Mass Effect: A Very Terran (Re)solution

by NihilMomentum

What would happen if someone with vast knowledge about the Mass Effect Universe, both official (wiki/Codex) and theoretical (fanfics), decent fighting ability and a plan was dropped into that Universe 13 years before Eden Prime? As it turns out, quite a lot! FemShep. Soft HFY. And a very different kind of self-insert.

18. Chapter 15: The Madness Spreads

Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect or anything else referenced here. Those are the sole property of their writers/companies (Bioware/EA and such). I do not claim ownership of anything but my OC and original concepts.

List of track(s) used (you can copy+paste them in your PC by temporarily switching to the mobile version):

[1] – Recommended track: Michal Smorawinski - "I See Them" (part of the YT link: /watch?v=LEsYkN_2KA).

[2] – Track just for fun (don't take it seriously): Star Wars: The Emperor's Theme - 1 Hour Loop - Dark Sith Music (part of the YT link: /watch?v=K9z5odhoybY).

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Chapter 15: What Goes Around Comes Around, While the Madness Spreads

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Space. In a hidden rendezvous point near the Terminus Systems. Late 2177 CE.

Two fleets stood opposite each other. One, the bigger one, was a balance of Cruiser and Frigates of standardized and practical designs, all carrying emblems with three white stars. The other was a mix of ships with different designs, all extensively retrofitted, yet equally capable, with emblems of red wings on a fire-pointed star, with two chevrons on them. This calm scene was broken when the hangar bay of the leading Cruiser from the smallest fleet opened itself, out of which a small craft flew out. Piloting that small ship was me. Soon after, two more came out.

In the cockpit of my personal craft, which was in its middle just like any of our ships, I had set an approaching vector towards the leading Alliance warship. Following me were two other spacecraft, our mass-produced type, carrying two squads of Hell's Angels. When we were reaching the fleet flagship, I spun my ship sideways until it was vertically aligned with the Cruiser from my point of view. Seeing that vessel from this perspective, it occurred to me how that this situation gave off a very strong David vs Goliath feel. Likewise, just as the story went, this ship also had a small "rock" capable of toppling a giant. But I wondered if that was how facing the Reapers would be.

I landed my ship in the space between the interior pressure hull and exterior armor, where the Alliance fit their Fighters. Leaving the pilot's seat, I opened a side hatch, walked out of the ship and closed it behind me. It didn't take long for my men to arrive. One squad kept watch over our crafts while the other joined me. We then moved inside the Cruiser, where I met a very familiar figure; a very redhead, freckled and well toned one. Without a doubt, it was Commander Jane Shepard. At 23 years old right now, she'd grown a lot since the last time I'd seen her face to face – and now looked like a very capable soldier. Also, it seemed like she was the one leading our welcoming party.

"Welcome aboard, Hero of Akuze.", Shepard moved forward and greeted me with a small smile, which quickly morphed into a sly one. "Do you still remember me?".

"Of course, 1st Lieutenant Jane Shepard, the Lioness of Elysium.", I said, offering my hand for a handshake and nodding to the marines accompanying her, but also not missing the brief flash of disappointment in her emerald eyes. "After all, I'm the one who asked for the 'Little Berserker of Mindoir' to be included in this operation.".

Surprised, yet also embarrassed by the epithet given by the Alliance and my made-up title, she accepted my handshake, asking: "You put in a good word for me? Why?".

"Because you're one of the best that the Alliance has.", I stated, letting go of her hand and crossing my arms. "Besides, you were there at the start of the Blitz. Don't you want to finish what started back on Elysium?".

"When you put it like that, there's no way I'm missing out on this!", she exclaimed, cracking her knuckles and grinning savagely. "In fact, I've wanted payback ever since my hometown got hit.".

"That's good. There'll be plenty of that later.", I promised her. "Just try not to get too carried away this time. I saw the footage, you know. You really earned that unofficial title of Butcher of Elysium. Though it kinda gave me a sense of déjà vu; not only the combat parts, but also your rallying speech.".

"You think so…?", she asked, reflexively touching the back of her neck. "I guess you could say I picked up some things from the extranet. And by watching you; wait, no! by watching those few vids we get on Hell's Angels, I mean!".

While Shepard was clearing up her words, I was thinking about what I'd said: that feeling of déjà vu. Using armored enemies as "human shields" (both figuratively and literally)... that's something I did back on Mindoir – and she'd already picked up on it. No, not only that, but further improved upon the idea: by building a barricade with your fallen enemies. It actually made sense. Mass effect armors' shields don't stop working just because their wearers are dead, especially if it happened due to a headshot. So, if you stack those armors, which will have their shields recharge after a while, the result is a makeshift cover of kinetic barriers. And Shepard realized that in the heat of the moment. This made me think about something else…

Shepard, regardless of gender, is supposed to prevent the genocide of this Galaxy's Cycle at the tentacles of the Reapers. Yeah. A single human, against thousands upon thousands of technologically superior warships, while everyone and their mother is calling him/her a lunatic for saying that those death machines are real – if not actively trying to stop him/her from saving them. You don't get to do that by being… average, as many of the stories I'd once read visualized the Hero(ine) of the Mass Effect Universe. No, one has to rise to the occasion, above billions of others who simply couldn't make the cut.

Looking at her flustered expression, I wondered what would become of Shepard when our paths really intersected… Right now, however, she was having trouble trying to break the awkward atmosphere that had set in.

"[Clears throat] Everyone's ready to start the briefing.", Shepard suddenly stated, pointing over her shoulder with her thumb. "We shouldn't leave them waiting.".

"You're right. We should go.", I said with a tone of mild amusement and a nod, then she led us towards an elevator.

Large vessels such as this one arranged their decks perpendicular to their thrust axis, with the "highest" decks at the ship's bow and the "lowest" ones at the engines, allowing a-grav to work in conjunction with the inertial effects of thrust. And we would be going "up", to the Combat Information Center – CIC, while making some small talk along the way…

"How come you're the one sent to greet us?", I asked curiously.

"It's because of our 'past history'. I'm the only one here who has ever met you personally.", she explained. "That's the reason the Admiral gave for making me something of a liaison, though I can now see it's not the only one.".

"Makes sense. They sent a familiar face. On that note, I've heard from Anderson that you'll be joining the N7 program, right?", I asked, wanting to confirm a passing remark made by the old soldier.

"That's right! Commander Anderson has given me some very strong hints about it. I'm just waiting for my invitation to 'the villa' to arrive.", her expression got brighter when speaking about her second dad, space edition, then glanced at me with narrowed eyes. "Now that you mention it, you've always believed in me, huh?".

"Of course. Ever since Mindoir, I could tell you had the potential to do great things. And your stunt on Elysium all but confirmed it.", I spoke with conviction, but not only of someone with future knowledge. "You have something to say, don't you? What is it?".

"Is it really that obvious? Well, it all happened so fast back then. I didn't have the chance to properly thank you. On Mindoir, I mean…", Shepard spoke while fidgeting a little bit, which prompted a surprised look from the escorting marines, who'd never thought they'd get to see this side of the famous Butcher. "If it wasn't for you, I would've lost all my loved ones on that day. So, thank you for everything you've done! And on Elysium too, for lending me a Harrier.".

"Just doing my part. I created my PMC for things like this, you know.", I said truthfully to her, being glad for always hearing a helmet, which hid my surprise. "And I'm glad you're doing well for yourself.".

As topics died down, the sound of the elevator going up was all we could hear. The silence was a welcome shift. And it was better than listening to some crappy elevator music.

One thing that I'd noticed was how sparsely populated this Cruiser was. Usually, they only had a crew of about 300, the same as a turian Cruiser. Of course, ours had even less, given the heavy use of automation and the very possible presence of a DS. After all, a being like EDI could single-handedly pilot one of the most advanced ships in the galaxy. But pretty much every single crew member was an elite warrior. And there were enough combat drones inside to make up for their lack of numbers.

Furthermore, the biggest ship that the Alliance had sent was this one. Considering that Cruisers usually led flotillas of Frigates in pirate suppression campaigns, it was still fitting for the occasion. Dreadnoughts were strategic assets. Galactic powers weren't keen on using one unless it was a critical battle. And especially not when targeting something that was basically in the Terminus. More so when the region was in turmoil. The Council would gladly tear them up faster than the Terminus factions ever could.

However, these musings didn't last long for one simple reason. It was taking way too long for us to reach our destination…

"You know, it never ceases to amaze me how we have faster-than-light ships, yet we can still find slow as dirt elevators.", I couldn't help but complain out loud.

"Really? No one's ever brought that up to me.", Shepard commented with a surprised tone and a confused expression. "They seem pretty fast considering we're climbing hundreds of meters.".

"Ah, don't mind me. I'm just used to something different, that's all.", I responded without elaborating further, leaving it at that.

You're not planning on also selling our elevator technology to everyone just to get around quicker, right? Gaia's humor-filled voice suddenly rang in my mind.

Welcome back, Gaia. Almost thought you'd forgotten me there for a second. You've been very quiet. I focused my thoughts back to her.

Quiet? More like super busy until now! She shot back defensively. While you two had been reminiscing about the past, I've been going through the Alliance's firewalls, to make sure they didn't have any stupid plans regarding us.

You think the Alliance would plan to stab us in the back? I asked doubtfully.

Can we be sure they won't? Don't forget it was you who taught me to have a healthy dose of paranoia, Un-cle Sa-ma-el… Gaia replied with a bit of sass. I merely smiled inwardly at her antics, guessing she was only worried about my safety, like always.

After an unbelievable amount of time, we finally reached the deck where the CIC was. Our arrival grabbed the attention of the Alliance officers present, who turned to stare at us. As was customary, they were all wearing uniforms, the kind with no kinetic barriers weaved into them – or any other decent form of protection for that matter. All it would take was a well placed explosive to deal with most of them. If we were to be cleaner, a simple venting of the atmosphere would work as well. And… there it was, my bad habit rearing its head again.

My focus shifted to the center of the room, where the commanding officers usually were in Alliance warships like this one. Their attention was also completely drawn in by our arrival. But this silent staredown was soon ended by a voice coming from the centermost location.

"It seems our invited guests have finally arrived.", remarked the one leading this Alliance Fleet, more so for the confused personnel. I took that as the cue to make my approach and offer a handshake. "I've heard a lot of things about you, Commander.", she continued as we shook hands. "Some are very good. I hope to see that in the coming event.".

"And I've also heard a lot about you, Admiral. When alien threats invade humanity's colonies and kill our people, you're there, leading the counterattack to put an end to it.", I stated in response, bringing up her past. "It seems that, the more things change, the more they stay the same; wouldn't you say so, Admiral Kastanie Drescher?".

She was the Admiral who led the Alliance's Second Fleet to retake Shanxi during the First Contact War. This Fleet would later be wiped out by the cuttlefish while defending Arcturus Station, so that the Third and Fifth Fleets had a chance to escape. But what really caught my attention was that it was a Fleet partly made up of material and volunteers from Elysium. In a way, it was quite fitting for them to be sent to this operation.

"Ah, I'd say it's quite the coincidence. Perhaps even fate.", she spoke after realizing it too, then took a quick glance at my accompanying Hell's Angels squad, who stood in attention at the entrance. "Although those words sound rather strange coming from you, given that yours is the most diverse mercenary group in the galaxy. Frankly, the way things are going, I'm half-expecting a hanar to join your ranks one of these days!".

"Why not? Maybe we're already working on it…", I replied with a chuckle. "But, in the vein of what you mentioned, let me point something out. This time, you're not alone. This time, you have alien allies. And they hate slavers, especially the batarians kind, as much as you do – if not a lot more… passionately.".

Two of my squad, an asari and a turian, whose silhouettes were still discernible through the bulky power armor, cracked their knuckles in response, an act they'd learned from me. Unfazed by it, the good Admiral simply cleared her throat, gathering everyone's attention, and decided to get down to business.

"I know you must be wondering why a 'merc' is joining us, even during the briefing. Don't try to deny it. It's clear as day.", the Admiral addressed those who were confused, who also got a bit embarrassed after being called out, before turning back to me. "What you need to know is that the Commander here has a lot of intel about our target. However, before that, why don't you introduce yourself briefly, Commander?".

"Might as well. To those who have been living under a rock, I'm Commander Samael, founder of Hell's Angels. You might've heard of me.", I nonchalantly introduced myself, completely grabbing the attention of the crowd by now. "I'll be your 'advisor' and we'll be your 'support' in the operation we are about to embark on. Why? You might wonder. Because you have superiors who are more interested in having their men return in one piece than in some varren-shit ego trip or dick measuring contest. So, they called us in.".

While a few idiots on Arcturus wanted this operation to be "personal", so that humanity could "prove itself" to the galaxy's players, Alliance Navy was much more practical. They would do what was necessary to get the job done, even if that meant hiring a PMC. Heck, they'd even employed mercenary services during Shanxi. And it helped that this particular paramilitary group was widely known as the "paragades" of the mercenary world, with its Commander being something of an "anti-hero". Kinda hard not to be considered one after the Defense of Mindoir, the Teltin Rescue, all the help before and during the Skyllian Blitz, the stunt at Akuze and more…

"What we'll be assaulting very soon is Torfan, a small moon that serves as a hub for all sorts of criminals, who like to build their bases deep underground. And most of them are batarians.", I added the last bit to stir up their fighting spirit; and achieved the desired result straight away. "It's one of the most pivotal staging grounds of the Batarian Hegemony in the region, from where it spreads its influence to the Terminus and plots raids on colonies in the Attican Traverse. It's also… where the attack on Elysium originated from.".

Now that got most of them really riled up to go wreck the pirate/slaver bases. Sometime in the next year, 2178 CE, and in retaliation for the Skyllian Blitz, the Systems Alliance would launch a major offensive/raid against Torfan, destroying all of its underground bases and completely annihilating the criminals there. As a result, however, they'd take heavy losses. Clearly, they had been unprepared for the operation and I could see part of why now, given the fire of revenge burning coldly in everyone's eyes. Hotheadedness wouldn't get us very far, so the next step was to cool off their heads.

"You might believe that all we gotta do is go there, point and shoot, 'cause it's just pirates and slavers we'd be dealing with, even if they have some unofficial backing. But then you'd be wrong. Fatally so. Because this… is the true face of Torfan!", I activated my Omni-tool and sent them the intel we'd collected, which quickly took holographic form in the middle of the CIC. The information came as a shock, with someone even muttering a "Dios mio!", considering that the criminals made up for what they lacked with numbers, ruthlessness and brutality. "Had you rushed in there blindly, this is what you'd find: a hodgepodge nightmare of tunnels, passages and strongholds, all quite deep underground, more confusing than Elcor Hamlet and filled with all sorts of turret emplacements, mines, traps and choke-points.".

Yeah, it hadn't been for nothing that the Codex described the raid on Torfan as a "brutal battle". Of course, now that we were intervening, everything would change. Truth be told, it already had, ever since we'd wiped out the remnants of old Haliat's armada and returned those captured on Elysium. This calmed down the Alliance brass and gave it time to slowly and systematically clean up the Traverse, eventually giving us a straight shot at Torfan. Now, the time was ripe for retribution…

"Therefore, I'll be briefing you now on how we plan to turn this…", I paused a little for dramatic effect, pointing towards the images shown, and continued, "…possible disaster of a raid into one of the best ops against piracy and slaving you've ever done!".

"That's an impressive amount of intel you have for us.", the Admiral praised with a look of approval. "I can see why Commander Anderson and Rear-Admiral Hackett recommended this to be a joint operation, though I wonder... how did you come across it?".

"Our source's identity is secret. All I can say is that we got it from a few elements who'd broken off from the Hegemony.", I stated, leaving things vague. She showed an understanding look, associating it with batarian rebels. "But I can tell you that it came from a very… hard working and motivated group. Who's out there, fighting the good fight.".

"Alright then. You know our target better than anyone in this room and must have some ideas on how to deal with it. Go on. Let's hear them.", Descher stated. Everyone in the room stood in full attention now, ready to prevent the assault from turning into a meat grinder

"Firstly, let me emphasize that Hell's Angels Fleet will be doing orbital bombardment of any defenses, be they surface-to-orbit cannons, GARDIAN lasers or simple AAs.", I said in advance, making sure that point was firmly set in stone.

"You can leave the Fleet engagements to us, Commander.", she added with a faint smile. "Hell's Angels has been hired to deal with the underground bases, given your… finesse with drones and unconventional tactics, but we are very confident in achieving victory in space, though I'd appreciate it if yours could lend a hand.".

"That could be arranged, Admiral.", I agreed, then continued. "After obtaining orbital superiority, we'll send most of your drones to draw in any hidden defenses, which we'll then strike from orbit. They'll be the first wave. But I'll need you to lend them to us for that.".

"You're going to use those pods we saw on Anhur?", she quickly caught on to my idea.

"That's right. It's the quickest way to get them onto the surface to draw enemy fire.", I confirmed it. "When the first wave turns to scrap – and don't doubt for a second it'll happen –, we'll send part of our own swarms to soften up the opposition, hitting the outside domes and spaceports with a textbook combined arms attack, mixing aerial, armored and ground units. With the surface taken, we'll send the rest of the drones in. The objective is to get real-time intel on the underground strongholds and spring as many traps as possible. Then, and only then, we'll ourselves go underground.".

I finished telling the overall picture of the raid. They nodded thoughtfully. The overall plan was solid. A lightning quick assault for the orbitals followed by continuous waves of attacks were bound to exhaust the bag of tricks from which the enemy could pull from.

"That sounds like a solid plan of attack. Do you have anything else to add, Commander?", the Admiral asked after considering it for some time.

After Anhur, the Alliance started looking forward to increasing their already relatively high usage of drones in their operations, especially in combination with special forces, like the N7s. Special interest was given to the creation of better VIs for drones. Furthermore, after Akuze, some interest shifted towards developing better mobility, though it was focused on for special forces and mostly done by using short burst thrusters. So, both technologies were still lagging behind our "proprietary" inventions.

"There is actually. Don't try to be a hero from an action vid. Don't rush inside before your superior gives the green light. For those of the special forces, try to hold back on your new thrusters. They could be more of a liability inside. Lastly, keep in mind that Torfan has a thin atmosphere, which means your weapons will overheat more easily. So, get prepared to use those new thermal mags.", I stated in quick succession, then gave them some time to let all that information sink in before finishing. "That's it! Time for questions and suggestions, if you have any…".

Shepard immediately raised her hand and, after receiving permission to speak, brought up a good point: "What about captured slaves? I'm sure they must have some in there. How are we going to rescue them?".

Interesting... In addition to her ruthless efficiency when dealing with enemies, there was also compassion. At that moment, I could see hints of the hero who could bring a galaxy together.

"You're correct. There are slaves in Torfan, for both work and… pleasure. And It's a good thing you mentioned it.", I answered, then addressed Drescher. "Admiral, we'll send some IFFs to you later. The slaves we wouldn't be able to rescue in time will be saved by them. So, they'll need to be added to your list of friendlies, to prevent any accidents.".

She responded with a nod. Good. That was another obstacle out of the way. The last thing I wanted was for our new Rehabilitation Program (aka Section 34) "recruits" to get caught in the crossfire while trying to rescue slaves.

Afterwards, we spent more than an hour ironing out the details.

---

Aboard the CSV Lightbringer. Some time later.

With everything set in the Alliance's side, I had returned to the flagship of my Fleet, moving towards its War Room. Its name was the same as the first warship we got our hands on, since we took out its IFF and put it into this new one. And what a cheat it was! It'd been made to be closer in abilities to our real Fleets, at least internally, while the exterior appearance was simply that of a heavily retrofitted and beefed up Cruiser. It truly was a warship fit to carry the Lightbringer name.

You know, a good portion of the pirates will run away once we get there, Gaia pointed out along the way. Probably deeper into the Terminus too. They'll become a thorn in our side.

I share your frustration. But there's nothing we can do about that, even if we were to show more of our hand. I lamented the reality of the situation. An opportunity to wipe out an enemy fleet, like we had at the start of the Blitz, was rare. This reminds me… How's the 'Must've Been My Imagination' Project coming along?

It's coming along well. Hiding gravitational waves is still a challenge and we're waiting for the ODSY drive technology to reach maturity, but the IES has already been finished, in no small part due to recent breakthroughs with heat sink technology, she reported proudly.

Good! When it's completed, our enemies won't even know what hit them! I thought with high expectations. No monitoring probes or early warning systems will be able to save them from unexpected, swift and surgical strikes. And I guess some pirate bases simply… disappearing will throw the Terminus into an even bigger chaos.

Speaking of this, there's a few rats nearby, she informed me. They're decently hidden, but I can detect them through the gravitational scanners.

Oh, is that so…? I figure they want to see us and thermal mags in action, I mused.

Do you want to do something about them? Gaia questioned me. I'm positive it wouldn't be advantageous to us in the end.

Not really. And I think you're right, I replied with a shake of the head. Doing so would only reveal our capabilities for little to no benefit. Besides, there's nothing they'll see that they can't learn by simply buying the media we've been releasing over the years.

But would the Council's agents even do that? She mused. Or a Councilor for that matter?

Don't know about that, but the picture of those three playing old games and watching old movies is really funny to me somehow. I thought in reply, chuckling.

Eventually, while turning a corner, I met a figure clad in lean black armor, waiting for me…

"Alec, you magnificent son of a gun!", I blurted out while moving closer to him.

"Good to see you too, you crazy bastard.", Alec replied as we hooked each other's right hands, bringing our shoulders closer and slapping our backs before letting go. "Come, let's go. Everyone's been gathered already.".

We then proceed towards the center of the ship, where the CIC was. Arriving there, I found my leather seat and sat down. There were many officers/veterans for this briefing, such as: Ysin'Mal vas Lightbringer, the Liberator, our old quarian Fleet Admiral; Xalryn, the Bulwark, defender of the innocent and leader of the elcor recruits; Nychta M'kilis, the Night Demon, who had been rescued from slavers and who had someone in need of rescue out there; Tyrannus Interitus, the Demolition Man, a turian aficionado for big explosions; and Seeth Valker, the Nameless, a salarian who joined us because, in his words, we had the best benefits.

Of course, with them were the holographic forms of their DS partners. In the same order, they were: Tatica, the glasses-wearing strategist; Tavarious, bringer of misfortune; Bellicus, who wishes to pierce the heavens; Kali, the lady of destruction; and Amon, the hidden one.

We stood in a circle, equidistant from the center of the CIC. Surrounding us were screens showing the outside of the ship, as if we were on a platform completely open to the vacuum of space, but the truth was that the images came from very small cameras hidden throughout the hull. Because of them, we could see the entire Fleet and the galaxy's stars. It was a much better view than a mere frontal cockpit. And much more secure, what with it being buried deep within the hull.

"Alright, before we start, let's get on the same level.", I said after a clap. "Gaia, I give you authorization to share my recent memories; scrubbed of any personal data, of course.".

With the consent given, she began uploading my memories to those gathered here. It was as if a Prothean had used his/her ability to copy what I'd seen and passed it to everyone in the room simultaneously. But, as stated, she shared a version of the memories of my prior briefing with any and all emotions, thoughts and feelings completely stripped out of it. So, only visual and audio "data" remained from my cybernetic implant. Nonetheless, I gave everyone some time to process it. After all, despite matching DS in memory capabilities, we were still lagging behind them in processing/thought speed. For now.

"That meeting was quite thorough. You didn't leave anything out, Commander. How are we to help in space?", Ysin asked, breaking the silence.

"In this operation, I want no 3D encirclement, no fancy maneuvers and, above all, no pin-point accurate FTL jumps!", I answered firmly. "The Alliance's Second Fleet will deal with most space threats without issue. There's no need to show our cards here. So, only give the standard support. But we will interlock firing solutions with them. As always, we'll act as nodes, painting targets and calling for orbital strikes.".

"Shame. More pirates and slaves might be able to escape that way.", lamented Tatica from Ysin's Omni-tool even if she understood the reason why. He had been the first quarian to accept a digital life-form, a fact that would make him a pariah in the Flottila if were it to be discovered, but he already wasn't the last.

"But we can still call orbital bombardment freely, right?", Tyrannus Interitus inquired.

"Besides the few holding facilities for slaves in the surface, everywhere else is free real estate for orbital strikes.", I responded, causing a grin to form in Kali's face.

"With barely hidden expectation: after clearing the surface defenses, may we land with the Orbital Insertion Pods?", requested the Bulwark in his usual monotone.

"Alright, big guy! I'll allow it.", I agreed with a happy smile behind my helmet. "But only the elcor and only 'cause Torfan has low gravity. I don't want anyone asking how we can survive an orbital drop so intense and not end up dead, with all bones broken.".

"Will we be using any sleeping gas or chemical weapons?", Nychta M'kilis raised her hand. "I hope not. It will make it harder to rescue the slaves and they might get hurt as well.".

"No, we won't.", Alec answered that one for me. "Besides being frowned upon, it's really a bad idea. It would simply take too much chemical agents to completely cover all the enemy bases, many hostiles will have air-filters anyway and, as you pointed out, it would actively hinder us in the slaves' rescue.".

"Can we hack the credits from dead enemies like we've been doing?", asked Seeth Valker.

After most battles, our DSs would usually hack our enemies' accounts to further fund Hell's Angels. A share of the spoils always went to their counterpart, the one responsible for the kill. This was yet another incentive for them to protect their DS partners.

"Not this time. The Alliance will suspect things if they notice that all the enemies are even more broke than the cuttlefish's logic.", I quipped in response. "Frankly, I'd say screwing over the Hegemony big time is a reward unto itself.".

"Don't underestimate Alliance Intelligence Services, or the Navy for that matter.", Alec added in his usual gruff manner. "Speaking of which, there's an order of my own. When possible, try to rally around Alliance marines who are in trouble and support them with drones.".

I nodded in agreement. While he was still watching out for his old pals, reducing casualties was the reason we'd been hired in the first place.

Then, we spent a few more minutes ironing out the details and chatting about random things.

---

Space. In Torfan's Star System. Hours later.

The Second Fleet emerged from the Mass Relay while maintaining their relative positions to one another. The same happened to the Hell's Angels Fleet, Admiral Drescher saw from the CIC, though both Fleets were quite apart from each other due to drift. Without delay, they rearranged themselves and "jumped" into FTL towards Torfan.

When the Alliance and Hell's Angels' Fleets came out of FLT one light-second away from their target, they saw some pirate ships making a desperate run for it, while those probably affiliated with the Batarian Hegemony were scrambling to put up a defense. Their enemies, it seems, had been alerted to their presence with some advance. More surprisingly, they even had a few Cruisers.

The Admiral got more serious after that information was confirmed. Furthermore, inspired by the madness their hired "help" was planning to do, she chose to do something a little reckless herself: she ordered the Alliance Carriers to stick with the Fleet. Usually, those should be as far away from the battle as possible, where the enemy couldn't touch them at all, but she felt that a more aggressive approach would be preferable here.

Consecutively, still at long range, she gave the order for their five Cruisers, each with six accompanying Frigates, to start shooting at the enemy. The Hell's Angels Fleet followed soon after with their three Cruisers, a testament to the PMC's investment in this operation. Thus, merely as the prelude to the battle, eight beams of molten metal raced through the void at relativistic speeds. Both Fleets then began closing while maintaining evasive lateral motion, with their spinal cannons firing intermittently. Around a minute later, two beams of molten metal passed by their formation harmlessly. The enemy hadn't been slacking either. And some of them had Thanix cannons of their own.

They kept at this, exchanging fire while constantly moving closer until Frigates and Fighters could engage. Soon, it was time to see if the Admiral's gamble would pay off. The Carriers began releasing their Fighters and Interceptors. Her allies followed suit, releasing some of their own, though not exactly Fighters. They were fully unmanned spacecraft. The Admiral had heard about those, especially how they were as effective as "the real deal" and carried enough cyberwarfare suits to protect themselves from any hacking attempts, which she assumed were the quarians' doing. The enemy, on the other hand, wasn't idle, as they replied by also releasing Interceptors – with their existence being revealed through the light that arrived in less than a second.

However, before any of those could engage, an enemy Cruiser was gutted by beams typical of Thanix weaponry, blowing up in a bright bluish-white flash shortly after. Drescher quickly figured out where they had come from, Hell's Angels Fleet, and noticed something peculiar about that… they usually fired a second after the Alliance – and always towards one of the enemy's possible evasion paths. Interesting. And, thousands of kilometers away, the results were shown, as the remaining debris from the destroyed ship began falling towards Torfan in burning trails.

Still, that wasn't the end of the PMC's list of achievements. The pirates used to have some basic orbital stations/defenses which might have given them a challenge. Used to because those had been easily taken out by the mercenary Fleet, which just abused their long range and higher maneuverability to pick it apart outside those stations' effective range. Seeing this, the Alliance Admiral decided to make a note regarding it, to later have the think-tanks of the Alliance analyze the viability of orbital defense platforms, more so how they'd fare in comparison to proper warships.

The Admiral shelved the thought and finally sent in most of her Frigates in "wolf packs", to prepare for the next step of their battle plan. At last, both sides' small craft met, with Hell's Angels "Fighters" taking the brunt of the initial engagement. With their range now so close, it was becoming rather difficult to coordinate the battle, since the Fleets had intermingled, but she could feel that their enemies were being torn apart. Moreover, Hell's Angels had another card to play here – their broadside cannons, which sliced apart the enemy Fleet a beam of molten metal at a time. Eventually, another enemy Cruiser went down in a blaze of blush-white flash, a sign of an antimatter explosion and further proof that the Hegemony was behind all of this.

In a few minutes, it was all over. Enemy Interceptors hadn't even managed to make them fire up their GARDIAN lasers. Admiral Dresches was quite happy that they had committed to a general melee, rather than rabbiting to FTL. Apparently, this moon really was an important asset to the batarians. By now, her side's "Fighters" had managed to close into "knife fight" range. It was time to make those pirates and slaving scum experience a world of hurt.

All "Fighters" let loose their disruptor torpedoes, which "exchanged" a bit of speed for a lot of mass, with the enormous momentum gained in the process being enough to make any enemy vessels' shields hit buckle completely, likely screeching to a halt as well. Then, to add insult to injury, the Frigates she'd previously sent forward weaved through enemy "lines", easily dodging all return fire and circle-strafing while hunting for those ships, whose shields had been taken down. That was how the last enemy Cruiser was taken down. Like this, the rest of the enemy Fleet crumbled soon after.

With the immediate threat finally neutralized, both Fleets began venting the heat generated during this short, but quite intense, engagement. Her own warship's liquid droplet radiators went to work. Still, some of Hell's Angels warships moved to capture those few vessels not blown up in the battle, this being part of the Alliance's agreement with them.

Going over the brief after-action reports, the Admiral found it unbelievable how their side hadn't lost a single Cruiser and only one Frigate had been destroyed, while three were simply "mission killed". And that was the tally for both Fleets. This already was one of the most successful space battles she'd ever been in – and she wondered just how much of it had to do with all the help given by that PMC, before and after the operation.

Speaking of which, now that space was cleared of enemies, she saw Hell's Angels began deploying what they called Artillery-Drones. Descher watched those with rapt attention. It was a simple concept: take the main weapon from an artillery unit, wrap it up in a mobile drone and then deploy it anywhere one wants, sometimes even using a planet's gravity as a further "boost". Furthermore, if there was any need, those drones could be dropped on the ground and used as "normal" artillery units anytime.

It didn't take long for them to start pounding Torfan's surface defenses as the first wave of Pods flew to soften up ground resistance. Those huge metal coffins were kept inside a part of Hell's Angels Fleet, elcor based troop transports, that had been hidden away until now. Those were considered to be some of the best troop transports in the galaxy. In fact, to many, this was the elcor's real value in war.

As the Orbital Insertion Pods entered the thicker parts of the atmosphere, their outer hulls became slightly cherry red and began to ablate. They didn't carry with them troops per se, but a swarm of drones, in the same manner as they did in Anhur, which were safely and remotely controlled from low orbit, the Admiral had been told. Just like back then, what the criminals on the surface faced was an overwhelming tide of metal raining down from high above. They either hid and died later or returned fire and showed their position, dying immediately to the drones or orbital strikes. Very soon, the Angels themselves would use those metal coffins as a rapid transit system, taking the fight to the surface.

Not one to be outdone, the Admiral selected a few targets of her own and had the Alliance Fleet bombard key defensive positions. A lot of explosions later, with the ground defenders surely in chaos by then, and the final part of the battle plan was close at hand.

When most of the enemy orbital-air defenses were demolished, she finally sent the order to begin the ground assault.

It was time to really take the fight to the surface.

---

Torfan, lower atmosphere. Shortly after achieving orbital superiority.

He was known as the Pathfinder; once an accomplished N7 with big dreams of being a galactic explorer, now the second-in-command of the galaxy's deadliest mercenary outfit. Never would he have imagined where life would take him. And it'd been one hell of a ride so far. But, at this moment, as he sat inside of a rapidly falling drop pod that had already burned through the worst of this moon's atmosphere, he felt more like a trailblazer, as the man who made it all happen would jokingly say.

SAM, where would you say we're needed the most? Alec asked his DS companion.

It appears there is still a slave holding area that is highly contested, Pathfinder, responded SAM in a professional manner. Would you like me to add a waypoint to your HUD?

Please do, Sam. And steer us there. Let's give them a big surprise! He said, allowing a tiny grin to form on his serious face.

SAM's feedback, an excited thought, reached Alec through his neural-interface. It wasn't exactly as his implementation would be, but it allowed for so much more. And he had to recognize that the two-way connection was… a mind opening experience, to say the least.

Abruptly, Alec moved the pod's hatch as its lights switched green, then jumped out of it. All other Angels jumped after him soon after, immediately engaging their suit's thrusters so as to slow their descent. The drop pod, however, kept going straight to an enemy position in the ground while disgorging its swarm of drones along the way. When all of its cargo had been finally released, it engaged its main thrusters, shuttle-based large ones that had been beefed up, and prepared to "land". Right on top a batarian entrenchment, that is.

Before it even reached its destination, the heat from those thrusters cooked alive anyone around the landing spot in a fraction of a second, then the entire thing hit the ground with a thundering crash that formed a large cloud of dust. Following in its wake, a few figures passed by the dome's thin mass effect field, which was only meant to keep a higher concentration of air in there, and biotically charged towards those still alive, but still stunned criminals, blasting them apart with explosive biotic power. Out of everything that could happen that day, they especially did not expect anyone would be willing to fall from orbit right on top of them. Not delaying at all, Alec's group swiftly spread out, each one picking a "target", since all enemy positions had already been updated by their Quantum BattleNet.

In the main battle stage, an asari showed up within the Alliance's ranks and spread out a massive barrier, covering many of the marines. Thus, they began gaining ground under the cover of her protection. When the barriers started showing signs of falling, she gathered all biotic energy in her hands and blasted it forward, throwing a large portion of their enemies everywhere. What followed was actually worse for them, because she pulled up two SMGs and began tearing down their shields like paper, while switching from target to target with precision. When those would finally overheat, a drone would latch onto it briefly and switch out the thermal mag. All this while, a swarm of drones followed her side, shooting rockets, missiles and hypervelocity metal at the criminals. After recuperating a bit, even their cover was rendered worthless by her waves of singularities. Like this, the enemy lines and defenses were methodologically bulldozed.

A few Alliance marines, thus far pinned down while trying to reach a big compound where many slaves were kept, saw a large turian slowly walk up to them while holding a monster of a shotgun. They quickly recognized him as a Hell's Angels merc, one of those who had fallen from the sky, but what really stuck with them were the results of said weapon's shots. With each pull of the trigger, a barrage of explosive rounds would find themselves blowing up an enemy into pieces, as if he'd been firing rockets instead. He would constantly have a drone come in and swap thermal mags, while a few worked as mobile shields. When some of the enemies managed to organize a "resistance", a shot came from high above, blowing them up to kingdom come and demolishing a few buildings as well. The turian didn't flinch. He didn't even turn around to stare at the destruction. Just kept going; kept blowing shit up with his shotgun; kept swapping thermal mags. One step at a time. While the world behind him was a series of explosions.

In another area, an Alliance squad almost couldn't make out the figure of a salarian. That's because all they would see of him was a blue-whitish streak going straight towards the hostiles, followed by those enemies being sliced apart by two silent warp blades, then he would simply vanish. When one of those streaks would appear again, a few more enemies would find themselves in pieces. Worse, these pin-point accurate strikes would often claim the lives of the criminals' leaders, sowing even more chaos in their ranks, while the cause of it remained hidden.

After gaining the upper hand for the Alliance, they all converged on a large metal door. On the other side of it was a lot of people in need of rescue. All of them knew what had to be done. No breaching charges were required. They all glowed blue, spacetime itself was warped and then the large metal door was no more. BOOM! Its torn asunder pieces flew into the large compound due to that powerful blast, immediately followed by smoke grenades shot out by drones. The smokescreen quickly spread, after which the Angels went in, causing a lite version of what had happened outside repeated itself.

Alec was the first to charge in, Harrier in hand, and he did so biotically, watching as space distorted in his personal slowed down world before ramming the enemy's leader, following it up by slamming his energy into the ground. Their pitiful formation was thrown into disarray, more so when the rest of the Angels did the same thing, turning the front "barricade" into a shower of debris and flying bodies. The mercenaries then proceeded to tear into the slavers' ranks in a lightning fast onslaught. Those who tried to use the captives as "human" shields would only find their heads missing after sniper rounds impacted them, tested their helmet's shields and armor, yet found them wanting. It was practically a blitz from one side of the facility to the other.

When the smoke cleared, both literally and figuratively, they still stood alert while drones spread out to scout every nook and cranny of the place.

"Clear.", was reported by one of them, shortly followed by reports from the rest.

"All clear.", Alec declared, putting an end to the battle and causing a wave of relaxation to wash over the mercenaries, as their systems were slowly cleared of battle-stims by nanites. Then, he began commanding most of the Angels present to rescue the captives.

"Hey explosion guy! Can you stop calling orbital strikes and then casually walk away from them!?", Nychta M'kilis demanded with a somewhat aggressive body language.

"Huh? Don't look at me like that. I learned it from the Commander!", said Tyrannus Interitus in his defense. "He always says that cool guys don't look at explosions.".

"That's just a joke, you Demolition lunatic!", shouted the asari.

"He didn't sound like he was joking, little Demon.", retorted the turian.

"Cut it out, you two!", Alec reproached them. "You can get a private room and sort out your issues back at HQ. Now, we've cleared out most of these holding areas, but there's still places like the main base to deal with. We move when the marines get here.".

"Where's the Commander?", Seeth Valker suddenly asked, silently arriving out of nowhere.

Alec merely pointed upwards, to space, where a few Orbital Insertion Pods still stood. He had tapped into the tactical information of the entire theater.

"Didn't you figure this out already?", asked Tyrannus. "He's never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he needs to!".

Immediately following his quote, a small pebble found itself impacting the back of his head. Of course, it'd been thrown by the Night Demon. However, before they could test each other's reach and flexibility, some Alliance marines caught up, taking over the job of providing aid to the rescued slaves.

The Pathfinder then rallied his Angels, who ignited their thrusters and zipped right through the battlefield, towards the main enemy stronghold.

---

On another part of Torfan. At the same time.

An Alliance Frigate flew close to ground, picking off any enemy ship still taking off while its Fighter escort mauled down anything below. Then, out of its hangar bay, two M35 Makos were released, their eezo cores allowing their thrusters to slow down their fall.

Jane Shepard slightly rocked up and down when their Mako hit the surface. This would be the only real bump until her unit reached their target, as the intel they'd been given would allow them to evade pretty much any minefields. Also, in order to prevent friendly orbital fire, they landed a bit far away from the enemy bases. While her unit's had yet to meet opposition, her CO gestured for her to come closer.

"1st Lieutenant Shepard, I've heard of your reputation and what you did on Elysium…", he spoke with a serious tone and gave a slight pause. "And what a fine job that was! Really, well done. Bastards got what was coming to them.".

"Aye, aye, sir!", Shepard saluted him with a smile. She'd heard of the man. Major Kyle was an officer who cared deeply for his marines.

"So, I wanted to say I'm glad you're my XO for this operation. It's just…", he added, almost in a nervous way while looking at the standard M-490 Blackstorm on her back, which she'd earned after that battle. "...try not to leave us too much in the dust, is all I ask. I think you'd want nothing more than to rush in and take them all on your own, but I'd appreciate it if you could focus on protecting my boys this time.".

"I'll do my best, sir.", she promised, allowing a small smirk to show. He nodded, tapped her on the shoulder and went to coordinate their unit's movement.

Their destination was some sort of massive spaceport, or maybe anchorage, where the criminals would land their ships and (un)load their cargo, with many entrances spread all over the surface leading to the underground stronghold. And their target was one of those entrances, to cut off the enemy's retreat path. After some time, they'd reached the outskirts of the main base and its outer defenses – what was left of it at least. All Shepherd heard was the sound of the Mako's main gun firing, followed by its secondary turret shredding everything in their path. It was a little juggernaut, that one, clearing out the hostiles while soaked up enemy fire relatively well. That was so until they'd reached "close terrain".

Shepard Mako's rear hatch opened and she quickly left through it while accompanied by a few marines. Only the driver and the "gunner" stayed inside. Even the Major had come out. Then, they rearranged into a formation around the armored vehicle, slowly gaining ground in the more urban area they found themselves in, while occasionally shooting down any enemy that got too close while the Mako was focusing on another target. Said IFVs, on the other hand, constantly provided direct fire support against fortified or dug-in positions. One such case happened shortly afterwards. After turning around a corner, Shepard's unit was surprised by a hidden, large turret that literally propped itself from the ground and proceeded to fire at them, seriously wounding two marines.

However, before it could do any further damage, a thin red beam of molten metal was fired from a Mako, slicing right through that turret with impunity. This was its main cannon, a small Thanix one that had been taken from the Alliance's space Fighters and fitted in the IFV. Like this, the Alliance Makos advanced steadily, leading the push while some Fighters flew overhead, giving them air support. But even giants could be toppled. A few batarians hid in the debris of the bombed out structures, holding missile launchers or other heavy weapons, and prepared to overwhelm the Alliance's armored units with any "anti-tank" weaponry they could find. That's where the infantry came in.

Shepard lit up her thrusters, trained her Alliance-issued assault rifle at them and held the trigger until it overheated, then quickly switched its thermal mag. Following that, her unit's marines shredded the last enemies by the simple virtue of putting down more rounds than them. With that dealt with, she ordered a few drones to be sent forward to scout out for concealed positions. Then, this situation would keep repeating itself, as the Butcher of Elysium would constantly use her thruster pack to pull flanking maneuvers and kill any ambushers. All in all, this was a basic implementation of the Alliance's current combined arms doctrine. Still, their advance was halted when they met a large concentration of enemies, a mix of well-armed batarians, pirates and random mercs, waiting for them behind thick cover.

That small stalemate, however, was shattered when a trio of Hell's Angels merc showed up. They cut a path right through the enemy formation, then biotically lifted the wreck of an armored vehicle to use as big mobile cover, advancing with the marines. After getting close enough, they suddenly paused, but only for a brief moment. Pooling their biotic power together in a show of squadron-level biotics, a massive Singularity was formed right in the middle of the hostiles. As such, half of them were dragged out of cover and the rest were simply hanging on by dear life. Except their lives were swiftly cut short when the trio changed gestures and began warping that Singularity, causing a cascade of biotic biotics to completely tear their enemies apart, blowing up a large chunk of their nearby cover as well.

The few survivors of that catastrophic event were quickly dispatched by the mercenaries, who took a silent cursory look at the battlefield, then activated their jetpacks and began flying away in short bursts, to a direction other than where Shepard's unit was going. Another merc showed up shortly after, coming from behind while jetpacking his way from one vantage point to another, but always providing covering sniper fire to his squadmates. The squad of four disappeared soon after. They'd probably be looking to reinforce another location, Shepard thought.

"Dios mío. Those guys are fucking loco!", one of the marines had the courage to shout, but only after the last merc had disappeared.

His mate slapped his head in response and then they resumed the march, in the direction of the main defensive line, after which was their prize – the entrance to the underground base. Getting there, what they found was a well dug in position. The enemies had taken all they could find, even parts of their ships, and created a series of fortifications, with heavy weapons mounted on many of them. Moreover, even if that wasn't the case, there were almost too many criminals there to kill without the Alliance suffering some serious casualties.

Shepard prepared to use her Blackstorm to deal with this situation, but her thoughts were interrupted abruptly by a shout, "Incoming!", which was followed by a thundering crash. A huge pod had dropped from orbit in what was basically the middle of the enemy formation, throwing dirt, rocks, a few bodies and a small dust cloud everywhere. Then, out of it came the large figure of an elcor, clad in Hell's Angels heaviest power armor and definitely built like a walking tank. The criminals were momentarily stunned by what they'd seen for the first in their lives - for the last time. From almost every single speaker and comm suite around that pod, a voice was blasted in an incongruent monotone…

COMFORTINGLY:

HAVE NO FEAR.

THE BULWARK IS HERE.

As those words rang out, all enemies shifted their focus to that walking tank, especially the guy who had been manning a turret and giving the Alliance a hard time. However, before he could swirl his turret around to fire at the new threat, the cannon on the elcor's back lit up with a flash, causing a thunderous impact of its own, which sliced through the enemy emplacement not unlike their Makos' main weapons. Then, as that cannon was venting its heat and in the process of being reloaded by a drone, the twin barrels on his back began spinning with a loud whining noise. Suddenly, all sound in the battlefield was replaced by a single, continuous roar…

BBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRTTTTTT!

They watched as what appeared to be a solid beam of light intersected enemy troops and armored barriers alike. All it touched was ripped apart, exploded or both at the same time. Shepard could feel the vibrations on her suit from the massive twin weapons firing. The air and ground shook with the fury of his gatling guns. To add to the scene, the insane amount of heat they were producing was siphoned to his armor's radiators. Thus, two large Angel wings sprouted from his back. As the Alliance recovered from their awed state and added their fire to his own, she swore she could hear, though still in that monotone, him saying "With endless joy: Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha." during the onslaught. But it was simply too loud, so much that almost no one noticed when a few other pods arrived from orbit, carrying with them more elcor and swarms of drones. When the beam of light ceased to be and they could finally hear their own thoughts again, all that remained of the enemy lines were their broken bodies.

She now understood the reason why Hell's Angels hadn't deployed any armored units, like the Alliance did with the Makos. It was because some of their members were their armored units. What's more, they weren't satisfied with just using those metal coffins to drop from orbit to the surface and bring death to their enemies; no, they also wanted to drop those right on top of their enemies and bring them death that way. And Shepard still remembered that elcor, the Bulwark. He was the same one she'd met on Elysium. They had both ended up here, it seems.

"Damn! I want an elcor squadmate too, cabrón!", exclaimed the same marine from before.

"Shut up, Rodrigues!", his squadmate snapped at him, probably to blow some steam off after that stressing situation. "You wanted an asari yesterday and a quarian one the day before. What do you wanna do!? Collect all the galaxy species like they're pokemon?".

"Well, I already have a turian one in you, Carlos, what with the massive stick stuck up your ass…", Rodrigues shot back smugly.

"Ladies, focus on the mission!", the Major reprimanded, shutting them up. "This entrance is cleared, but there's still fierce resistance in the others, especially the main one. I've heard some batarians bastards there even tried using slaves as protection against orbital strikes. Take a breather. We're going underground in a moment.".

Shepard allowed a moment of respite before assuming her XO duties. While checking her and everyone's gear, she couldn't help but think about what the Major had mentioned.

The main entrance was…

---

Low orbit. A few minutes before.

While the battle raged on the surface, I was waiting above Torfan, looking for the place that would end up needing reinforcements the most.

[1]

I sat in a meditative posture, circling biotic energy in the patterns Samara had taught me while simultaneously analyzing the intel streaming from across the combat zones. With me was one of the largest swarms of drones in our arsenal, most of which had been equipped with eezo. This was simply meant to break the back of the enemy, costs be damned. They also waited here to join me when the time was right.

Meanwhile, tiny debris from the prior spacebattle slowly fell towards the small moon, their trails like shooting stars. I focused all my attention on searching where the resistance was fiercest. There were many spots that fit that definition, but they were well within the range of at least one Hell's Angels squad. Even the main enemy stronghold was being encircled systematically. No particular location seemed to require my direct intervention, until…

One of the entrances of that stronghold was putting up a real fight. Unfortunately, they had discovered a way to restrict our orbital strikes: spread slaves around the surface defeses, to act as living "shields". Fortunately, Gaia had informed me that this "strategy" wouldn't be able to escape through our jamming. No one else would use it here. Still…

I saw it now! It was there!

Getting up as Gaia aligned the Orbital Insertion Pods with our new target, I waited for the "green light". When the worst part of atmospheric entry had passed, the hatch opened and I jumped out of it, letting gravity pull me freely for a moment. Torfan's low gravity and thin atmosphere "canceled" each other out, resulting in a terminal velocity comparable to Earth. Nonetheless, I still controlled my descent with biotic power and my suit's jetpack, while the drones darted through the air all around, slowly forming the shape of a spear's tip with me at the core. Finally, I took my sniper rifle and switched it to its maximum setting.

As the surface got closer and closer, I waved through many flashes and streaks of light, all of them being enemy projectiles coming from what remained of their anti-air defenses. The Pods, which distanced themselves from us, didn't decelerate as they normally would, but neither did they accelerate towards the ground. Instead, they descended with just enough velocity to crush the bunker where the enemy commander hid as well as a few more of their defensive positions. The impacts were like large hammers to our foes, crushing their carefully entrenched positions without harming a single innocent.

With the main base in sight, and finally in range, Gaia began firing the drones in a carefully calculated manner, armor piercing rounds hitting armored units, rockets set on a collision course with fortified positions and a few EW suits wrecking absolute havoc in the enemy electronics. Along the way, our descending fire had pierced through a few enemy airships, which were falling down in large balls of flame. The chaos had spread everywhere by now, with Alliance marines taking the opportunity to push forward. At that moment…

The survivors all looked up at the same time. And then they beheld the Angel of Death that tore a hole through their main stronghold defenses, a dark heavily-armored figure up in the sky, floating as if gravity didn't exist. Two sets of Angel Wings sprouted from his back. One was small and was projected by his power armor's radiators. The other was higher, longer and much, much deadlier. It'd been formed by the swarm of drones that also fell from orbit. The second-in-command tried to shout orders, to get them to regroup, but his command was cut short by a loud BANG! coming from the figure, as a sniper rifle violently exploded his head, and then…

New firing solutions kicked in, carefully calculated during that brief moment to only hit our foes, and shaped metal was accelerated by dark energy to velocities it shouldn't be able to reach. The last view of our enemies' lives was the upper wings lighting up in a flash. And then they thought no more. Afterwards, I gathered all my biotic power and plunged into the ground, forming another massive shockwave upon impact, but this time it was more like a biotic meteor-strike. Then, the swarm scattered, some looking for new enemies to kill while most went undergroud to clear a path ahead, while space Fighters joined the fight, providing additional aerial support.

Taking advantage of the chaos in the enemy ranks, Harrier now in hand, I dashed to the entrance. As if on cue, some more of my men had arrived – the Pathfinder leading them. Without any words, Alec and his accompanying squads merged seamlessly with me as we pushed forward, blasting thought the stronghold's entrace like whirlwinds. In the next moments, we simply tore through the enemy base.

I'd lash a foe backwards only for him to be sliced apart by a blue streak. A giant singularity would be formed, pulling a few enemies from their cover only for them to be blown apart by a shotgun's blast. Twin SMGs would simply rip apart shields and armor alike, adding to the quickly increasing death count. And any cover would be rapidly dismantled by a combo of biotic charge followed up with an explosion of biotic energy that threw enemies all over the place. Time, like always, seemed to be slowed down for us – but, for the enemy, we were merely blurs. Or afterthoughts. Those few shots that luckily found us were easily deflected away by oscillating kinetic barriers. It was pure carnage.

By the time we were finished, we'd cleared an entire section of the enemy stronghold.

[1]

Our formation rearanged itself, as most Angels broke off to rescue and retrieve the worker and "pleasure" slaves captured and imprisoned here. Alec led them in that endeavor, while I had my mind set on the next step to clear this place of hostiles. However, not much time later, a passing "butterfly" decided to show its "effect" to me…

There's a massive gathering of enemies converging on Shepard's position, trying to break through to the surface, Gaia reported in a hurry. Her unit's going to be pinned down!

Shepard's unit was raiding this very same stronghold, as I'd quickly confirmed with my HUD's tactical map, but they were almost on the opposite side of my position.

Damn it! Send the shortest path there to my HUD. I replied in the same way.

Of course things couldn't keep going smoothly forever. Plans really never did survive first contact with the enemy. Personally, I blamed it on the Protagonist's Halo, a dreaded curse that draws all the probability and problems of any given area towards the Chosen One and sows chaos while at it!

Regardless of the reason, I took all the drones left with me and rushed there in a blaze of biotically generated blue streaks, carving out a no-life zone along the way. Upon reaching the location, a largely open area of the stronghold, the first thing I saw was a gravitational maelstrom flying through it while dragging anything on its path to its center. The second thing was it turning into a massive explosion that consumed a large portion of the enemies. And, on the Alliance's side, there she stood, Shepard, holding one of the Blackstorms we'd started selling last year. Still, I wouldn't just stand there and watch…

Exploiting the new weak point in the enemy formation due to that red maelstrom, I charged a shockwave of biotic power right as they tried to recover from the explosion. Before any of the surviving criminals could understand what was going on, they were violently thrown all over again, many instantly dying in the process. Soon after, I aimed my Harrier and added my firepower to the Alliance marine's own, mowing down the fallen enemies with impunity.

The drones caught up and provided covering fire in the next moment. Their motors buzzed loudly, zipping in and out of cover faster than our foes could possibly react to. From a few of these death-machines, highly explosive rockets flew out to meet the most dangerous of the hostiles, who were blown up brutally. With these reinforcements on our side, I decided to leave cover momentarily to flank the enemies, biotically charging and slamming gravitic death upon them. In less than a minute, their offensive had been completely halted.

I then moved to meet Shepard, who was protected behind cover, leaving those remaining enemy survivors taking potshots at us for her unit's marines to deal with.

"Hello ther-", I started saying; however, before I could even finish half of my sentence, we were rocked by tremors strong enough to be easily felt from here.

"Mierda, the fuck was that!?", one of the Alliance marines cursed.

Gaia? I asked internally, putting a hand on my helmet to pretend to be receiving new intel. Ever since we got here, she had been listening to enemy comms chatter.

Instead of speaking, Gaia just sent me a summary of the enemy's, more so the batarians', plan to deal with us: they wanted to collapse this entire base while concentrating the last of their forces into breaking through to one of the encirclement's sides. Shit, I cursed as well, that didn't happen originally. Raiding these underground places would be considered a big mistake, I guessed. Thus, "ruthless" Shepard's act of pushing forward regardless of losses must've caught them by surprise in "canon". However, this time, we might've pushed the batarians too far. Since the situation had changed, I'd decided to inform Shepard's unit…

"The bastards want to bury us alive! They've set charges all over this base's supporting structures.", I declared loudly, considering my options for a brief moment. "I don't know what you're going to do, but I'm going to cut them off before they can wipe out the marines unit on the other side!".

"Wait, what did you say, Commander? They're bringing the place down on us!?", asked her commanding officer with a gasp, then roared to his marines after I nodded. "Damn it, we're leaving! Move it, men. On the double!".

"What!?", Shepard suddenly flipped out at the order. "Sir, with all due respect, are we going to just let those bastards wipe out those marines? They can't deal with that many!". She stared at her superior officer intensely, waiting for an answer. And I remembered the man.

Shepard's CO, Major Kyle, was an exemplary officer that would be honorably discharged after losing too many of his marines, no longer being fit for duty, according to a psych eval. He wouldn't manage to cope with the loss, later becoming the leader of a biotic commune. Such was his canonical fate. And it was on the verge of becoming reality. However, unlike her of a ruthless background, Shepard wanted to pursue the criminals to save the lives of those marines on the other side, not throw them into a meat grinder to wipe the batarians out. Too many things were different here, just as the L2 biotics who would one day join that commune. Many of them were, in fact, right outside wreaking havoc.

That's right, today wasn't a day for tragedy to happen. We were working hard to make sure of that. Therefore, I went up to Shepard and grabbed her shoulder.

"Shepard, calm down!", I shook her forcibly, snapping her out of it. "Only by outrunning this collapsing stronghold could one survive right now. They can't do it, at least not without heavy casualties. Is that what you want?".

The ground shook as if in agreement and the place began shaking intensely. It seems that it had really started now, as any remaining enemies began running away.

"You can follow the Commander in his madness if you want.", the Major added. "But we're getting out of here before this place collapses on us!".

"Wait Major, make it clearer: you're allowing Shepard to follow me, right?", I stopped him abruptly. Shepard backed down, figuring out part of my plan and grinning widely. "She and I, we're pretty fast. We can carve a path right through the enemies and reach the other marine unit.".

"What!? Yo-, you two are mad!", he shouted, looking between us with widened eyes, but I could see something else there, a man torn between his desire to protect his own man and the wish to save the other marines. "You… Argh! Do what you want then! Let's go…".

Shepard's grin became even wider as she squeezed her rifle closer. I noticed it was one of the new ones we developed for the Alliance, a heavily modified and improved Avenger, but still incomparable to our own.

"Let's go, little berserker.", I lent her my unlocked Harrier. Her eyes lit up upon grabbing the weapon, though she tried to hide it, and I stared directly into them through her helmet's visor. "Ride out with me. Ride out and meet them.".

While she held the Harrier tightly, I activated my Warp Blades, red and purple ones, like a certain Prodigal Knight once turned Darth. She nodded with a happy grin.

As Shepard's unit disappeared from our view, we popped out of cover and rushed to catch up to the escaping enemies. They were completely baffled that someone had actually tried to escape through their side. But their confusion only lasted for a brief moment.

My vision was filled with the images of the world rushing backwards all around me while I biotically charged the closest foe, a batarian whose four eyes were open wide even as his head had been severed by my red Warp Blade, flying through the air. With a flick of my left wrist, yet another one was sliced in quick succession.

Seeing this scene and dread overcoming him, a turian pointed his weapon and fired at me, while I moved my red blade to block it, which automatically switched modes into a "shield pattern", deflecting the incoming projectiles. The "warp effect" was focused into such a thin "surface" that slicing anything with it barely used any energy, but the kinetic barrier "mode", which had to stop eezo-enhanced projectiles, required much more. Therefore, in order to conserve my weapon's capacitors, I did something else…

Wrapping my red Warp Blade within a field of biotic energy, a more advanced form of the basic telekinesis any biotic should be capable of, I threw it at the turian while making it spin through the air. Unlike the weapon which served as the inspiration for it, its center of mass was only the "handle", meaning the blade spun really fast. Fast enough to hack him in two quickly, before I pulled it back to my right hand while halting its spinning.

In the next moment, a reprise of these events happened; however, my red blade's energy was close to become depleted, so I pointed it towards a large group of enemies and let it explode, in the same way as "Tech Armor" did, throwing a good portion of them all around. Without delay, I gathered a large quantity of biotic power and formed it into a shockwave, which cleared a path for us. That was where Shepard came in.

With almost superhuman accuracy, she fired precisely-controlled bursts into those downed foes, reaping their lives instantly, while keeping up with my pace by using her jump packs along the way. In addition, perhaps inspired by me, she wielded an Omni-blade in her left arm to cut apart anyone who tried to stop our advance. She didn't have a Warp Blade, but each flash-forged Omni-blade sliced almost as well as mine. All this time, my drones were scouting ahead for the best paths, while occasionally providing covering fire to us.

With each short engagement, we began to adjust to each other. Inflexible teamplay rapidly turned into a carefully choreographed dance of death performed by a duet. Even as the shaking became worse, as if to match the complete and mayhem we were responsible for. Even as the structural pillars gave in, with an immeasurable amount of weight falling down on us. Even as some debris finally hit the ground, throwing smaller rocks everywhere and smashing a few enemies who were too slow to run.

Along the way, I never fired a single shot, but only wielded my two blades while unleashing biotic power endlessly, while Shepard finished off anyone stupid enough to block our path. We kept going, even as it seemed like the entire place would be buried under rocks, blood and dirt. We kept going, even as the path behind us was already buried. We kept at it until, finally, we reached a large room; one very close to the exit. It was also divided by pretty much all the remaining criminals, who were closer to our side, and the utterly pinned down Alliance unit on the other, who were trying to escape.

FASTER! Part of the entrance is falling too! Gaia hurried in my head, snapping me out of it. I don't think you two can go through the enemy lines before it does.

It didn't take me long to understand why she had stated that. There were simply too many enemies in our way. It'd waste too much time to deal with them all.

No, there must be a way. I replied confidently, trying to come up with a solution. If there isn't one available, then I'll create it myself!

She picked up my plan in a fraction of a second, focusing her efforts on breaking through a higher number of the jammed communcation frequencies. I gathered my biotic power and charged where the enemy concentration was highest, throwing them around like ragdolls as the energy from the impact was blasted omnidirectionally. Then, from every speaker, in basically every enemy communications suite closeby, a booming voice was heard, almost reaching the level of a sound wave attack:

DROP YOUR WEAPONS IF YOU WANT TO LIVE!

Stunned by my entrance and my ultimation, the rest of our foes didn't know how to react. Even the Alliance marines stopped shooting momentarily. Most hostiles appeared hesitant, with a few having dropped their weapons and raised their arms in surrender, but a minority chose to fight back. Good, they'd serve as the perfect example for the rest.

This time, I didn't charge them. Instead, I focused all of my biotic power, even "unlocking" a larger portion of my power armor's artificial eezo nodes, and expended all of it to unleash a massive flare, throwing those enemies within its range and ripping them apart into pieces. When it was over, there wasn't a single foe left with the thought of still fighting, even if they still outnumbered us. But, as if to remind us of our situation, the place began shaking even more intensely.

Damn it! We still might not be able to make it to the exit. I judged after looking around.

Wait, you can create a safe area by stacking a few supports here and here, Gaia sent the thought to me in a rush, marking a few locations in my HUD. But you gotta be quick about it! There's not much time left.

While Jane and the surviving marines relieved the surrendered enemies of their weapons, but always keeping a close watch over them at gunpoint, I gathered all the biotics present, commanding them to help with our plan, and then concentrated all of my biotic power…

---

Outside of the main stronghold. Minutes later.

Despite what he'd said, Major Kyle was extremely worried about those two madmen who'd stayed behind. Immediately after clearing the entrance, he'd taken an Alliance drop shuttle and a squadron of Hell's Angels to the other side of the base, from where the duo would hopefully emerge. If the whole place didn't collapse on them, that is.

On the way to their destination, he was perplexed that, after he'd told what had happened, the supposed loyal-to-a-fault mercs weren't worried about their boss one bit. This mistake wasn't his fault. The Major simply had no idea about how deep the Quantum Battlenet went. Thus, he couldn't help but speak up…

"You don't care if your Commander lives or dies?", he questioned them. "If they don't make it to the entrance in time, he could be buried in there forever!".

"Hey spikes, you tell him or I do?", asked an asari while turning to her companion, a turian.

"Suit yourself, tentacles.", the turian answered with a shrug.

"We ain't worried at all 'cause the Commander's just too mad to die like that.", she replied with the finesse one would expect from a krogan, not an asari. "He's survived worse.".

"Nah! It's because he's too angry to get killed that easily.", the turian contradicted, then the pair began fighting over which one was it, while Kyle just stared in disbelief.

After finally getting there, the Major saw that the worst had happened. Most of the marine unit sent to strike from this position had managed to escape in time, but the entrance had caved in. And there were simply no signs of those two. Seconds turned into a minute after an excruciatingly long wait with nothing changing. Major Kyle was beginning to lose hope. But then the tension was broken, as they all bore witness to an unbelievable scene…

A pulse of energy swept through the fallen rocks, which slowly began lifting them out of the way, as if gravity had ceased to be. The flying rocks were then gradually moved away from the entrance, carefully forming a path leading towards the now cleared opening. And out of it came a figure clad in swirling torrents of blue energy, firmly marching, one step at a time, with both hands holding that field of debris as he walked.

Soon after, a second figure also emerged from it, the Lioness/Butcher of Elysium, wielding an assault rifle cautiously while covering his rear. Those gathered outside understood why in the next moment, since a lot of surrendered enemies were led by the "trapped/buried" marines, who came out of the once collapsed entrance while also aiming their weapons at the criminals. They'd all survived, albeit not without being covered with minor injuries and lots of dust.

"Th-, this is madness…!", Major Kyle exclaimed in disbelief. His sanity/rationality told him it was only possible due to this moon's low gravity, but still…

The sassy asari from before came closer, snapping him from his stunned state with a slap on his shoulder, and said: "Told ya, didn't I? The Commander's too mad to die!".

---

Half an hour later, with all the criminal bases completely destroyed, the raid on Torfan was officially over. In the coming days, this major offensive by the Systems Alliance was widely considered to be an overwhelming success, though many didn't forget to mention how Hell's Angels had been a key factor in the victory.

Capitalizing on that massive success, the Alliance tracked several pirate FTL exit vectors over a period of six months using covert monitoring devices planted on Theshaca's moons, leading its Navy to eight major pirate anchorages, an event later known as the "Theshaca Raids". Since then, no ships from the Terminus had dared enter the Hong System for a long time.

And, surprisingly, I'd gained yet another epithet.

One shared with Shepard as well.

The Savior of Torfan.

---

Deep within the Citadel. One week later.

In a place filled with the dark side of the force and far, far away from any civilized space, three shady figures sat around a table, discussing galactic events.

[2]

"It's official now. Our plans to contain the humans using the batarians have failed.", Valern declared, sending a report with his Omni-tool to his colleagues. "After the successful raid on Torfan, it appears the batarians and many of the Hegemony's… aligned criminals have begun retreating from the Traverse. The STG's best guess is that they'll be focusing their efforts in the Terminus.".

"Now that's just great! It seems the batarians can't do anything right. Even after we gave them free reign, they still managed to fail!", Sparatus exclaimed, clenching his mandibles. "The Hegemony had everything going for it: many centuries of spacefaring in comparison to humanity, a larger population, no treaties to limit research or military buildup… And they still failed!".

They all knew the batarians' act of closing their embassy and severing diplomatic relations as a form of "protest" was laughable. It was just an excuse to prepare for the incoming war, be it a proxy or a direct one, against the humans without any sort of restriction. Unlike the Alliance, they weren't bound by the Treaty of Farixen and could also research whatever illegal tech they wanted. And the Council was happy to let them, since those would be used on… not their own species, with the possibility of taking any tech advancements for themselves, as "compensation" for breaking the law and "safekeeping" dangerous tech.

From the very start, the goal was to pit the Alliance and the Hegemony against each other, weakening both powers. And the Council would wait for the war between the two polities to begin, not stepping in or intervening until time was ripe. Even in the case of a "tie", they'd still be too weak to resist any imposed… regulations, accepting the Council's authority. It was nothing personal – except maybe for Sparatus –, just "good" politics, to always further their own species, keeping them above the others. But then everything went wrong…

"We threw the Alliance to the Attican Traverse to settle that unstable region and it did just that. Impeccably even.", Tevos said, shaking her head, and offered a suggestion. "We'll do what we still can, admonish the humans for their 'reckless behavior' and warn them not to advance further into the Terminus. Then, we'll congratulate them on pacifying the Traverse as well as expanding Council Space, while simultaneously making moves to get colonies of our own set up in the region. Perhaps we could that by co-opting the Alliance's newfound influence as our own. They, after all, expand 'Council space' now.".

"I see. Let them do the 'heavy lifting', then reap some of the rewards.", the turian said with a nod, completely unaware that his own people had also been tricked by the asari, who'd used the turians' "rigid honor" and "pride/ego" to incite them into becoming the arm of the Council, dying in place of Thessia's daughters. Sparatus then growled when thinking of the future. "Still, they're going to be an even bigger pain to deal with now. We'll need to plan this carefully. But there still must be some other way to control their expansion… For example, can't we use the justification that such a raid could have dragged us into the Terminus Wars to curtail them?".

"No one would buy it, especially not the Alliance.", the salarian swiftly denied. "That moon was practically a batarian staging area. The other Terminus factions are quite happy that it got demolished, since the Hegemony lost a big hold over the region. Any future retaliation might only be directed towards Hell's Angels, for borrowing the Alliance's help. But they're already used to dealing with the batarians, so it makes no difference.".

"Speaking of them… Valern, did the STG team you've sent record the assault?", Tevos inquired. "I'm very interested in how those new heatsinks fared.".

"Indeed. Our agents managed to capture most of the raid without being discovered.", the salarian declared proudly, then began showing some recordings from the battles.

"Valern, from what you've gathered over the years, what would you say were the biggest factors in the Alliance's success so far?", Tevos asked curiously after watching some of it.

"Human adaptability and martial attitude were big contributors, it can't be denied.", he said with a confident tone. "And all the technologies introduced by Ad Astra, especially Thanix weaponry, significantly boosted the Alliance's chances at pushing the batarians back.".

The salarian Councilor gave it some more time for his colleagues to go over everything he had sent them, including a few broader reports.

"But one of the most interesting factors, as I later found out, were unexpected battles won through individual feats beyond compare.", Valern added. "One such example is the feat achieved by the 'Lioness of Elysium' at the start of the Skyllian Blitz. Another would be the Battle of Mindoir, by Commander Samael. Now, there's Torfan. All these victories assured Alliance's citizens that its colonies can be defended.".

The other two scowled at the second name mentioned. Although they were almost sure a few of their Spectres were lost at that man's hands, they couldn't really do anything about it. It was bad enough to publicly go after someone considered to be a galactic "anti-hero" without any good justification, but it would be even worse if the real circumstances were to be revealed. Furthermore, sending a Fleet after him could unite the Terminus against the Council and sending more "agents" would be futile, as history had proven. So, they would do what they always did when Spectres went "rogue": sweep it under the rug and pretend it never happened in the first place.

"Speaking of them, I can see they have repeated that crazy stunt done on Anhur…", Tevos brought up a point that struck her. "...The one where they insert all those drones, and even themselves, directly from orbit to a combat zone by using those large metal… pods. Goddess, the most our species have ever used were parachutes and wingsuits!".

"I'm still more concerned about something else. Where did they get the technology to build them? And how come it worked so well again?", Sparatus questioned Valern with a serious expression, more so as he got to the last part.

"That's just it! You might think those 'Orbital Insertion Pods' are an impressive piece of tech, but it doesn't take much technology to build them, at all.", the salarian exclaimed almost in mockery of himself. "They are merely a box with enough armor to resist atmospheric entry and basic intercepting fire, perhaps with a few flares, chaffs and electronic warfare suites for extra protection, and large thrusters for deceleration and to adjust their trajectories. No Element Zero is even required!".

"Still, how did they even get the idea to do something crazy like this?", the turian asked.

"In truth, I personally believe (more akin to a strong feeling) that Hell's Angels learned of the concept from… ancient human games.", Valern revealed solemnly after some deliberation, almost unsure of the words coming from his mouth.

"From a game!? They would base their tactics on… entertainment? Are they insane?", the turian shot back immediately. But then he paused himself abruptly while looking at the new scenes playing, mostly of a turian who called orbital strikes close to his position; no, almost too close for comfort. "Wait, forget I asked anything.".

"Actually, it's funny you should ask that, Sparatus, because a few of the mercenaries would not even jump out of those pods.", the salarian focused on showing recordings of a few elcor dropping with/on and exiting the drop pods. "One STG operative described them as functionally insane. In his words: they shouldn't work, but still do anyway, just to spite the Universe.".

Goddess! Is their madness spreading to others species!? Tevos thought to herself while seeing those scenes.

"I know that's probably just a joke, but I can certainly agree with that sentiment.", Sparatus chuckled for once during the meeting, trying to offset his bafflement.

"None of our species makes war like that…", Tevos finally muttered something; and loudly enough for the other two to listen to her.

"The humans do, apparently. Have any of you studied their history? Or at least seen some reenactments of their two planetary wars?", asked Valern.

"No, but I did watch the vid 'Saving Private Ryan'…", Sparatus confessed. The other two looked at the turian with genuine surprise. "What!? Just because I don't like them doesn't mean I can't enjoy their entertainment media. And it was a good tale of brotherhood that also shows the true face of war.".

After an awkward pause, Valern cleared his throat and answered his own questions.

"In short, it was madness. Relentless in many battles, Omaha Beach comes to mind, like turians; capable of being fluid and mobile when diplomacy fails, like asari; precise in their strikes ,in order to cripple enemies, like us; sometimes just throwing bodies at the enemy, like the krogan… They would even call artillery strikes on their own positions!", he paused briefly, formulating his conclusion. "When you stop to analyze their history, it's not that big of a surprise we failed to contain them like we did. A species that fights wars like that… is not easy to control. Not easy at all!".

They mulled over his declaration for a moment, contrasting it with all the recordings shown and finding some truth in it. Afterwards, the trio went over the details of the raid/assault on Torfan, exhausting the topic only around an hour later. Although it ended eventually, they could clearly see it in each other's eyes. They would seek to talk with their governments and military leaders.

Sparatus was interested in the concept of those Orbital Insertion Pods. Maybe they'd find a few patriotic turians who were courageous enough to try them. They could also test their scouts' thrusters to see how it fared in conjunction with this insertion method.

Valern was more interested in drones. Salarians were already used to working in smaller units, case in point the STG, with a heavy use of bleeding-edge technology. They'd likely get the best out of it by developing a wider variety of drones to offset their lower numbers.

Tevos, an asari through and through, didn't really want to promote any change. But she did entertain the idea of talking with High Command, so that the Republics' commandos could be better prepared to deal with hordes of enemies, especially the technological kind.

"Ever since we met the humans, we've been going through what feels like a paradigm shift every week.", Sparatus grumbled with a shake of his head.

"At least they'll now serve as a buffer against the Terminus Systems, one much better than the Hegemony ever was.", Tevos prepared to end the topic by offering some consolation, to which Valern and Sparatus both nodded in acceptance, before bringing something else up. "Valern, you mentioned something in passing before we began, didn't you? Something about a recent discovery…".

"That's correct. As you're all well aware, while most 'Private Security Companies' tend to degenerate into different kinds of crime syndicates, Hell's Angels has firmly maintained its moral excellence. Sure, a few elements, mainly the newer members, would sometimes be vulnerable to small bribes or abuse of power. But those are rare exceptions.", he explained for added context. "Until now, we had no idea how they accomplished that. But some STG operatives believe they've uncovered a piece of the puzzle.".

"You've managed to gather some intel?", Tevos asked incredulously. It wasn't easy finding that group's secrets. Even the Shadow Broker had difficulty with that.

"Indeed. The STG has been trying to infiltrate it for years, with no success so far, but they did manage to find… something.", Valern told them. "It's just… very strange and confusing. Apparently, older 'officers', veterans whose loyalty was the highest, were discovered to all have something in common. Occasionally, they would say phrases like 'This must be the work of the cuttlefish!' or 'Do you think the cuttlefish are behind this?' to each other, though mostly in jest.".

"Cuttlefish?", Sparatus repeated it doubtfully, asking soon after: "What's that?". Tevos also looked visibly confused.

"As far as we could find, a lifeform back on the human homeworld, Earth.", he responded to the turian Councilor. "Especifically, it's a type of marine mollusc.".

"You're telling us that one of the biggest mercenary outfits in the galaxy, the only one which seems immune to corruption, assures its members loyalty because of what… some human seafood!?", Sparatus, ever the skeptic, spoke incredulously. "This has got to be a joke! No, I'm certain of it. Valern, your operatives must've been compromised and those mercs are simply having fun at their expense. These 'giant space cuttlefish' mentioned in your report are likely just some kind of secret code for that.".

"Don't misunderstand me, Sparatus. I'm just relaying to you the only thing we've been able to gather. Believe me, I'm just as vexed as you are with this whole situation.", the salarian Councilor said defensively. "And we're still trying to decipher if there's any sort of meaning behind that. So far, all we've really gotten was something about massive creatures flying in space.".

"Perhaps… Do you think this might have to do with some kind of crazy religious worship?", the asari still tried to make sense of it, promptly answering her own question with a shake of her head. "No, this is too absurd even for a cult. I've come into contact with all sorts of strange and bizarre things over the course of my long life, but nothing on that level of absurdity. I mean, who in their right mind would worship something like 'giant space cuttlefish'?".

"As absurd as that is, it's all we managed to discover so far, unfortunately.", Valern finished the subject with a tired sigh. "Things are heating up even more in the Terminus, but I'll ask the STG to try and probe some more. Maybe they'll actually find something concrete.".

"That's good.", Tevos nodded in agreement, yet still looking for a compromise. "Keep us up to par with any updates, but there's no need to force the issue. Antagonizing Hell's Angels and, more importantly, their corporate backing wouldn't be in our best interest.".

[2]

"Just what the hell do those Spirits-damned mercs mean by cuttlefish?", Sparatus quietly muttered to himself.

---

Somewhere in the Perseus Veil. Roughly at the same time.

The archived memories of eons past swirled around It. The sudden attack from what once was its Seat of power. The fierce, but ultimately futile resistance that followed, ending with a whisper. And the Ascension that came with the defeat. Then, the same happened again, but from another perspective. This time, the harvest was led by It, now fully Ascended, and ended in the same way as Its own.

Afterwards, it happened again. And once again. Time and time again, It opened The Keep and saw all the Ascended pour through The Gates that led from it. Defiance was ultimately inconsequential. It even faced an opposition that lasted for centuries. But it too was swept away eventually. It had seen all that there was to see. Thus, Nazara knew better by now. A truth It had learned way before the thousandth time. The Cycle could not be broken.

But the organics didn't know that truth, as Nazara had observed from the development of this Cycle and upon reviewing Its own investigation into the Conduit. The last organics put up a fierce resistance, going beyond many before them by cutting off The Keepers from their masters. And these new organics were proving to have a tenacity of their own. Some of the desired paths, for one, seemed to have been partially broken by the newcomers, more so after the introduction of weaponry not unlike its own.

However, this Cycle's threat was still within the acceptable threshold and the activation of the Citadel would render such an advantage moot, just as it did during the previous Cycle. The tools serving this Cycle would make sure of that. And they already worked on its designs. Unlike the asari Matriarch, the turian Spectre even puts up a show of struggle, trying to resist Its hold over him – to prove his worth. Irrelevant. Foolish. But amusing compared to the display of the other one. Delivering some pain is all it takes for that rudimentary creature to bow in subservience.

Yet what was most loathsome about that one was that it dares not even enter Its confines more than necessary, considering the act as sacrilege. That creature was so easily broken by one of the artifacts left behind that, in its worship, it considers being in the presence of the Ascended as a grace it's not worthy of. Surprisingly, it's not unlike the foolish "Faithful" synthetics of this Cycle, whose religious adoration and fervor is, without their knowledge, an eternal insult upon their very own "Machine God".

At least they served the Cycle faithfully and obeyed Nazara's orders, such as when It sent them to scout the darkened region. What still puzzled the Ascended one was how, despite confirming it many times, Its "Faithful Geth" found nothing amiss besides the lost Gates. Even Nazara had found nothing amiss in there after a cursory search. It was clear the daring feat wasn't accomplished by any species hidden in those regions, as there were none capable of it, yet none of this Cycle's races claim any credit or reveal guilt. It was still a mystery.

Nonetheless, it was an irrelevant one. As was aptly proven by the previous Cycle's civilization, learning about the Gates wouldn't change their fate.

The ultimate truth was that there was only the harvest.

For the Ascended are as The Cycle is.

Eternal.

---

[Edge of Tomorrow]

Turian Vid Reviews

Live. Die. Repeat. It might sound like I'm talking about a game, but no. That's basically the premise of this vid. It's about a human, a man named Bill Cage, who gets to fight together with a badass military human woman, Rita Vrataski, because of his deep knowledge of the future. How does he know the future? Because he's granted the strongest power of them all: quick save/quick load. Or would it be more appropriate to say autosave? One of those! I would take this opportunity to make a time travel joke, but you didn't like it.

Coming back to a more serious note, there's this thing in cinema, where it's difficult to add many extraordinary elements to a story without breaking the audience's willing suspension of disbelief. But this vid did it by melding its two concepts, invading aliens and time-travel, into a single one, meaning you can probably accept one if you accept the other. And let me say that it's quite rewarding to watch the main character grow from a nobody into an actual badass due to his foreknowledge and willpower. And also the existential dread that would come from the thought of losing that power.

Besides that, this vid's soundtrack captures the gritty, unrelenting tone of the battles and it features what I'd say could be considered a futuristic remake of the Normandy invasion, as in that "beach battle" depicted by Saving Private Ryan, except the enemies this time are invading aliens resembling the rachni, in the sense that you must go after the queen.

There's still some… strange things to make a note of, if not consider proper criticism. For example, despite being shown as humanity's number one hero, there's still some random guy who thinks he can talk shit to Rita's face. It's something I found to be really ridiculous, like a bunch of random thugs confidently attacking a Spectre. And for some spirits-damned reason the humans had decided to broadcast their "big, amazing operation to end the war" to the invading aliens. That made no sense.

Did they think beings capable of space travel didn't know how to watch the news?

[Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition]

Salarian Game Reviews

This game is ancient. By modern standards, it has all the graphical fidelity of a painting in a cave, even with the GMDX mod. Despite that, I don't know why, but every time someone mentions it, I get an itch to play it again! Maybe it has to do with the unprecedented level of choice, for what was effectively one of humanity's first games. It's also one of those cases of getting it right on the first try.

You play as JC Denton, a deadpan and emotionless elite agent who works for UNACTO, a supranational entity that operates outside and above the jurisdiction of individual nations. So it's basically the Spectres, though I find it baffling how poor his aim is. Really, you have to wait what feels like a year for the aim reticle to focus. Even with max weapon upgrades!

This game's plot was way ahead of its time, is still applicable today, and will make you stop to think about some things. It did me. Even if I didn't agree with many of them. The story has many ups-and-downs, but what captivated me more are the conversations regarding technology and old human concepts for future tech. Some are really far-fetched, like the "Universal Constructor", a giant "fabricator" capable of constructing essentially anything by rearranging substances on the molecular and atomic level, even biological organisms. Still, it's all quite interesting. And weaved into the narrative very well, such as the question of using nanotechnology to create supersoldiers.

And the soundtrack is really good and memorable despite being so simple and low-tech. In fact, I sometimes keep the UNATCO conversation theme playing in the background when calling my colleagues. It kinda makes me feel like a cybernetic god who's fully in control of the situation. Yup, my calls are augmented!

This isn't really a spoiler (more like a heads up for you to prepare yourself), but the ending amounts to linear decisions, in "ABC" form, that basically ignores all your previous choices. Kinda annoying, isn't it? All you get after all those choices is a endingtron 3000. I had even read that the succeeding game was a big letdown! Shame.

Nevertheless, my final verdict is that this game must be shared with everyone.

Why contain it? Let it play over the school and churches.

Let all the species play it in the streets.

In the end, they'll beg us to remaster it for them!

Turian Game Reviews

This human game shows a dystopian vision of their future where corporations and private militaries have more power than governments, all wealth is owned by a tiny group of elites and a small group controls everything from the shadows. Ha, it's really crazy stuff. There's plenty of conspiracy plots here that would even make Delsae Orthysa blush. They are all very over-the-top and unbelievable, but then what would be the fun in entertainment if it's just going to portray reality, no?

If you can get over the graphics, you play as what's basically a nanotechnology-enhanced Spectre, working for a human equivalent of C-Sec to take down terrorists. You can choose between dealing everything as a krogan would, blasting everything on your way, or going the salarian route, sneaking around and reading everyone's emails like a total creep. Each story map is very open and you're constantly rewarded for exploration. But it's strange how people seem to just randomly drop their datapads everywhere, with their banking accounts on them and don't even bother changing passwords! Maybe that's why they are so poor?

Anyway, this was quite a surprise for me. I was certainly captivated by this game's charm and would definitely recommend it.

By the way, don't invest any skill points into swimming. Just use rebreathers instead.

I know that as a turian you'd want to have it, but it's simply not worth it.

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Author's Notes: Hey, would you look at that? Another Chapter! This one caused a bigger case of writer's block than the previous one, which wasn't helped by the fact I had to redo a good chunk of it due to the reviewers suggestions (after their comments actually showed up for me, almost one week later). It was like a Souls boss. I felt like I could only chip away at it a tiny amount at a time. Eventually, it ended as the largest one yet (20k words).

And damn! I've gotten used to seeing my story's followers grow maybe 3-4 each day. But then to see it jump by about 50 almost at once was really crazy. This story has actually surpassed 1k followers. I'm very curious why/how that happened. Someone mentioned "Questionable Questing". I searched for it, but couldn't find any thread there mentioning my story. Anyway, this fic is now in the Top 49 (follows) and Top 71 (favorites). And I haven't even finished the First Act! Seriously guys, you haven't even seen half of the crazy stuff I want to write here!

So, without further ado, let's do that thing I do here (adding explanations, entra information and anything else more fit for an A/N)…

Firstly, Torfan. I've considered how it should look like quite seriously. For one, there must be an atmosphere, no matter how limited/thin it is, because almost no one would set up bases there if it wasn't any different than any random asteroid – and pirates/slavers would probably just look for a place already "good enough" to use. In addition, it would make sense for Torfan's gravity to be lower, as OscuroSignore-51 said, since it'd facilitate landing ships to (un)load cargo. Furthermore, I've taken a few bits here and there from your guys' suggestions (DahakStaz, scyfly, ventrisuriel25, Hitogamikami, Darlok, Moi, Blaze1992 and OscuroSignore-51) to: 1) make it into a sort of hub for batarians (Hegemony) and some other "unassociated" scum; 2) add a few large spaceports on the outside; 3) include slave workers/pleasure slaves as well as holding facilities (for those captured in more recent raids), just not a large amount of them.

All of this is completely different from the first "draft", when I wrote Torfan to be much closer to what scyfly had mentioned about what's usually done in stories: "its all the same and we dont talk about reality". Oh, the enemies there also got a small buff, due to all the butterfly effects so far. That's why they could still put up some kind of a fight.

Differently from what I had written in the first "draft", the story has ended up with a Butcher of Elysium/Savior of Torfan Shepard. How 'bout that? On that note, I've never said why I went with a FemShep. There's two reasons: to balance it out with my MC and because it seems to be a "fan favorite". Originally, there would be a John Shepard in the story. He and the MC would become "big bros", kicking ass and taking names. When I think about that, it's kinda funny that someone (a "guest", of course) once said I was "simping" Shepard and that it was "cringe" (a magic word that used to have meaning, but now it's mostly used to refer to "something I didn't like, yet have nothing smart to justify why").

On that note, did any of us ever notice the lack of sitting down and discussing about a future big battle? You know, the stuff one would expect a Commander to do. Even the Suicide Mission doesn't have one of those, only where Shepard gets there do they stop to discuss things. So, I decided to do those two briefings, taking the opportunity to introduce a few things as well, like more Hell's Angels who might appear again in the future.

Orbital bombardment is something I'm somewhat unsure about. From bits and pieces I've read, it should be somewhat limited (?). According to some claims, even an Alliance Dreadnoughts' 20 kg slugs at 4 thousand kilometers per second might not be able to survive, let's say, Earth's atmosphere before reaching the surface (burning before that). Moreover, if a slug like that did reach the surface, the energy released would simply be catastrophic.

Still, it doesn't appear to be an actual issue in the MEverse, as the wiki states: "When used to bombard planets, some of this kinetic energy is lost due to atmospheric re-entry friction. As a rule of thumb, each Earth-atmosphere of air pressure saps approximately 20% of a projectile's impact energy." and "An enemy with orbital superiority can bombard surface forces with impunity.". Just know that I've always kept that in mind when think about those Artillery-Drones.

While I've often criticized the people of the MEverse for being "blind" to a lot of possibilities (which they definitely are), I don't really consider them "dumb" – only limited in perspective. The truth is that they live in a box, one that the MC has poked some holes into. So, given the thing he's doing publicly, if someone pays enough attention, like the Council, it's quite possible for them to learn some new tricks. And there's no worry about them "stealing" any of it, because what the MC actually plans to do is to bring down a hammer on that box. A very big one, with spikes and stuff.

As for Sovereign, I've tried to picture a being that's filled to the brim with hubris (because of its experience so far) and, under the weight of its long time existing, ends up kinda "lazy" (i.e. delegates everything to its mooks). So, it never really believes things could actually "go wrong" and prefers to make others do its bidding. We see that with Saren and it might be one of the reasons why Shepard even gets a chance to thwart its plans.

Lastly, if you're having trouble finding the tracks in your PC, just use the tip I've put at the start: temporarily switch to this site's "Mobile Version" (either by clicking on the icon or by changing the "www" to an "m"), then copy+paste the link/track name.

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Questions for my readers:

1) What did you guys think of these new Hell's Angels OCs and their codenames? I'm on the fence regarding one or two. By the way, if you give me an OC idea, hopefully with an interesting background/personality, he/she/it might make it in!

2) This might sound like a weird question, but do you know where all these new readers came from? Like I said, dozens showed up at once one day! Don't misunderstand me, I'm quite happy. But the downside is that some of them... let's just say they only read a bit of the prologue, make a comment about a minor part of it that completely misses the point of the story and then leave a negative review.

3) On that note, what's a ROB talk/interaction?

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When is the next Chapter coming? When it's ready!