Sorry again about being late but I knew I wasnt going to make the date. So I don't know when the next one but I bet it will be out before Thanksgiving.
Also towards the end of the story there will be more aspects of the Grimnoir Chronicles coming into play. So if you confused don't worry I will clear everything up in the next chapter.
Shanxi bunker facility
Jack Harper hid behind a makeshift barricade made up of sand bags and cinder blocks that had been hastily built only a day prior. Every remaining human and turian was now taking cover in this very building. There only objective was to survive and to kill as many of the slavers as they could before they eventually died.
The invaders assault had come fast and hard crushing their first line of defense and sending everyone back to the building that the entrance to the underground bunker was located at. Few soldiers from Jack's original group including Saren and Camren the lazorith from the Grimnior were still alive.
"It appears that they have stopped for now," Jack said as peered beyond the barricade towards the side entrance that was littered with alien corpses.
"Not for long though. They are most likely regrouping and coming up with another plan of attack. At the most we have a few hours to spare or it could be another few minutes," Saren said as he peered through a pair of advanced looking binoculars.
"Ha well then I'm going to take a breather," Jack said as he sat down with back to the barricade keeping him out of sight of the any lines of enemy sight.
"Are you sure that is wise?" Saren said as he kept his eyes on the entry way while most of the soldiers with him sat down as well.
"We need a break we have been running, shooting, and bleeding for the past few hours. Give me another few minutes then you take a break."
"I'll be fine."
"Yeah right I can see the fatigue setting in. It doesn't matter if you're an alien you still will get tired. You need a few minutes to rest up or else you'll just end up dead," Jack said causing Saren to glare at him before nodding in acceptance knowing that Jack was right.
After a few minutes Jack and Saren switched off as they waited for the next wave of invaders to come. Another ten minutes of silence passed with the defenders watching the entryway and briefly glancing behind them to make sure that the invaders didn't make it into the facility.
Sure, enough though the sounds of gunfire could be heard coming from the other side of the building. Within seconds a couple krogan charged towards them followed by a mass of batarians. Jack and the rest of his unit focused fire on the krogan trying to kill them before they got to close to the barricade.
The krogan both finally dropped a few meters from the barricade, but their job was done. Since most of the soldiers had been focused on the krogan the batarians were getting close to the barricade with only losing a few men.
"We need to fall back!" Yelled out jack as he threw a few grenades over the barricade to give the defenders some breathing room.
"Go go, Jack and I will hold them back for a bit." Saren yelled as he killed a batarian.
All of the unit except for the two leaders fled back to the secondary defensive position while Saren and Jack slowly made their way back giving each other covering fire as they fallback.
"All units fall back the batarians have broken our first line. I repeat fall back to the final barricade!" Their comms yelled out causing Jack and Saren to pick up the pace so that they wont be overrun by slavers.
"Finally, were here," Jack said as he saw the final barricade down the hall. Saren nodded in agreement as the two made a break for it while the men at the barricade covered them from enemy fire.
"That's the last of them shut the doors!" Someone yelled as soon as Jack and Saren made it close to the barricade. Within seconds multiple steel doors fell from the celling sealing them off from the outside world.
Jack looked around and saw barley a hundred men with a third of them being turians. "Listen up all of you," a voice yelled out grabbing everyone's attention towards the large man who walking towards them from the back of the room. "For those of you who don't know who I am I'm general Williams and this here is general Arterius," general Williams said motioning towards the turian standing next to him.
"As you all know this is the end. Those doors might buy us another thirty minutes at the most and then we are all that stands between the slavers and the civilians," he said as he motioned towards a massive door at the back of the room.
"I will be honest with you men it will take a miracle for us to get out of here and I think that we have any left after that stunt we did with the black hole," general Williams said earning a few chuckles from the crowd.
"But we all of us are soldiers and we will all fight till the end we will make them remember this day. For this will be the day that they look back in horror and in fear. For when our whole military might comes crashing down on them in retribution they will think back to this day when we were badly outnumbered but for everyone us they killed we killed ten of them!" General Williams yelled out with a risen fist that was coated in ice.
The crowd of soldiers all cheered in reply including the turians while Desolas smiled and clapped along with him. "Everyone get ready, we don't have long," Desolas said after the cheering died down.
The minutes ticked by as the soldiers could soon here the slavers trying to destroy the door. Every tick or boom that they heard caused the soldiers to jump a little thinking that would be the one to cause the door to finally collapse.
Thirty minutes had passed, and Jack was surprisingly calm. He knew that he should be freaking out about the alien army that was about to kill him but for some morbid reason he couldn't bring himself to care about it all he wanted to do was to kill.
A large boom broke him out of his thoughts as hole about five meters wide was blown off causing a hail storm of bullets to erupt from the other side. Jack quickly managed to open fire killing the first krogan that stepped though the whole with help from at least five other soldiers.
Krogan, batarian, vorcha, turian, and even a few asari poured through the hole but they were quickly cut down by the massive amounts of gun fire and explosives being fired towards the hole causing a mound of bodies to appear at the entrance. Jack kept firing and ducking whenever he needed to reload and each time he popped back up he killed another slaver.
But Jack knew he was fighting a losing battle. Every now and then he could see another soldier fall and with less guns firing at the hole that meant more slavers would make it through. Running out of ammo jack threw it down on the ground and picked up one of the mass effect weapons. Before he could peer around the barricade he was taking cover behind Saren landed right next to him clutching his left arm which was barely hanging on.
"Come here," Jack said as he grabbed Saren by the arm startling the turian.
"What are you doing?" Saren asked confused as to what Jack was doing in the middle of a war zone.
"Healing you," Jack said. Saren was about to ask how before he felt his arm. He looked down at his left arm and sure enough it was healing somehow all of the ligaments, muscles, bones, and nerves were going back to what they used to be before his arm got injured.
In a few moments Saren's left arm was back to normal. In stunned shock Saren examined his arm as he felt it trying to see if felt any different. "That's incredible."
"That's nothing look at the general over there," Jack said as he pointed at general Willimas who has summoned a small blizzard of ice shards that was impaling anything near the hole.
"Every time I think I understand your magic you humans show me something new." Saren said before he picked up his rife and fired into the crowd of slavers who were trying to take cover from the ice storm being sent at them.
Saren gave a moment to see that the general wasn't the only one using magic he saw a man summon a large white being with four arms that charged at the slavers and tore them to pieces. He saw another that seemed to fade into the floor and drag down some of the slavers with him and another who was taking on his fifth krogan in a fist fight.
"Saren come on focus you can stare at the magic you want latter, but now you need to fight."
"Right sorry its just seeing it in combat gave me hope."
"I know but we would need a lot more than we already have."
Saren and Jack both got into the fight and killed any slaver that they could, but it wasn't enough. Jack got shot in the shoulder sending him to the ground followed shortly by Saren who got thrown back by a grenade blast. In the corner of his eye Saren saw the giant four-armed creature fall down and turn into dust along with the brute who ended up having his head caved in by a krogan.
"All right that should be it bring all them over here," a batarian called out. Saren was quickly picked up and dragged over by two batarians along with Jack and a few other soldiers. "Well I almost don't believe it general Desolas Arterius in the flesh. I thought that you would have died in all this chaos. This is just too good to be true I wonder how much you will be sold for."
"You won't get to live to enjoy it," spat out general Williams who was being held up by two krogan with a third behind him holding a shot gun to his head.
"Ha, nobody will know that we were here. The turian fleet arrived and last I heard it was getting demolished by our fleet. And after we collect all of the civilians in this bunker were going to destroy the entire colony. There won't be any evidence of us at all," the batarian said with a smile.
"Oh, I almost forgot, our standing orders are to kill all human soldiers. Kill all the humans." Jack looked at the batarian in front of him who was smiling as he pulled out his gun but stopped when a loud explosion was heard from above followed by more explosions and gunfire. "What the hell is going on out there?" The batarian said into his coms before a few he and anybody else listening in on the coms stopped moving.
Jack looked on in curiosity as he saw the slavers turn their attention to the hole. 'Did the turian fleet survive? Maybe they were reinforced?' Jack continued to think until the large steel door was blown down followed by several flash of bright light that blinded him. The next few seconds were spent in blinded silence as his vision was gone and his ears were ringing.
For what felt like an eternity Jack clutched his head in pain wishing that he didn't use all his magic in healing Saren so that he could see. 'If I survive this I am going to get a few spell carvings to increase my magic,' he thought as he laid down on the ground not knowing how he got there.
After a few seconds Jack's vision came back to him, looking around he saw a large number of human soldiers standing over the corpses of the slavers. "Hey there, are you all right?" asked a soldier as he helped Jack to his feet.
"Just a few bruises and my ears are still ringing," Jack said as he got a better look around and saw that both general Williams and Saren were still alive. "I thought reinforcements wouldn't arrive for at least a week?"
"Nope, the second we heard that Shanxi had been hit the military threw a massive fleet comprised of a dreadnought fleet, a couple carrier fleets, and a few auxiliary fleets. But don't worry about that any more your safe now let's get you to a medic."
Jack was about to protest but he decided to go along with the soldier knowing that he might have a concussion and he still was out of magic, so he couldn't heal himself yet. On the way out of the vault room he tried to count how many soldiers were still alive. He doubted that there were more than fifty defenders still breathing as he saw so few of them being either escorted out or carried out on a stretcher. And too many were being placed in body bags.
Five hours later at temporary command center on Shanxi
The command center was little more than a nice tent with air conditioning, a desk, some nice chairs, a couch, and a holo table in the middle of the room giving them real time updates on the situation on both the ground and space.
General Williams was sitting in chair writing up his report on the battle of Shanxi while general Arterius was sitting across from on a couch writing up his own report on his omni tool. They were currently waiting for admiral Drescher to arrive so that they could speak about what action humanity was going to take next.
"Have you ever been in a battle like this before?" General Williams asked causing Desolas to look up from his report.
"No, never something like this. I doubt that anybody in citadel space has been in a battle like this since the krogan rebellion. Never before have I faced such odds I thought I was going to die I have honestly never felt this before."
"Same humanity hasn't had a true war for a while sure we have criminals and pirates that we fight but nothing like this. The last time we had a war was when we discovered the prothean beacon, but that only lasted a little over a year."
"How do you think your people will react?"
"They will want blood. We will be going to war with batarians that I can assure you of,"
"I would like to think that my people would join you, but I doubt that the salarians and asari will let it happen. They will probably demand that your forces stand down. They have done this in the past before even when the batarians take their own people and even colonies. The council always say that it was pirates that are not affiliated with the batarians, but everybody knows the truth."
"Even when we show them that there were multiple Hegemony fleets?"
"The batarians will probably make up some excuse and the asari and salarians will go with it to keep the status quo while my people will crack down on slavery activity and be demonized by asari media as being too warmongering," Desolas said with a sigh knowing that the media wasn't entirely wrong.
General William was about to speak up until admiral Drescher entered the tent followed by a turian. "General Williams, general Arterius it is good to meet you I am glad that you both are still alive and well," Drescher said while the two generals stood up to great her well.
"Admiral Caellius Fausnianus I'm glad to see that you are still alive I feared the worst when I heard that the slaver fleet ambushed you," Desolas said as he made his way to his fellow turian.
"Thank you general, but I lost most of my fleet and I would have died as well had not admiral Drescher arrived."
"We can save the pleasantries for another time, but we have a lot to do," Kastanie said as she pulled up a massive list of tasks on the holo table. The tasks varied widely from small tasks such as trying to find places for all the civilians to live until their homes were rebuilt to fortifying Shanxi as much as possible in case of another attack.
The four military leaders talked and argued for hours on the best way to complete each objective as hastily as they could. "Well I think that about covers everything except for what do we do when this council fleet arrives?" General Williams said.
"I Just got done talking to our councilor and its not so much a fleet as it is a diplomatic ship with a few escorts and some medical and supply ships to help out the colony," Caellius said showing them the details of the fleet that she received from councilor Sparatus.
"Just like the asari never to fight but they always to show up after the fighting is over with trinkets acting like the galactic saviors to get you to let your guard down," Desolas said as he crossed his arms.
"Is their something I'm missing here I thought you were allies with them?" Kastanie said a bit puzzled at Desolas reaction.
"The asari will try to manipulate you into signing whatever they want saying that because they have lived so long they know what will help you out in the long run. They will try to get you to sign unfair trade agreements and contracts and before you know it the asari will be controlling your entire economy," Desolas said while Caellius nodded in confirmation.
"Has this happened before?" General Williams asked.
"They almost got away with it on us but then we acquired the volus as a client race. And no, they are not slaves or anything of the sort. The volus are a small and weak race in return for protecting them they help us out financially. When the asari found out about this they were furious we had no idea why until the volus told us how much of our economy relied on the asari. Since then we have been rebuilding our economy to be more independent of asari control."
"Have they done this to anybody else?" Kastanie asked.
"Yes, they tried it on the krogan and they would have succeeded if not for the krogan rebellion destroying their economy. Also, the Eclor are slowly losing their economy to the asari."
"Well we will have to warn high command about that wont we," general Williams said making a mental note to tell his superiors.
"Yes, I will make sure to tell them when I get back on my ship, but for now I have some questions about the Treaty of Farixen and what would be required if we decided to join the council," Kastanie said earning a confused look from the turians.
"Why of course ask away." Caellius said.
"How many dreadnought ships would we be able to have?"
"Based on the treaty for every five dreadnoughts that my people have the other two council races the asari and the salarians get three, and all other associated races get one. In that regard you would end up getting six dreadnoughts."
"What do you consider a dreadnought?"
"Any ship over a kilometer that also has a spinal rail gun."
"So, our carriers wouldn't count then?"
"Well I want to say yes but with those energy weapons I am betting that the council will change it to so that energy weapons like your peace rays count as spinal rail guns since they are more dangerous than any other weapon I have seen except for nuclear war heads."
"Are nuclear weapons banned as well?"
"Yes of course the destruction they create is deemed as a war crime just like firing spinal rail guns at garden world."
The two humans looked at each other for a moment before Kastanie spoke again.
"So what would the council do if we nuked a few batarian worlds?"
The two turians were silent for a second as they tried to process what they just heard. "The council would make you pay reparations to the batarians and they may even declare war on you. I doubt that the turians would be a part of it after the batarians sent a couple of their own fleets here and killed thousands of our soldiers we might even help you," Desolas said.
"This is interesting I will need to repot this to my superiors I will see you all later," admiral Drescher said as before she left the tent.
"Do you really think that your race will nuke the batarians?" Desolas asked causing the human general to frown.
"I don't know about nuking them, but I do know that we will go to war with them especially after seeing how effective our ships are compared to their own."
"The council wont stand for it or should I say two thirds of it won't. As I said early my people will want blood as well and we have the proof that two hegemony fleets attacked us alongside the pirates and slavers."
"Will they try to stop us?"
"Not with force they don't have the ships for that without my people's fleet. They will try sanctions, trade embargos, and maybe sending aid to the batarians even special forces. Why are you telling us this couldn't this get you in trouble with your people?" Desolas said earning a nod from the turian admiral who was wondering the same thing.
"Because I know that you two want us to go to war with the batarians and because I believe that your race will end up helping us out and it would be better if your government knew of it ahead of time."
"What if your wrong and they tell the asari and the salarians what your planning?" The turian admiral asked earning a smile from the human.
"From what I heard from you two and any of your soldiers there is no love lost to the rest of the council."
The two turians looked at each other for a second knowing that the human was right. "I need to go send a report to the hierarchy I think it would be good if you came as well Desolas." Caellius said before she left the tent followed shortly after by Desols who said his goodbye to the human general before he left.
Earth secret bunker
Fleet admiral Adam Fenix entered a building that didn't exist. On the surface it looked little more than a large abandoned hanger with a small stretch of runway for air craft. The entire complex was surrounded by razor wire fences and had the most advance security system in the world.
When he entered the building, he found himself in a large empty waiting room. He motioned for his guards to stay in the room as he proceeded to the next room. Having been here before his guards did as they were told without saying a word.
Opening the door the fleet admiral found himself in a much larger hall with gun turrets on either side of him. He knew that the turrets wouldn't fire since they had already scanned him and deemed him not a threat. On the other side of the hall was one regular elevator inbetween two large freight elevators that were both big enough to carry two tanks at once.
The regular elevator was actually an express elevator that only had one destination. On the outside of the door was a keypad. If the fleet admiral entered the wrong code he would be torn apart by the turrets.
After entering the right code the fleet admiral entered the elevator. Once he entered the doors shut he began to descend. The elevator didn't tell him how deep he was going but he knew that he was going to the twenty fourth floor.
Finally, the elevator stopped and opened its doors showing the fleet admiral a long white hallway with more armed turrets all pointing at him. Adam walked down the hall with the only sound being his foot steps and the sound of the turrets keeping him in their line of sight.
Finally, he reached the end of the hall and opened the door. Inside was a large furnished room with a large circular table with twenty seats surrounding it. There were four other people and an A.I. projected on a screen in the room and he knew all of them except for one new face senator Brackenridge.
First there was a young man in lab coat named Erich Ward who was the head scientist of this base. Next there was an elderly man Dedrick Koenig the current head elder of the Grimnior society. Then there was Kunie Sugihara a middle age woman of Asian descent who was the leading expert on all things prothean. The A.I. on the screen named who had the avatar of a train conductor was named peter. His job was probably the largest out of all of thiers since in included coordinating with all of the other A.I.s, keeping this facility off of the maps including any satellite view, and he was the head of security. But right in the middle of the group was senator Kyle Brackenridge who was smiling like he just won the lottery.
"Good that you finally joined us fleet admiral Fenix we were beginning to think that you weren't going to show," senator Brackenridge said as he motioned for everyone to take a seat at the table.
"I take it that you are our new represented from Washington?" Adam asked as he stayed standing refusing to move due his distrust of the senator.
"Yes I am. You couldn't believe how happy I was when I got selected for this job. Just think of all of the quality time we will get to spend together now adam," Kyle said with a large smile as he took his seat.
"So why am I? Why are all of us here? I need to be preparing to leave to go meet the citadel council soon." Adam said as he looked around the table knowing they wouldn't bring in all the big players form a new face.
"We believe that the reapers are coming sooner than expected," Kunie said causing the fleet admiral's face to go blank.
"How long do you think we have?"
"At most maybe a hundred years."
"How do we know this?"
"We looked into the codex that was sent over and we found references to an entity called the collectors. We have reason to believe that they are the reapers agents. Also from what we have learned from the codex it has been a lot longer since the last cycle than we last though."
"We are no where near ready enough to fight them off."
"We never were going to be ready enough. That's why we established all those hidden colony's and why we have been constructing dreadnought fleets in secret. But now that we know that there is other life out there we may have a chance," Dedrick said causing Adam to look his way.
"What are you talking about?"
"Last night the power gave me and a few other Grimnior elders a vision. It showed us the reapers and it showed how this wasn't the first time it had encountered it. The reapers have no defense against our magic that is our ace in the hole."
"Then how did the power lose? If it won, I would think that it would have stayed with that race."
"The pathfinder aided the reapers in the war causing the power to loss. But since we killed off the pathfinder and its master we have a much greater chance of winning."
"Still we need to build more defense stations, bunkers, and fleets."
"Go ahead and get to the best part," Peter said causing the fleet admiral to look up.
"The power showed us that its going to give magic too two other races. I have already dispatched Grimnior agents to their worlds to help them out. You will need to tell the leader of the turians of their arrival and of our group's existence," the elder said causing the fleet admiral to become confused.
"Are we sure that this is the right idea?"
"We will need their help in the war to come especially since the turians have one of the largest military's in the galaxy," Peter said as he pulled up data that they had received from the codex.
"Yes, but their ships are too weak and small to be of any help to us. Unless we give them weapons and ships which would be a horrible idea. The reapers could get ahold of our technology that way." Adam said knowing that the other chair members would agree with him on that.
"Of course we won't, but when the reapers come we should have close to dozen extra fleets that need to be crewed," Kyle said causing the fleet admiral to think on the decision.
"That's not a bad one, but I still don't like it at least I won't have to deal with it when the time comes."
"Yes, you are retiring in a few years. Have you decided on who should take your spot?" Erich asked.
"I'm thinking of second lieutant Steven Hacket. I was going to pick admiral Drescher but from what I've heard she is too hot headed and cruel. She killed every slaver on Shanxi even when they surrendered. I don't blame here but the rest of the galaxy will see us as war mongers if I give her the position," Adam said earning a few nods from the others.
"So Dedrick you never told us who the second race is?" Erich asked causing the elder to smile before he told them. Kunie and Erich laughed loving the choice Kyle, Peter, and Adam grew horrified at the effects it might have on the rest of the galaxy if the codex was right.
Unknown
He was fighting and killing everything that came his way, his father tricked him and was trying to kill him. Now he had to kill his own father on sacred ground. 'Wait I've done this before,' he thought as he dropped the dead body of his father on the ground.
"This must be a dream, but I've never had one so real." He said as he felt the blood on his hands and the wounds on his body. He could even smell the blood coming from the countless bodies. Out of the corner of his eye he saw three asari that were staring at him.
He turned around to face the asari and was surprised when he saw them and realized that they weren't asari at all. Their bodies looked like asari but that is where it ended. Two of them looked like if male asari existed with short fur atop their heads. The third one looked the most like an asari but that was probably because she was a female. She also had long black fur the descended to her middle back and silver eyes.
"Wrex Urdnot I am Okubu Tokugawa and my two associates Jake Sullivan and Faye. All three of us have at one point been chosen by the power now it has chosen you to carry out its will."
"I don't work for anybody except myself so go tell your power to Fuck Off!" Wrex yelled.
"Even if it can save your people?" The being called Jake said as he pointed to the sky showing a great big ball of light composed of symbols and shapes.
"This power is bring given to you Wrex it is yours to chose what you want to do with it. But you can save your people and even the galaxy or you can doom it to extinction," Faye said even though Wrex was barley listening as he was too mesmerized by the ball of lights in the sky.
Wrex could feel power coursing though him and it burned in a good way causing the krogan to grin.
"Now awaken and go home, heal your world, and get your people ready for a war that determine the fate of the universe," Okubu said causing the krogan to wake up abruptly.
Thank you for reading it and I liked it.