Chapter 39. Ardat


4. March 2409 AD, Torfan

To an outside observer watching through say the security camera feed in the command center, it would've appeared as if the slavers in the corridor were struck down by the wrath of a supernatural being, facing the ghosts of those they had damned to a life in chains. An invisible force tore through them and for anyone watching, it was impossible to grasp what was really happening, let alone stop it. Death came to all of them in a swift and brutal fashion. The first one to fall died without even realising what was going on, a spray blood shooting from his chest and caused his comrade to stumble back in surprise when the dark-red liquid made contact with his face. Too stunned to act, he too died before ever getting the chance to fight back. The other slavers fared no better than them even though some managed to actually lift their rifles and get of a few shots before inexplicably dropping dead. Whatever it was that they were fighting appeared unstoppable in its onslaught. In only a few moments an entire security team tasked with patrolling the interior of the fortress currently under siege by human forces had been wiped out, their false sense of security washed away in a river of their own blood as something intangible cut through them.

However for the people actually within the corridor it was very much possible to understand what was going on. There was nothing supernatural about a striketeam using optical camouflage, the moment of surprise and overwhelming aggression to make their way towards their objective, it had been done countless of times throughout the last centuries, the quarians had pioneered the idea and the salarians had perfected it. The slight reflection of light dancing across ever so slightly visible figures, the shouting of the injured and most importantly the bullets flying through the air were all tangible. It wasn't something that transcended the laws of physic, it was the combination of training, tenacity and technology that brought death to the slavers.

"Stack up, second door on the left," he muttered, replacing the half-spent magazine of his rifle with a fresh one before climbing over the corpses now slowly filling the corridor with a large puddle of blood. As he stepped over the remains of what he assumed to be the leader of the patrol, he caught a glimpse of something moving in the corner of his eyes. One of the batarians had somehow survived the brutal ambush of his squad and was now trying to crawl towards safety. Since they could neither leave him behind, he would shoot them in the back, or take him with them, he'd slow them down and render their camouflage useless, the captain made the only other call he could make within the timeframe he had to decide. Haugen lifted his SR-8, aligned the rifle with the batarian's head and immediately fired off a lone, silenced shot, permanently eliminating the problem. Under any other circumstances, he would've given at least some thought to his actions but every second he would've spent weighing his options was another second the marines outside had to endure the full might of the fortress' defenses.

Stepping over the last dead body, he pressed himself against the wall of the corridor and advanced on the door that would lead them through the series of rooms still standing between them and the command center. When another soldier, his HUD and his gut telling him that this particular shimmer was none other than Sergeant Jordan Miller, placed his hand on the locking mechanism, he nodded. The door began to open itself and the moment he could fit through the gap, Haugen rushed into the room, rifle at the ready. Training the SR-8's crosshair over a head that was showing itself beyond the makeshift cover the defenders had set up, he fired off two bursts, one shattering whatever low-quality kinetic barriers the slaver had on him and another splitting the four-eyed head in half. In accordance to the countless of CQB drills he had run over his years in ASOC, the captain didn't stop there. Moving forward so that the man behind him could enter as well, he killed another slaver just as the first rounds came close to hitting him, tearing past his head and embedding themselves in the wall behind him. Camouflage or not, at this distance they'd hit any second now. Maintaining the speed that was so essential for these types of situations, the ASOC captain moved deeper into the room, which seemed to exit solely for the purpose of slowing down any assaults on the command center, and managed to reach a piece of cover just as a burst of SMG fire pushed his shields to their breaking point.

Leaning around a piece of cover that seemed to be as retractable as the barriers that had put Phantom Squad in its current situation, he managed to hit a batarian rapidly firing his shotgun into the doorway in an attempt to suppress someone no longer there. Haugen kept shooting right until blood exploded through the batarian's back and reacted just in time to avoid suffering a similar fate, the very audible sound of a portion of his cover being shaved off by an assault rifle causing him to start looking for alternatives. Fueled by adrenaline and the knowledge that at least one of the three other ASOC soldiers would've taken care of the shooter by now, he eyed a crate in the center of the room, an already deceased batarian lying on top of it, and threw himself forward. Landing on his belly and realising that the barrier he had just been behind had vanished into the wall, he crawled forward ever so slightly and managed to align his sights with an exposed batarian taking cover from the suppressive fire of his squad. Pulling his trigger, several rounds drilled through the flank of the slaver and caused him to fall to the ground, presumably perplexed as to how had been hit. To his credit, the alien tried to get back up and rejoin the fight right until another of Haugen's rounds turned his brain into a pink mist.

"Clear," he heard just as he was about to get up look for another target. Confident in the assessment of his comrade, he rose to his feet and made towards the next door, passing Hofmann in the process.

"You good?" the man asked as he looked at Haugen.

"Yes, keep moving," he ordered before the door shot open in front of him and Hofmann, exposing a fortified machinegun emplacement directly opposite to him. Others might have jumped to the side or frozen in spot but as the batarian braced himself to fire only a single thought crossed the captain's mind. The few precious moments it would take the shooter to realise that they were there were more than enough time for him to save Hofmann's life. Acting without as much of a moment of hesitation, he shoved his comrade to the side just as the gun began to fire.

Growing up Tore Haugen had always found it strange how many people claimed that your life flashed in front of your eyes in the moments before you died. After all, how would they know? They were still alive. Sure, the sound of the gun firing was slower than it should've, he would admit to that, but instead of reliving his happiest memories, he only saw the blue flashes of the machine gun's muzzle flashes coming towards him as he threw himself to the side. If these people were right, he should be on Terra Nova right now, not Torfan. But instead of lying on the shores the Sithian Sea, he was still in the underground fortress of some slaver gang holding well over two thousand humans hostage and instead of feeling the warm air brush against his skin, his shields shattered and a stinging pain shot through his left arm as a round somehow bounced off its armor, miraculously not taking the limb with it. If these people were right, shouldn't he land on the wet sand of a beach instead of a hard floor covered in batarian blood? Shouldn't the distinctive explosion of a grenade be replaced by the calming sound of waves?

The only logical explanation was either that they were wrong or that he had somehow survived his encounter with a light machine gun.

"Shit," he heard Miller curse as he saw the soldier rush towards him.

"I'm fine," Haugen insisted as he tried to rise to his feet, a certain light-headedness and a burning feeling in his side telling him the opposite. Placing his hand on the spot near his ribcage, he withdrew his hand and found its palm to be red. It was at this moment that his training kicked in. He immediately went for his medigel and jammed the syringe into the wound, a practice most certainly not advised by the producer but very much needed if one desired a quick effect.

"Captain's hit!" Miller called as the numbing sensation of medigel replaced the pain. The fact that he was still breathing meant that the round had missed anything immediately lethal, good, he could work with that. Applying a another dose of the product to the exit wound, Haugen turned to look at the soldier, stopping him dead in his tracks.

"I said I'm fine," he repeated before climbing his feet. "We have to keep moving."

Under any other circumstances he knew that they would've protested. Even if it wasn't fatal, the kind of body hit he had just taken needed to be treated sooner than later. Medigel was good but it didn't replace a real doctor. But as things were, evacuating him wasn't an option. Quickly checking his arm for any more injures besides the presumably dozen or so smaller bone fractures the machine gun round would've caused upon bouncing off his armor, he looked through the door and found the emplacement blown to bits, the remains of a dead gunner being the only thing standing between them and their way towards the command center.

"Fall in," he instructed before walking across the long and narrow hallways that had almost succeeded in killing him, looking at the blood stains on his armor in the process. This was the issue with the human approach to optical camouflage. While the rest of the galaxy achieved invisibility by using dozens of small mass effect generators to bend the light around them, the HSA still stuck to their version of the tactical cloak, coating every piece of ASOC's equipment with a material that, when combined with the small device on his belt, mimicked its surroundings. Instead of trying to disappear like everyone else, humanity had decided to blend in, a concept they had stuck with even after being offered state-of-the-art cloaking devices by the Turian Hierarchy several times in the last two decades.

At first glance, it seemed like a stupid choice. Compared to other tactical cloaks the human version had several drawbacks. For starters it was both incredibly expensive and incredibly complicated. Everything an ASOC operative carried that was outwardly visible like weapons, magazines, backpacks and even binoculars had to be covered in a layer of the material and other equipment like grenades or first aid items had to be stored in pouches made of the same fabric, which when covered by too much dirt, or in his case blood, still tended to at least partially fail at its task. Then there was the fact that unlike tactical cloaks, human camouflage still had a hard time to keep up the moment its user had to act at full speed. While contact with the rest of the galaxy had allowed the HSA to improve the optically active fabric to the point where jogging didn't immediately result in a complete breakdown of the camo, which it had done in the past, sprints and other breakneck maneuvers still caused ASOC operatives to turn from being almost invisible into simply appearing as somewhat pixilated figures.

However as with everything else, a first glance was not enough to explain why the HSA had decided to keep its own design. For all its drawbacks, there had been a logic behind sticking to the different and in spades inferior concept. While the mass effect generators of tactical cloaks could keep up with even the most rapid of movements, they only lasted a few minutes at most before disabling themselves to recharge, their power consumption was simply far higher than that of their human counterpart. While someone using a tactical cloak could remain basically invisible for several minutes, the optically active fabric ASOC operatives worked with allowed them to blend in with their surroundings for hours at a time. As long as they didn't move too rapidly, a team of trained human soldiers could cover well over a dozen kilometers with their camo activated, a feat necessary for many ASOC operatives but impossible to achieve with the mass effect variant. Furthermore due to the camo adapting itself to its surroundings instead of just trying to remove itself from sight by preventing light from hitting its user, a soldier capable of staying perfectly still could quite literally disappear, being nearly impossible to spot right until it was to late, yet another thing impossible to replicate with a tactical cloak, considering the subtle but still present flickering they produced by bending light.

"Breaching charges on the door," he added as he figured that the space was far too limited for a regular entry. If they just opened the door, chances were they'd fall for the same trick twice. An explosion would lower the chance of stumbling into the next killzone unprepared. After the magnetic charges had been put into position, he looked at Hofmann and gave a nod.

"Execute," the now partially very much visible ASOC operative spoke.

With the press of a button the heavy door was thrown into the room and crushed a vorcha that had been waiting beyond it with a wet crunch. Relying on their speed for a second time, the ASOC team broke into the room guns blazing. Overwhelmed by the violence of their entry, this time only a few of the defenders managed to actually fire their weapons before they fell victim to the human special forces. If the overalls most of these particular slavers were wearing were any indication, the reason for this sudden drop in quality was rooted in their proximity to the command center and the continued assault on the fortress. They had already cleaved through whatever security personal had been tasked with guarding the heart of their base and now only the slavers' equivalent of support staff remained to fight them off.

Marching through the room and putting two more rounds into the crushed vorcha just to make sure that the dark-red alien wouldn't somehow survive the loss of most of its blood, Haugen, aware of his partial visibility, decided to turn the thing that gave him away into an advantage and stopped next to the large door separating them from the command center before shooting out the cameras. Once that had happened, he pointed at the wall behind him and Hofmann placed another breaching charge next to the heavy metal frame, realising that the captain intended to surprise the slavers. They had seen him in front of the door so that's where they'd focus their attention on.

He'd use that.

Replacing the magazine of his rifle and giving Hofmann the signal to detonate, Haugen felt time slow down for a second time in recent memory but instead of staring death in the face, he found himself on the opposite end of the gun. Stepping through the sizeable hole the charge had torn into the command center, he unleashed a hail of bullets on the defenders inside. The accelerated full metal jackets tore through armor, cloth, flesh, muscle and bone. The slavers standing directly in front of the door were the first to go, cut down where they stood, unable to put up a fight. Then came the ones that had chosen their cover with the intention of flanking anyone coming through the door, they died just like their comrades, only a few of them managing to fire more than a couple of shots. Finally the attention of both him and his team shifted to the ones that had taken something akin to reasonable cover. As he and Hofmann suppressed them, Miller and the fourth member of his team, Sergeant Mavuto Oluwaseun Arendse, whom they usually simply called Mav for convenience's sake, moved across the room and exploited the situation. A series of well aimed shots later, the last flames of resistance within the command center had been extinguished.

"Alright turn everything off. If it looks important, it has to go," the captain instructed as he removed the dead batarian blocking the console closest to him. "Command, Phantom Squad has reached the command center, we're working on the defenses right now," he spoke into his radio as he flicked off a switch that seemed to power a series of heavy kinetic barriers. "Command, I say again, we're taking down the defenses right now," he repeated himself when no reply came. Figuring that he might have broken his radio during his earlier near-death experience, he turned towards one of the barely visible figures within the room. "Hofmann, I think my radio's a bust. Try to get Hackett on the line."

"Admiral, this is Phantom-Two. We've reached our objective and we're shutting down the defenses. How copy? Over," nothing. "Admira-"

"Don't bother. The ship's long range jammers just went up. Nothing bigger than squad intercom's gonna get through," Mav interrupted him as he pressed a series of buttons on a terminal next to a large, somewhat bloodied screen. Before Haugen could ask exactly what ship it was that the soldier was talking about, the blurry depiction of an underground hall with a transporter parked inside appeared on the screen. "Looks like they're trying to scram with as many hostages as possible."

"Damn," he said after finishing his current task. That particular part of the base had gone unnoticed by their scanners. As he looked at the footage of the large hangar, the inhabitants of a dozen or so crowded prison cages rapidly being moved aboard a large transport ship, he also realised that their estimation of how many of their people were being held in this fortress might have been off. While he was sure that there were other holding sites throughout the fortress, the fact that most of the cages were filled with asari, salarians and surprisingly quarians made him doubt that there were as many humans being held in this base as they had initially suspected. The ratio simply didn't suggest it.

"That's one hell of an insurance policy," Miller whistled.

"Yeah, there's no way the navy will shoot them down with our people aboard," Hofmann reasoned as a neat line of humans was marched aboard the craft. "Once they take off, they're as good as gone."

Looking at the size of the transport ship and the number of people still inside the hangar, he was confident in the assumption that not every last one of the slaves would fit aboard, there simply wasn't enough room for everyone. Going from there, pragmatic logic and the fact that their mission was to seize and defend the command center of the base dictated that they'd be able to save the majority of people by simply waiting for the batarians to leave. Once the slavers were gone, they could swoop in and liberate the remaining captives.

However he had been inside a slave barge before, he had seen the nightmares that awaited the people currently being forced aboard and he'd be damned if he didn't try to prevent that. Besides his very personal reasons for wanting to stop them, the professional half of his mind couldn't shake the thought that the slavers would resort to asset denial once they were in the clear. Chances were that they had put some sort of trap in place to spite whoever attacked their base with the intention of saving people and discourage future rescue attempt. It didn't have to be something elaborate like explosive collars rigged to blow the moment someone tried to disarm them or a bomb set to detonate once the ship left, cutting the air supply of the fortress or flooding it with a toxic gas would be more than sufficient. Right now he could still prevent that from happening, he could still try to save these people by preventing the ship form escaping. In the absence of radio contact with his superior and in the face of not knowing when they'd take off and set off any possible traps, the decision fell into Haugen's hands, a situation he was all to familiar with. He had been here before a dozen times.

The mission always came first, that was one of the lessons installed into him from the day he had first set foot into the Anaru Academy, the army's most prestigious military school on Terra Nova. No matter what happened, no matter how bad it got, the mission was to be completed at any cost, that had been the philosophy of the academy's staff. But no matter how much respect he harboured for his teachers and how carefully he had tried to stick to what he had learned in Anaru, his time with the army's special operation forces had taught him that there where cases where the mission had to come second, for example when the whole reason they had set out on it in the first place was at a risk. As contradictory as it sounded, he had to jeopardize his mission for the sake of his mission.

As he counted the number of visible guards, numbering at less than two dozens, he also tried to remember just how big the crew of the last slaver barge he and his fellow operatives had boarded under far worse conditions had been and realised that he'd need something more than his optical camouflage to equal the odds. Noticing that most of the batarians weren't wearing their helmets and therefore lacked immediate access to their night vision, a plan started to form in his head. Even though they had more eyes than everyone else, they were just as blind as the rest of them without light. If they wanted to see where they were going, they'd have to rely on flashlights which were notorious for giving away ones position without being nearly as useful as night vision gear.

"Can you cut the hangar lights from here?" he looked at Mav while taking note of the three heavily armored batarians who stood guard at the base of the transport's ramp. If the quality of their gear was anything to go by, they were either very wealthy slavers or bodyguards of someone who paid far better than the average ring leader.

They could be a problem.

"Yes, Sir."

"Good. When I give the signal, I want you to darken the whole place. Hofmann" he began. "think you can lock this place down without me?"

"Sir, I don't think this is a good idea," the man replied, having known the captain for long enough to suspect what he was about to say.

"That doesn't answer my question."

"The rooms leading to here make for a nice bottleneck. Unless they come through the ceiling, one shooter shouldn't make that much of a difference."

"So that's a yes?"

"Captain with all due respect," there it was, the sentence people used before being disrespectful,"you can't honestly consider going down there-"

"These people are the reason we came here, Hofmann. We can't just let the batarians fly off with them. There's no way I'll stand here and watch them kidnap them for a second time."

"- on your own, Sir," the NCO added.

That's all he really needed to hear.

"How the hell do we get down there, Mav?"

"Stairway down the hall, hard to miss from there." the soldier replied a few moments later. Something told Haugen he had already been looking for a map when he had asked him about the lights.

"Good," he said as he once more loaded a fresh magazine, stopping only to point the way they had come from. "Miller, you stay here. Anything with more than two eyes comes through that door, you kill it. Understood?"

"Yes, Sir."

"And Mav," Haugen added as he and Hofmann began to walk through the door, "in case this all goes to shit-"

"I delete the security footage and tell them you went down in a blaze of glory?"

"Good man."

"I aim to please."

When Tore Haugen had gotten engaged, he had promised his now-wife that he wouldn't take any 'unnecessary risks', that he wouldn't go out of his way to 'play the hero', it had been the kind of promise you made to calm someone with very justified concerns about your safety. While he couldn't discuss what he did for a living with strangers, usually only giving vague answers, and the details of most of his missions were locked behind several layers of security clearance only HSAIS managed to outdo in terms of red tape, his family knew that he worked in a high risk job. They knew that every time he was sent someplace that wasn't an HSA military installation could be the last time they saw him. However what they didn't know, or most likely willingly ignored, was that the promise had been a white lie. No matter how much he tried, 'playing the hero' and 'unnecessary risks' were simply a part of what he did. Even though their success ratio was admirable even when compared to the rest of the galaxy, ASOC regularly suffered casualties. While the actual number of killed operatives wasn't anywhere close to the number of grunts that died in the line of duty, the percentage was. Special forces or not, they were just as mortal as anyone else and only the secrecy surrounding their missions and the fact that there were far fewer ASOC soldiers than there were regulars had given birth to the myth that they hardly if ever died. Breaking a promise wasn't something he enjoyed doing but as things were, there was no other way around it.

"This is it," Hofmann commented as the two soldiers came to a stop in front of a blast door.

"Mav, we've got a door. Can you open it?"

"Affirmative."

"Alright, I want you to cut the lights in our corridor," wouldn't want to tip of the batarians as to where they were coming from.

"Done," it came back to him, a green filter laying itself over his vision after a second of darkness.

"You ready for this?" he looked towards where his HUD told him Hofmann was standing.

"As ready as I'll get, Sir."

"Mav, cut the hangar lights and open the door," Haugen spoke into his radio and not a moment later his orders were followed, the two halves of the heavy blast door slowly moving apart to reveal an equally dark hangar. The moment they could, they stepped inside and the first thing that hit them was the very angry shouting of batarians and the very confused screaming of the hundreds of slaves still imprisoned in the large hall below them. His heart slowed down ever so slightly, screams were better than bullets, if they weren't being shot at it meant that his plan had actually worked.

The captain took in the area around him. At first glance it looked like any other hangar he had ever been in, the only difference being that instead of a clearly defined exit, the it ended in a tunnel of some kind. He wasn't an expert but he would've guessed that it had been dug with the same kind of large-scale mining equipment that allowed the slaver rings to construct these fortresses in the first place. While usually employed to strip mine desolate places like this, a bit of fine tuning, a bit of patience and a lot of reinforcement beams could go a long way to create an escape path like the one he was currently looking at. However the moment one looked closer than just a glance, the striking differences between regular hangars and this one became obvious. Instead of inanimate cargo and busy working crews, cages filled with people broken through months, years or even decades of being bought, sold and traded on the slave markets of Hegemony were overlooked by brutal slavers currently fumbling through complete darkness. Besides the cages and the transport craft, which now that he was up close, realised to be actually somewhat smaller than the ones he had previously seen, only machinery like loading cranes, small vehicles and unsurprisingly supply crates filled with the kind of necessities needed to operate a place like this.

"Light on your four," Hofmann whispered through the squad intercom not a minute after they had started moving.

"Smoke him." Haugen replied as he shifted his eyes to the batarian just as his comrade sent a single bullet straight through the side of the alien's head mere seconds before he could put on the final piece of his ragged and mismatched armor. With the commotion drowning out the faint sound of the lone gunshot, the ASOC operatives continued to make their way across the dark hall and towards the sparsely lit ship. Passing by a large four-wheeled loading vehicle in the process, Haugen stopped in his tracks when he noticed a light shining towards him from the other side of the truck.

"I know it was in here somewhere," a deep voice growled from within the driver's cabin, causing the two soldiers to divert their attention to it. Quickly circling around the back of the vehicle, they were now almost on top of two batarians searching the inside of the truck's cabin. "Shine in here, so I can find it."

Whatever it was that they were looking for, they wouldn't find it.

"It's just below the stee-" another voice began, only to be cut off when it heard footsteps directly behind it. As the big alien tried to turn around in an attempt to confront him, Haugen shot him in the back of his head. The body dropped to the floor and logically drew the attention of the other batarian who then received a similar fate. Blood spattered against the inside of the truck's windshield and the slaver fell back into the carfloor, dying before he could alert anyone to their presence, a last gurgle escaping from his now opened throat as he choked on his blood.

"Alright, let's keep moving," he said after making sure they hadn't been spotted, once more moving ahead of Hofmann who had provided security for the duration of his small detour. The captain picked up his pace again and his fellow operative fell in line behind him as they kept crossing the hangar, marching past one of the prison cages just as a batarian smashed his fists against the metal exterior in an attempt to quiet the still confused slaves, the light of his omni-tool, which he was using to illuminate his surroundings, being distorted for a few moments as a result.

"Shut your mouths or you'll regret it," he threatened just as Haugen let go of his rifle and gestured for Hofmann to secure him. Even though they lacked the kind of penetration power of mass accelerator rounds, human bullets had a tendency to go through multiple targets before actually stopping. While he disliked getting this close, he wouldn't risk hitting one of the slaves behind the batarian.

Slowly pulling the knife, which unlike the rest of his gear was not coated in a layer of the material used to render ASOC operatives nearly invisible, from its sheath without making any unnecessary sounds, he crept up on the slaver who was about to activate the shock collars of the slaves directly in front of him to finally enforce silence. Distracted by the task at hand, apparently not quite adept at using the technology he had been entrusted with, the batarian was unaware that something was going on until a mostly invisible hand slipped over his mouth and the cold steel of a blade opened up most of the major arteries around his neck. The dark-red blood spilled from the wound and onto both one of the asari captives standing closest to the slaver and Haugen's hands. When the batarian stopped trying to contain the flow of blood and completely sagged into the captain's grip, the soldier let go of the corpse and immediately turned it on its back. Searching the slaver's belt for the small box responsible for the treacherous orange light currently betraying his position, he heard something unintelligible from the lone slave that hadn't withdrawn to the other side of the cage by now.

"I need you to be quiet," he finally reacted to her as he realised that whatever it was that she was saying grew louder with every moment. If she kept this up, the batarians would soon come looking. Where the hell did this guy keep his omni-tool? He needed to kill this light. A pair of bloody hands floating through the air were bound to raise questions and the increasingly louder mumbling of the asari wasn't ideal either.

"Be quiet goddammit," he muttered before finding a promising satchel attached to the batarian's side.

"Ardat," the asari fearfully replied in a foreign language, indicating that his translator implant didn't recognize whatever dialect she was speaking in. "Ardat," she repeated louder just as he finally found the cable he was looking for, ripping it out and separating the omni-tool from its wrist projector before rapidly withdrawing from the corpse. "Ardat!" it kept sporadically echoing behind them in a series of asari voices, only the fact that the other cages were being just loud enough to distract the batarians in the keeping them from being made then and there. Whether the inhabitants were aware that something was going on and actively trying to cover for their potential saviors or if they were actually as terrified of the dark as the audible disarray suggested was not a question he cared to answer.

"What the fuck was that about?" a whisper came through his helmet as they got closer to the transport's ramp, the three guards he had spotted earlier dutifully standing in the dim light of the ship's interior lamps while their comrades were picked off one after another.

"Damned if I know," he reasoned as the two operatives spotted two slavers in the process of setting up some kind of floodlight. "I've got left," the captain didn't need to add anything else to get his intention across.

"Copy that, right," the sergeant confirmed before two more corpses hit the ground. Silencers and background noise really were among his two most favorite things at the moment. On any other day, at least the guards trying to keep a column of shackled humans moving not twenty meters to his right would've heard them but as things were, the two soldiers truly lived up to the motto of the Army Special Operations Command.

The intangible really was indomitable, especially if the odds were stacked into its favour.

"Forget it, cut them loose. Time's running short," a voice spoke from the darkness before a flashlight shone across the faces of the human captives currently being moved to the ship.

"Fine. As long as you explain it to the commander," another replied while Haugen and Hofmann stopped next to the ramp, two invisible lasers coming to a halt above two separate batarian faces.

"He's the one who told me to cut them loose, you idiot," the voice replied. "The humans have breached the fortress outer perimeter and the buyers are now paying us to get them off of Torfan before they get here. Looks like we're taking over your jobs," the slaver finally called into the direction of the ramp, the angry shift in one of the heavily armored batarian's face telling him that they really were bodyguards.

"Whatever you say," a pause followed as the guards stepped into the light of the ship." It's your lucky day, humans. We're leaving. Enjoy your life while it lasts," he didn't like the sound of that last part.

"Eight targets," he muttered, normally this wouldn't be a problem for an ASOC team. Hundreds of hours had been invested into perfecting the art of taking down several targets at the same time, it formed an integral part of how the four-man teams regularly took on forces several times their size. But since they were only two of them, the other half of Phantom Squad still holding down the command center and ensuring that the marines could dissemble this place room by room and hopefully find the missing slaves, it was something akin to a problem.

"Heavy's first," he instructed as his finger slipped over his trigger guard and centered his aim right between the four dark eyes watching for any movement in the mostly dark hall, "then the regulars and then the crew."

"All set."

"Execute."

When the captain began pulling the trigger, he already suspected that he'd need more than a few shots for the bodyguards. Since their gear already looked expensive, it wasn't a surprise that they also wore kinetic barriers. The first five shots of his SR-8 harmlessly bounced off of the protective mass effect field surrounding the guard, only the bluish flashes that appeared with every hit and the fact that the batarian was still alive even revealing that they were present. In the time it took him to sent the sixth shot, which finally broke through the barriers and the seventh shot, which killed the bodyguard just as he had turned towards Haugen and lifted his rifle, Hofmann had been somewhat more productive, dispatching his own target and moving onto the third one on his own accord. Having had enough time to react due to the death of his two comrades, the bodyguard managed to jump into cover just as his barriers failed him, his shouts for more defenders effectively ending their concealment.

It had to happen eventually.

Realising that he wouldn't leave his cover anytime soon, Haugen used the little surprise they still had left to shoot the still exposed slavers before emptying the rest of his magazine into three unarmed crew members trying to unlock what he suspected to be an emergency weapons rack meant to be used against hostile boarding parties. Removing the now empty magazine from his rifle, the special forces soldier quickly reloaded before climbing up the ramp, Hofmann closely behind him.

"Go right," Haugen ordered before moving to the left himself, his sights trained on the last known location of the bodyguard. The two operatives quickly closed in on their target and when they were right on top of it they spun around it, ready to attack the batarian from two sides. It wasn't a fair fight, mostly thanks to their optical camouflage still somewhat increasing the time it took the shotgun-wielding batarian to realise that someone was actually standing in front of him. The blood Haugen had collected over the last thirty minutes might have made parts of him visible but even then the combined fire of both soldiers was more than enough to end the body guard before he could pull the trigger, something the captain was very much thankful for. He had already been shot once today, as far as he was concerned that experience didn't require repetition.

"Go to the engine room and make sure this thing doesn't take off. I'll see what I can do with the bridge," he called to Hofmann before climbing a flight of stairs that he suspected would eventually lead him to the command center. While their size and purpose varied, ships made by Batarian State Arms tended to share a similar layout. As it turned out, the state-owned enterprise liked streamlining so much that they extended it to all aspects of their production lines, even the interior design of their ships.

Going 'lone wolf' had always been something Tore had both disliked and avoided at any cost. Being on your own wasn't exactly the ideal scenario in any hostile environment, especially one as confined as a spaceship. You had no one to watch your back and no one to help with covering all the hatches, doors and corridors that an attacker could jump from at any given moment. Contrary to what the kind of person who'd say they were better of on their own would claim, it made you more vulnerable. Soldiers lived and died at the hands of their ability to work with their unit, ASOC teams were so good at what they did because they functioned as a collective, not four separate people and even HSAIS' most elite covert agents preferred to have a partner with them if the situation allowed it. Everyone he had ever talked to about the subject knew his opinion on it, working alone got you killed.

Yet he found himself passing through the dark-brown corridors of a batarian transport by himself.

Today really was a strange day, wasn't it?

Breaking through an entrance of what he hoped to be the bridge after shooting two guards rushing towards him, the captain instead found himself standing in a sleeping quarter of some kind, several beds, shelves and five angry slavers standing opposite to him. As with a lot of the people he had bumped into over the course of his stay on Torfan, they weren't exactly happy to see him. When the rounds bounced off his shields right until he spun back around the corner, he didn't even bother to consider going back inside. Instead of exposing himself to the lethal bursts of mass accelerator rounds, Haugen opened one of the pouches attached to his armor and tossed the disk-shaped charge into the room. Three seconds and one detonation later, the captain only quickly checked for survivors before moving on. He couldn't keep wasting time like this, even if Hofmann managed to cut the power to the engines, he still had to get to the bridge to prevent whatever deadly thing the slavers had planned for those left behind.

Breaking into the next room in the hopes of correctly recalling his last journey aboard a slaver barge, the ASOC operative stumbled into the wrong room for the second time in a row,finding a small control station of some kind instead of the bridge he had been hoping for. Moving towards the large glass window situated in front of the terminal, images of the first batarian assault on Mindoir flashed through his mind upon looking at the crowded holding cells below him. Dozens of people were crammed into the small rooms, the dampened sound of human crying causing anger to surge in the bottom of his stomach. All it would take was the flick of a switch, he could free all of these people right now, end at least some of their pain.

No.

Stopping his hand short of the switch, he realised that he needed to take care of the bridge and the slavers first. If he let them go now, he'd put them in even more danger. As cruel as it sounded, the fact that they were slaves was the thing keeping them alive. If the armed guards were faced with the release of all their captives, they'd start shooting. If they started shooting, they wouldn't stop until every last one of the people below was dead. Leaving the room with a heavy heart and the promise that he'd return shortly, Haugen once more moved through the ship until coming to a stop in front of the door he was certain belonged to the bridge.

"Engine room secured," a quick update came through his radio.

"Good work."

Third time's the charm, that's what they said, right?

The secret about being successful in close quarter combat was actually very basic. Speed, aggression and commitment. That had been drilled into his head during one of the earliest combat scenarios he had taken part in during his stay in Anaru Academy. While a sizeable portion of humanity considered it incredibly questionable that fifteen year old cadets were being taught how to quickly and efficiently sweep a room, Haugen himself could never really find anything negative about the practice a bunch of groups called 'political indoctrination of the worst kind'. It gave people who planned on committing themselves to the military a headstart, something that could eventually save their lives later down the line. As the bloodied, ghostly figure of a man jumped through the door of the bridge and began firing onto anything looking remotely like a slaver, he was certain that these people would change their minds if they were in his shoes. All it took to alter one's perception on a subject were circumstances. As his bullets found their mark in the backs of several crew members, he for one was glad for the additional years of training. It had made him who he was right now, it had given him the foundation he had built his life on and it had lead him to this very moment, given him the abilities he needed to save the people suffering under the horrors of ruthless slaver rings.

It was strange to say that he was exactly where he belonged when said where was the complete chaos of a shootout inside a slaver ring's secret underground base but even as he let go of his rifle, threw a charging batarian to the ground and shot him in his face with his pistol, he couldn't deny how complete he felt right now. He had never enjoyed this part of his job before. Killing had been something he had grown jaded to over the years, at first it had been necessary evil committed for the sake of something greater than himself, then somewhere down the road it had turned into just another part of his training, something he did without giving it a second thought. He shot so he and his team wouldn't get shot and he killed so whoever was on the other end of his rifle wouldn't kill someone else. But right now, as a batarian tried to bludgeon him with a fire extinguisher only to have his neck broken as a result, he felt more than the surge of adrenaline that usually fueled him during a fight. It was the same kind of desire for vengeance that he had felt during the closing hours of his first encounter with slavers eight years ago that drove him. And quite like back then, it was almost like he wasn't entirely present for the whole ordeal. He realised what was going on, yet most of what happened seemed to be mostly out of his control. He simply let his training take the wheel, figuratively sitting back and watching the events unfold as they happened. While it felt like a small eternity, it hadn't taken him long to clear most of the bridge, only one particularly heavy-set batarian now lying in a puddle of his own blood putting up something akin to a fight. He had cleaved through the bridge crew just like one would expect a highly trained and highly motivated special forces operative to cleave through a bridge crew. He was aware that somewhere along the way his camo had failed him, otherwise he wouldn't be able to see portions of the green digital camo through the blood that had collected on his hands. Maybe his generator had been hit, maybe something else had broken, he didn't know.

What he knew was that the only thing left to do was to take care of the two visibly terrified batarians shakingly pointing their meager looking pistols at him, only the two civilian targets between him and them, one asari and one human keeping them alive. Their appearance had been what had snapped him out of the semi-autopilot he had been in up to now.

"I said-" the young looking batarian in bluish robes stuttered as the middle-aged man he was using as a shield dug his fingers into the alien's forearm, "dro-drop it."

"We'll kill them," the other reinforced by pressing the barrel of his gun into the temple of the stoic asari he was holding hostage. He was noticeably calmer than the other one, that made him the more dangerous one. "Lower your weapon."

While he hadn't been in a whole lot of hostage situations, none actually, his ASOC carrier being distinctively more conventional than the ones shortly after the Fringe Wars, he had gone through enough simulated scenarios to know that first and foremost he should try to talk down the hostage takers, get them to lower their guard until he could take a shot. Luckily, or depending on which side you were on sadly, he had never been much of a talker.

They wanted him to lower his gun? Alright. They could have that.

Accuracy, like any skill, was something you learned by doing it over and over again. Every human that served in a special forces unit, be it N7 or ASOC, went through intensive fire arms training for both long-range and close quarter situations. The exercises were timed, variable and most importantly frequent. Haugen tipped the barrel of his gun down ever so slightly, giving the batarians the impression that he was complying. Falling for the bait, the one who had pointed his gun at the hostage up to now made the mistake he had been waiting for, aiming at Haugen himself and exposing himself ever so slightly in the process.

It all happened in a flash, a single bullet went through the blue robes covering his chest, ruptured his right lung and punctured his heart. Before he could think about pulling the trigger, the batarian was dead. Then Haugen, as practiced, shifted his aim and put a shot clean through the other batarian's gun, taking off a chunk of his hand in the process and allowing the human to free himself. Once the obstruction was gone from his line of fire, he put two additional bullets through the alien's chest, causing him to collapse and cough up his own dark-red blood.

"Please, I beg you," he spoke as Haugen walked over to him, the memory of a slaver looking strangely like him tormenting a girl on Mindoir surfacing once more."I'll give you anything, credits, a ship, weapons, property, anythi-"

The first punch that shattered his needle-like teeth might have stopped the begging but it didn't stop the images. Humans being put in shackles, an armored gauntlet broke the several noses of the alien. Batarian doctors cutting up his people and turning them into obedient slaves through some sort of implant, another punch caused blood to seep from the batarians face. Thousands of innocent people being condemned to a life of terror and suffering for no reason besides personal profit, he felt the jaw of the unconscious batarian break under the weight of his fists. 'Final chance, get up or I put you down for good,' a deep voice echoed through the back of his head as the pained face of a young girl lying in the grass not two meters in front of him stared directly at him, her expression crying for his help just as his fist came down on the mangled face of the batarian for a final time.

"Sir?"

He couldn't undo any of these things. Those who had died would stay dead and those who were trapped on Khar'shan would very likely stay there until their final days.

"Captain, are you alright?"

He couldn't save them. But there was something else he could do.

"Haugen!"

He could give them payback.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he replied before rising to his feet and inspecting his bloodied knuckles. "Did we win?"

"I sure hope so," Hofmann nodded before giving the corpse a small kick. "Because if we didn't we're dead and if we're dead and this is our version of the afterlife, I already hate it."

"Word."


Three Hours Later, HSASV Austerlitz

How he had gotten here had been far less blurry than the events on the bridge. His team had been picked up by a Kodiak, debriefed, treated for their injuries and sent on their merry way with the knowledge that the attack on Torfan was considered a success. While only finding roughly seven of the nine thousand missing colonists, the HSA had apparently freed a whole lot of non-human slaves as well and every council ship in the vicinity was currently being called to aid in their evacuation. The early headcount suggested that nearly thirty thousand slaves had been held across the various bases and smaller outposts discovered during the fighting and just about all of them had been liberated. Then, after dinner and a much needed shower, he had been recalled to the operation's room of the Austerlitz for a small chat with the admiral himself.

As he had said, far less blurry.

"Do you know who you just killed, Captain?" the raspy voice of Admiral Hackett spoke through the hologram projector, the bluish projector giving his voice a slight mechanical tone.

"No, Sir," the ASOC captain shook his head.

"That bastard," the picture of the one batarian that had put up a somewhat decent fight came into view,"was the biggest slave runner of the whole Traverse. He and his gang sacked hundreds of worlds in the last three decades and fought of every attack on themselves up to now. Called themselves 'the Undefeated'."

That explained a thing or two.

"And these two," he recognized the two as the buyers who had taken hostages,"were part of military top brass," the admiral explained as the soldier studied their faces. "HSAIS identified them as first cousins of the Balak family head and by killing them you just pissed of one of the most powerful families in the Hegemony," a pause, "They'll want blood for that one, Captain. Batarians are some of the most unforgiving sons of bitches in the galaxy, the moment they hear what you did, they'll put a bounty on your head."

"Meaning, Sir?"

"Meaning that you did damn good work down there," the admiral nodded before straightening himself. "A lot of the people back on Arcturus would call you a war criminal if they ever saw the recordings of the operation, they'd say that you beat an unarmed man to death in a fit of uncontrolled rage," he had been waiting for that.

"Sir, I'll take full responsibility for what I did," there was no reason to deny it.

"Son, if it were up to me, I'd pin a bunch of medals on your chest," the admiral corrected with a wave of his hand."The ones who'd do that weren't on the ground and until they actually get their asses in gear and save hundreds of people from getting shipped off to Hegemony space like you just did, they have no right to burn you," the admiral locked eyes with him. "The recordings of your helmet camera were corrupted by the ship's jammers and considering the bounty the Hegemony will put on your head, I'll redact your name from any report that doesn't go straight into lock-up. For your own safety, no one's ever gonna hear the details of this one."

He merely nodded as reply.

"Get some rest, Captain, god knows you earned it. Hackett out," the man spoke before exchanging salutes.

He'd get some rest but first he had to make a call.

It had been a long day and there was only really one person he wanted to talk to right now.


2. December 2409 AD, Blue Suns Frigate 'Lockpick'

"So what does this mean for us?" Zaeed Massani spoke as he rotated the damaged helmet he kept for nothing but sentimental reasons in his hands before tossing it to the man who currently shared the briefing room with him and the other Blue Suns leaders. Inspecting the cracked piece of armor a few moments before setting it down on the table, he leaned his back against the wall.

"It means that the whole reason we created the Blue Suns in the first place is now gone," Commander Holderman, their Cerberus handler shrugged. "With asari media outlets still bloating up the whole story and the HSA doing its best to keep the flames going, slaver bands are running to the Terminus Systems faster than you can say 'deniable black op'. They're all scared shitless of the big old 'Ardat-Torfana and want nothing more but to put as much space between them and him.'"

"And all of that just because you saved some matriarch's daughter?"

"Not any matriarch's daughter, Massani." Holderman reasoned. "Helia T'Lias, who happens to be one of the largest shareholders of the D'Lao broadcasting company, has been looking for her daughter ever since she went missing during the batarian invasion of Esan over two centuries ago," long life spans really were a bitch in cases like that one, while he didn't have any children himself, he could picture how terrible it would be to know that your missing daughter could still be alive two hundred years after she went missing, "and right when she's about to call the search off, we come knocking on her door, her Kalis T'Lias at our side."

"Pure coincidence, I'm sure," the former sergeant muttered. He'd be damned if HSAIS or Cerberus or whoever it was that was running the show these days hadn't done something to make the matriarch think that her daughter had died right before they could bring her home. If she had been looking for her daughter for two centuries, what were the odds that she'd consider stopping right before the HSA could return her home? While he didn't regret fighting for them, years of operating outside of its ranks had allowed him to see that at times the Human Systems Alliance could be incredibly opportunistic and a tad too manipulative for his own liking. In his younger years he might've hated the IFS with a burning passion but the older he got, the more sense some of their gibberish started to make.

"And a fortunate one at that," the Cerberus officer pointed out."T'Lias was more than grateful when her daughter returned home. She practically jumped at the chance to do us a favour. A few tweaks to the story, a few credible sources-"

"-and the might of the biggest independent news outlet in the galaxy," Zaeed injected.

"-later and you got the perfect recipy to terrify even the most hardened slavers."

"We've been shooting these bastards for years now and all it takes is one good lie and they pack things up and run back home," Kuril, the most senior turian member of the Blue Suns chuckled.

"Sometimes the pen is mightier than the sword," the Cerberus officer shrugged.

"Anyone ever tell you that you humans have funny sayings?" the turian said as his mandibles clicked into a slight smile.

"It'd be even funnier if it wouldn't make me jobless," a third Blue Suns commander injected

"I wouldn't worry about your job," Holderman retorted.

"I thought you said we're done," Kuril recalled as both he and Zaeed looked at the man.

"I said the reason we created you no longer exists," the human clad in a white dress uniform corrected before tossing a small data drive towards Zaeed. "I didn't say you're done."

"The hell's on this?" the Blue Suns veteran asked as he passed it down the line of assembled commanders after a short inspection.

"Your new set of orders," the man explained. "We might have created your organisation for somewhat selfish reasons," it was true, the Blue Suns had been founded soley to keep slaver bands off of the HSA's back without risking a war with the Hegemony, the fact that they'd save the lives of thousands of people had simply been an added benefit," but you've become so much more than a deniable black op. You're a spark of hope for a lot of people and these days, hope goes a long way."

"Damn right we have," he grunted in approval as the other commanders, especially the three turians, stood a bit straighter. "So what happens now?"

"You're not done, you're just getting started."

"Do go on."

"We want you to follow them," Holderman explained. "Just because the slavers are running away from the Fringe doesn't mean that they stop existing. They might not be our problem anymore," the Cerberus officer continued before locking eyes with Massani in a fashion similar to the day he had found him in a bar on Terra Nova,"but as long as they're around they'll still someone's problem. Given that you'd go after them either way," Zaeed couldn't deny that they hadn't considered it prior to this meeting, "we figure the best outcome for everyone is that we simply adapt the status quo to the situation."

"How so?"

"This entire operation has been far more successful than we initially planned it to be," he'd take that as a compliment,"so we'd like to expand it. Give me a list of what you need to scale things up and I'll see what I can do for you."

"What kind of scale are we talking about?" another turian commander asked before sticking the data-drive into the holo-table of the room and folding his arms in front of his chest, waiting for the projection to assemble itself.

"Have any of you ever considered what you'd do with your own assault carrier and a planetary base?" the officer asked as the depiction of a small moon and an outdated Everest-Class in the process of being retrofitted by an automated shipyard appeared in front of them. "Because I know I have," he smirked.

"You're fucking with us, aren't you, Holderman?" Zaeed muttered in disbelief. "How the hell are you going to explain that one to the public?"

"We won't have to, you're looking at the Broad Peak."

"Wait, didn't the Broak Peak buy it during the Fringe Wars?" a human commander injected, the grey fade of his hair making it very likely that he had been around for the occasion.

"Yes, it got hit on Dark Thursday, half the crew didn't make it," Zaeed confirmed. "Which makes this all the more interesting."

"Everest-Classes are tougher than their crews," Holderman argued before walking over to the table."Originally the wreckage of the Broad Peak would've been moved to Bekenstein's moon and scrapped for spare parts but since just about everything useful was broken, the navy towed it to Mars to eventually scrap its hull."

"Then what happened?"

"Before they could do any major scrapping, the Fringe Wars ended," the officer explained,"and with the Killimanjaro-Class entering service, the shipyards were too busy for the Broad Peak's corpse."

"So the navy gave it to you?"

"Not at first, no. They might have the second biggest budget of all uniformed services but they're still a greedy bunch. As far as they were concerned the few cruisers they gave to Cerberus were already more than enough."

"What changed?"

"Times," the man shrugged. "Bottom line is we finally got it a five years ago and have been fixing it ever since. Unless something goes horribly wrong, it'll be done in seven months."

"If you wanted it so badly, why are you giving it to us?"

"Didn't take you for one to look the gifted horse in the mouth, Massani," Holderman chuckled. "Cerberus works best in the shadow and as much as it pains me to say, we haven't figured out stealth dreadnoughts. Also we don't have nearly enough people to run it at full efficiency."

"And we do?"

"Not yet but you could. As I said, you've become so much more than a black op," he looked around the assembled group,"Folks look at that white circle on your armor and see something more than just a person. Use that to make even more of a difference," he extended his hand towards Zaeed. "Any more questions?"

"Just one."

"Shoot."

"Is it Christmas already?" Zaeed chuckled. "Because right now it sure as hell feels like it."


Codex Skyllian Blitz:

The Skyllian Blitz, a failed batarian invasion the Skyllian Verge, was a brief but significant conflict fought over the span of several months and dozens of colonies that resulted in neither the HSA, backed by the Citadel Council, and the Batarian Hegemony, backed by various Terminus nations, losing or gaining any territory. Instead of altering the borders like they had hoped to and repeating the practice of claiming previously settled planets as their own, the batarian military instead suffered a moderate but still morally-crushing initial defeat at the hands of the human defenders. Originally hoping to swiftly conquer some of the larger colonies of the Fringe Worlds such as Elysium, Mindoir and Camelot, the batarians were drawn into a several month long stalemate before rumored internal strife and the threat caused by both turian and salarian forces joining the fight and lingering just outside of their borders forced them to the negotiation table.

While not a very costly conflict for either side, the final death toll numbering at only roughly five hundred thousand, the real significance of the Skyllian Blitz was first and foremost that it reinforced the idea which the Human Mercenary Intervention, the induction of their first Spectre and their contribution towards the Citadel Defense Fleet had already planted in the heads of the galaxy, the HSA would sooner or later join the ranks of the 'big three'. Furthermore the Skyllian Blitz, more specifically the Battle of Torfan, also resulted in another significant development, permanently ending the slaver threat in the region and solidifying the HSA's relations towards the various independent planets of the Verge, making humanity the de-facto guardian of dozens of wealthy corporate worlds willing to share their riches with their new protectors.

However not every result of the conflict was positive. As a direct consequence of the ceasefire that resulted in the current state of coldwar between the HSA and the Batarian Hegemony, the Goyle Administration saw a decline in popularity, causing the ruling party, the Systems Alliance Foundation which had been in power for most of the HSA's history, to only barely gain the majority in the elections of 2410, hitting a historic low in the process. Additionally the previous belligerence towards the IFS, which had suffered a series of blows to its credibility ever since the closing year of the Fringe Wars, began to shift towards Arcturus, returning the separatist movement to the level of prestige it had enjoyed before Andrej Kamarov's assault on the station. (See Entry: Elysium War) Due to IFSDF remnants joining the fight against the batarians at the side of their previous enemy and playing a keyrole in the defense of several smaller colonies, the Skyllian Blitz became an even bigger victory for the Independent Fringe Systems.

As a result of their involvement and due to having never fought against them themselves, the newest generations of HSA soldiers had now developed a dangerous bond with groups the HSA still considered separatists. Many of these soldiers were simply reassigned into territories with insignificant IFS activity but several ranking military officials who deliberately ignored orders to engage IFSDF forces for the duration of the war faced court martial charges in regards to insubordination and misprision of treason. While most of them were found non-guilty, three were dishonorably discharged as a result of their actions. Additionally to these high-profile cases, small parts of the HSA's military, more specifically young servicemen hailing from the Verge, began adopting a worrying sense of revisionism in regards towards the IFSDF, moving away from their traditional portrayal as traitors and deserters and colouring them as people who much like they themselves fought for their homes, ideas and values but happened to stand on the losing side of the war. Even though a begrudged sense of respect had always existed between the IFSDF and the HSA's armed forces, the level of sympathy towards the separatist movement spiked after the Blitz.


A/N: Goddammit these delays are getting out of hand, I wanted to have this out three days ago...

But alright, let's not get into the very nasty habit of being late that I seemto develop now that we're closing in on our one year anneversay (at the end of november, Semper Vigilo will turn ONE! :D) Let's talk Torfan.

Now, to start things off, I'd like to point out that I never specified what kind of renegade this background would be, so for those who suspected it'd go down like in canon (read that as an incompetent infantry officer wasting 90% of his unit because he's a fucking idiot), I don't really apologize for taking a different approach. This isn't Shepard. Shepard was really fucking fresh when Torfan came around in canon, he wasn't even an N7 back then (I'm saying he because for god knows what reason I always picture the renegade background as a dude) Haugen is... well, no need to sugarcoat it, compared to Shepard at that point in time, Haugen is much more experienced, better trained and most importantly in a way different position than him.

I realise that by calling him Demon of Torfan, I let a lot of you to believe that he'd turn into some sort of onemanarmy and slaughter half of Torfan by himself but since I already had Shepard's background being the "turns the battle by herself" trope, I decided that for Haugen, I wanted his background to be much more... 'personal'. On the grand scale of things, any other ASOC dude could've done what he did but since these missions/events are supposed to shape the character into the direction they were going, I decided that Torfan works best as a much more brutal but also much more grounded story that uses his other background (Mindoir) to sent him down the not-so-pretty road. Sure, he's a specops dude with years of work on his back, but did you really believe I'd have him murder hundreds of batarians all by himself :P?

So what I'd like to know now is who saw the twist of the whole Ardat-Torfana thing being more of a myth than an actual reality coming? Who managed to use the little detail that the name of his background was asari in origin to piece together that the Demon of Torfan is basically a case of a galactic media outlet showing just how good they are at spinning things a certain way? (right here I'd like to point out that this is in no way a commentary towards our very own 2017 media, SV is not politcally motivated, pls no review hate)

Also who figured out that the whole reason I used Hackett was because Arrival showed us that he's totally down with covering shit up?

Just me?

Alright.

Now the other segment of the chapter (by the way, originally Torfan was supposed to be short but somehow it turned into the longest scene I wrote up to now), there's no real point in it besides explaining how the Demon of Torfan came to be and giving you a clue as to where the Blue Suns will be when Shepard runs into them.

So yeah.

Finally I'd like to say that the next chapter is actually going to be the one which does the next portion of time jumping and that, spoiler alert, it will very likely (I might change my mind) set up Akuze...

There it is again, the A-word I keep mentioning... weird, ain't it?

'Why does he keep pushing Akuze back?' they ask. 'It should've already happened', those aware of the timeline cry...

fear not lads, the lone survivor background is right around the corner and by the time you read the next A/N you will very likely ... no I already said too much.

Stay tuned.

For the record we're at 317 reviews, 537 favorites (17 in one chapter is a lot dudes, keep it coming) and 644 follows (15, not bad.)

Review and let me kow what you think about the chapter, I always like reading and as all know, I reply to all of your questions in cryptic, douchebaggy ways! Don't miss that.

See you around next time.