All the Stars

by BlueWay

When the Long Night of Solace is evaporated over Reach via the weaponized usage of a Slipspace Drive, it ferries with it in its swallowed sections the Covenant Empire and, more horrifyingly, the desperate measures that the UNSC used to fight them. When they are found in a universe on the precipice of their own history, the meaning of the term "Mass Effect" will change forever.

42. 1-35: The Battle of Virmire Pt II

1-35

The Battle of Virmire - Part II of II - The Time of Monsters (A New Covenant)

---

Shepard runs for the CIC and command deck as soon as she's on, but she cannot look away as the dead of the Normandy are laid down on the well deck. She passes by Chakwas on the way down with all the nurses, and even the old woman is moving fast as she is in the opposite direction.

She tracks in the battle beneath her, her hand on her rifle, never letting go as Kaiden beats her to the stand.

It was not easy traversing the Normandy as Joker kicked it into high gear, flying up and away from the planet as fast as he could without breaking the ship in two. Still, when he does break the atmosphere, the Normandy quivers, but Shepard does not as she makes her way to the bridge and every visual sensor aimed behind them. The routine of war for every commander was that loss was inevitable. It didn't mean that Shepard had to be complacent about it. She had lost more than one from her crew today and further still. More than that, however, a mystery had been revealed before her, and its two characters had been gone.

That was what she had thought anyway, eyes steeled, facing the future of her newfound knowledge alone, waiting for that death bell of an explosive to go off on Virmire below.

She forces herself to look and see the explosion. She needs to, for her own soul's warning.

But as the seconds pass, nothing. Absolutely nothing.

"Ma'am," Joker had reported with a yell as the Normandy punched back out of the atmosphere. "The bomb just went dead!"

Shepard and Kaiden snap to each other, concern in their eyes, verbalized by the newest passenger of the Normandy: Kirrahe storms up, dinged up but alive and very much surprised.

"Impossible!" His words were firm. "There's no reason for that bomb to have not gone off! This isn't even the first time I've had to do this with a ship drive!"

"Your definition of impossible needs to be adjusted then." Kaiden's hands are in his head, thinking of the mess in the well deck below and the men and women who had died for the bomb to go off. The assumption had been a mechanical failure.

Shepard knows better. If she were Mai, and if she had cared for JD in the way that was so plainly observed of her, there was one thing that had happened:

"What the hell is she doing?!"

Commander Shepard had expected Mai Gul to die. How silly had been that notion when considering her. A phrase from a memory not her own arises in bitterness: Spartans never die.

"Commander-?!" Kaiden had been caught off guard by how Shepard snapped.

"It's Chief Gul!" The crew on the deck gives their pause, thinking it has finally come: Chief Gul's stubbornness has brought herself against Shepard in the worst way.

"What-? Why?" Kirrahe hadn't entirely understood, but Shepard had. A faltering of faith on her behalf in the belief that the steadfast Mai, so in line with military protocol, wouldn't dare compromise the mission. She had, to an irreparable end, changed what was to happen. "That facility has far more Geth or Krogan than we thought. To leave it alone is to" -Kirrahe, mission-minded, gets to the logical endpoint of this new change, but Shepard is already there.

"We're not leaving it alone!" She barks, and the Normandy comms pick it up. Kirrahe nods, the ice-cold slap of Shepard's words to his doubt that she might've left entirely sobering him, causing him to run back down to the well deck to get back ready. "Joker! We're not done here!"

Throughout the Normandy, her words resounded. In the well deck, Hitman, licking its wounds, addressing the dead, had responded as they should've: With hatred, with battle rage.

Ashley Williams, the sole survivor of her squad on Eden Prime, heir of coward Marines, rejects her birthright and accepts her future: "Oorah!" Her scream echoes and is multiplied, by the bleeding Marines of Hitman, looking down upon their dead and lost. Only blood would pay for this now. It's an eternal circle for Marines, but one they keep to like gospel. Oorah is their prayer, and it surrounds the aliens. Liara T'Soni holds her head, a dam of thoughts bursting in harmony with Human yells over her mind- a veil on her thoughts as Chakwas and any medically trained personnel attended hurriedly to the wounded and injured on the floor of the well deck, blood flowing from wounds reopened to be plugged. Garrus is on the floor, Hitman's medic, Doc, pushing a bucket to him as he throws up his lungs full of smoke, scratches on the floor from where he crawled in, made by his armor. He can only continue puking into a bin as he tries his best to stay conscious, but it's not enough, not enough as he collapses again and one of the medics clamps a mask over his mouth to try and pump air into him.

Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, ash and soot and debris littering her suit and poncho, stands ready with her shotgun beside Urdnot Wrex. She is not done, and he, as he had decided so many centuries ago, would never be done. He reaches out with his metal clad claw to her shoulder, confiding in her a promise for an eternal fight that many would give their lives for. She takes it as she lays her hand on his claw and squeezes once. In fighting, there is purpose.

Kaiden Alenko, from the bridge, looks down on the battle below and does his job and job alone. He is not Shepard, his mind is not of the wider world, of the struggle within. He is a soldier, through and through, and he follows his commander in her orders, even if only more death would follow.

Jane Kennedy Shepard is again caught up in the long line of history, and she can feel it start tearing her skin off as all she can do is fight. The world had chosen her to act through, and time and time again she played her part.

She's never alone in that prospect, however.

A bridge crew member screams out, sound ahead of thought in surprise: "Large signature! I've never seen a profile like it before!"

"Who-?!" Shepard has her answer before she can even finish the question. Forced down her throat, into the air, and out through the Galaxy.

A female's voice, a warrior's voice, not unlike Shepard's own. "This is the Ardent Prayer of the Covenant. We are in battle with this synthetic presence. We will rip their wires from their hulls and burn them into glass. All parties willing to find their glory, may you join us."

The Covenant has arrived, and their message is clear: intervention. A fever pitch was met, and for one last time, Shepard yells out in her bridge: "Raise the Alliance. Raise every Spectre in this area! We're going back!"

"Aye ma'am!" The bridge affirms her sentiments entirely.

"Kaiden! You have the conn!" She screams out, already marching back down to the well deck. "Wire into my comm and let me know what the Covenant direct-action plan is!"

"Aye ma'am!"

"XO Alenko has the conn."

Action. Action. Action. Lives lost for the sake of inches taken, the very feeling of the immediacy had overtaken all because of the grace of the dead and the lost and what was left to do. If there had been a thought that there was a time to pull back, to remove themselves from that situation entirely, no one on the Normandy protests. They are caught up in the Shepard's wake and dragged along with the ride, not as a matter of captivity, but as a matter of belief. Every word from Shepard spit with the authority of command and intention is one that ascends with the verifiable feeling that what was to happen in the immediate moments, minutes, hours, and days mattered more than anything they had done before: even dying.

In another life, Shepard left Virmire somber, enraged, with a piece of a puzzle almost completed.

In this life the puzzle had been shattered- the world had been turned upside down. In her mind swirls the history of a Mankind at war and two of its actors have shredded apart desperate plans in the name of themselves. She is furious, upset with herself for letting it get this far, but it mixes with pity, horror, and madness that come with losing her men and women. What is happening is wrong, she can't help but feel, but she has a role to play, and that is as the Commander Shepard.

The mention of the Covenant now still burns her mind, but she turns that fire and turns it into command.

Her scar, the wound of her motherhood, drags her down like gravity, and she fights it still as she had for years.

The cold flicker of cold liquid on her face brings her back as she waits in front of the elevator to take her back down. She hasn't even let go of her rifle. The wounded have been brought up the deck into the mess hall instead of the well deck, if not in Chakwas's domain of the Medbay. It is Chakwas that has looked her down, gotten on her in all but physically, looking for wounds that would've killed her. Chakwas finds nothing, so what she does is what she can: Shepard flinches as she feels a bit of it touch the back of her neck, not anticipating it, in her mind so much that she didn't even notice Chakwas at first.

"Through this holy unction, may the Lord give you strength, and forgive us your sins to come to save us all."

Shepard doesn't know how to feel, the droplets sliding down from her skin, down onto her armor. "Didn't know you were our chaplain, too, Doctor."

There's a grim look on the doctor's face, so much blood and death brought inside those modern halls she is trying to recover from, nurses and aides yelling out medical language as chaotic as any battle chatter. Just one moment, she takes the time to come around to the true, important figure of their life. No one else there matters as much as Shepard, and because of that, she needs all blessings. Chakwas gives her own from a flask of Serrice Ice Brandy, flicked in droplets across Shepard's form before the elevator arrives. When the doors open, the floors are stained with blood. Behind her, a Hitman, Bannon, a nurse slaps a patch over her chest from a hole made from a Krogan projectile weapon. She coughs up blood from it, and all her breathing is down ragged as her arms and legs all struggle and spasm.

"I'm not. But when I've done all I can for those that need help, all that we have left is to pray to a higher power. Hm?" Chakwas words convey enough that she wants to do more, but there was nothing left to do but entrust their fates to a higher power. Shepard can only nod, looking from her to the wounded writhing in her ship before she disappears back below.

History throws its shadow over the well deck, and its shape is Shepard as she emerges. Those that remain, armor battered, guns smoking still, are soldiers in the highest regard. No faces, just helmets in a row.

"The oldest mission, ladies and gentlemen!" She yells out. "Search and destroy!" Hitman is there to her front ready and waiting, mixed in with the surviving Salarian STG, no better off than they were. At least another twenty, but a weak twenty. Kirrahe keeps quiet. His time for speeches is over, and what remains is something that, quietly he ponders, is perhaps why the Krogan were brought up in the first place. He sees the appeal in sending monsters to fight wars for him.

"Plans have changed." Shepard clarifies further. "The bomb failed to go off. It doesn't matter why. But the job needs to be finished and I don't leave my business unkept." No good deed goes unpunished, after all. "We are going down there to kill everything, and everyone. We will dig what Saren has planted out from the roots and burn it down in front of him!" The rage. The fire. Threats to Humanity take the stage in her head, and in those microseconds of lucid thought, she realizes now where this rage comes from. This was Mai's rage, born from an endless war against the Covenant. What she had put into words, in command, she had exerted through combat. She understood now, and even so, Mai had been an insubordinate by a measure that would've cost many more lives.

And for what?

To die with someone she held dear?

Perhaps she would've done the same thing if she had been in Mai's place. But that wasn't the case. Her responsibility was to her galaxy, her people.

"Has Chief Gul gone rogue?" A Hitman asks.

"No." Shepard answers quickly. "But she'll need to be detained regardless."

The biotics of Hitman are ready with that mention, but that was how this was all going to end, not the in between. The in between, nothing was promised. Nothing is clear but the battle ahead of them, and already the cost had been too many. But it always was.

A singular message is quickly sent over the Normandy's IM service and flashes on all their omnis. No one comments, but it's sent by Loke, the pointwoman, as she tears her vision away from the bloodstain left by a body of one of the fallen Hitman.

Earth. Pennsylvania. A-4874-393-320. Call wife, name: Sarah. For Tracy.

It's not a message for anyone. But if more were to die, the contact info for at least one of the Hitmen would be left out in the open for someone to follow up on.

"Fuck." Emerson grits through his teeth, having made the mistake of looking at the message. Too early to mourn, but the chance may never come.

Five dead from Hitman.

Twenty down to fifteen.

Bale Marcos. Quiet, but overly honest, the oldest son of an eight-child large family.

James Black. Artist. Former art teacher even. Boston had been on his tongue, and he sang to the displeasure of all.

Tariq Omar. Family ran an animal shelter out of Elysium. Fell out of contact with them.

Tracy O'Neill. Father of a beautiful 11-year-old daughter. Maria.

Dead. All dead now.

In a crew that large, Shepard had taken the time to know them. Otherwise, she had told herself long ago, they would just become names on a report, alive or dead, vaguely remembered, unable to have the privilege that the world had chained her with: being Shepard. If she would not remember them, the readers of any report, of any story, would not, especially not when she had been there. She was the one that mattered to those above her, not them.

A travesty, one that made her nearly bite her tongue off as she turned her anger into hate and let it burn her down all over.

In another life, all she lost was one. In this life, however, she had so much more to give.

---

It would take another ten minutes for the Ardent Prayer to breach atmosphere, but it was a gap of time enough that justified the first wave: The initial portion of ground troops would be deployed by Spirit and Phantom transports. Out from the hull of the Ardent Prayer the detached, like ticks fat from suckling, and as a swarm, they descended onto Virmire, fighter escort in tow. From one invasion to another. The contingent of the Ardent Prayer was enough for some of the frontier Human colonies, it would be enough a single facility.

Usze had confided as much seeing the two hundred strong force that the Ardent Prayer ferried all ready to fight.

The only space faring ship of the Covenant left had been this corvette that matched the might of the capital ships of this new galaxy, and all its hopes had been backed up by refit and rearmament.

Mercaius had, in his low bark, rallied his troops, the Brutes, to him as the two Phantoms that were to ferry in the Wraiths and his portion of infantry were boarded, leaving two Phantoms and two Spirits for Usze for his infantry force.

The rest would follow and land on Virmire with the ships hundred insertion pods or the back and forth of the troop transports. A practiced routine, made from experience when insertion pods were not the initial play. Once, not too long ago, the Covenant had been at war.

The Ranger, Major Nazhumee, silver armor and fuel rod gun ready, had been waiting for Usze. No words exchanged, just a knowing look as they had boarded the lead Phantom and disembarked the Ardent Prayer.

As the engines burned at combat speed, the mission had been clear from the start, disseminated down from major to minor. Usze needed not to give any briefing, for the objectives were clear, and the method: familiar.

The Unggoy were warbling in their anxiety, the Kig-Yar in their infinite confidence gripped their carbines and rifles patiently waiting to do what they were paid to do, the Jiralhanae were waiting for yet another battle to prove themselves in, while the Yanme'e, the Huragok, and the Lekgolo stood by, waiting to be commanded as was their place in what was known as Covenant. The Sangheili however, with honor and the ideas of History in their mind, there was a weight to their feet that had been missing since they had come to that galaxy.

In each Sangheili was the inclination to be a part of history; an eternal struggle against time itself to make their mark, as their honor demanded.

The atmospheric layer of Virmire below was breached by the transports. It wouldn't be long now.

"AA guns are active!" One of the pilots had yelled out as the transport squadron reported back to Usze.

"Proceed over the water! We will go with the waves to our backs! We must clear the way for our pods!"

"And what of the Demon?!" One of his troops called out.

Usze had his answer. "We trade one enemy for another."

The Ghost operators had fallen through the hatches in the Phantom's, depositing themselves in the seats of their vehicles as their repulsors fired up. The Banshees, with as much of their iconic scream wailing, had fired up their boosters and flown ahead of the Phantom formation.

"Incoming tracking!"

"Brace!"

---

Now Playing:

Halo: Combat Evolved Soundtrack – Halo (Main Theme)

Intro Suite for Mission 4: The Silent Cartographer

---

This was war again.

"When we joined the Covenant, we took an oath!" Usze had stood tall as the pilots yelled out and the world started shaking. He stood unbothered between the rows of his troops and defined the creed, read back, lived back.

"According to our station! All without exception!" They rattled back at him. The Ghosts were let go by the Phantoms as they floated down onto the surface of water, their repulsors kicking in and sending them flying like jet skis of Human design, following beneath the Phantoms as the Banshees shot down incoming anti-air rockets.

"On the blood of our fathers! On the blood of our sons! We swear to uphold the Covenant!"

"Even to our dying breath!"

"We're approaching the beachhead!"

All Sangheili had a predilection for the dramatics. Honor codified it after all, and Usze was a very honorable Sangheili. "May we show this galaxy nothing less than the bond of this Covenant!"

Approaching the beachhead, the Ghosts had opened up with their plasma cannons as Geth on the walls opened fire. The shields of the Ghosts flared up as blue fire reigned in return, the soak of ocean water coming with them as the Ghosts hit the beach and continued, full speed, to the facility's walls. Angling their vehicles as they approached the walls headfirst, there was enough thrust in them to climb up the walls after a kick of their boosters, ramping up into the sky above the defenders as those that could held on, and those that couldn't had jumped from their vehicles and drew their weapons backlit against the blue sky.

For the first time in a long time, the energy swords of the Covenant had lit with the promise of blood; synthetic blood.

Ghosts came crashing down in controlled chaos as those still being operated had chosen a side of the defensive walls and held down the trigger before Geth as they tried to readjust to their maneuver. The forward armor of the Ghosts and their shields had weathered the first impacts, rewarding the defenders with a hail of plasma fire which cut them down in metallic pops.

Those Ghost drivers who had disembarked had found themselves facing the scattered wall defenders, face to face, their computations trying to find out how to deal with an enemy that very much thrived in the close up.

Energy swords flared as they slashed down upon Geth trying to back up and get a shot, but every Elite there had been a swordsman, every Elite a warrior as they fought chest to chest with a new enemy.

The Phantoms had followed behind seconds later, their carried Wraiths being deposited on the beaches as their thrusters made glass of the sand.

Usze had stepped out the outer wing of the Phantom, seeing the battle before him begin. "Everything over this wall is hostile! Open fire!" He cast out to the Wraiths below.

"Commencing fire!" They affirmed.

Banshees screamed overhead as fuel rod bombs dropped from them, into the facility, prodding the defenses as Geth deep in the facility came back to life with an urgency.

Usze and the infantry had dropped down onto the sand shortly after the Wraiths, the great thumps of their mortars powering up, and then firing, had started many a battle against the Humans. The Geth would be no different. "All units!" Usze called out as squads deposited. "Go!"

The Ardent Prayer above had moved further into orbit, converging over the facility. In the distance, the great black beast, the leviathan of ancient legends, had done the same reappearing in atmosphere and closing.

"Weapons and batteries are all confirmed full charge! Shields operating at full capacity!"

"Torpedo bays reporting first volley primed!"

"Face me." Karonee had muttered to herself as the defensive Seraph formations maintained around. "Proceed over the facility and drop all units as prepared. We alone will have to tie up the Beast."

"Yes shipmistress."

Ke Nazhumee had been with his Rangers, their silver armor gleaming in mid-day as, once again, he had been on the frontlines of a war.

"Major Nazhumee! Push forward! Scatter the enemy! Strike from above!" Usze had ordered as he had seen the group of Sangheili and their Unggoy deposit out from the Phantom. The transports that had deposited their load had opened up their gunnery platforms, transferred to combat duty as Unggoy and Jackals hanging out the side readied their weapons.

"It will be done!" Ke had answered affirmatively, giving his jetpack harness one last shake as his cadre of silver warriors ran for the defensive wall. Several Grunts charged with equipment had already been at the bottom, prepping for gravity pads to send infantry over. His Rangers needed no such assistance as they, just at the bottom, hopped and felt the thrust of airborne warfare on their backs, sending themselves up and over the wall. His fuel rod gun over his shoulder, the breadth of the battle was revealed to him: Just another facility, multi-layered, already masked with the sounds of battle as pieces of it were blown open by the Banshees and Wraiths. Distantly he could hear another battle in the distance, but that was none of his concerns as his Rangers flew above and looked down at the companies of Geth responding to the Ghosts on the wall.

The Geth had never fought the Covenant before today.

That was their mistake.

Ke had aimed down as the entire floating squad of his prepped their needlers.

The pink and green explosions that followed were visible even behind the defensive wall as the gravity pads were activated and Usze ran at them, feeling the jump and the acceleration carry him to on top of the wall as many more followed behind him.

Like the ticking of a Human clock, the Wraith artillery kept flying above them in second increments, unceasing.

"Commander." One of the Ghost operators who had unmounted had nodded at Usze, the wall cleared as the Ghosts rode its pathways across, cutting down any remaining defenders and securing. Geth return fire had been sporadic, present, but it worried Usze not as Ke's Rangers and the air support rained from above. Behind him, a great thud of a larger being.

Or rather two: Hunters.

They looked at Usze expectantly, and he had only pointed forward. The hulking troops had grunted, and they had jumped down from the wall into the facility proper, charging at Geth trying to put up defensive positions. There was no such resistance to be had as they barreled through.

A Phantom had hovered overhead, two Jackal snipers off the edge of its platforms looking down at Usze, the Elite quickly barking out orders and the Phantom going forward to provide sniper support.

The Unggoy had their place as back line troops, securing the beachhead as the Phantoms which deposited troops went back up to the Ardent Prayer to collect more. For Usze, this was his time to fight.

Up above on the Ardent Prayer, Mercaius and his second wave had been preparing for said transport shuttles to return, but so far above the planet, from out the hanger: a glimmer of white.

"That is that Human ship, is it not?" One of his Brutes whispered in his ear as he tightened the grip on his hammer.

Mercaius could only nod and see the SSV Normandy burning its way back onto Virmire.

"They are not our enemy today." The Brute Major answered back, the first transports returning at breakneck speeds into the hangers.

To affirm, over the radio: "This is Commander Shepard of the Systems Alliance. We will be proceeding from the north end of the facility. Covenant forces, how copy?" An open transmission. Bold. Usze was unused to hearing them over channels, let alone calling for his attention. They deserved an answer if they fought with them.

"Understood, Human. Be careful, lest you learn the lessons of the Heretics." He answered, igniting his swords as his Spec Ops squad formed behind him.

"Your orders, Commander?" They asked Usze.

He looked at the silver facility and the sound of warfare. This was what he was born to do.

"Purge."

---

Throughout the galaxy, a message was beamed out about Virmire: funneled through Spectres, through Alliance and Council communication lines. The whole galaxy, at once, had heard, but not yet understood until the realization washed over all of them. Today was a day that would cast History itself down a path.

On Altis, before the Covenant Round Table, convened with the Quarian Conclave for matters pertaining to their alliance, an Elite honor guard reports: "Reports from the Ardent Prayer and various Alliance communications. The Covenant is now engaged with the Geth."

Destiny's long fingers stroked his chin as he looked at the Admiralty of the Quarians, the shadow of the Halo ring that had been formed above the Round Table gleaming upon all of them.

"It seems Shipmistress Karonee has once again seen fit to prove herself completely." Destiny had referred to his other San'Shyuum to his sides, now minor prophets. His wreath of vines on his head had begun to sprout, as was its cycle, with green leaves in the light of paradise Altis, but the Covenant could not remain in paradise forever. Not when there was work to be done.

The Quarian Admirals had all gotten the same reports from their aides and omnis, the matters of the day about the procedural business of the Covenant and the Quarian alliance still forming put off step, but for a reason completely reasonable. Quarian ships already out in the Traverse had been engaging Geth ships and troops on their own in prodding attacks, and the state of war between the two had existed for as long as the idea of the modern Quarian existed. However, now, a new variable.

"Prophet of Destiny," Admiral Han'Gerrel vas Neema ushers his words first from his side of the Round Table with the Quarian Conclave. "Was this a planned engagement?"

Destiny is quick to dismiss with one stern shake of his spindly head. "The Ardent Prayer is only on a diplomatic mission. If they are engaged directly with the Geth, then it must be a matter of grave importance that even we, as fresh newcomers to this galaxy, must recognize." There were never failures or surprises for Destiny. Only opportunities. He was named the Prophet of Destiny for such steadfast optimism after all. "I have no doubts that today is but the first victory of our Covenant against this machine menace. A non-issue perhaps."

The gall of Destiny to say that this centuries long issue of the Geth upon the Quarians had been a non-issue had been surprising, but he had said it with such confidence- like a comment on distant clouds promising rain. The Great Journey was always guaranteed however, to them. Distant as it might've been, it was promised. Confidence derived from divine paths was rare in that Galaxy and the Covenant had an abundance.

The agenda of the meeting had far been removed now. This was a matter of wartime. "From where we came," Destiny stands from his gravchair. "The Covenant does not simply stand by. The Covenant walks, forever forward, on our destined path. In light of these new events unfolding, I feel it is prudent, to seize on it." He stands tall, stands alive and well and full of life and hope for the future. "The Covenant will commit, at once, to the reclamation of Rannoch. May we begin a greater journey, together!" And so that was how the largest fleet in history had been called forth to another higher calling. One Great Journey was as good as another.

"Wh- what do you mean?" Han'Gerrel had not understood. None of the Quarians could understand what the power of the Covenant, unified behind a single Prophet, could do. How easy a decision could be made without Councils and Politics.

"I mean what I've said." Destiny, one by one, looks to the other Covenant leaders of the Round Table, and one by one, the military officers all leave, away, off to their troops and stations, whisked away by a mission, same as any other. "The Geth will be dealt with, starting today."

Hundreds of years of dealing with the leaders of that Galaxy, all to be told no, torn away, discarded. The Covenant regarded no one.

Apart, and yet unified at that second, off in the stands the two liaisons of the Council and the Alliance look to each other in a flash of emotion, a slurry of confusion and worry. Avitus Rix, staring across the stands at the Alliance officer assigned by Hackett to keep tabs on the Covenant, breaks out running faster than they can to the nearest place he can call out to the galaxy at large.

"Tell me plainly, again then, what you mean, what is happening." Han'Gerrel understands the language as translated into his ears but cannot comprehend.

Destiny levels his vision across the table, to all Quarians there, and he, in no ambiguity, outlines the simplicity that the Covenant knew best: "We will deploy to engage the Geth across the Attican Traverse, and then, to Rannoch-Sanghelios, starting now. My main military commander is currently engaged. There is no other reason to be, especially under the context of such blatant wrong against the innocent: Your people."

The Covenant existed to right wrongs, after all. Each step a step toward salvation.

"Understand that we fully understand what is to come. Follow our Covenant, and we shall guide the way." Destiny, whispers enter his ear from advisors left and right, but he is not bothered. He knows that his Covenant knows how to wage a war. A righteous war.

And over them all, the crowd of councilors, recognizing the momentous occasion, the continuation of the Great Journey, sing a hymn. It is a hymn known only to be sang in the presence of the Sacred Rings, an image of one hanging over the Round Table in silver splendor. The canticles of a holy writ and passage echo through the world, and then back to the Sacred Ring, and it vibrates in song that the Quarians have heard not: It was a song of unity, and the vague impression that they should've joined this chorus takes over them all.

Minutes later, Phantoms and Spirits, like the seeds of dandelions, shed off the Long Night of Solace, and make their way above to the Migrant Fleet. Another invasion has begun, and on that day, Altis again is shown what it looks like, the day the Covenant visits a Human colony.

---

Nihlus gets the information first, naturally, but the thrust of it is so severe that when he blips into the Council chambers during an adjourned meeting of the Councilors, whispers surround them.

"Everyone that's not an ambassador or military liaison, get out!" Sparatus is almost leaning over his console as he barks it, and the growl of a Turian giving orders is not forgotten in those political, high halls as those not addressed leave the tower.

A quantum message, funneled through at a breakneck speed to the Council and the Alliance separately. A simple message:

SAREN FOUND. REAPER FOUND. LOCATION: VIRMIRE. SPECTRE SHEPARD AND COVENANT CURRENTLY ENGAGED WITH THE GETH. REQUEST SUPPORT IMMEDIATELY.

Another flurry of messages come forth from Altis, repeated by Valern:

"We're getting reports from Rix and Vasir that combat pickets of the Migrant Fleet are splitting off immediately, along with a complement of at least four hundred thousand troops."

The Covenant, and indeed even the Quarians, were party to no contract of war or a respecting of boundaries. The two oddest powers in the galaxy, emergent, cast in their lot together and made their move. Ineffectual apart, but stronger together. A familiar situation, but the Council didn't like to look in the mirror.

"Councilors, are we just going to let this happen?" Nihlus had been on his pedestal by the Councilors, whispering, but his words had been loud enough, if not in volume but in content. "We anticipated them, that they, at least, would've deferred to us for any offensive martial action… To strike out on their own- "

"The Covenant." Sparatus grits. "Are they really as powerful as the Quarians believe?"

"Are they as powerful as we believe, Councilor?" Tevos offered instead.

The reports about the Covenant trickled in like rain, day by day from Spectres Rix and Vasir. Troop composition, supply manifests, personnel reports from afar, and most of all the readiness exercises around the grounded Solace. They all told the story of a force that had the experience and the know-how of how to conduct a war that perhaps even the Turians lacked. There had been a refined brutishness, a frankness, to the conduction of the Covenant even in exercise alone. Usually this wouldn't have been a concern. Militaries out in the galaxy who had shown their grit had been common enough, but not many had the drive, religious or not, to look at a planet and declare it to be taken. Planetary invasions had been left behind in the original Turian unification wars in that galaxy, and only a necessary brutal feature of the Krogan Rebellions, but for the Covenant, it seemed old hat. Usually this had been a non-issue, but the Quarians had been at their back.

"Getting the official communication now from- A joint Quarian-Covenant statement." It had been in Nihlus's data stream, and he had reiterated it in a second.

All the Councilors had shared a look of unease. A statement meant that this had been prepared. With a steady nod, Tevos had coaxed Nihlus on to speak it:

"In light of recent events concerning an encounter between the Covenant and the rogue synthetic entity known as the Geth, the Covenant Round Table acting unilaterally with the Quarian Conclave, has seen fit to mobilize fully into a state of active war against the Geth. Pursuant to Council Decree Askar-076 of this galactic year, the Covenant, acting with the Quarian people, align themselves fully to the actualization and realization of their divine right to a homeland. The Covenant respects all treatise as respects current Citadel Council adherent entities, however the actions partaken are underneath the authority of the Gods alone. End message."

The Covenant did not seek an embassy, nor any political participation in the Council. The only space faring race in the known galaxy to ignore them. They acted without regard, and for that, they were above. They were their sovereigns.

Inconceivable in a Galaxy built along a predefined line that began and ended at the feet of a council that was now, at that very moment, feckless.

Below them, galactic audience awaited them with grit teeth and tight lips. This was one of those moments that the Council had been made for: to speak on matters of galactic importance.

Those voices were silent themselves on their dictations. They were the people who were charged with knowing what to do, and yet no answer came from them.

"Are they going for Rannoch immediately?" Sparatus says in a hushed, hurried breath turning over to Nihlus. He's a Turian. He wants to act, but he needs any information. Anything.

"The Migrant Fleet had scouts and picket groups just short of the Perseus Veil, scouting buoys readback that all are moving to secure relays leading to the Far Rim sector. We'll be getting reports from our forward fleets as well." Nihlus answers immediately, sending out notices to those far posted ship captains as events transpire.

If this was the Council race, they would've taken to the Council first to ask approval, to let them know precisely what they intend to do. An action of this magnitude alone would realign the galaxy on the scale that even the Krogan Rebellions couldn't, yet they were not conferred with.

It was an insult.

Curled fists, tight lips, and most surprising, a scowl on Tevos. This was beyond them, and that had been a disservice. Political animals as they all are, they speak a language infinitesimally small, and in unison they agree their misgivings without letting the rest of the galaxy know. Sparatus is not content to stay silent: "This Council is a pillar of all galactic society. Without it, the stars are nothing but host to slaughter between all of us. This chaos cannot stand. The Covenant may think themselves free to do as they wish, but they need to learn the reality of their situation." They would, as was the unsaid worry, undo the pillars of galactic society. It was different if they had been a singular species, barely learning to come to terms with space flight and the larger galactic community, but this was not their understanding.

"We rise to the occasion and meet them. We ARE the Galaxy. They are but misplaced troublemakers. They are not an Empire. If they wish to wage war, they will have to understand that we are the ones that will herald victory, not them." Whether by force, or by fear, the Council aligns. There was no time for debate, only for movement, action, history. Sparatus speaks for them all. "It is hereby that by Council decree, that all members party to the Citadel Council are engaged in a defensive war against the Geth." The Galaxy is at War. "The Covenant and the Quarians will work in concert with us or face the consequences."

Prepositioned, pre-planned, pre-reckoning of a war that would never seem to happen in normal lifetimes, come to bear now. Theoretical maneuvers meant for the unthinkable, roar to life as those in charge realize that they are and let the wheel of history turn beneath their feet. Some were ecstatic, some wore the blankness of daily routine on their faces, some hadn't yet processed what was happening. Only the solemn knew better, however. They had been there out in the space frontiers, and for the Turian military attaches even, some of them had been there for First Contact with Humanity. They knew war.

"And what of Shepard?" Nihlus asks before the galactic war reveals its spark.

"We'll have any Spectre within three relays jump to her." Valern answers, always minded more about the Spectres than his compatriots.

"I'm going then." Nihlus put a holographic foot down, it surprised him even.

"What-"

"I'll attach myself to quantum comms to one of our assets. I need to be there." Nihlus was a Spectre still, and if he weren't someone able to stand up to the Council, he wouldn't have been a Spectre at all. "Saren was my mentor, and Shepard was mine to judge."

"Very well." Tevos gives him his answer, and he blips out of the chamber and leaves the Council to look strong in the face of an oncoming storm.

---

Arcturus Station is on fire, metaphorically.

An emergency cabinet meeting of the Systems Alliance military and civilian apparatus has filled into its most secure conference room, Shepard's message the same there as it had been in the halls of the Citadel:

SAREN FOUND. REAPER FOUND. LOCATION: VIRMIRE. SPECTRE SHEPARD AND COVENANT CURRENTLY ENGAGED WITH THE GETH. REQUEST SUPPORT IMMEDIATELY.

There is no galactic consideration that the Systems Alliance needs to address, at least to the scale that the Citadel Council must at that very moment. One more time, Prime Minister Shastri must face the contention of the Covenant on Altis in such a manner. The information is disseminated and the message from the Covenant and Quarians are the same to everyone who listens.

The Alliance, however, short of both, have skin in the game in the shape of a Humanity's first Spectre.

"Closest fleet?" Shastri speaks over to the Secretary of the Navy. She adjusts her cap before breathing deeply, the movements of all Alliance fleets changing daily as the Terminus and even the Attican are being increasingly approached and encroached on by every galactic navy in some way. Humanity's colonies had been the most on that dangerous frontier; therefore, major fleets had been out on QRF duty since Eden Prime.

She answers, "Admiral Hirano and the Seventh. Half a day at least from their position."

In a popular, twentieth century sci-fi franchise, it was said that all ships bearing the name of the 7th's flagship was always there to make history. So, it is true here.

"On top of that," The director of the Alliance's internal security apparatus had spoken up. "The Ardennes is in immediate response range as per their ghosting of the Normandy. They'll be on station immediately."

With a resolute nod all Shastri could do was make the call. "Send the Enterprise and her battlegroup to Virmire immediately and get Hackett to split off a carrier group from his Fifth to tail the Covenant and Quarian forces. Alert Destiny we'll be doing this and have his communications sent to me as soon as I'm out of this room."

"I don't know if the Covenant will appreciate us tailing them all the way to Rannoch." An admiral had warned, his hand brought to his chin stroking grey hairs. More would surely join with the stress of today.

"On the contrary, they need us to chaperone." Shastri had grunted, wrapping his hands together and tapping his knuckles on the glass table. "We have to assume that the Covenant will come underneath the scrutiny of the Council even further now, and if they look deep enough, ask enough people questions…" A shiver racks through the Admiralty and the Executive Board of the Alliance. "If you think Shepard's suspicions are bad, think about the entire arm of the Spectres."

"But what do you mean?" Another admiral had leaned in. He was a military man. The best language was the straightest; the one that left no doubts as to what was being conveyed.

"We can act as the go-between, and because of that, the Covenant will still see us as valuable partners." Everyone in that room had been in on that secret of the Covenant, and yet, even then, the future of the nature of their collaboration was never said outright. "When you make friends of your enemies, you destroy your enemies, after all."

"The Covenant are neither, Prime Minister. If they are who we know they are, whose to say that someday, down the line, our children won't be facing off against the threat of them as the UNSC did?"

"Because we aren't the UNSC." Shastri had put down immediately. "By chance alone we caught the Covenant in an unfamiliar world, and we did not kill them, but circumstance, and now by pure rationality. They have too much to offer us, in the same way they have offered the Quarians what the Council in hundreds of years could not."

Technology, over four hundred years of future astrological events, planets. All of this could be bartered by being useful. That was the consensus of so many in the Alliance's higher echelon. Genocide could be forgiven for utopia.

Shastri goes on, and his words are the words that the Alliance admiralty hide behind, whether they agree or not, shuffling in their seats as Commander Shepard fights on for them on distant sands. Odd bedfellows make for the strangest of galactic truths. "This secret of the Covenant, we are keeping it because it is a secret that damns us both. It is on us: harboring a species that has essentially waged a genocide war against another version of us, all for the sake of gaining from them against the wider world, and on them: for being the beasts that they are."

But it's worth it.

On Earth, deep within the darkest of classified caverns beneath Japan, the slipspace drive of the Savannah is combed over, again and again. Just as the Covenant intended to sidestep the galaxy, Humanity primed itself.

Shastri, in no uncertain terms, made clear the stakes, and the battle to come for Mankind as a whole: "We keep the lie as long as we can. By the time it's brought to light, we will be better off for it."

---

Orbiting a sun, red hot in color, the Illusive Man looks on as always: from afar. Today however, he leans in.

---

"The Covenant is coming in from the west end of the facility, we're coming in from the northern beachhead. Our objective is to take and hold; it's no longer about destroying the facility. We're too far in for that." They come in north because that's where the Mako was left, and they needed as much power as possible. Shepard gives her battle plan. "We go in, and we kill every single Geth and Krogan. We sanitize the facility, and let Saren know that nothing will be exempt from us."

"Commander, remind me again why we aren't just bombarding this place from orbit?" Joker asks out over comms, still wired in. The Normandy's guns are hot, and he's finally getting his fair share of fighting in.

"All of this blood, and it has to be for something." She answers aloud. Wrex does not look like he has seen a battle yet today, with how he stands firm and tall. He was willing once to let the cure for people go, but the situation has changed and there is yet a path forward that he can brute force his way through to final salvation for the Genophage. "Intel, research, information on that Reaper. Anything!"

Anything to make it worth it. Shepard's wish was the wish of any commander who had to deal with their own loss in war. Something to make all the pain worth it. A consideration for her, of course. Not for the enemy that she was about to put herself upon again.

Yet they were all ready, her Marines, Hitman, behind her, Tali and Wrex, and even Kirrahe with his men, but not Liara, not Garrus.

Garrus was incapacitated, and Liara, Liara had been not needed, not like this. She had not signed up to fight a war, and Shepard couldn't blame her. This might've been beyond her now. With blood still on the Normandy's floor, everyone there had signed on for a very particular amount of stakes.

"If anyone cannot, for any reason-" Shepard starts, but she is stopped by Pointwoman Loke, a hard hand on her shoulder.

"Ma'am. We were all there at Torfan. We know the score. We know what you're gonna have us do." Said with the weight of people who knew they were going to die.

Torfan, bloody Torfan, is remembered, and Shepard feels the same person as who she was return to her now. Fire and fury, turned against the enemy, and despite her losses then, she wants nothing more than to do it again now. Her rage comes not from justice however; it comes from not of her own mind.

"Hitman! We ready to go?!" She screams out once, helmet going on.

"Oorah!" They cry back, and soon enough, Joker let slips the dogs of war.

"LZ in ten! It's gonna be hot! Get set to come out swinging!"

It was there that the Normandy had remembered its namesake.

Another war, another beach, another band of soldiers ready to know that blood is thicker than water, and violence is a constant throughout history and all of space. The mouth of the Normandy opened, and Hell had followed.

"Touchdown!" Joker had yelled out. "Hit it Marines!"

"Shepard!" Kirrahe calls out. "We'll fall in with you! We act as one!"

Joker opens them up horizontal to a beachhead, sand beneath their feet with the Mako just ahead. The reason why it hadn't been brought back is apparent: it's partly tracked, a wheel of it popped and melted from Geth plasma fire. Just beyond it, Geth pick away at it, drawn to them now as the Normandy approaches, hot. Beyond that: the great defensive wall again, breached once, and open again for yet another infiltration. Further beyond that, the sounds of war. New weapons, but an old sound.

Before she steps out first, leading the way, she opens her comms to the open air and speaks to any who would listen: "This is Commander Shepard of the Systems Alliance. We will be proceeding from the north end of the facility. Covenant forces, how copy?"

"Understood, Human. Be careful, lest you learn the lessons of the Heretics." A gravelly voice answered back. And the Heretics, as she had known now, was another Human race. A matter for another time.

"Go go go!" One of the Hitman screams out, and they all go fighting.

---

Mai Gul, Spartan B312, the once Noble Six, was not just fighting for her life. She was fighting for Jonathan-Jameson Durante. His body remained untouched, slumped against the bomb, but the bomb itself had been fried over, a hole about the circumference of Mai's right arm spewing sparks still. In fact, a part of her arm remained in it still: elbow down, bits and pieces of MJOLNIR and flesh together, steel bone and Human flesh.

"Five troopers! 4 o'clock high and nine more at eight!" Cash screams into her head as he does double duty, managing, repairing, fixing what is broken in her armor and body. The medigel and biofoam supplies are directed right into the channels that lead into her right arm. She no longer has a hand there, barely a forearm even, and neither she nor Cash can tell where flesh and metal begin and end where she is torn. Mai doesn't even care. She still has another hand, and it still has a trigger finger.

It's a miracle, even in her head, Cash doesn't think himself even dead with the energized pulse that dissolved itself through Mai as she reached into the bomb's heart and tore it up, but it came at a cost greater to her: Adrenaline and medicine alone are what's keeping her up, keeping her fighting. Her DMR is burning, on fire, polymer and metal alight on fire and red hot that she keeps dipping into the water below to cool, carbon being blasted off with each shot. One handed, it doesn't matter.

Mai Gul fights like a cornered animal. She sounds like one too, each time she takes a hit and deals one back, tearing through Geth and Krogan that come to deal with her as if it meant anything at all to her other than new, more targets.

A firefight, yes, but more like a slaughter as the water run off below her runs oily slick, red, and bloody, only to slide before JD's body and the bomb.

She does not speak. She does not cry. She fights.

Speed and aggression are her language and she is fluent in it as she dips between foes and covers. They are not looking at him as long as they look at her. As long as she can kill them all he could be saved. How, she cannot answer. She doesn't care.

She has to save him.

She has to save the most Human part about her or else what was she good for in the end?

In battle rage denoted by metal, she punching through a Geth chassis with both her rifle and her arm's bracer, she hears a voice. A voice she had not heard since she was young, and one that Cash does not hear himself.

She hears the voice of her mother.

Mai Mai Mai Mai Mai Mai.

Words, calling to her. Begging her to come? She doesn't know. All that it does though, on that line between life and death where she can feel a presence haunt her, it gives her strength. It had been so long since she had felt the presence of the woman that loved her.

If her mother is calling to her, she prays that it is not in shame.

Beneath her techsuit, the wheel of Dharma burns her skin as hot as plasma fire bites through MJOLNIR.

She twists and turns, her HUD going from blue, to yellow, to red. She doesn't need it to know that she is very quickly losing herself. It doesn't matter though.

Spartans never die.

(She dies with him. No other possibility exists in her head.)

If she's fought for hours, days, months, or years, she doesn't know. Battles morph into each other, and skills and lessons learned are applied brutally. She doesn't notice the shrill wail of another galaxy returning to her, overhead. Cash, however, let's her know, just before she charges, headfirst into a Geth Juggernaut-

"Eyes up! Friendlies!"

The unmistakable shrill shot of a beam rifle had preceded the Geth juggernaut falling the floor, a silvery line from it to the sky followed with her eyes as she saw, once again, the war she was made for.

They stand up on those walls, looking down upon her: Elite, Grunt, Jackal, and every member species she has known. Weapons draw down on her, but they do not fire. The rules have changed, the mission is different, and the enemies are no longer that of flesh and blood, at least, not in the aggregate. Their war was over, and a new one had just been beginning.

The Covenant came to confront her again.

This had not been the afterlife however: her forever. This was reality.

In a flurry of a spin, Usze Tahamee had jumped down, onto the waters below, on the level with the Spartan herself, followed by other Elites, energy swords and weapons drawn.

The more things change, the more they stay the same: She, and him. If the Gods had a plan for him with her involved, the third time their paths crossed was when Usze started realizing some sort of design, for if there had been none, this would be an anomalous occurrence.

She stands there, rifle held across what's left of her right forearm, pulling and pulling the trigger, but no shot comes. Her rifle is done for. And still she stands there, pulling the trigger, right on Usze's head.

Mai recognizes him specifically, finally, as he takes off the face covering his helmet, and shows the scar left by her across his face. He doesn't flinch, and eventually, she stops, her entire form pulsing in panting, run down raw. A moment of reprieve as she realizes that the Covenant is engaged with the same enemy she is.

How only three months change people.

This was the third time Usze Tahamee met Mai Gul, and that had meant something whether either party had accepted it.

"We. Are. Helping. You." He spoke a language she understood, and that would be everything that he could say as his own troops stood frozen, waiting for her response as the battle raged around him. By her feet: a dead imp, an ODST. So too did he recognize them.

At least he died well.

So, this was it. He glanced at her arm, burnt, and destroyed, shriveled and disgusting in its damage. He swears he can see bone where a hand should be, her arm just shy of just collapsing it seemed as it shook, vibrating with all her might to try and stay in any fighting condition. He thought he saw bone sticking out like a broken tree branch from the tattered remains of her gauntlet. Her armor too had been scarred by battle, but not yet done.

For all the stories of Demons, and the challenge they brought to the battlefields of the Great Journey, Usze recognized this: heretical, disgusting, degenerate. In the end, however, they were equals. The scar across his face said that the marks on his energy sword told the tale of the encounter they both survived. She was in no condition to fight with her weapon.

Usze had reached behind his back, and Mai had almost killed him for it, but what came out had been an object, same as the one in his dominant hand: before she knew it the silver object was thrown at her. It was his spare.

She knew what it was as her DMR clattered to the floor, her remaining hand gripping the hilt as, in one instinctive motion, she had depressed the activation pads and ignited the weapon. It was an Energy Sword. Same as his own.

"Our fight is not with you, Demon." He felt compelled to say to her. How often did an Elite meet a Demon like her three times in life and live?

"I'm going to kill you someday," Mai answered. Her only answer. Her only words she could ever speak to someone like him, even after all this time. The Geth and the warring Krogan did not give Usze time to answer as fire erupted again toward them, and in line, for the first time, the Covenant and a Spartan fought together.

Trepidation, traitorous thoughts, if any had felt that seeing a Spartan stand by them, facing down a synthetic menace that seemed to arise out of the ground itself, none would act on it, not when the war was there. The Grunts would not do anything, shivering between her presence and the enemy in front of them, nor the Jackals, for their behavior had always been pragmatic and realistic: she was going to kill more of them than they. The Hunters followed their commands, and the Brutes, amused but otherwise taken by the promise of battle, did the only thing they could as they formed a line with the Elites: welcome her by gruff admittance between them gunfire and explosion. It had been the Elites that thought the most, the wondered the most on what it meant that this Demon stood with them all.

Perhaps, in another life, in another time, Usze could harbor this private thought, that Humanity might've been a part of the Covenant, and then this scene would've made sense.

"The Demon fights with us against the Beast and the synthetic menace! May no one strike her down unless the word is given!" Usze had screamed out over the comms, and finally, finally, peace between the Covenant and the Spartans was made, even if it was one made in the heat of battle.

And on the motion trackers, on the HUDs of every Elite and Brute, the Spartan once known as Noble 6 was deemed friendly. It was enough to give pause to those in the vicinity, who could see the Spartan fight with them, but war stopped for no one.

Mai stopped for no one.

Another wave of Geth Juggernauts had run at them head-on from every nook and cranny of the facility, but they ran head on into Mai and Usze both with their combined forces, energy swords already flared as even as they collided, it had been the Geth that fell on their backs as hot plasma cut through.

A Geth Juggernaut had almost hopped onto Mai completely, seeing its only option was to crush her, but it was crushed in turn as a slab of metal called a gravity hammer had caught it before it landed, Mai crouched down, seeing the shadow of the swing cast over her as in one earth shattering pulse the Juggernaut was sent into piece, and she saved by a Brute.

In what world was this happening? Cash had thought as he fired off Mai's neurons and ran through his data streams.

Covenant and a Spartan fighting together.

The energy sword that Mai wielded had been a knife like any other, rushing down her targets and slashing out like hellfire as Geth forms were cut and eviscerated by a warrior who knew what it meant to cut and tear and bleed down the enemy to death. This was not a final stand, far from it, as Covenant and Geth converged to her and the aborted bomb. This was a trial by hellfire itself.

An ancient tale is recounted by Masterson, too engrossed to speak because of what's happening. It goes back to the namesake of the Spartans in ancient Greece: two lovers, one of boundless beauty, and another, who could sing Heaven and Earth into motion, are separated by cruel fate. Having been deprived of his love, the bard traveled to the underworld to bargain with Hades to return his other half. Hades agreed, but for one condition: The bard would have to not look at his lost love before he left the underworld.

In ancient mythos, the bard failed, and their love was banished to Hell forever.

On Virmire, Mai refuses to look back at the body of JD as she returns to what she was: a lone wolf. For his sake. Reckoning with destiny would be for another time, a million bodies in between then and now.

Mai's active camouflage activates as she bobs and weaves in between Geth lines, and she is not alone, Usze and several Elites follower her in between sunlight shadows, destroying Geth from behind, below, above, and through them. Nothing can stop or kill her in this moment as the Geth contend with the impossibility of a new factor beyond them: the Covenant, and her.

For that witness, legends became true: about the Spartans, for any Covenant there had not lived to see Spartans in war. They did now as a wolf grey machine in the shape of a man threw herself at the enemy, and even the storied Elites could not do any more than to follow in flight. The Jackals fired away what the Elites and her could not cut down, as the Hunters cleared swaths of Geth that tried to prick away at them with weaponry perhaps too precise for a hivemind's form. The question that the Geth had to consider with all of this had been impossible to answer: What happened when the immovable object, and the unstoppable force, worked together? No answer could be given because no one had been left to provide it.

Mai, however, had everything to give, and, if that wasn't enough, had sacrifices to put upon her altar for JD's sake.

A single Engineer, floating down, its armor like a cage, but brought with the squad to act as support for shielding, flows to his body as all else are engrossed otherwise. A long fluorescent tentacle reaches out from the curious individual- better to be curious with this dead Human than be scared by the battle around them. How sad he looked; the Engineer decided. Quietly, a shield from it to him was shared for what good it would do.

If the Demon was protecting this body, and they were fighting with the Demon now, this would suffice as aid.

---

Getting back onto the facility walls at least hadn't been as much issue as the first time, the bodies of the STG members cut down on the way given their silent reverence as the survivors passed them. A single STG member, plucking a pill-sized device from his battle belt, leaves it with each body. No doubt a transponder for post-battle retrieval. The Geth had been spread out this time, but they had a constant presence, having awoken from the inside depths of the facility with more Krogan. Geth transports from above had also deposited troops adding onto the unending resistance, but the Geth had been fighting in a way that could only speak to strain.

"Piece of shit!" Harris as the auto gunner had been running his typhoon LMG hot, and the carbon baking on its barrel had been coming off in chunks. Each time he had gone down to cool it as they pushed on forward, beach turning back into the concrete of the facility, a flurry of rifle fire from the rest of her squad continued and went on, turning machine into mulch.

It had been too long since Shepard had been a part of an actual Marine element, and it showed. Shock and awe, and yet of all the fears manifested for her that day, Tali is one: She keeps pace, and that was a tragedy.

"Search and destroy?" She asks Emerson as he passes on point, clambering over the defensive wall again as freshly dead Geth fizzle beneath them. Above: The Covenant, burning past them in fighter aircraft and transports.

He turns around, reaching down to haul her up as the rest of Hitman and Shepard settle back on that god forsaken facility.

"Completely. Down to the brick." Torfan was the same. With pirates and Batarians dug so deep, it would mean they would have to go through it too. "We go in deep, and we don't come out until everyone but us is dead."

"Or we don't come out at all." Loke had grit through her teeth. Anyone who hadn't been actively holding down an angle on top of those walls, Geth scurrying back and forth beneath them either taking potshots or moving positions to fight the obviously far more pressing enemy, had been looking up.

Hitman had been on Altis when the Covenant first came, and again now, they filled the skies above until one made a direct line to them:

"Incoming Covenant contact! Transport ship!"

Distant explosions of a plasma variety had been happening in the opposite end of the facility, and now, at least one of part of the Covenant force had taken proper notice of them as a shuttle craft, a Phantom, circled around, a Covenant tank hanging beneath it that had been dropped in front of the Humans below the wall, several Elites hanging off its hull and going onto ground with it. Immediately the plasma fire from them had started out toward Geth forces, firing from windows and buildings within the facility, the sun above still burning brightly. Off the sides of the Phantom, small arms fire erupted downward as side paneling opened and firing positions were revealed, a small turret armed by a Grunt peppering forward of the Covenant tank and its bellow of a cannon opened fire and sent debris raining.

Hitman had joined in on the fire, shooting any Geth displaced by the fire.

All Tali did was look up in ire as closer, the Phantom came, and eventually its belly opened, a squad of Covenant come forth onto the ground in the middle of Hitman.

It had been hard to reconcile the fear and anger that Shepard had, the memories now clear, and the knowledge of who these people were. The reality of the situation however had kept her shut as a single, blue armored Brute emerged as the leader of this squad comprised of Brutes, Grunts, and Jackals.

The Brute had singled out Shepard immediately, throwing his arm up to send the shuttle he came in off as more shuttles appeared around them with further vehicle support. Kirrahe and his men are frantic, trying to either stand ground or address the Covenant that have come into their circle.

"My name is Mercaius." He announced in a deep voice. Deeper than Wrex's even.

"My forces will assist you." He had held a great hammer in his arms, vibrating with its own energy.

Tali had answered before Shepard could. "What gives you the right-!"

"Tali!" Shepard snapped, and that had been that for what Tali would go into that day about her people and the Covenant. There was no time.

"Do you know how far down this facility goes, Human?" Mercaius had ignored the Quarian and directed only at Shepard, save for the occasional glance at Wrex, who stood ready, half concerned with the battle around him, and half worried about him. The other Brutes, wielding pistols and caribes adorned with spikes, Wrex couldn't help but notice a certain familiarity in brutality.

"At least five levels, but there could be more. Our first time through wasn't a deep penetration."

"Hm." Mercaius grunted. "Direct me and my forces as necessary."

"…What?"

"We know who you are. Now show us what you are." Symbol of Humanity, representative. Mercaius knew what type of Human represented the one he had gone to war against: metal clad and silent save for their action of slaughter or being slaughtered. Was this Humanity going to be any different? Shepard would answer.

"Fine." At the very least, she knew how they fought. Somehow, through Mai's memories, she knew what each of these beasts could do. "Kirrahe! Maintain this wall for a rally point!"

Kirrahe gives off a sharp hand gesture, affirming as his men get comfortable with the Covenant around, the occasional gunshot whizzing above them from Geth yet to be put down.

"Hitman! With me, we're going in! And you, Mercaius, can you keep reinforcements off our back as we kick into the guts of this place?"

Mercaius didn't answer with his voice. He responded by the curl of his thick fingers around well-worn leather wrap on his gravity hammer, and by the way he nodded, fur braids bobbing beneath his blue helmet. His squad went with him over the wall, down to the ground with the Wraith and the disembarked Elites.

"Shepard, on you!" Hitman called to her, and she had gone into the breach with them again.

It was always going to be on her.

---

Above, the constant stream of ground forces disembarking from the Ardent Prayer down to Virmire had rushed on as, appeared once more from the planet's curve, the black beast of impossibility.

"Shipmistress!" A sensor crewman had called out to Karonee, but they didn't need to as she stared, right ahead through the Ardent Prayer's bridge out into the black hole in space in the shape of a monster.

"Status on ground deployment?!" She asked cried out, the hangar chief answering through the comm.

"70% of all forces disembarked!"

"Accelerate the process we'll be engaging in a direct confrontation!"

"Incoming contact is at least twice our size! Incredible element zero readings coming off of it!"

"Weapon capabilities? Structure?!" Karonee demanded answers, but none would come.

"Unknown!" The sensor crewman yelled out, but his voice had been run raw as they nearly screamed out the next: "It has locked onto our flight vector, intercept imminent, port side!"

The Reaper had been moving, fast, almost as fast as ships from their experience, their galaxy. The Ardent Prayer alone had been far beyond the capability of any ship in that galaxy used by the Council. Could it fight the Destiny Ascension? Perhaps, Karonee could trust herself to conduct such an engagement and had been brought to the scenario privately by her officers, but this was a scenario, actualizing: one that could not be prepared for, and one that this galaxy could not account for.

She looked on, at that creature, the Beast and felt not fear. If Shepard's delusions were true, and it seemed they had to have been, then this Reaper had been tantamount to old gods, vengeful, absolute, able to fell civilizations and of timeless age. Karonee did not subsume herself to that history, that idea, that reverence.

She knew who her gods were.

Whipping out an arm, her half-cape fluttering, the Ardent Prayer stood steady; faith unwavering. The Reaper had been inbound imminent, less than thirty seconds. Its intent, clear as Karonee's voice in her command:

"All weapons stations fire as they bear on the first pass! Squadrons two and three go for screening! Squadron one, continue transport escort!"

"Contact bearing 160!"

"Fighter squadrons turning in now!"

"All crew in combat stations and bracing!"

"Right sharp!" Karonee yelled, the Beast approaching left of them from below at an angle. The Ardent Prayer was not a ship designed for the space warfare of mass drivers and shootouts. It was a ship of the classic tradition: full broadsides.

"Beginning our attack run!"

The Seraphs and Banshees that had been deployed had formed up in their V formation, stark against the stars as they angled themselves against the beast, cannons and torpedoes primed, probing in front of the Ardent Prayer's firing arc to test the waters. Each fighter pilot of the Covenant had been a willing martyr, all the same as any of its troops, and with their faith they flew true straight, the first attackers of an ancient demon.

It paid them no attention as plasma scarring was scratched onto its plating.

"Right sharp!" Karonee cried out again, and the ship had shifted, lining them up for the first barrage.

For a moment, Karonee remembered where she came from, and the ship and fleet she once commanded. The Blood of Union, a mighty CAS ship that had burned worlds, had been far and away from the martial might of the Ardent Prayer, but it didn't matter in that moment. The battle had come, and she had a ship. That was all she needed as the Beast, the Reaper, faced them, and opened its maw. A shadow had cast all over them, and then hell broke loose.

---

From its mouth, a red spear of an energy weapon lashed out as the Ardent Prayer shifted over, bringing its guns to bear. The shrill sound of its firing had been followed by the low thrum of the Ardent Prayer's energy shields reacting, a sludge of matter bouncing off a barely perceptible bubble around the Ardent Prayer for a flash of a second as energy sparks dissipated in a long line from where the weapon had slashed across them.

They'd taken a hit, the ship rocking once in the concussion of battle, the frame and shield buckling before straightening. The calm before the storm existed even in the middle of fire as the ships

The shrill beam of fire had been followed by the drumming pops of the Ardent Prayer's fire. The Reaper had been wide in the targeting array of the Ardent Prayer, and no shot would miss its mark as plasma batteries opened fire at the wide target making a pass at them. As its arms opened to seemingly swallow it whole, the Ardent Prayer's shots were true, peppering its belly, red hot spots emerging past explosive clouds of plasma impacts. The force of them pushed it back, repulsed, the mass of it almost sending it to a flip.

"Shield's holding!" Came one of the crew. "90%! Internal generators spindling further charge!"

Karonee had pointed out to another sensor crewman. "I need an immediately analysis on that attack!"

"Direct impact yields are nearly 173 kilotons!" They answered. "Impact appears to be caused by some sort of molten material, fired at a considerable speed. Nearly the same velocity as our Humanity's weapons."

UNSC nuclear weapons, threats to even CAS-class ships, had been recorded to the degree of fifty megatons, and even then, they could be withstood, though not without rendering the target heavily disabled. One thousand kilotons had made up only one megaton. The math, the realization, had hit Karonee hard. Wracked by a single spray of its long beam, they had taken the hit, and come out with reality. Karonee purred deep in her throat. "So, it is an even fight!" She adjusted herself on her chair, whipping her neck to follow the Beast out the window and past their viewing angle. "Take her around! Go for another pass on starboard and then anchor to the enemy at ideal firing range!"

"Yes shipmistress!"

There was a Human tale that she had learned, someway, somehow: David and Goliath. She wasn't sure who was who in this situation as the Ardent Prayer banked wide and plasma fire rained in the heavens above Virmire.

---

Memories of Torfan come back to her, and she becomes who she was back then. The anger, the rage, however, was grafted on. The sin of the pirates and Batarians that had rained upon Elysium that day, suffered by her, was not the same blinding hot rage she felt now. The rage she felt now was to all those she called allies in this instance: the Covenant.

Maroon Wraiths, six fuel rod cannons on their back shell, had been dropped continuously by Mercaius's transports, filling the sky with flak to wave away Geth reinforcements from beyond. Further beyond those flak clouds, the Ardent Prayer and the Reaper, Sovereign, did battle. All that had left then was the devils below.

But below the battle went on, all the rage, all the fire, there was no crescendo as Shepard and Hitman pushed down into the depths, room after room, Geth after Geth. Gunfire rang against concrete and metal and glass as grenades were tossed into each room with discrimination that spoke not of operators but of soldiers clearing positions like the oldest wars. The red of Shepard's N7 stripes on her armor gone the way of dust and grey with each concussive pop and room cleared.

Kill them all. Every synth, ever organic. Husks deeper down, Krogan too, but Geth more often than not as each room and research facility was entered. More questions are asked, each time a glimpse of the experiments before them are revealed, with each data pad of Saren's uncovered, with each piece of a puzzle that Shepard has solved in her head already unveiled, but can now bring to the Galaxy. The facility that sprawls beneath Virmire is expansive and her force is split up wordlessly, stamping out into the dark heart of Saren's operation less with each kill as a matter of tactical importance, but as a matter of battle rage.

Full auto cacophony reigns, and Shepard does not let up on her trigger until it burns through her suit's gloves, and, when that fails:

A Krogan tries to rush her through a breach, as she breaches, full, head on, biotic powers flailing that would crush lesser Humans. But Shepard could match as in a snap her own biotics flair and her powers return at a voracity not seen in years.

She hates her biotics. She hates being set apart from the common people she is told to lead. For now, however, as her arms blaze fire blue, she can accept them as a weapon as she takes the Krogan by the chest and meets it, face to face, until the Krogan is face down in the ground and drilled through by her fists alone in wet, messy consequence. It keeps her occupied as through her ear protection in her helmet is beginning to degrade by the amount of stimulus around her, but she is as focused as a single point as she picks herself off the body of the Krogan and shoulders her rifle again, only to have her squad already clear out the room with their breakneck aggression. She becomes just another soldier now, from the top down. She's not an admiral, or a flag officer, she is still, in the end, a commander in the Alliance Navy and a Marine at that, and she yearns for that simplicity again if it meant keeping the thoughts that drew her to madness away.

Krogan blood drips from her hands, and with them she grasps her rifle as she is first out the door back into those concrete halls, moving again to another doorway to repeat the process as all hell above breaks loose.

She loses track of how often she clears out rooms like a genuine door kicker, without regard or remorse for those inside. They all blur together as her body and instinct alone take over. She can't think about what's happening above, the Covenant covering her six and the Spartan above who, she knows, is still alive, still fighting, still killing because of a man they know as dead. She loses so much track by the time that the Geth stop shooting at her, she's already downed half a room of them before the charge past her and away.

Hitman, Tali, and Wrex, they all swipe at them as they brush by, like machines, faster than they could keep up with. Some do fall to the ground, cut down by fire, but they do not care. For the most part, they are going from where Shepard has descended and going up. Like the machines they are their movements are absolute and with purpose, and as Hitman opens their mouths, wondering whatis happening, Shepard already has an answer.

Machines, Synthetics, they operate along lines that are entirely logical. They were responding to something that, if not addressed, would be against their internal logic.

She knew what that something was.

Even then, as the Geth drained upward out to the surface, no doubt engaged by the Covenant forces there, it left Krogan, and they alone still had their danger.

"What the hell are they doing?!" Still a Hitman had cried out. This rare chance, this rare opportunity however had presented itself to Tali as Geth, some as old as the Migrant Fleet themselves, passed her by. This is the closest she's been to the Geth as they all ignore her, and rush topside. How much these beings had given her people trouble and trauma, yet here and now, at the apex of a long hunt, they ignore her, reflected in her visor as dolls being led somewhere else.

The conflict between the Geth and the Quarians was the entire world to some Quarians, her father included, yet here they were, completely passing her by.

Tali wants to ask the same question, but to whom she turns to, Wrex, has no answers for her, not as they keep on their attacks, their clawing of their enemy's out of the earth deep, deeper into Virmire. Each time they claw deeper, more and more secrets are revealed until Wrex finds what he's looking for.

Wrex stands with Hitman, over the bays and bays of Krogan clones and their tanks, left untouched in exchange for complete and utter insanity of that battle. He smirks, grins. He owes Shepard. He owes the Covenant as he turns back over and returns to the fight.

Rage alone however does not offer a physical barrier against enemy fire.

Another breach: this time those inside are ready as the entry grenade pops off and Hitman stacks outside, prepared to flood in. It's a larger room, a control room of some sort, requiring all of Hitman left to go for it. Corporal Ortiz and Corporal Loke had been first in.

They were the first hit.

Ortiz, one leg of his wholly obliterated as a Krogan flak barrage landed evenly spread across his entire body, is thrown back into the breaching group as his body crumpled. On his way down, he takes several squad mates with him, but enough push through to start the hail of return fire as they each sweep their sectors.

"FUCK!" Emerson is the loudest as a bolt goes through his stomach after his barrier pops. The Krogan in this room had been waiting, and the barriers put up by Hitman's biotics are not enough as spikes rain in through. The firing line that gets set up is frantic, but Loke, pointwoman, she barrels through to push the offensive,

The room is large, the size of the Normandy's well deck, with large screens up against the wall. As the crossfire rains those screens fracture and cracks into multicolor shatters. The gunfight that rings out is not kind, not as Human bodies get thrown and cut down and Krogan on the other end have flesh and blood to spare, but it's a gunfight of endurance, slugging out as kinetic barriers break and flesh is bit into at a breakneck pace that shatters teeth.

Shepard goes in with a platoon of men and women, at the end of fifteen seconds, half are on the floor as Wrex charges ahead and gives the surviving Krogan of the firefight a lesson on what it meant to be one. Flesh and meat banging against the floor, with shotgun flowering flesh when applicable. Wrex takes pleasure in it, but Tali finds focus as she alone follows him into arm-length fights with Krogan a dozen times her mass. She grits her teeth and feels only the recoil of her shotgun dissipate into something as natural as breathing. Her mother's poncho is bloodied further, and when she emerged from the other side of that room, looking back at the Humans that have brought her here, she sees complete tragedy.

"Corpsman! Ortiz is-!" Someone yells.

"I know! I know!" Doc yells out as he drags Ortiz's body into the room entirely, men and women bleeding as those still standing vent their rifles and count off their numbers.

More and more, those numbers are beginning to not be filled in. The absence in Shepard's head burns as she stands in the firing line herself, rifle burning, sent to her back as she looks to her left and right and sees the Marines of the Normandy crumpled around her.

"Fuck! No- NO!" Shepard twists around to the woman screaming that out. It's Loke, screaming, begging with herself. "Please, God, no…" She's on the floor, her back against the wall as she's trying to thread her-

"Oh God." Shepard is by her side immediately as her left forearm finally falls off like a loose leaf, fried and shot through by plasma along with the slag of her armor. The pointwoman tried her best to thread a tourniquet up her arm, but she couldn't, not when she was looking right at the space where her whole arm used to be. Her eyes are wide, and they cannot look away as Shepard forcibly moves her face with her hands. "Look at me, Taila."

Loke's eyes were on the verge of tears, her entire form vibrating as Shepard remained eyes locked with her as her own hands moved to tighten the tourniquet beneath her remaining armor tight. But her sorrow is wiped away, turn into anger as in her other hand, a pistol remains up.

"Shepard… you're bleeding." Even near death, Loke notices Shepard. It's always about her.

"Wh-"

"Move." Doc moves Shepard asides almost shoving her, but it's warranted as the man, wounded himself, powers through to tighten her tourniquet and applying what he can. He is silent, jabbing syringes and injectors into her, hands flying across her.

Shepard's bleeding herself. She didn't know. Couldn't feel. Not until something runs warm down her right side starting at the bottom of the slope between her neck and shoulder. Her barriers had given out, and pure gunfire had been exposed to her, cut through her suit. Training takes over and the slow burn of medigel is applied from a syringe in her battle belt that clogs up the hole. The blueish-gray gel turns red, but it coagulates and hardens, a solid slice in her skin that goes beyond skin deep. Beneath her armor and the uniform beneath she can feel the blood that had already came out of her wound stick, coat, warm and then veil the feeling of her very body beneath it.

She smells the blood, and knows the room is drenched with it.

"Annel's down!" Another, Annel's name grabs Shepard's attention out of the dozen that are called for who are wounded or gone.

Clarity.

Clarity that should not be possible with a Human mind passes through Shepard as she looks upon a body that used to be a person: a person she was responsible for.

Barbara Annel was born into a family of painters, so she always had a knack for details. Annel had a sister, and two nieces. When Shepard spoke to her in downtime, she spoke of contests she's won and paintings she's made. She shows Shepard one such painting: a field of tulips in burning red, and that red is all Shepard thinks of as the color drips from the back of Annel's helmet.

Harris, still standing, drags her body straight as if he could start applying aid to her, but it's for nothing.

The woman is dead.

If only the battlefield stopped, if only the world paused, but it doesn't. Not even for Harris to drape her arms across her body and look down on her. The rest of Hitman don't look. If they do, they stop, and they cannot stop now.

Names, so many names are in Shepard's head now as she sees them bleed at her feet.

An errant explosion above shakes the world again.

Only four Marines remain standing other than her, and half of them return to the door they were holding, keeping the hallway secured as, without question, triage and immediate aid must be rendered. One of the survivors again is Ashley, and if it were the moment, she'd be swearing God's name in profanity. It should've been her, she thinks, as she again survives.

Half a dozen Krogan dead responsible for this lay warm but gone beneath Tali and Wrex, and they are silent, looking on as the casualties mount and remain untouched. The providence of battle chose them.

"Just like me, eh?" Wrex whispers (or at least the best approximation that a Krogan can) to her.

"What?" Her innocence returns in word, as if he had been caught doing something wrong, looking to him.

"How you just reloaded."

She had reloaded her shotgun without even thinking, and more than that, had done it like Wrex.

"Right." She said simply, as the explosions above knocked the world mute still.

---

Mercaius had sent the status report of the Geth, rushing up from the facility like the tide around them, without regard to them, up to the Ardent Prayer, but no report came back. All it took was one glance up in the sky to know why. For now, at least, if the Geth were ignoring them, making their way to a part of the facility, above ground, unknown, it had been their loss as he felt the burn in his arms and swung again at the rows and rows of Geth, rushing past him. Metal rained, and the Covenant provided. Even the Grunts seemed to enjoy the cannon fodder. Usze too had gone silent on the comms, but not on the battlefield. Even across the facility, the Brute could hear distinctly, the sounds of battle so typical of Elites: plasma as opposed to the Brutes more physical armaments, namely. He did not worry about him, not that that had been anything he would ever consider.

There was only one thing that Mercaius ever cared about in battle: defeat of the enemy. He was doing fine in that regard as his gravity hammer purred on still across the back of a Geth Juggernaut.

The Ardent Prayer above had been a light show: shields and weaponry reacting against blows from the Reaper, but it was a fight between two beasts, evenly matched it seemed from below.

Constantly the Reaper would try to wrap its maw and tentacles around the Ardent Prayer, but its bubble shield hadn't lost enough integrity to allow it too. Any attempt, exposing its underbelly to the Ardent Prayer was met with a barrage of plasma fire with a technology it had not become accustomed to. Sovereign had no say over the Covenant's weapons, its technology, but most of all: it's faith.

Inside the Ardent Prayer's temperature had been rising, the work of the internal power generators shuffling in and out with each blast of the Reaper's weapons against its shields dumping it into its frame out of need alone. That heat wasn't what made Karonee sweat upon her face though. Only battle alone against an unknown had heated her so, off her gravchair and tending to the consoles themselves as the ship rocked with each blast, back and forth.

"Shields 54%!"

She had run over to the weapons station to get a full read on their operations: all overheating, but still in the fight. All she needed to do was look outside to see the damage sustained on the Beast.

Superheated plasma had a way of bringing reality back to form. Even the left behind structures of their gods, especially the more errant and malfunctioning constructs, could be brought into line by plasma. It was true for this construct as well. Little bits in the dark shape, exposed to fiery light: this was not a god, this was a machine. Like the rest of this galaxy, it would be unprepared for them.

"I need an analysis on our outcomes!"

"Unsure! We can only sustain this type of engagement for another few minutes!"

She snarled at the beast barely several dozen kilometers away and closing again for another attack run: basically no distance at all in space warfare terms. "Can we take off its arms?! The least we can do is start stripping it down, leaving our mark."

"Joints are hardened, and our current arc of fire means we can't directly target them without breaking distance."

Karonee snarled at the report and then outside as the Beast approached again, the ship buckling as it entered its shield radius only be repulsed, another stream of fire let loose as the Ardent Prayer beat it back.

"48%!"

"Such an infernal design." She said through clenched jaws, watching more of her fighters get swatted out of flight. "Are we doing any critical damage to it?"

"The Beast is taking ample damage to its super structure but nothing integral. Plasma fire seems to be being withheld by a secondary layer below its initial plating."

Outside Seraphs and Banshees continued their strikes against the Beast alongside the wounds it had sustained, peppering its holes with further strikes. They did not go unanswered. However, thin lasers sent back up to finally address those fighters from its many tendrils. Fighters that couldn't dodge out of its angle of fire unfortunately caught up in a blast that they could not handle: pops in the stars.

Losses. Her losses. She wished those who died in battle well, but most of all she wished this battle won. "Now or later, the outcome is the same. Close distance! Dump excess energy into our energy projector."

"Shipmistress?" The unison question from throughout was spoken in one way or another as the ship rocked again from the battle, Karonee returning to her gravchair before the main holo display of the Ardent Prayer, the beast in red projection noting damage so far.

"Let us not forget in this hour we do what we must because of our Gods! The Galaxy will understand the rituals of our faith, even this." She gestured to the avatar before her. She knew not of what it was, only what it could be: slag. "Forward direct control to me and charge our lower hulls."

And at once, the crew knew what she was doing.

Silently, the hum of prayers, the sound that preceded the consecration of defiled worlds, joined the low rumble of the battle.

The Beast had gone for another attack, but the Ardent Prayer had been proactive this time, turning over from its broadside, offering its belly, to its belly.

Even down below, all those on Virmire could hear Sovereign roar its vibrating, bone breaking roar.

Through it, Karonee had guided the ship with her hand alone. In her left: controls for the ship's steering. In her right: the light.

"Plasma emitter primed! Hot!"

This was a retrofit of the Ardent Prayer from the Solace. This was one of the Solace's holy apparatuses that had been placed on it, for it was more useful to a ship flying, than to a ship that was permanently docked.

The same fit and routine had been done from the Solace to what Quarian ship could handle it; several hundred weapons that had burned Humanity before given to the Migrant Fleet. The Ardent Prayer alone had received the best of the remaining equipment, and now it showed.

Karonee nearly crushed the direct targeting apparatus as the Prayer's maneuvering thrusters stopped and held her steady, offering herself to the Beast, her claws almost digging into the display and confirming her biometrics as she turned swiftly to her weapons officer, sucking in her breath.

"Steady."

"Steady."

"Steady."

"All fighter wings stay clear of the immediate area!"

Close enough so it couldn't run. Close enough so the beam would burn brightest.

Close enough so that this Reaper would know what it meant to be glassed in its heart.

What had been reserved for nothing less than the destruction of heretics, had now been brought to bear on a new galaxy, a new universe, in such a way that painted the entire sky of Virmire a glassy red as pure hatred and faith manifested in something that, in another galaxy, was supremely an inhumane disaster in the name of genocide. As if all sound had been sucked in and away, into the gaping bright light of the Ardent Prayer, it came back at once in one shrill scream as a red flash of concentrated energy struck out into the very heart of darkness, and it too had screamed.

The light was sucked into its armor as it dug into it like a drill, like superheated metal sinking into flesh. The resistance offered back by the body of the Beast had been great, almost bouncing off the

plasma at first, but Karonee had Glassed planets before. She knew what it meant to aim true as she dug her hand into the interface and painted her mark on the Beast, trying, with all her might, to home in on one point and one point alone as if trying to dig out its heart while it was vulnerable.

Sovereign screamed; Shepard could hear; everyone could hear. The planet had shaken as the low rumble that became its roar vibrated every piece of her being as reality seemed to be coming undone.

"Its armor is strong!" One of Karonee's officers had yelled out, alerting her, as the legs of the Beast started wriggling in pain.

"Burn it away! Burn!" Karonee had screamed out in turn, guiding her hand, marking the Beast as its armor melted on itself.

"Ardent Prayer isn't meant for this! We have less than twenty seconds left of weapon's power!"

Every Banshee, every Seraph still flying had reconvened, bombarding the Beast as the light of Ardent Prayer's glassing beam rose to a high pitch, molten metal layering onto itself as layers and layers of its stomach gave way to the beam.

Karonee had only one name for her target as she looked into it and saw the tentacles of a thousand horrors reach out and try to grasp her ship as she carved her distinction on it:

The Devil.

Heresy.

---

Mai kept fighting, even as the stars turned red, even as her world was ending.

Mai's sword had slashed through another Geth Prime as her boot crushed the skull of a Krogan, Usze wrecking everything in their path as blue bolts of Plasma fire cut down Geth after Geth, piling bodies higher and higher and higher and higher, past the crumbling of the world itself as men and women screamed in fear or in anger, in war and in survival, fighting and fighting.

A message sent out: to the Perseus Veil, to the Geth from the Machine God.

Help. Help. Help.

A consensus; regardless of differences, of belief. This was the fate that would await them all now if this was the effect of the Covenant. Above Rannoch, in the patrol fleets of the Geth along the Veil, ships start to move, corpses pushed asides, a future chosen.

What happened when those who served a God, killed them?

All the Geth on Virmire could do was reconvene to confront something that challenged them all: from what they could observe, the synthesis of flesh and machine had been there trying to kill them. It required nothing less than all of them at once. Every unit on Virmire had reset its priorities to come to the Spartan to try and kill her, destroy her. Her death was the only logical conclusion that the Geth could work towards. Her death was necessary because in that hive mind a million million computations had come to the conclusion that if she didn't die, she would kill them all.

Usze crushed the ocular of a Geth beneath his booth as another tried to rush him, only to be swung at with Mai's shoulder, sending it flying in a thousand little pieces, her sword cutting up any besides her. The Covenant gave her wide berth, but they were in that fight as well, hundreds of Geth come to swarm them all, as they more than observed, gone from fighting a war, to fighting her and her alone.

Sovereign screams, Mai had sounded of a beast behind her helmet. Shepard looks on from that control room, repurposed as her surviving men and women patch themselves together and hook into the nerve center, what cameras remaining painting a picture of the old world dying, and a new one about to be born as Geth, more and more, try to take Mai down by charging, rushing at her, and she swallows them whole in her fight.

Shepard had so many questions to ask, and so many answers she would demand, but the most important question was the one shared between those who defined the action of today, and the events to come.

It was a question asked as Karonee burned her way through the very heart of Sovereign as its entire form came alive, once more, only to writhe in pain as it tried to turn over, only for the beam to drag again across its midsection and, in one responding swipe, send an attack of its own up, glancing the Ardent Prayer as for a moment, the Glassing was turned onto Virmire. The Reaper did not stop screaming as it ran, aimed toward the Mass Relay. She gives chase, and that is enough for her.

Liara, the Normandy having earned its battle stars and strikes as Joker, silent for once, having spent the day strafing and torpedoing Geth transports, asks the same question as she huddles among survivors and wounded quiet, wide eyed.

The Council, looking on as its prospective forces affirm to move to establish a new frontline, asks the questions of themselves as reports from Virmire arrive in complete clarity from Captain Kirrahe.

Udina, Shastri, Hackett, and Anderson, alone in the galaxy representing Humanity, ask the question to each other as Humanity's next steps are crucial on its tight rope between sedition against a galactic order and their own strength.

Nihlus, tagging on the back of Avitus Rix as he gets into his own ship and makes a line right toward Virmire, doesn't want to know the answer to the question, now a machine among men himself. All he can do is wait, silently, processing what might happen, a data packet from the Alliance's first known AI in his metaphorical back pocket.

And finally, Mai:

Mai doesn't have time to think about what was happening, about what she had done; she only understood why she did it, and what she was doing now as she climbed bodies and bodies of the Synthetic enemy, clambering over the dead and alive with paradise in the background, crushing light and life out of each and every one just as she was trained. She didn't know that her arrival had changed the galaxy, changed Shepard's story; she didn't see the damage she brewed as if black magic surrounded her. She didn't question whether if she really was better off dead. All she knew was that she was a Spartan: ordained to fight and to wage war for Humanity for the rest of her life.

On that day however, the only Humanity that mattered to her was a single man, perhaps already long gone forever.

If that is the case, she joins him in her own forever: war.

She was no times for questions, for what ifs other than the one that tear at her face and make her eyes bleed tears: What if you survived, JD?

That question was: What now?

The Prophet of Destiny sings at the Round Table the holy canticles. He sings in delight and joy because he alone has the answer.

---

Shepard doesn't know how her feet take her there, she doesn't know when the fighting stops, or when reinforcements from the Council and the Alliance get to Virmire. She doesn't see the Normandy land amidst calm waves as the skies over Virmire, the most beautiful many have seen, die in a red glow.

The Ardent Prayer has taken chase after Sovereign.

She has been left behind on Virmire.

Somewhere Saren goes on, but he is not in her mind as distant battlefields from another memory return to her. The Covenant stand amongst a thousand mechanical dead as they occupy the facility, standing watch over her as she trudges through, doe eyed and tired, following the trail of bodies and bodies until she finds herself tracing steps she had made hours before to deliver a bomb. They leave her alone, clambering over the dead of Virmire in their metallic terrain as they find who she is looking for: those that she had failed first that day.

JD lays dormant, surrounded by Geth and Krogan, his head lolled to the side as his body remains still, sparse aid rendered by Mai to it. So many of her own dead today, and yet his death, in its own way, meant so much more. The bomb, long cold, is his gravestone as stacked on top of it, more bodies, more Geth that had come for their priority target: the Lone Wolf, the Spartan.

Did they know? Did Saren know? Did Sovereign?

It doesn't matter. It really does not to her.

What matters is that she did.

She stands before a hundred dead at her feet, as a billion more find a place in her memory and find their hopes and dreams avenged by a woman she oversaw.

Shepard clambers forward on her knees before JD, and she too cannot bear to take off his helmet. All she can do is touch upon his arm and hope that his memories, maybe, could be hers as well. Knowing what she did now, she wanted his memory to survive in her, as all those that had fallen because of her had done. Touching him however is a taboo, the electric gaze she feels on her as she lets go of JD is one that she must look up to see:

Spartan B312.

Missing her arm, her armor is scorched to a blacker grey, a coat of soot and ash and hydraulic acid scarring it. She is unreadable, unmoving.

If Sovereign is a god, then so too is Mai.

All at once, Shepard had put a name to what Mai had done now. It was the sin that befell only the most fallen of angels, the most desperate of souls. In a way that could never be made known in their universe, even different from Saren, Mai had sold her soul to the devil of another life. To an Oni, no less. Whether it was her choice or not it didn't matter now.

The horror of the Spartans was revealed, the hierarch of its culmination in that universe sat on her castle of glass, the bodies of the dead synthetics below her like tribute to a God. Demons always came from the other worlds, from realms and dimensions all culminated in the word: Hell. Shepard decided this was what it looked like as she stood before the base: a Monument of Sin.

---

During the battle, lost between explosion and gunfire, Jonathan-Jameson Durante stirs.

---

Author's Note:

Oh no. He doesn't get to die yet.

Hi all, and thank you for reading the penultimate chapter of All the Stars in Mass Effect 1. The reason this took so long was because this chapter went on for far longer in my initial drafts than it needed to, but, chances are if you've read this far, a lot of that stuff was a little unnecessary. So I spent a long time cutting, refining, and I didn't want to sit on this too long on top of dealing with my professional work.

What it is, is how it it's presented to you.

For me it means the shackles of Mass Effect's story are, at least in the more traditional notes, are now shed off. I'm given a little more horizontal now as the galaxy is changed forever.

Rannoch is being approached, the Covenant and the Council are now in a game of pride and power, and Shepard? She has now been cut from her wire of playing the role of protagonist in a sense.

I want to spend some time with her as the main character as opposed to her playing the role she was prescribed in Mass Effect 1, wherein in All the Stars she was always more of a figure playing above the story of Mai and JD.

I'm excited to see where this goes, and, for those of you long time readers, or those of you who just recently binged, I thank you sincerely for staying this long, and I hope to have you for a long time yet,

Forgive me again for the roughness of some of this story's prose. The editors I use don't like being hit with chapters this large!