"We're going to nuke those fuckers back to the Analog Age." CMDRE Shepard, CO SSV Kilimanjaro, Battle of LaGrange Point Two, 2183

SSV Kilimanjaro (IV FLT), 100 km from Vegna, Feros Space, Attican Beta Cluster, July 7, 2183

Author's Note: Remember when Tali got to play 'Admiral' somehow in ME3? Yeah, no. Jannie actually gets to play Admiral.

I think you're going to like this. You're so in for a treat. There will be a legitimate space battle for the rest of this ARC. Not just 'fire the guns and boom'. No, real Navy stuff. Maneuvering. Missiles. Prayers. And a concept that I stole from myself back from Fall Of The House Of Therum, III.

Thus, the 'Special Tactics' portion of 'SPECTRE'.

Thanks to LogicalPremise and his use of US Navy tactics (God bless Submariners!) for the direction I'm about to plot course and blast of into.

Don't forget to check out the disclaimer up top for a good chuckle. Sometimes I impress myself.

Captain Jane Catherine Shepard (SAN, N7, OST) exited the main personnel lift onto the Quarterdeck of the Kilimanjaro-Class Dreadnought, stepping onto the Bridge of the the class leader of the modern Alliance Dreadnought, what Sailors and Marines called 'the Mighty Kili'. Petty Officer (Second Class) Sara Elaine Ryder strode by Jannie's side, two Human women in HMWA MasterGear SPECTRE Armor, probably looking like a SPECTRE Kill Team at first glance to the Sailors manning the Quarterdeck as a few helmeted heads turned to see who had arrived from the personnel lift. Even though Sailors were in REDCON FOUR, fully suited and armored for Naval combat, the redhead knew that they were getting stares and dropped jaws at the sight of Council Agents on the deck. One Chief Petty Officer stammered out 'Agent on Deck!' at a complete loss at what else to do, announcing her presence in the way he knew how but with a complete lack of knowledge of what other protocols there were. To these men and women, Jannie was likely the pinnacle of the Human race in their eyes; having achieved the absolutely highest position of authority a Human had ever reached in the galaxy, a position dreamed of and coveted when learned of in 2158. To see a Human SPECTRE (flanked by yet another one in the guise of a Navy Corpsman), Jannie wondered what those men and women were thinking. The general impression of the citizens of the galaxy upon seeing a Council Agent was likely somewhere along the lines of 'please don't be here for me!' But to these Sailors, to these brave men and women, she had probably strode right out the doors like the Hand of God; salvation in one hand, and righteous destruction of their enemies in the other.

They weren't far off, actually.

The Quarterdeck, like the rest of the Kili, was an absolute mess. The Dreadnought had been front-and-center for the attack that the Geth had pounced upon the IVY Fleet, and the flagship had taken the brunt of it. The Kilimanjaro-Class had been designed to take on a Turian Wyominix-Class Dreadnought and suffer the abuse, the hull armored in thick Iridium-reinforced Alumnisteel plates with a superstructure laid in Titanium and Depleted Uranium. When the Everest-Class Dreadnoughts existed, Mankind had no space-faring foes, and found the SSV Everest, Elbrus, and Fiji wanting. Thus the Kilimanjaro was made; the modern titan. Built to take on a Turian Dreadnought, it was rated for a ten-minute exchange with a Wyominix-Class, using its many missiles, its main cannon, broadsides, and fighter craft compliment to take on the galaxy's premiere peacekeeping force and only species to officially wage war on Mankind. But it hadn't been designed to take on a fuselage of over a hundred vessels, taking an absolute pounding for five minutes straight as the Kili reversed roles with the Fleet; the Dreadnought had protected the Fleet's retreat, suffering abuse for its smaller vessel. The act showed; the Quarterdeck, like the rest of the vessel, showed that it had been clobbered hard. Jannie noted at least three metal-plated plugs QuikWeld'ed to the bulkhead where damage had penetrated from hull-to-deck, resulting in space exposure. Wiring and panels had been knocked off, the deck was littered with debris, there were shattered or burnt-out terminals, and there were most certainly splashes of red to indicate when a piece of shrapnel hit something made of flesh. None of the ruptures were large, and likely no one had been sucked out, but the spray of metal fragments from the penetration had likely caused serious wounds to the personnel on the deck.

One of them had killed her stepfather. Likely, the same shot was killing her mother.

"She still stands, and so does her crew. God bless them one and all." Sara breathed out, her vox transmitting her words, and Jannie noted that several overheard the Navy Corpsman wearing SPECTRE Armor.

"Indeed." Shepard replied, completely agreeing with her friend. The Command Deck should have no less than twenty-five at any point in time running the various operations of the Mighty Kili, but its staff had been reduced by a third at least. Without a doubt, there were Sailors manning positions and terminals that were not their trained rates, determined to keep their home alive while protecting the fleet. It was as First Lieutenant Nicolai Yevseyenkov had said earlier; praise God for the courage of Men. In its worse moments, the crew of the Kili kept going, standing strong against the forces of the Geth. Like the Sailors of old, braving wind and sea, facing cannon and fire, their modern-day successor did not shrink nor shirk from their Oaths and duties. The Geth had it in for Humanity, and these men and women were going to show them how much of a bad fucking idea that was going to be. They did it to the Turians over and on Shanxi, bloodying the snouts of the galaxy's premiere military, and now it was the synthetic races' turn.

Jannie moved towards the Combat Information Center of the Dreadnought, noting differences between the SR-1 Normandy and the DVA-4 Kilimanjaro, looking more like an Alliance ship should; two semi-circle raised platforms where the Naval Technicians who kept in constant contact with not only the Dreadnoughts' many systems, but that of the other vessels of the fleet, surrounded the main podium that was the hub of information and command of the IVY Fleet. There, a raised dais displayed the holographic image of the surrounding battlespace of Feros, while an adjoining series of monitors above the trigraphic image displayed ship status for not only the Mighty Kili, but for various components of the Fleet, and IV Fleet as a whole. Dozens of terminals encircled 'the Pulpit' of the CIC, where the mind, heart, and soul of the IVY Fleet stood; it was here that ten thousand Sailors got their orders and followed them, where Humanity was defended from all threats, both foreign and domestic.

It was here that her mother was.

Shepard felt her heart shoot up in her throat at the sight of her mother, Rear Admiral (Lower Half) Hannah Mallory Singer sitting on a fabricated wheeled chair instead of standing, haunting the CIC by lording over all from a impromptu contraption but looking every centimeter one of the vaulted members of the Bravest Generation, injury or no injury. The redhead sucked in a breath when she saw the injury in question; a spur of metal had impaled her mother in the lower torso, where her kidney and pancreas were at the very least, and her intestines if it went any deeper. Considering she thought that she might be dying, perhaps it had, internally bleeding. There was a medical package taped to her left shoulder, an IV line going to the crook of her left elbow; fluids. She intended to combat death by blood-loss by pumping more fluids into her than she was losing. That would only work for so long, Jannie knew. Her mother wasn't going to go out leaving IV Fleet without its Commanding Officer, and its XO proved herself once more why she was venerated throughout Mankind as one of the Bravest Generation and a member of the Night Stalkers. She kept herself alive long enough to ensure that someone would take over, someone Hannah knew could lead the Fleet to an acceptable degree of success.

What Hannah Singer hadn't expected was Sara Ryder; Jannie's secret weapon, so to speak.

"You came." Admiral Singer looked up from her chair to look upon her daughter, armored in her HMWA MasterGear SPECTRE Mk. IV Armor. Then her helmeted gaze went to the other SPECTRE. "Sara?" The mark of the Emergency Medical Technician laid over Sara's heart on her armor, and Hannah had easily put two and two together. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm taking you back to the Normandy for emergency surgery, ma'am." The Petty Officer replied, her tone without deviation. "We have a fully-operational and stocked MedBay, a Surgeon, and a rated Surgeons' Mate. The Fourth needs its Commanding Officer, so while Captain Shepard temporarily relieves you, Doctor Chakwas and myself are going to perform surgery and save your life.

"These Sailors need the best at the Helm, and we're going to make it happen."

The sixteen men and women serving upon the Command Deck of the Kili never said a word, but their unspoken support was announcing loud and clear in their movements and actions. Lives had been lost, and without the Dreadnoughts' Medical Department, more would likely be lost. But it was as Sara said; the Fleet needed Admiral Singer on the Conn. Jannie knew she couldn't command the Fourth forever; she had her own mission, and being a replacement Admiral wasn't it. She would do so until her mother was fit-for-duty or until reinforcements arrived, but her place was preventing the Geth from reaching their objective, not getting into slugging matches with their fleet in a straight-up fight.

"Your orders and assumption of command, Captain." Hannah handed over a datapad sitting on top of the raised holographic displays' center ring, the electronic form filled out to its entirety save for Jannie's acceptance in the form of a biometric scan. The redhead held the viewer at the top of the 'pad to her visored eye, letting it scan her cornea. It toggled green with acceptance. "I stand relieved."

And just like that, Captain Shepard was now Kilimanjaro Actual for the time being.

"Doc? Take the Admiral to the Rey and have her in surgery post-haste." The Level Three Council Agent told her Second, Ryder's' helmeted head nodding as she took the fabricated grips of the wheeled chair and began pushing her mother out of the CIC. Without a word spoken or an order given, every man and woman on the Command Deck stood to their feet if they were able to, standing at the position of attention and saluting the escorted Admiral as she promised vocally I shall return, echoing the words of a General more than two centuries prior. The doors to the personnel lift closed behind the Corpsman and the Admiral as Sailors returned to their duties, and Jannie felt a forlorn pain in her heart. Here she was, standing in her mothers' command, the woman she had been estranged from for half of her life, yet now taking her place. The sight of the Sailors saluting Hannah as she left was almost a bitter mockery of the relationship between mother and daughter, yet Shepard pushed that aside. For now, IVY Fleet needed her on top of her game.

An N-Level Sailor with a months' worth of experience captaining a Frigate was now in charge of what was left of a thirty-seven vessel Fleet.

Green pickle award, Jannie thought to herself as she looked the next highest-ranking person in the CIC, a male First Lieutenant by the name of Dawson, manning the Navigation terminal. The XO's terminal was dark and unmanned, as was the Commo terminal. The Weapons terminal was still functional, and was being manned by a male Senior Chief Petty Officer by the name of Rodriguez. The Ops terminal was functional, and being manned by a female Petty Officer (Third Class) van de Mare. There was no one at the Engineering terminal, the Tactical terminal, the CAP terminal, or the ECM terminal. There were a couple of the seats for the LADAR Technicians that were unfilled as well.

She was just going to have to make do on a vessel she had never been on before with a crew she didn't even know the names of while leading a Fleet ready to crumble apart.

"Lieutenant Dawson? Open up the 1MC for Fleet-wide announcement." Jannie told the only other Commissioned Officer in the Pulpit. The Kili's Command Console was a shattered wreck, and its location had a liberal amount of blood on it. Likely… that had been her stepfather. Lieutenant Dawson looked up to her and nodded his helmeted head as Jannie took a steadying breath and spoke to the Fleet.

Her Fleet. No pressure.

"IVY Fleet, this is Captain Jane Shepard, of the SSV Normandy." The redhead began, keeping her voice calm and even as she spoke to the remnants of the battered Fourth, letting the words of the Lion flow forth. "Command of the Kili and the Fourth have been officially passed down to me by Rear Admiral Hannah Singer, and as of this moment, I stand as Kilimanjaro Actual." Seventeen vessels of the Fleet, with the addition of the Normandy, listened on. "Sailors and Marines, Officers and Enlisted, ladies and gentlemen, we are down;

"But by no means are we out.

"As of this moment, I want all Commands to finish up any and all emergency repairs that involve weapons, LADAR sensors, and ruptures within the hour." Jannie continued. "Any vessel that is not space-worthy, report status so that crew and weapons can be transfered to another vessel. If a vessel is deficient in the ability to fight, fly, or contain a core, update as soon as possible so we may transfer the necessary parts and specialists to get your vessel back into fight.

"Because there's a Geth Armada on the other side of Feros that is dire need of having its ass kicked hard."

Jannie could see men and women in her CIC nodding, despite the beating they took and the losses they endured. The only thing worse that what they had suffered would be to let it all happen for nothing. The Fourth was not about to kick rocks and walk away. They would find a way to make the Geth pay, and the Lion was going to lead them to that purpose.

"On Eden Prime," the SPECTRE continued, "thirteen Colonial Air Force Destroyers were obliterated when the Geth hacked the Surface-to-Space Defense Systems, blasting our folks out of the sky. On Eden Prime, ten thousand Geth hardware platforms were dropped onto Constant to inflict damage and casualties, and the death toll was in the tens of thousands, civilians and military. They planted polonium-infused bombs to deny any kind of rescue operations and disguise their true purpose.

"Despite all that… a small team succeeded." She reminded them. "Two Sailors and a Soldier pushed through these forces and denied the Geth their two objectives; a Prothean Beacon, and the cover-up.

"On Therum," the redhead spoke, "a Marine platoon was killed to the very man defending a Prothean dig site defending against a thousand Geth hardware platforms. Their objective was a Prothean researcher, with the intent of capture for whatever purpose they had in mind.

"Despite all that… a force of twelve succeeded." The Lion smiled at the memory of Sara emerging from behind her cover, her face one of shock and love at the sight of her Auntie coming to her rescue. "A defensive position held by the Angel of Illyeria and eleven others destroyed seven hundred Geth over the period of a solar day and denied the Geth their objective until they were rescued by myself and my team.

"On the ACV Horizon," Jannie briefly wondered if anyone in the Fourth had been told about what happened to the Cruise Liner, "every occupant of that forty-five hundred soul vessel had been assaulted by the Geth and turned to their evil purpose. Civilian lives were not only lost, but turned into the enemy; as nefarious a crime as I could ever come up with.

"Despite all that… twelve defeated four thousand." Those nightmares would be long in fading, sadly. "The ship was taken from Geth hands and returned to the Alliances', and whatever plans they had were halted.

"The Geth are not invincible." The Captain reminded the men and women of the Fourth, her tone assured. "They can be stopped, they can be destroyed. Men and women have held the line against them and their forces and came out on top. It has been proved that inferior numbers does not guarantee a defeat.

"Stand strong, crew members of the IVY Fleet. The Geth mean to take whatever it is that they want, to trample us into the dirt." She practically spat out the words, no one able to deny her tone. "I have stood against the Geth, and I will continue to do so. I will fight them for the sake of my species, to protect those of my race so they may not know fear of war. They know no fear, yet they know no courage. They are logical, adaptive. What they are not are creative or feeling. They cannot push themselves harder for that extra gram of effort to add to success. They do not believe in something better themselves, be it the Gods or their own kind, to strive towards something beautiful. They are just machines.

"And machines… can be broken."

Captain Jane Shepard stood at the Command Deck of the SSV Kilimanjaro, reviewing the information that was being spat out through the update monitors above the trigraphic display that showed the composition and position of her fleet sulking behind the moon of Vegna. She had been a Fleet Admiral for all of forty-five minutes, and the whole time she had been studying the Geth through the Recon Probes that the SSV Normandy and the SSV Ypres had laid to monitor their activity. So far, the Geth Fleet hadn't moved towards them.

Actually, that worried her.

Her mother, Rear Admiral (Lower Half) Hannah Singer had been right; the Geth's objective was on Feros. The Fleet had been there to defeat whatever defenses the colony had and protect their interest. They had been learning since Eden Prime and Therum, and knew that there was a ship they couldn't see; the Normandy. The Geth must have assumed numbers would have accounted for something to ward off the attack of such a small vessel like a souped-up stealth Frigate, but Jannie had corrected them of that thought by planting a Multi-Fusion Objective Acquisition Battery right into the tailpipe of a thousand-plus meter Dreadnought and obliterating it, along with over a dozen other Geth vessels. With the largest ship in the Armada now being a Heavy Cruiser-Class, the odds were a little bit more favorable, though the Fourth was still very battered. The best ships in the IVY Fleet had been the more nimbler ones, Corvettes and Frigates that had done their best to avoid the incoming fire before being decimated. The Fourth was still standing at only a single Acquisition Carrier, two York-Class Bomber Cruisers, a singular Moscow-Class Patrol Cruiser, three Missile Destroyers, four Frigates (one of them being the Normandy), and five Corvettes. She practically had a Battle Group instead of a Battle Fleet save that she actually did have a Dreadnought that was a work-in-progress.

She had been using the previous forty-five minutes to come up with a plan.

"Ensign? How's the resupply?" Jannie asked one of the few surviving A-61 Trident Pilots she had in her fleet, Ensign Jeff Harbeck having survived the catastrophic destruction of the SSV Francis Drake when its core went supercritical by simply being in a dog fight at the time against a Geth Frigate. His 'baby' was being scrapped for parts to repair vessels with components of its hull, electronics, and anything else that they needed. As for the pilot himself? He had staked out in the Kili's CIC as her Combat Action Patrol, monitoring the positions of the vessels of the Fourth Fleet to avoid mid-space collisions while dodging fire. As one of the few surviving pilots in the Battle of LaGrange Point Two, Harbeck was now in command of all near-space flying between vessels, everything from Cruisers down to shuttles. Refit and Resupply was the authority of the Kilimanjaro's Tactical Officer, providing Space Traffic Control for the various going-ons in between vessels as well. Dreadnoughts carried parts and supplies for the vessels of its Fleet to conduct mid-patrol resupply without making use of port or spaceyard, and the Kili was utilizing that to shuttle parts and components to get its Fleet up to snuff as near and as soon as possible. Tactical also served as Damage Control in the event of battle.

"We're standing at seventy-two percent complete, ma'am." Jeff wasn't exactly thrilled not being in a cockpit anymore. Space Jockeys thought their existence was solely based upon being in a seat strapped to a Heavy-Helium Fusion Thruster with a couple of missiles dangling from purposeless aerodynamic wings. The man was the sole survivor of his ten-vessel squadron, and probably wanted revenge in the form of a missile launch. They were all eating a little crow, today, and at the least the man performed his duties well, knowing the Fleet needed him there in the CIC. "The special delivery is next in the queue, Commodore." The new 'rank' was merely a traditional one; anyone who commanded anything less than a flagship was a 'Captain' regardless of rank, and those who were in command of a flagship were always an Admiral. Yet the previous Admiral was still alive, Rear Admiral Hannah Singer in emergency surgery. Blue Water Navy (namely the British) had solved this possibility for when a non-Admiral was in charge of a Fleet yet their predecessor still alive but unavailable. It was a temporary rank for a temporary billet.

Still, Commodore Shepard had… a nice ring to it.

"Ma'am? The SSV Ypres reports having MetalGel'ed their spine back together, and should be battle-worthy in five minutes." Came from Lieutenant Commander Charles Pressley, Shepard's brand-spanking new Executive Officer for the Mighty Kili. Pressley had been shuttled over within the first five minutes of her taking command for two very good reasons; one being three years' experience serving the Kili, the other being that he had served as the Kili's Red Team Navigator prior to being transfered to the Normandy, as well as being its Gunnery Chief and Tactical Officer during his time on the Dreadnought. There was literally no one else amongst the Officer Corps on the Dreadnought who knew the ends and outs of the vessel, and his experience was telling. He knew the names of most everyone on the Bridge, knew several of the surviving Department heads or their Non-Com replacements by first name, and could tell by the groaning of metal or the subtle shift of the deck what the Kili needed. Charles was a Godsend. Commander Mark Vanderloo had been named nominal Captain of the Normandy for the time being, and Jannie knew her Frigate was in good hands. Mark was one of the very best.

He was going to get a chance to prove it. Soon.

"Commodore?" That was First Lieutenant Matthew Dawson, the sole surviving Officer of the CIC. A round had barely penetrated the Bridge, and the resulting shrapnel had raked the Pulpit and a small portion of the Ops Alley. That shot had killed Jannie's stepfather and put a chunk of metal into her mother. It had also maimed or killed most everyone else in the Pulpit. Dawson had been lucky, somehow magically standing in the statistically-improbable location known as sheer dumb luck, everyone else being impaled or cut into ribbons around him without Matthew suffering a single scratch. Surviving that fate hadn't emboldened him; the Lieutenant had been shaken to his very core watching good men and women threshed around him like so much wheat while he stood uninjured. Whatever crisis of Humanity or Faith he was going to have would happen later on, the Sailor heroically staying on task. "We've sent a distress buoy via a light catapult with the necessary modifications." Dawson, once the Kili's Communications Officer, was now its Communications and Electronic Countermeasure Officer. Thankfully a trained-and-rated Sailor who knew the details of his job. With Geth hacking a very real threat, it was his responsibility to keep communications up and Geth software out. "We're at full connectivity with the Fleet, and all vessels reporting five-by-five for strength and clarity."

"Good." Communication was essential to a Fleet, and the last thing that Jannie wanted was the Geth to disrupt or interfere with their ability to talk and, more importantly, coordinate. Jannie had been staring at the Geth Armada, having pondered what the Geth were up to. It was simple, really. There was no way in hell the Geth didn't know that the Fourth was being held by WonderGel and prayer. Any time in the past seventy or so minutes, those vessels could have come over to the dark side of Vegna and wiped out the Fourth without any real effort. Even a quarter of their ships could have done the job with an acceptable loss of vessels.

So why hadn't they? There was something about this equation that wasn't ringing true.

"Commodore?" Jane looked to Petty Officer (Third Class) Aubrey van de Mare, now her Ops Alley Specialist as well as her Engineering Bridge Officer. The short Afrikaner woman was originally Rear Admiral (Upper Half) Kyle Singer's Yeoman; the Navy version of a secretary and personal assistant. For an Admiral, that was a necessity with the amount of paperwork, protocols, checklists, appointments, meetings, and itineraries that needed to be kept in functionality. She might be rated as a Yeoman, but she had the job skills necessary for multi-tasking, which was needed for an Ops Alley Officer as well as an Engineering Bridge Officer. "Chief Engineering reports that the thermal venting system is now back on-line and running at acceptable efficiency. Commander Wesley reports that we can have as many as three dozen shots of the main cannon consecutively, and in a pinch he can do a half-dozen more by flooding reclaimed water into the system." That was a trick that only larger vessel could do with their larger hydro-tanks. "He also updated the repairs for the kinetic defense array. Dorsal and Bow emitters are back on line, and Keel will be operational in ten minutes."

"Good. That's good." Three dozen shots would put a Wyominix-Class Dreadnought into the grave, as well as four other Cruisers. And they really needed shields. "Give me a status of how fast we can fire without rupturing the coolant system."

"I'd give it seven seconds per shot." Pressley answered immediately, tapping something in his console. "We can overclock at four seconds per shot, but we'll literally reduce the amount of shots by less than half. Seven will give us maximum efficiency while still being able to engage and destroy." The Kilimanjaro was rated at throwing a thirty kilogram slug at over five thousand kilometers a second through its centrally-mounted main gun, measuring at a crisp seven hundred meters. The impact was rated at fifty kilotons of TNT; less than half of a Turian Dreadnought. What the Kili had that the Turians didn't was fully-mounted broadside cannons, seventy-eight on each side on three decks, giving them a barrage of twenty-six cannons on six decks for a hundred and fifty-six rounds at ten kilograms accelerated to one thousand kilometers per second, giving them a strike force of fifteen kilotons. With that many guns, the Kili could lay aside a Wyominix-Class like the HSV Valiant Resolution and blast it to pieces in quick order without taking one round of main cannon fire since Turians had never invented the broadside. Oh, they had retrofitted a couple onto some of their newer vessels, but they were mere popguns in which a deck had been gutted and the systems rigged in-place. The Mighty Kili could deliver over eleven thousand megatons of TNT with a one-sided broadside, flip the ship over in five seconds, and give them the ol' one-two. Just because Systems Alliance Dreadnoughts were small didn't meant they were weak.

"Gunnery? What's our broadside capabilities?" Shepard asked.

"We've ignored the issues to fix the issues with the main cannons and the missile pods, ma'am." Senior Chief Petty Officer Raul Rodriguez replied, a Gunners' Mate-S that was actually in charge of the port broadside cannons once upon a day ago; normally it was given to an Ensign, but the man had been fully vetted by Charles as being on top of his game. Now he was the Kili's Gunnery Chief. Raul was eating it up. Good for him. "We can deliver seventy percent starboard, but only forty percent port. We'll need days to correct all the damages and malfunctions, Commodore."

"I can live with those numbers." Broadsides meant getting within knife-range, and as battered as her vessel and the Fleet were, that was a bad idea unless she created a scenario where a drive was likely to be survivable. Still, the amount of throw weight was more than effective enough to bring down a Cruiser with a single broadside, and complete overkill on anything smaller. Which was always a nice thing. Right now, the Kili, for all her damage, was the biggest piece on the board with the destruction of the Geth Dreadno…

"Holy shit."

That's why the Geth haven't been attacking!

The whole time, Jannie just assumed that they were stay in position because they held the weather gauge; the optimum point for sphere of influence. With the IVY Fleet sulking behind Vegna like a celestial shield, they were hampered in what they could do, having to go around a moon in order to engage while the Geth could see anything coming their way. Any attempt at striking at the Fleet would have the ninety-eight remaining vessels converging on the threat and finishing the job. The Geth could conduct their operations with little worry or interference from the Fourth because they had been soundly beaten, if not destroyed. They ruled the battlespace, and Jannie had been figuring that the Geth would be content with that victory.

But then she remembered the Dig Site of Therum.

Back in the Prothean Dig Site, when Jannie and her team had been leading a rescue operation to keep Doctor Liara T'soni from their clutches and rescue Sara Ryder, they had encountered a Geth Alpha Prime unit, standing head and shoulders taller than its Geth brethren. Wrex had charged in when one of the Pilgrims (and Shepard couldn't remember which one who said it, but probably Niki'Raan) had identified it as a command and control unit, picking up the three meter platform and snapping it over his knee.

But the coup d'grace had been when Urdnot Wrex had put a Graal round through its main processing core.

All the other Geth had stopped!

"Son of a bitch!" Captain Jane Shepard realized what was actually happen. Yes, the Geth were in a holding pattern, holding the 'high ground', so to speak. With their strength in numbers, they could press that advantage. Yet any Naval Commander worth their salt would never let an enemy force have time to repair and refit, and would have moved in on the kill. Leaving even a partial force unchecked was just retarded. And the Geth weren't retarded.

They were afraid.

When the big game hunter had 'killed' that Geth Alpha Prime unit, there had been dozens of Geth hardware platforms still functional. Jannie had faced a Prime unit on the spaceport of Constant, Eden Prime, the three-meter monstrosity having taken position in the back of the Geth formation to fire at herself, First Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko, and Staff Sergeant Ashley Williams with a heavy-bore medium machine gun that seemed to never need a cooldown time, with long bursts of fire intermittently interrupted with only a second-or-two break in between. Jannie had her team destroy the smaller Trooper, Hunter, and Destroyer units before tackling the Prime in what seemed to be a forever gun battle with its ridiculously-overclocked shields and heavy-armored skin plates. It had been the last unit they had destroyed on the spaceport. Yet when Wrex had lifted up the unit and snapped it in half over his knee on Therum, there still had been most of its forces available when he had put a super-heavy spiked slug through its main processor, effectively killing it. The Prime had been in the back of the formation in relation to Sara's position, and thus had been near the front of her own. The Geth had used what was a rather standard military formation of keeping its 'Officer-in-Charge' in the back for maximum protection, but had suffered a classic pincer attack, and had been assaulted at the rear.

The Geth Alpha Prime unit had really been a mobile server armed with a machine gun and armored to protect what it really was.

An uplink.

The Geth Dreadnought is the same exact thing, the Captain realized as she looked at the Geth Fleet formation.

"They're mortal." Shepard said out loud.

It had been around three hundred years since the Morning War; when the robotic servant race of the Quarians had lead an uprising against their creators. The Geth hadn't been the first Artificial Intelligence to turn on its progenitors, nor were they the first machines to gain sentience. What made the incident different was the fact that there were so many of them, literally millions upon millions of units serving the Quarians in almost ever aspect of their society; from nannies to political advisers. They filled nearly every role there was for the Quarians, tasked with menial labor that was risk-inducing, employed towards some of the more mundane tasks that a person of a space-faring species might scoff at, essentially filling in at the positions one might considered Lower Class or Caste while the Quarians enjoyed an increasingly-more decadent lifestyle as their creations suffused their way of life. There had been Geth farmers, Geth teachers, Geth food servers, Geth greeters, and even Geth who were tasked with the care and upkeep of pets and children. During those days, it was impossible to see a Quarian without a Geth, the servitor with its Master, carrying about in whatever task the Rannochian had it performing.

Then the Morning War occurred.

There were fragments of what was known as 'the Event'; the moment creation stood against creator. Unlike the Batarian Hegemony and its rather-constant unrest and occasional Lower-Caste or Undesirable-Class (meaning the fettered) physical uprising or rebellion, the Geth were literally everywhere in the Rannochian Monarchy, employed in positions both great and small. His Imperial Majesty Himself, Kel III Turroh, had several Geth advisers pertaining to economics, politics, interspecies diplomacy, and even as a secretary. When the Geth, a Hive Intelligence with a massive mega-server situated in the capital city of Alerai meant to constantly update its hardware platform connections, linking every Geth together to create a Massively Mega-Intelligence Entity, became self-aware, the war was practically over within the first several minutes. No one knew what set the Geth off, to decide to violently overthrow their creators, but it had been done in the largest unilateral first strike in the history of the galaxy. Literally every Geth on Rannoch began attacking Quarians indiscriminately; young and old, male and female, rich and poor. There had been twelve billion Quarians living in the Hall of Walled Gardens (technically Rannoch's official name) to the one hundred million Geth platforms. Yet ninety-five percent of the Quarian race had never been trained at fighting, and were unarmed as well. An organic person trying to fight off a hardware platform with the taste of murder generally did not end well for the flesh-and-blood.

It was said that the Morning War lasted less than a Rannochian day as the Quarian race fled their Homeworld, their hearts and souls shattered with tears enough to fill an ocean over the wake of billions dead in the bloodiest day in galactic history.

The remnants of the Quarian race had escaped the planetary massacre aboard whatever space-faring vessels they could gut the Geth Uplink nodules out of, the Rannochian Imperial Navy having thankfully been one hundred percent organic (evidently, some Quarian muckity-muck Admiral had disdained the thought of being protected by robots, and had inadvertently saved the Quarian race due to his racism) as they led what would later be known as the Migrant Fleet from Rannoch before the Geth could take over the planetary defenses and start blasting vessels with planet-to-space laser artillery. One by one, the Geth took over every Quarian colony in the Perseus Veil, and within the week, the Quarians became the vagabonds of the Milky Way. Lord Gaulis Varis, the Imperial Ambassador to Thessia, had pleaded to the Council of Law and the Chamber of Governance for intervention for his people, the last known survivor of the Rannochian nobility due to the fact that the Asari Matriarchy had (in no uncertain terms) declared that the Ambassador and his family would not have Geth on their planet, the rest (including the King and his family) having been murdered by their servants within the first minutes of the Morning War. No amount of begging from Ambassador Gaulis Varis would sway the seven members of the Chambers or the three members of the Council as they wrote off the entirety of the Quarian race, exiling every single Son and Daughter of Rannoch out of Council Space.

As for the Geth? The Councilmembers and the Chamberlains voted to monitor and dissuaded the thought of action.

For three centuries, the Geth had been left alone in the Perseus Veil. Uncontested.

Oh, there had been a million fools that had tried, of course. Mercs, salvagers, treasure-seekers, Pilgrims, scavengers… the bounty of an entire species laid await behind the doors of the Perseus Veil, begging to be unlocked, yet with a very murderous gatekeeper at that door. Every year, there was some fool who was under the distinct impression that he had somehow out-thought everyone else that had tried and failed (and died), and gunned for Quarian Space with the dreams of riches in his eyes and Geth Naval fire in his scanners. But no serious effort had ever gone into reclaiming Rannoch or her daughter colonies; the Quarians were too few and too weak, and no one wanted to piss of a synthetic species that could literally arm everything and send it to obliterate the offender in question.

They were omnipotent. They were omnipresent. They were immortal.

The Quarians had inadvertently created a Deus Ex Machina.

God from the Machine.

"They're mortal."

Lieutenant Commander Charles Pressley looked over from his station in the Pulpit of the CIC of the SSV Kilimanjaro to the Admiral's Station, where stood Captain Jane Shepard, armored in her HMWA MasterGear SPECTRE Mk. IV Armor, her words vox'ing over. He had been working on the Executive Officers' Suite, the terminal having been replaced by a Electricians' Mate, and he was manning more than his fare share of the burden of the understaffed Kili. The Dreadnought had been his home for three years, serving as the Red Team Navigator, the White Team Gunnery Chief, and even as the Tactical Officer. For three years, he called this ship home, and none finer did he have. Over three thousand souls served the mast of the Mighty Kili, walked its decks and manned its positions. For three years, he had lived and served aboard one of the finest ships ever built by Human hands, to protect and defend Mankind and its many homes.

To see it in such a state was heart-breaking.

"Ma'am?" Jane Catherine Shepard was an intelligent woman, and much more than that she was an out-of-the-box thinker. N's were trained to be unconventional and unpredictable, but the Lion of Elysium exemplified that by crafting her own armor modifications and even her own weapons, forging herself into becoming a titan on the battlefield. Charles had been on the ground during the recovery of Elysium, Second Fleet dispatched to harry pirate forces that had attacked the colony, seeking to net Humans for sapient trafficking. He remembered the destruction wrought by those who were Separatists and Hegemonists, plussing heir forces with pirate bands, mercs, and anyone else wishing to make a profit off of misery and woe. Buildings had been shot and damaged, and the streets littered with wreckage. But the worst was the sight of the people, men and women holding one another as they wept at the loss of loved ones, those bereaved and those bereft. He had never told Jane, but he had actually been in Illyeria General where she had recovered after her impromptu intervention by Sara Elaine Ryder. He had actually met the thirteen year old, remembering the many people in that hall and their family members already calling her what Humanity later knew her as; the Angel of Illyeria. It had been a terrible day, but it wasn't without its lights of hope for the future. On that day, Charles Kenneth Pressley met a Lion and an Angel.

"Charles… they're stalling for time." The Council Agent spoke out loud to the man who stood diagonally from her, only a meter away. "When we took down the Geth Alpha Prime units down in Therum, the rest of them shuttered up because the Alpha Prime unit was the MC; the master coordinator. Likely, it has something like an LCARS as well as a server hub inside of it. When we took out the Prime, we took out the hub."

"And a Geth Dreadnought would represent the same thing, but for a Fleet." Now he understood Jane's line of thinking. It made perfect sense in a computer's viewpoint. One could have hundreds of computers in an office building, separate Stand Alone Complexes with each employee diligently working upon their tasks. Yet at the end of the day, the work had to get compiled together, someone had to tell the employees what to do so no one was double-tagging a task or missing one completely. The Dreadnought served as that voice; the command module. Without it, the other Geth vessels were likely lacking in coordination. Oh, they could probably fight back, but at a less efficient rate. And there was the thing about the Hive Intelligence, too; the Geth were smarter when there were more connected. More processing power meant better efficiency.

Jane didn't just take out a Dreadnought; she put a bullet in the Geth brain! All that was left was the still-functional body.

"Harbeck, has the special delivery been sent?" The Lion asked Ensign Jeff Harbeck, the surviving pilot of the SSV Francis Drake standing at the Combat Action Patrol terminal as well as the Tactical one.

"Commander Vanderloo reports that the first MFOAB has been unloaded, and the second will be finished within the next minute, Commodore." The Trident pilot replied, consulting his terminal. While the Normandy had used its singular Multi-Fusion Objective Acquisition Battery against the Geth Dreadnought with impressive results, the Kilimanjaro had two for use, either to off-load into another vessel to use, or to use it itself. Jane had wisely decided to use the Normandy's stealth once more to good effect by delivering both MFOABs to the Geth Fleet to further reduce the opposition.

"Good. As soon as package has delivered, tell him to cast off and sneak around behind the Geth." Kili Actual replied, sending her orders. Pressley nodded in acknowledgment as he typed in the order and relayed it to the Normandy, the receipt acknowledged by Lieutenant (junior grade) Vanessa Steele. His heart warbled at little at the memory of hearing her proposing to the SSV Ypres' Gunnery Chief, an Ensign Novalee 'Nova' Reid, both women knowing how close Nova came to dying during the attack on the Fourth. He wished them well, and then went back on task. "Charles? I have something ridiculous in mind."

"Of course." It really shouldn't have been a surprise at all, considering someone went and put an N-Sailor at the Conn. Rear Admiral (Lower Half) David Anderson had been rather unique himself when he had captained the Normandy, and bless his heart for that when it came time to put missile-to-vessel into the Geth over Eden Prime.

"I want to fire the main cannon and hit the Geth Fleet.

"From right here."

Everyone at the Pulpit looked up from their stations to look at Commodore Shepard. Fortunately for them, Pressley knew what she was talking about.

"You want to curve a Dreadnought's main fire around either Vegna or Feros." Shepard had some self-made contraption that she had hand-built to curve a round and strike out at targets unseen. She wanted to do the same with the Kili. "We won't get anywhere near the arc you'd get with your Saber." Pressley replied, looking at the holographic map that displayed Feros, Vegna, the four LaGrange Points, and both Fleets, pondering. "We can get a shallow curve, this is true. At best, we might get a few degree arc to where we can fire from behind cover." Charles realized that was exactly what Jane wanted; to engage the enemy while under cover… in space. Unconventional, indeed. It would buy the Fleet time to repair their battered vessels while hitting the Geth with a suckerpunch. Well, it wouldn't be like the Geth would see it coming. He began inputting some of the factors into a math app, calculating the distance from the Fourth Fleet to the Geth Fleet (a percent of an AU), and the gravity well of Feros (a whopping nine meters per second squared, just a shade under Earths'). The Kili could fire its spinally-mounted main cannon at over five thousand meters per second, and the Geth were at just around one million, five hundred thousand meters away.

Time to target? Three hundred and eighteen seconds; just over five and a quarter minutes until impact.

"We'll need to adjust position." The Lieutenant Commander advised as he plotted the protected arc curve in reverse, mapping it from the Geth Fleet and developing several that led back to optimal positions for the Kili to engage. Firing at an enemy at one percent AU was generally the 'maximum' range of engagement, vessels usually being able to see the bloom of thermal that signified weapons discharge and having plenty of time to maneuver. Yet firing from 'behind' a planet? No, likely the Geth wouldn't see it. It would be a shot in the dark, figuratively and literally. "Anything you wish to target specifically?"

"They've got two Heavy Cruiser-Classes. Those I'll leave for the Normandy." The Lion replied, looking at the Geth Fleet composition where two Heavy Cruisers sat near the middle of the formation; obviously what remained of the Geth heavy-hitters. "Relay to Mark that I want him to fly into position Rimward of the Geth Fleet, and target those Cruisers' thrusters with the MFOABs. They're going to nuke those fuckers back to the Analog Age, and then we're going to clean up the mess."

"I'll relay to Mark the plan and the timeline." The Lieutenant Commander informed her, already typing away at what the Lion wanted to do. The plan was… well, it was certainly an N's plan, wasn't it? To hit the Geth twice over with a silent first strike and then use the confusion and radiation that would affect the sensors of the Geth Fleet to suckerpunch as many Geth warships as possible? That was exactly what was needed for the remaining ninety-five enemy ships. "Mark relays that the last MFOAB is unloaded, and that the Normandy is underway. ETA is one and a half minutes to Geth position."

"Good, get us into ours. I want to target the Light Cruisers." Pressley had already sent the firing solutions to Senior Chief Rodriguez, whom he could tell was grinning ear-to-ear in his helmet. Like everyone else in the Fourth Fleet, Raul had lost friends and comrades to the Geth, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with a little payback. Or a lot.

"Helm, get us into position." The Lieutenant Commander ordered, sending the spacial coordinates, direction, and declination needed for their shadow strike. The position was still where the planet Feros would hide them from line-of-sight, so thus any shots fired would likely be hidden by the planet, LADAR working off the principal of light beams and laser-links. Oh, he didn't doubt there was some Geth buoy keeping an eye on them, but the Geth would probably wonder why the Kili was firing at a direction that wasn't them from around a planet and so far away.

Of course, by the time they figured it out, the Normandy would have struck anyhow, rendering the exercise obsolete.

The Kili and its two hundred and thirty-four megagram mass shifted slightly as the Mighty Kili's flight crew moved the ship into position with a slow burn of its main thrusters, the large vessel slightly dragging in the gravity of Vegna and Feros, the common sounds of groaning metal and stressed joints a little louder because of it as well as the damage the Dreadnought took. Charles listened with an expert ear at the sounds, hearing the groans and feeling the cavatations, looking to Jane and nodding once; despite it all, the ship was doing well as it took a minute to get into the proper position, facing the right direction, and then angling the vessel into the proper axis for fire.

"Helm reports we are in position." Pressley reported, checking his firing solution once more, and saw that the Kili was spot on. A shot fired would hit a Light Cruiser near the center of the Geth formation; Charles wanted to sow just a little more confusion and disbelief amongst the Geth when the strike came. Oh, it was probably a moot point for a synthetic race that could do trillions of calculations per second, but even a percentage of a second devoted to shock and query: what the fuck just happened? was more than enough for him. The Geth tried to kill the Fourth.

They were going to kill them right back.

"Tactical reports all systems as green as we're going to be." Ensign Jeff Harbeck announced, looking at his terminal and the status of the Kili.

"Engineering reports main cannon is at one hundred percent, primed and ready." Petty Officer (Third Class) Aubrey van de Mare declared from her own position.

"Fleet at standby, connectivity at one hundred percent." First Lieutenant Matthew Dawson relayed.

"Gunnery and ECM ready to fire and defend." The Senior Chief replied, the excitement in his voice bleeding through his vox. There was a healthy dose of vindictiveness in it; good man.

"The Normandy reports being in position in full stealth, unobserved and ready to fire. Awaiting orders, Commodore." Charles told his superior officer, looking to Jane Shepard, the Lion of Elysium and Humanity's First SPECTRE, thanking the Lord for the opportunity to be right here, right now, when Man needed him most. He wasn't at all ashamed to be recording all of this on as many different sensor readings and media sources as he could. He was going to play back this moment with a smile.

"Gunnery Chief? Want to know how it felt when I pressed a pistol to the fringe of Elanos Haliat and blew his brains out?" The Lion asked her Gunnery Chief, looking to the Senior Chief.

"Pull the trigger and find out."

"Aye aye, ma'am!" Senior Chief Raul Rodriguez replied heartily as he nodded once, and Charles could practically taste the mans' pride exploding from within. This would be a moment Raul would never forget for he rest of his days; sniping a Geth Fleet from behind a planet like a Marine Sharpshooter. "Repensum est canicula, motherfuckers." The Gunnery Chief declared, stating in Latin that payback was a bitch.

And fired.

Author's Note: Who's excited? I know I am!

The Wyominix-Class Turian Dreadnought is named after the longest wooden sailing vessel ever built and deployed, the USS Wyoming; a 140m/450ft monstrosity whose 14 year existence ended due to heavy seas with a loss of all hands. The length of the ship caused it to twist, and the hold had to be constantly pumped out. There is something very wrong with this idea.

There is little canon information about the various Naval vessels in Mass Effect. The Normandy stands at 155m long, while the Everest-Class is at 777m (the Kili-Class at 700m). There are no named Destroyers (thus I named them after warriors), Corvettes are my own advent (and named after vehicles, mostly automobiles), and the personnel manning the vessel aren't exactly put out (the official Normandy page on the Mass Effect Wikia lists 50 people; the deaths of the attack, several positions, and named crew members. I've always envisioned about 90-100 personnel for the Normandy, and plopped out a simplified table of ships, the fleets, and some capabilities. When canon could be used, I used it (such as the force of the Mighty Kili's main gun is canon; size, force, and tonnage). Everything else I've likened to the United States Navy, using those wonderful vessels, upgrading them and futurizing them, and generally multiplying them by about 2 to 3 for size. As a reference, the Gerald R. Ford-Class Aircraft Carrier (the CVN-78 is the largest warship afloat today) is 100,000 American Tons, is 337m long, costs $12.7 billion(!), has 25 decks, 75 aircraft, travels at 30 knots (56kph/35mph), and compliments 2,600. That is a fucking SHIP!

The SR-1 refers to the fact that the Normandy is a Stealth Reconnaissance vessel; a space submarine. For the Kili, I went with the non-nuclear Aircraft Carrier designation (CV standing for Carrier Vessel) and made it into Dreadnought Vessel (Armored), where as the DV-1 through DV-3 (the Everest-Class) don't have the 'Armored' designation. Carriers are CV's, Cruisers are CS (for Combat Ship), Destroyers are DS (for Destroyer Ship), Frigates are LS (for Littoral Ship), and Corvettes are SS (for Shore Ship). In modern navies, there can be anywhere from two to five classes of vessels, some old-school pre-gens, while others serving a different functionality (there are several classes of Destroyers in the American Navy). Here, I'll keep it more stream-lined so I won't confuse people, and keep it to two Classes per rate minus the Frigate, in which there will be three (the Normandy being the exception over the Missile Frigate (LSM) and the Patrol Frigate (LSP)).

Canon states that the Normandy's CIC was more Turian-aligned, where the Captain could oversee the majority of the bridge, where as in Alliance ships, the Captain was more in the middle. For reference, I used the concept of the Battleship Galactica to build the Kili's Bridge and CIC, a circular room where Ops surrounds the CIC for flow of information, with the Helm at the fore. Canon supports the idea, as the Normandy was designed where the Captain could overlook his subordinates unlike a Human vessel.

I Shall Return - US Army General (5-Star) Douglas MacArthur. Which he did in the landing of Inchon for the Korean war of 1950.

Jannie gets to smack out my fav quote from ME1; telling Sovereign how you really feel.

Commodore is a rank for a small fleet, a flotilla, or a force of a few ships in concert. A Captain is in charge of one ship, while a Commodore is in charge of a few to several, while an Admiral is in charge of a Fleet. Don't stand on me for this; I didn't paddle for a living in the US Military. But Commodore is a real rank, and is in between Captain and Admiral in the British Navy, and in some instances the American Navy (usually a command position on land, such as the United States Naval Academy's Commanding Officer being a Commodore). And actually… Commodore Jane Shepard has a terrible ring to it!

I touch upon the Morning War. Really, it's pretty much in line with the history of SkyNet from Terminator 2: Judgment Day, where Earth loses in a singular day from a violent computer overthrow. I'm trying to imagine my Samsung plotting my demise. I think I mentioned that there was never a Jon'Konnor vas Rannoch for the Quarians as a joke earlier.

LC Charles Pressley comments about the gravity of Feros being at a whopping 9m/s2. Earth is rated at 32ft/s2 or 9.8m/s2. This would give Feros approximately 90% Earth's gravity force, and likely one would hardly feel the difference.

I'm curving a bullet… again. I used this in Fall of the House of Therum, III, Jannie manufacturing the one-trick pony from WANTED with tech. This was the reference I made in the beginning disclaimer at the beginning of the chapter.

Repensum Est Canicula - This is, in fact, Latin for "Payback is a bitch". While I've known this quote for years (I don't know who started it), it's been used in more than a few works, to include LogicalPremise's Of Sheep And Battle Chicken and its sequels, And Then There Were None and That Which Cannot Die. In the Premise'Verse, this quote is the battlecry of the Arcturus Marines and one of the Fleets.