits lift. He hadn't been exactly happy with the rescue plans himself. Still, the flotilla was probably going to be a lot bigger than planned for when they attempted their breakout, since the other ranger raider teams would probably do the exact same thing when they were tasked with rescuing slaves too.

Hello all! This was originally going to be a mega chapter depicting the entire Spartacus Operation, but I soon realized that was a bad idea. I ultimately decided that splitting it into more digestible chunks would be better for the story flow, as otherwise there would be a lot of disorienting perspective shifts for a single chapter. Even more so than usual.

You could think of the next few chapters as being part of a story arc. The SPARTACUS arc, if you will.

As always, thank you for reading, and please leave your thoughts in the reviews.

P.S. : Any fellow history nerds who think I screwed up something in the little tirade at the end, I plead mercy. I'm not a historian, just an amateur enthusiast. Any mistakes are not meant as a personal affront.