So I am still bamboozled by all the support for this story.

Special Mention: Spartan 626 for sending me a 10,559 word message with ideas he/she has. To answer your last message, I'm still going through your ideas, trying to think how to slot them in and when I figure out what I like I'll get back to you. Massive thanks though!

Cheers all for that.

RR - Again I couldnt answer everyone due to the sheer number of reviews, (A really nice problem to have if I am honest) but I will answer a few here.

Heartfanglives: Humanities strengths is going to come from the fact they have alot of tech the citadel will want, but in a military sense they are going to be weak, but strong at the same time. Unable to launch an offensive per say, but strong in that to actually get to a planet and attack will be a hard feat because of their defences. They are going to be more of a fort knoxx type thing, the fort is hard to do anything against but the fort is not able to move on enemies.

Duke Phelan: The language issue is not going away, and it will continue to be a problem for a considerable time. Cheers.

Pyrforos: Ha, I am tempted. Evil Overlord Blasto would defo be a dangerous villain.

naruto namikaze 9: Everyone does love the complete tag, and all authors on here love the support through faves, follows and reviews! Cheers.

Kira 117: Quirinus is my creation, and that was my goal, make a Turian who isn't the typical portrayal, that being gun-ho. The melding is going to work a little different in this universe, atleast it does when not Asari-Asari. We will get to how it is different later in the story. And Shhh, no giving away story spoilers.

Evilthelast: Organising a well oiled fleet takes time, organising a bunch of slavers will take even longer. I do not plan on anything like this happening - for a while.

ThePrimeCronos: Thankyou!

/.../

Final note: I've pushed this one out earlier than I wanted to because I'm going off radar for a while, so I didn't want to leave this without update for who knows how long. Should be back in about a month. Maybe earlier if I get a day or two off. What I want to say is, if it has a few errors, I'm sorry.

Fleet Commander Quirinus looks over an image as an Officer speaks to him, "From our brief analysis we have noted 5 things."

"Yes, do go on."

The Turian Officer reaches over and zooms into a part of the craft, "They achieve stealth by being able to turn on what we suspect is a nano-coat paint, capable of absorbing a minimum of 99.9% of light, making it effectively undetectable in the visible spectrum. We have a few ships that have experimented with something similar in the years past."

"What happened to them?" Asks Quirinus.

"Officially," The Officer speaks, "Development of stealth vessels was banned under Citadel Law after the Asari discovered a similar Salarain vessel in their space. After that, who knows."

"Probably developed further by high command, put up a request for information on how we can detect such vessels. For now, can we detect their Eezo core, transmissions or gravity wells?"

"Eezo we will come to in a moment, transmissions are unlikely, they were silent when circling the Goshawk, as for gravity wells, it is possible, but easily fooled. Without reflecting or emitting light for us to analyse, it will be hard for us to determine what is causing the gravity well, it could be a small asteroid that is in a shadow, thus a lack of light to reflect, or one of their stealth ships."

"I see," Quirinus says while thinking on a solution, "What else have you concluded?"

"Have a look at where the weapons are placed, what do you notice?"

"They face rearwards, towards the engines," Quirinus says, "Now why would they do that? Unless... Do they lack eezo engines?"

"Most certainly, we could detect none of the element on the stealth vessel, further, we can't even detect a slither of the element in this space. Their engines we believe are neutron engines."

Quirinus thinks hard for a moment, neutron engines have the advantage of being almost undetectable, but they are slow and incapable of FTL, meaning these stealth vessels are not meant to leave this system. Who uses stealth as a primary form of defence, wonders Quirinus, who is a firm believer of visible deterrents like dreadnoughts. "So, they can't use Eezo to rapidly slow down and will come at us engines facing forward to slow, which is why the guns face to the back of the vessel and not the front. What can you deduce about their weaponry?"

"That," The officer says with a scratch of his neck, "Is where we begin to guess more than evaluate. This is what we suspect the weapon to be," The Turian taps to a large metal rod that is slightly glowing orange, the rod is facing backwards, towards the engines. "We suspect this is what they use to shoot the plasma we came across earlier."

"No Mass Accelerator Cannons?"

"Hard to tell but I doubt it. These holes in the ship here and here are potentials but with no element zero, I struggle to see how they would accelerate a heavy projectile to required velocities. It is more likely due to the number of these holes that they are for missiles."

"I see," Quirinus says before looking to another officer in the room, "Aurelia, how effective will our barriers be to plasma?" Quirinus is not overly concerned about the missiles, his fleet has more than ample missle defence platforms, and they are a known, he has come across more than a hundred different types of missiles in his life. What he does not know about is the plasma weaponry, and this is what he is most concerned about.

The Turian whose name was called looks up from a work station, "I've been working on this Fleet Commander. The best I can say at the moment is that without our deflector operating, we are defenceless. If we find a way to power our deflector when stationary or not in FTL, it should be adequate to protect from head-on shots."

"Will this be hard to implement?"

The Turian looks uncertain, "The deflector requires immense levels of energy to operate, and I suspect we will have to sacrifice certain functions for it."

"Such as?"

"As crazy as this sounds, shields, Fleet Commander. Our shields will not actually stop a plasma shot. The velocity of the warning shot was 97.76% the speed of light, our shields would fail to activate in time." Shields are not permanently active because of the vast amounts of energy that would draw, they power up when they detect a shot is going to hit, further shields generate vasts amount of heat which would need dissipating at regular intervals.

Quirinus thinks hard, to sacrifice shields for the deflector is a bold strategy, unheard of even. "Are you certain this will work? Could we not permanently power the shields?"

"The shields are not rated for that type of use, they would fail after a few hours of being permanently on, so the deflector is the best answer I have at this moment."

Quirinus taps his chair arm for a few moments before flaring his mandible downwards slightly, "I trust your decision Aurelia. Fleet Orchestrator, when Aurelia is ready with a plan of action, have it passed onto the fleet."

"As you command," The Fleet Orchestrator says as the Fleet Commander goes back to watching the conversation on the alien space station.

/.../

The General leads the Turian Captain and his small entourage to a nearby room which has been pre-prepared in anticipation of this conversation. The room itself is vastly different from what most would suspect the first contact with a new species would take place in, instead of a small formal room with a desk surrounded by chairs being the main feature, the room the general has led them to is a larger open room with some comfortable chairs laid out at multiple locations. Inside the room, a few paintings decorate the walls that show various phases in Humanities technological and military advances. The oldest photo is an ancient sea battle between two sail ships donning gun powder cannons, and the most recent photo is an image of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers inserting into a combat zone. The pictures were carefully chosen to show the Turians that Humanity is experienced in the art of war, without the General actually having to say anything. The pictures could also be viewed as a non-verbal warning, something that says, we know how to throw a punch if push comes to shove. Despite the underlying message of the paintings, they do not dominate the room, instead, it is the comfortable nature of the room that pulls one's attention.

The laid back feeling of the room was also done on purpose, it is hoped that the rooms setting may help defuse any possible frictions between Humanity and the new aliens, by keeping people feeling more relaxed. No one within the UNSC could really say what the aliens would find relaxing, so they just went with what a human would find relaxing, and hoped the feeling would be mutual with the aliens.

Finding his way to a set of highback armchairs the General gestures for his guests to sit down first, and then when everyone is seated he is the last to sit. There is a small coffee table between the General and Captain Remus, and sitting on top of the table there is a few empty glasses and a large jug of cold water with condensation dripping down its outside. Taking a glass and jug of water in his hands he asks those he brought to the room, "Water?"

A few around the table accept the offer of water, so the General makes sure he serves each and everyone a glass. With everyone now settled in the General looks to the Asari who has been translating for him, "Could you please Tell Captain Remus that should you wish, you and your fellow comrades from the Avian are free to travel back with himself."

The Asari takes a second to understand the Generals Prothean before relaying the message on, it takes her a little longer than usual as she is desperate not to miscommunicate anything the General may be saying. "But if they want," The General then speaks when the Asari finishes interpreting, "We can accommodate them for a while so we may learn from one another."

Captain Remus considers this for a second before thanking the General for the offer and for saving the Avian's crew. Captian Remus also tells the General that Humanities actions in saving the Avian will not be overlooked by the Citadel Council, who will be sure to send representatives to establish proper communications.

"I am glad to hear it," The General replies to this with a small genuine smile after deciphering Benezzia's rough translation, he feared that this conversation would be much harder than it is currently being, "Do we have an estimated time period for the arrival of this diplomatic party?"

The Asari once again passes this message on and Remus can only try to make an educated guess as to how long it would take to mobilise the Citadel Councils first contact parties, "A few days, minimum," He tells Benezzia. In truth, history shows the Council will go above and beyond extreme measures in order to send a fleet within a day, which unusually is less time than expected for the council to send a rapid response fleet to war.

"Does this Citadel Council speak for your own species?" Asks the General, hoping to gain a clearer understanding of how the power is allocated within this council.

The answer to this question is not a straight forward yes or no, the Turian Hierarchy can operate without the Citadel Council, and can represent itself, however, in affairs such as First Contact, the Citadel Council is their representative. This is for two reasons, the first is because a collective of species all acting as one creates the image of a far more powerful organisation, it helps prevent any kind of hostilities. The second reason is because of the risk to reward ratio, the Citadel Council could impose all sorts of paralysing sanctions on a species government for not involving themselves on a first contact that has gone wrong, and first contacts as proven by the history books more often than not go wrong at some stage, usually due to a misunderstanding. The last contact to go wrong was with the Yahg where the species slaughtered the entire first contact party due to a fundamental failing on the Citadels behalf of understanding the Yahg Society. Whereas the Citadel should have sent warriors and soldiers to show their strength, in order to gain respect from the Yahg, the Citadel sent ambassadors with flowery words, which in Yahg society is an insult.

"For First Contact, they do." Remus tells the General, "But they do not command our fleets. General, may I inquire, how long has your civilisation been space capable?"

The general partially counts on his fingers before saying, "From the launch of Sputnik, 1,560 human years, or 1,836 Prothean years. Yourself?" The General uses a Prothean measure of time so that the Asari and Turian understand a 'year'. A Sol year, after all, could be any measure of time.

Hearing the numbers Remus looks to Benezzia, "How long is a Prothean year?"

It is Benezzia's turn to do the maths, "Approximately 0.8 to 1.1 Council years, we think."

The Turian taps a few of his clawed fingers on the armrest of his chair before replying to the General, "Turians have been spaceworthy almost 1,110 Prothean years. I am most curious, why have we never encountered your species before if you have been space capable for as long as claimed?" Benezzia once more translates this, but she knows with so much technical talk she is exploiting her Prothean beyond her capabilities, something she informs both Remus and the General. It is something that both already understood, however, Benezzia's translations were quite broken.

The General considers Benezzia's confession, and he knows that without a means to speak properly to the Aliens then no deals can truely be struck, the wording needs to be thoroughly understood on both sides. With this in mind, he says, "That is an excellent question Captain, a question with many long answers I suspect. A short answer, if there is such a thing, I suppose, is that we have for the longest time been content with what we already have. Now, getting down to business, we need to find a way to talk and understand one another's language. I propose we work together to create something to translate for us."

Remus flares his mandibles a little while taking off a bracelet from his arm, "Yes," He tells Benezzia, "This omni-tool contains the entire Turian and Citadel languages, with Prothean translations."

The General gratefully accepts the Turians omni-tool before nodding to someone out of the Turians line of sight, and soon a man approaches with five thick books. "5 identical books," He tells the Turian, "Each contains a human language with Prothean translations." Books are used because the Turians do not need to know how Human coding works in order to interface with a device. "Do you have books?"

Remus flares his mandibles in a way the General has quickly deduced means 'No.' "None that I am aware of, however, I will have some brought over if we find some."

"Excellent, then another parting gift," The General once again signals to someone out of sight, who then drags in a black box around the size of an old desktop printer. "A QEC comms portal. This will allow us to maintain contact. Simply press the large red button to contact us." Giving away a comms device is a dangerous risky move, if the aliens start to play with it then they could theoretically work out how human comms work, but the device is well over two hundred years old, and the most secure comms use vastly different protocols.

Captain Remus looks to one of his men, telling him that it is now his responsibility. "We thank you for your gift."

/.../

As the General speaks with the alien a few other generals and admirals have gathered in a dark room, "...50,000 men on a good day, we are arming 10,000 reserves and we have 300 mechanised armoured fighting vechs" One of the Generals says, "After a week, we could have generated a militia of 75,000 to bolster the regulars."

"Christ." An Admiral says, "We have 4,973 Marines, 15 Stealth vessels and Ultron. The auxiliary fleet is 14 cruise ships, 1 transporter and 1 colony ship."

"How much faith do you put in Ultron?" Asks another General.

"Ultron has killed 6 enemy vessels so far. How many have your men killed?"

After the quick return, there is a tense silence till the General says, "We have 15,000 ODST's, and we are mobilising 5,000 reserves as we speak."

There is another deep breath released before another General speaks, "We have 400 stealth fighters just sitting on runways awaiting our word, and 300 attack helos. It would take us months to bolster those numbers. Recent budget cuts have been harsh."

The lead General in the room looks over a map of Earth before breathing out heavily, "So, with 70,000 men we need to figure out how to defend Earth if things go down. Any idea's?" The defence of Earth has been war gamed many times before, and most in the room already know the likely answer.

An Admiral speaks, "The Fleet will draw them into Ultron, that should cut down some of their numbers if it doesn't outright destroy them."

"I have a lot of faith in Ultron," The lead man says, "But these are new threats, we must assume the worst and believe they will get past it and our planetary shielding."

"I do not believe they will come ground side," An Admiral says, "The war of Sol told us taking a planet is costly. It is my firm belief that if they get past Ultron and take out our planetary shielding, they will just bombard from orbit and request surrender."

"In such a case, we would need to dissipate all assets, make it hard to locate them. Fight a guerilla war."

The lead General nods, "Then let us war game it."

/.../

"Fleet Commander," The Intelligence officer speaks, breaking the silence on the bridge as the Fleet Commander watched in on the first contact through a camera on Captain Remus's armour. "Those that were stagging on the gas giants have forwarded a set of images you should see from their journey to rendezvous with the fleet."

"Yes." The Fleet Commander says, obviously distracted by the ongoing conversation a few hundred thousand km away from his current location. "Show me."

The Intelligence officer hands the Turian Fleet commander a data pad, containing an interesting image, "That is this solar system's star." The Intelligence officer adds, just in case the Fleet Commander does not know what a star looks like - and yes, the Intelligence Officer immediately regrets adding that comment.

The Fleet Commander looks away from the screen, showing the conversation on the alien station, and looks down to the datapad, but he keeps one ear open and listening in on the conversation. Looking at the image on the data pad the Turian brings a hand to the bottom of his jaw, "Fascinating," He says after a moment, "If this is what I believe it is, then they are mining the Star. We tried a hundred years back and failed, found gathering resources elsewhere much easier."

"The vessel also provided energy readings, should be on the next sceen."

The Fleet Commander flicks to the next screen, and after reading it his hand begins to rub his jaw some more, "Is this accurate?"

The Intelligence officer nods, "Two ships on return from the 5th planet have confirmed it. Whatever this construct is, it is generating some serious power. Even more curious is the fact we discovered 5 of them, two of which are in close proximity of the Ringworld, and one is in orbit of the planet."

"If this energy density reading is correct," The Fleet Commander begins, "One of those things alone could probably power an entire planet. Have them marked as HVT's."

"As you command. We also have images from the first and second planet in this solar system. On the next image."

Quirinus flicks to the next image and the picture takes his breath away for a moment, "This can not be real." He states.

"It is."

The Fleet Commander shakes his head a little to see if his vision is failing him, but it is not. "This entire planet has been turned into a mega city?" The Turian is currently looking at the second planet in the solar system that is now covered in gigantic cloud cities. It is something that reminds the Turian of Illium, just much larger. "By the spirits."

"These worlds are also using something similar to this planet, hiding them, the ships that scouted them out reported that from a distance, the worlds just looked like uninteresting rocks to sensors."

/.../

Tevos looks up the moment she hears a knock on her door, "Come in," She says. Soon Benezzia allows herself into the room, and the Asari councillor immediately asks, "How are the negotiations?"

"We are being taken back to the Turian fleet." Benezzia tells Tevos with some relief, "But so far all is well considering my poor Prothean. At the moment, we have agreed to pause talks till we have a more thorough understanding of one another's language."

Tevos allows a sigh of relief to escape her lips, "Thank the Goddess. Do these humans seem reasonable?"

Benezzia blinks, "So far. I don't believe we will have another Yahg situation to contend with." After taking a small pause Benezzia then adds, "Come, we must go, the Turians are waiting to take us back."

/.../

"I've been thinking," The Fleet Commander says after some time, "A lot of things this species has done just seems like hard work. Planet cities, Ring Worlds, Star Mining." The Turian pauses for a second before going on, "It makes me think, why? Why go to so much trouble unless... unless they have not got an easier solution."

"Fleet Commander?" The Fleet Orchestrator asks, hoping for the most powerful man in the fleet to clarify his thoughts.

"What if, for whatever reason, these people have not left this solar system? It would explain why they are doing things the hard way. It would also explain why they have gone to so much effort to develop stealth technologies." The man thinks some more for a second before adding, "They are using stealth maybe because they do not want to be found. If we did not go looking for the Avian we would never have found this world and its people. Their stealth was their best defence, till we found them."

"Fleet Commander, we have received the Avians crew from the Goshawk."

The Fleet Commander immediately stands, "Excellent. Have everyone briefed immediately after I greet them, I want to know if they know or witnessed anything that can give us a tactical and strategic edge. I will meet them in the 3rd cafeteria."

Soon, the Fleet Commander is looking at a bunch of weary eyes, "Your Excellency," He initially says, greeting Tevos, before moving on, "Troops, welcome to the HWV Accipitridae. We are organising accommodation for yourselves as we speak. In the meantime, we are going to be asking each and every one of you a set of questions about your time in the alien space station. Please answer to the best of your capabilities, even if you think the detail is small and unimportant. Enjoy your stay on my warship, and congratulations on making first contact."

After making his speech the Fleet Commander moves to the black box and five books gifted to Captain Remus. As he approaches them he hears someone say, "But why books."

"Books because we don't need to know how to use the technology to access what it contains," He tells them, "Quite smart in a way. Run them up to intelligence, have the books digitized and analysed."

Just as the Fleet Commander is about to lean down to inspect the black box he hears his title called, "Fleet Commander,"

The Turian stands and turns to face Tevos, "Your Excellency?"

"Thank you for coming for us," Tevos tells him, "And not starting a war in the process, but I must ask, have you secured the artefact from the Avian."

"The artefact is safe, and the men who saw it sworn to secrecy." The Fleet commander tells her, "And please, my men are just doing their job."

"Well, please tell them thank you on my behalf."

"As you command," The Fleet Commander says, "You will also be glad to hear I have sent a message to the Citadel regarding our situation."

"Then they will be here with a defence fleet within 72 hours." Tevos guesses, "And I do not wish to have so many war vessels in this species space while we try to negotiate peace and maybe more. May I request you prepare to hand over reigns to the Citadel fleet when they arrive and prepare to leave at the earliest possible moment."

"I did consider this," Quirinus tells her, "And I agree with your reasoning. I will make sure we are not in this part of space for any longer than necessary."

/.../

Earth

A short thin man looks bamboozled as he looks at the alien device which purportedly contains the ET's language. "Only means of interfacing with this thing is via networking or its inbuit interface, and I have no idea how you do either to access this alien dictionary. I mean I can do this," The man presses a button on the device and a holographic interface appears, "But what does all this gibberish mean? That set of symbols there could be settings or pressing it could be some remote to flush the loo."

"This is why we give them books," Someone says, "Guess we just have to press everything till we come across some sort of list."

After a few hours, another says, "This is bloody useless."

Another man in the room rubs his jaw, "Maybe they have done this on purpose. We give them books as an easy way to decipher our language, and they give us this. If they crack it, they can understand everything we say, while we are still sat scratching our heads. We need to fire up that QEC device and have someone ask how to use it. Dam the General for not asking when he received it."

"To be fair to the General, he was probably thinking 'don't probe my anus' for the majority of that conversation. I know I would have bottled it."

"Well, good job you weren't that General."

/.../

6 hours later

Quirinus sits up on his bed the moment a red light begins to flash. Since he slept in his armour, he leaps out of bed and immediately goes to the bridge, "Sitrep." He demands.

"Since we regrouped to advance on the new alien world, we did not have our rear guard protecting the relay. 5 Hanar whirlpools and one Vortex have entered the theatre."