Chapter 7

War endures. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.

— Blood Meridian

March 31st, 2216

Had it really been three days, only?

For Jillian Sampson, it felt like it had been three years, since she'd been - almost literally - thrown headfirst into her newest of occupations. She'd been a slave - a word that she'd only ever paid attention to during her history classes on Eden - for only three days, and yet she'd already gained a myriad of scars from her new master. Whenever she didn't clean something right, that was a lashing. Whenever she didn't cook the god awful Batarian Cuisine to an exact temperature, that was a lashing. If she slept even a second after 3:30 in the morning, that was ten lashings; and if even the thought of disobeying or showing up a moment late to her Master's (Or his several children and his eight wives.) orders, that was twenty.

Sampson's only respite came in the form of another slave, but this one wasn't a Human, but rather, an Asari, who had apparently been a slave of this family for generations, she said she'd lost count after three hundred years of servitude. Sampson had felt really sorry for the Asari, she'd been a slave for thee hundred years, and she was complaining about three days. The Asari - Saira, was her name - had been great at helping her adapt to the Slave's life, and teaching her how to do, whatever her Master's demanded of her.

Sampson's mind unconsciously found itself going back to when the language barrier between Saira and herself had been overcome. When the Master had gotten beyond frustrated that Saira couldn't properly convey to the Human on how to cook Batarian food, he'd - after an hour's whipping, mind - updated the Asari's translator so the two could understand each other. Jillian had been amazed when Saira told her of the life she could expect, now that she was her master's property. Saira had told Jillian that, given a few decades of service with few mishaps, the chance existed that she may get her bomb-collar removed, like she had a century earlier. Jillian couldn't help but be bewildered at how indoctrinated Saira was, as opposed to the Human's anger at her position and her passive-aggressive rebellion against her masters, Saira was one hundred percent dedicated to what she did.

It amazed Sampson, just how effective the Batarians were at their mind games, because she hadn't been able to get anything rebellious out of her Asari companion. However, she had gotten a reaction the night previous, when Saira had been as captivated as a wide-eyed child, when the Human spent their entire sleep-cycle explaining to Saira what Humans, and the Systems Alliance was. At the mention of how the Alliance had defeated the Turians, just over a decade ago, during the Second Contact War, Saira's eyes had, temporarily, brightened at the prospect of freedom, however, reality hit Saira like a semi-truck and the light in her eyes dulled as her mind went to more important things, such as warning the Human that if they stayed up any later, they would not be able to complete their sleep-cycle and still function acceptably the next day. The words hit Sampson hard, because the light she'd seen in Saira's eyes had been filled with a brief flicker of hope, so in the end Jillian lied to Saira, hoping to see the light again.

"Just you wait... Saira." Jillian had told her, before she curled up onto her sheetless mat, high up in the attic. "The Alliance will come, they will save us." She said, though she barely believed it herself.

"That is nice..." Saira had responded, "perhaps the masters will allow me to make them some dinsa."

Jillian couldn't get Saira's words out of her head the entire day, even now, as she was on her hands and knees, viciously scrubbing what passed as the Batarian version of a stove, for the eighth time that day.

"Human!" She heard her master's deep voice bellow, "here!" The one-word command was all it took to inspire Jillian to get to her feet and rush out of the kitchen.

Outside she was greeted by the brown grass and unhealthy lawn, the sky above them was a dingy blue, lacking the life of any Human colony. The Master, impatiently, ordered Jillian to him. It was as he was giving Sampson her newest set of orders that she noticed an odd stillness in the air. She couldn't help but let her eyes drift to the city in the distance, the ugly picture ripping straight through the planet's environment, seeming to poison the very air around it.

The Master's fist slammed into Jillian's lower stomach, "you look at me when I -" He was silenced by an ear-piercing whistling noise coming from the north.

The Master whipped around as Jillian, doubled over in pain, looked up and saw what the Master was looking for, before he saw it. There were three flaming white streaks screaming through the air, all seeming to converge on the same target. Just when the Master found what he was looking for, did the Rods from God slam into their target. The building they hit seemed to explode from the inside out, as dust and debris shot out of its windows like bullets from a gun. In seconds the building finally lost its battle against the space weaponry and began to fall to the ground.

A wide-eyed Human slave couldn't stifle her gasp as she recognized what she'd just seen. Rods from God were a uniquely Alliance weapon, because the Alliance wasn't bound by the Citadel's version of the Geneva Convention, so they could still use space-based weapons against planets; specifically barred by the Citadel was Garden Worlds, or worlds that could support known life. Their presence here could only mean one thing, said idea was enforced when Sampson looked up and saw the sky being lit ablaze as hundreds - if not, thousands-of meteor-like objects were hurtling through the air, and above them came the falling, flaming wreckages of Batarian ships.

"Oh… My… God!" Said Sampson, simply not believing what her dark brown eyes were showing her.

The Alliance was here.

They hadn't abandoned them.

They were safe!

A moment after the master snapped out of it, her 'owner' looked to his slave and saw the hope the meteors and destroyed ships had brought, and did not like the way it looked. So he activated his Omni-tool, and sent an overload flying towards Jillian, the overload sent Jillian to the ground, convulsing as it would if it were a taser.

"Don't you remember what you were told?!" He demanded, as he removed a hand cannon, "you will never, ever again… Be free!" He said, as he walked towards them and aimed the gun.

He was about to pull the trigger, when the ground shook violently. The Batarian whipped around, in time to see five more tungsten rods, shot from the Alliance satellites that had been launched into orbit, by the ships that were currently isolating the planet from the galaxy around it. The Rods from God slammed into the ground, and Sampson knew that, because three seconds passed and she hadn't died, they weren't the Tungsten Rods weren't launched at what her father - an Orbital Dropping Death Dealer - had called 'Nuke Speed', meant to be launched at such speeds that when they slam into the ground, they do damage comparable to a low-yield Nuclear Bomb.

Thankfully, she thought, I won't have to worry about that.

The Batarian above her's shoulders were sagging, a Rod from God slammed into another Batarian Skyscraper, and even from this distance, the sounds of the building falling to the ground were deafening.

Move! Kid… She almost heard her father telling her, I spent years telling you what to do in these situations! Now MOVE! 'He' ordered her, in his 'Soldier Voice'.

Jillian snapped out of her trance, and saw the Batarian, who was still very obviously shaken at the 'unforeseen' invasion. She got to her feet as fast as she could, and leapt onto the Batarian's back, one arm locked tight around his throat, the other hand viciously clawing at his four eyes. The Batarian only took a moment to realize what was happening, and roared, as he fought the Human off of him. She wrapped her legs around his waist and tightened her lock around his throat, effectively locking her to him, as she continued to scratch, claw, and beat his eyes and face. Her attempts, eventually, proved to be futile, Batarians were biologically stronger than Humans, at least one and a half times so, so after enough effort, he tossed Jillian from his back, and slammed her onto the ground.

A pistol was produced, and aimed at Jillian's head, "you… Will regret that… Human!" He said, as his finger squeezed the trigger.

His efforts were halted when Jillian swept his legs out from underneath him. Jillian didn't waste a moment in attempting to get back to her feet, but unlike soldiers who could do the same feat in moments, she wasted precious seconds as her previous appointment with the ground caught up with her. She looked at the Master, who was in a similar state as she. She saw, past his wheezing attempts to regain his lost breath, that his grip on his gun was slack. Seizing her chance, Jillian leapt for the gun, and when the master realized it had left his hands, he activated his omni-tool and tried to utilize Jillian's kill-switch. The Human, unfortunately for him, was too fast and ended his attempts with two slugs from the mass accelerator weapon.

Jillian, breathing heavily, fell back on her hands. What registered in her mind wasn't the fact that she'd killed someone - if anyone in the galaxy, this man in particular had to die - but the fact that she now had a genuine chance at escaping to the life she led mere days ago. For several minutes she found herself formulating a plan to escape, but eventually decided that it would be best if she simply improvised it, as the best-laid plans were never so. So, deciding her first step should be to remove her collar, she looked at the master to see if he had some sort of key. What she found was his omni-tool, which she slipped onto her wrist and, after it acclimated to her translator, found - with a glaring bluntness - two buttons on its gelatinous holographic surface: detonate, and disarm.

Tentatively she pressed disarm, and after a loud metallic 'click', she felt the collar drop off of her neck. Words could not properly convey the indescribably gleeful feelings running through Jillian's mind as it registered that her life was hers again, not the whim of a button on the holographic surface of a gadget owned by an overweight Batarian bastard with too many wives.

Now armed with a gun and an omni-tool, Jillian strode back into the house. Thankful that the other masters were out at the store, it took Jillian no time at all to find Saira, who was dutifully folding the mattresses on one of the Master's wive's beds. Saira looked up at Jillian innocently, eyes wide but expression respectfully blank, as if expecting the Human to deliver orders from the master.

Much to the contrary, Jillian spoke bluntly, "Saira, we're going."

"What does the master require?" The centuries-old slave asked, blinking her large green eyes, conveying a sense of raw dedication to her job.

"He doesn't matter now, we need to go." She heard in the distance the sonic-booms that were the telltale signs of fightercraft breaking the sound barrier, Jillian knew that they had to get going immediately, lest they get stuck in a warzone.

"The master... Doesn't matter?" The Asari repeated slowly, "oh, Jillian, please pray he did not hear that!" The ancient being said, her face conveying a horrified look as she brought Jillian into a tight embrace.

Much as Jillian liked the feeling of friendly contact, she pushed herself away from Saira. "No, trust me Saira, we've got to go, we're leaving."

"Did the master say he needed supplies?"

"No, we're going to freedom."

"Were we sold? Did I do something -"

"Saira, you're not listening to me!" Jillian said, raising her hands and speaking clearly, "we, are, escaping!"

The Asari reacted quickly and violently, her hand whipped through the air and impacted with Jillian's face with a loud clap. "Jillian how could you speak in such ways?" Saira demanded, a horrified look etched into her face, "escape is..." She paused, her horrified expression becoming one of intense concern, "where will you go, Human? You cannot truly escape the Master, it is impossible."

Holding her stinging cheek, Jillian briefly considered simply leaving the Asari, but she looked at her for a moment as she thought so. The Asari looked a special kind of pathetic, garbed in what equated to years old leather rags, with the only new piece of clothing being her shoes, though even they were several years old. Jillian knew she couldn't live with herself if she let her stay here, locked in her illusion of a good life.

Slavery isn't a life... Jillian thought, as an idea popped into her head.

"I'm... Sorry... I was thinking aloud." Jillian said slowly, as she carefully chose her next words. "But the... Master told me to tell you that we have to... Go on a trip."

This wiped the concerned expression from Saira's face, as she innocently accepted anything that was told to her at face value, as long as the words 'The Master Said To' preceded it. "Where are we going?"

"He said I couldn't tell you... But you have to follow me." Jillian extended her hand, and added, pleadingly, "please?"

Sergeant Joseph 'Geronimo' Whitley was stuck.

It was embarrassing beyond belief, but the veteran Orbital Dropping Death Dealer was. A Batarian ship had exploded in-atmosphere, a few hundred meters from his drop pod, and the shockwave had sent it veering off course. He was happy that the inertial dampeners hadn't been fried by the Eezo Core's explosion, which acted as an Electro Magnetic Pulse when detonated, or vented after a sufficient charge. The detonation had changed his landing course violently, he was stuck tightly on a building, or, inside a building would be the better term. He was stuck inside a building, with his Orbital Insertion Vehicle's primary exit being blocked, wholesale, by a pile of rubble, and the secondary exit malfunctioning enough that it wouldn't work automatically, and due to the dents in the Pod's armor and casing, it was incredibly hard to maneuver, and thus, next to impossible for Whitley to manually deploy the secondary exit.

He'd heard reports from his squad, they'd seen his landing zone - his shields had saved his Powered Infantry Assault Armor's systems - and were fighting through the sky-scraper sized building that he'd landed in, but it was huge, and despite them working, his squad mates had taken the stairs, due to the fact that rumors of the Council's 'Turtle Elevators' were believed by the squad's second in command.

So, in short, he was stuck. And he couldn't do a thing about it.

"It went over here, Sior! I'm sure of it!" Whitley heard.

Fuck. He thought, as he tried again to create room, so he could turn around and deploy the secondary exit.

"Wait for me, damn you!" Shouted another voice, this one was lighter, but sounded more harsh than the first, Whitley allowed himself a moment to wonder if it was a female Batarian.

"No! Do you know how rare it is to obtain Human Technology? Imagine how much money we can make, after the Hegemony pushes them from our space!" The first voice declared, "here it is! I see it… Haha! It crashed into Sianan's office!" The Batarian laughed.

"Gods… It actually is a Human!" Said the female, "I think I've read of this before… An… Orbital Batallion Storm Trooper!" She said, loudly, Whitley had to suppress a loud retort.

One of the Batarians knocked on the Insertion Vehicle, Whitley froze, "are you alive in there?!" Demanded the female, "we're here to… 'Help' you!" She said, Joseph heard the male snigger, before being silenced by a smack from the female. "Say something, if you can hear us!" She demanded.

Whitley remained silent, "perhaps it died on reentry?" Suggested the male.

"No, you fool, the Storm Troopers are trained to drop from orbit, and their vehicles are designed to protect them!" The female declared, "if he's dead, I'll give you my hand cannon." She said, angrily.

Two Batarians… At least one is armed… Whitley noted.

"I think that's an opening!" Said the male, Whitley assumed that he was pointing to the secondary exit.

Go ahead… Open the god damned thing and make my day! Thought Whitley angrily, as he slowly - and silently - reached for his sidearm, which was magnetically attached to his right thigh. It was his own personal Special Forces Pistol, fully loaded with a sixteen magnum round magazine.

"Well… Okay… You open it… I'll cover you." The female ordered the male, to Whitley's glee.

His fist clenched the SFP, just as he heard the latches hiss on the Insertion Vehicle.

"Gods! This thing is stuck tight!" Shouted the male, as he pulled on the secondary exit.

"Pull harder, you good-for-nothing pile of meat!" Shouted the woman.

The man roared with the effort of pulling the exit open, and finally did so. It sprang open with a loud 'clang!', and Whitley literally leapt into action. He jumped out of the pod - which, to his satisfaction, was actually hanging from an elevated position, giving him an ally in the form of gravity - and his left hand closed around the male's throat. The male's skin was a pale, almost sickly shade of yellow, and his throat was at least one and a half times thicker than a Human's, but Whitley still managed to pin the Batarian to the ground. With his hand crushing the alien's windpipe, effectively keeping the alien neutralized, Whitley whipped out his pistol and aimed it at the female, who pulled the trigger twice - but only received two horrifying 'clicks' in response - before he put two between both sets of her eyes. The magnum rounds cascaded through her head and turned whatever was left of the vaguely cranial shape, into mush. She went down with a sickening 'splat', and just a moment later the male's neck broke with a wet-sounding 'snap'.

Whitley got to his feet and simultaneously checked his motion tracker, and his surroundings. On the former, he saw only himself, and on the latter, he saw the dark gray visage of the office building he'd slammed into. He'd been briefed that several N7 Squads had been inserted using the still-in-development 'Warp Insertion' method of deployment, and had set up at least two dozen EMP Spires, which, when they received a signal from any of the Alliance's many fleets, would activate and unleash a brutal, non-discriminatory Electro Magnetic Pulse all over the planet. Had the N7 Armor, the OD3's PIAA Armor, and essentially any other Alliance Military Device not been EMP Hardened, they too would have been affected by the pulse, but they all were, so they weren't, and they'd given the Alliance an immense advantage: The entire planet was without power, and the only weapons that would work would be the Military's.

Whitley had loved that about the Council's Mass Effect weaponry, they needed power to charge the Element Zero positively, so they could shave off the sand-grain sized metal pellets that would be accelerated by the mass-reducing Element Zero. But, without the power that was required for the Eezo Charge, the weapons were rifle and pistol-shaped paper weights. That was what the Female Batarian had learned in the last half second of her life, before Whitley had ended her with two well placed shots.

"This is 1-1 Actual, broadcasting on all Alliance Channels. Dagger 1-2, sitrep." He called into the radio, as he walked to the Insertion Vehicle.

"Sergeant? Is that you?" Called his second-in-command.

"That's right Corporal." Said Whitley, as he retrieved his assault rifle from the vehicle, and grabbed the few spare magazines that had been tucked away in a corner, only to find two of them broken, and empty of all ammunition. He shook his head and packed the one that made it in his tac-vest, before he chambered a round in his rifle. "Sitrep." He repeated.

"We're on our way up to you now, Sarge!" The Corporal reported, "AI says we've got maybe six floors to go!"

"Take a breather and hold your position, new elements have entered the playing field and I've been released from the OIV." The Sergeant ordered.

And with that, the fatigue that had no doubt been welling up in the corporal showed through, "copy that Sarge, you okay?" He asked.

"Fit as a fiddle. Stay frosty, I'm moving out." Whitley responded, after he entered in the codes for the OIV to self destruct, and then ran as fast as he could to the stairwell. "And cover your heads, OIV's gonna blow… Dagger 1-1 Actual out." He added.

As he thundered down the stairwell, Whitley went over his objectives. He and Dagger Squad had been ordered to strike at the heart of the city, they were to take out the Police Force and anyone who raised a rifle at them, but any non-Batarians, be they combatants or otherwise, were to be taken down non-lethally. So, simply put, the Alliance was here to kill Batarians, and save aliens, be they Salarian, Turian, Human, Quarian, Asari or even Batarian slaves. Whitley - and the Alliance - were quite thankful of the Batarian pride, and their need to degrade their slaves, as the Alliance had learned from their excursions into Batarian Intelligence, that the Hegemony's slaves were all forced to wear iron collars, to mark their status. So the Alliance's job was simple: If they shoot you and they aren't wearing a collar, kill them; but if they shoot you and they are wearing a collar, restrain them.

No collars are bad, Collars are good. Thought Whitley, before the building shook violently when the OIV detonated.

The battle for the Batarian world, Siler's void-space, could not have gone more perfectly, if Admiral Hans Griebun were to be perfectly clear with himself. He was sitting in the CIC of the sixth fleet's flagship, the Sol's Fury, as it hung back with the Dreadnoughts and Frigates, all of whom were firing upon enemy targets from the farthest edges of the system's borders. The Carriers had already made their way into the thick of things with the Destroyers, seeing as how both of their primary roles in naval warfare involved closer combat. Frigates, Dreadnoughts, and Flagships, they were all long-range fighters, as common naval tactics had dictated since the beginning of warfare at sea. Frigates used their advanced numbers to swarm and protect Dreadnoughts and Flagships, and brutalize enemy ships. But their Rail Guns, their main cannons, they were nothing compared to the Dreadnoughts that had done the brunt of the long-range work.

Human Naval weaponry operated on a simple, magnetically accelerated principal. The Humans of the Systems Alliance hadn't evolved next to Element Zero, so when the time came to arm their space ships, they simply couldn't make Mass Accelerator weaponry. So to make up for this, the Humans made Magnetic Accelerator weaponry. The Alliance Navy's Rail Guns were able to launch tungsten slugs, weighing in at around six and a half, to seven meters long, and one and a half meters wide, all weighing in at six hundred twelve tons each, at a minimum of thirty six thousand meters per second. Rail Guns also varied in speed, as ship size increased, Frigates had the lowest speed, at thirty six thousand meters per second, while Destroyers could reach forty one thousand, and Flagships could reach forty six thousand; but Dreadnoughts, such as the ones currently blanketing the Batarian ships in the system, and Orbital Defense Platforms, such as the ones protecting Earth, Valhalla, Eden, and the lone platform above Elysium, they were the unique factor in every naval engagement.

Alliance Dreadnoughts were, in essence, mobile ODP platforms. The Dreadnought could get their much heavier slugs, weighing in at two thousand, six hundred twelve tons, moving at speeds of a current maximum of five percent the speed of light, or nearly fifteen million meters per second. The Orbital Defense Platforms defending Earth - the most advanced, powerful, and up to date ODP platforms in Alliance Space -, on the other hand, could get projectiles moving to approximately ten percent the speed of light, or nearly thirty million meters per second, with energy donated from the antimatter and fusion reactors on the planet below them. By comparison, the most modern, up-to-date, and advanced ship in the Citadel's navy, the 'Destiny Ascension', could fire its projectile at two percent of the speed of light, almost six million meters per second.

The Alliance's Magnetically Accelerated Arsenal was, aside from raw nuclear power, and their Antimatter Particle Weaponry, the single most brutal force Man and Quarian could bring to bear upon their enemies; and while the Destroyers and carriers in the system ahead of them did not have the power and energy of their cousins in the Blank Space behind them, the Flagships and the Dreadnoughts, they were frighteningly powerful in their own rights. The Frigate alone could level a decently sized city with a single, fully charged shot, whereas a Destroyer could scar several miles with its own series of cannons.

So Admiral Griebun smiled wide as he heard reports of fleet-wide Dreadnought fire. In mere seconds, over a hundred enemy ships in the system disappeared off the map. At this rate, Griebun knew, they would not have to even consider using their Antimatter weaponry. A few moments passed before reports came in that Frigate fire joined the dreadnoughts, and seconds after that dozens more enemy ships fell. Griebun soon heard that the Batarians had all but decided to ignore the ships that were far too far out of their range, and instead decided to focus on hitting the Alliance's Carriers and Destroyers.

Griebun, and everyone in the room, knew it was a horrible mistake. Alliance Craft Carriers alone, were game-changers in the Galactic Naval situation. No species out there seemed to understand what the point of a ship was, whose primary weapon were fighter-craft and men. But during the Second Contact War, and the Mercenary Wars, the Humans had silenced the Galaxy by showing them all exactly how effective thousands of fighters, bombers, and shuttle-craft could be, if they were suddenly introduced to the battlefield. The fighters and bombers were more than plentiful enough to simultaneously protect their Carrier ships, and attack the enemy vessels. The fighters conducted intense strafe runs on the enemy ships' main engines, crippling the vessels, while the bombers dropped enormous explosive incendiary devices on the ships, which would quickly overwhelm their shields and destroy them. That, coupled with the thousands of shuttle-craft that could deploy tens of thousands of Alliance Marines, and the thousands of OIV's that could deploy Orbital Dropping Death Dealers, a single, lone Alliance Craft Carrier was a force to be reckoned with. But, of course, the Humans hadn't stopped there, their second big blindside was currently at work, making short work of the idiotic Batarians who were refusing to abandon the system or surrender.

The Alliance's Destroyers were meant to break the rules of organized Naval Warfare. Even when compared to Dreadnoughts and Flagships, both of which had such thick and such powerful armor, and such brutal and deflective energy shields, that even Alliance-Issued Rail Guns had difficulty piercing it, the Destroyer had mighty protective, devastatingly thick, and horrifyingly powerful armor and shields. This was to compliment the Destroyer's main function: Flank, Suppress, and Kill. It came equipped with six broadside Rail Guns, three on each side, which turned to five for each side if the rotateable deck guns could get a shot.

These 'knife fight' tactics put the ship itself at risk, but this was where warp technology came into play, the Destroyer's warp drive was capable of creating four entrance and exit points, simultaneously. Essentially, the ship warped in right next to its target, and tore it apart with conventionally and magnetically accelerated weapons fire, and then warped back to safe, 'conventional' ranges, before the enemy ship could have time to react and counter attack. The Second Contact War, the Rebellion, and most prominently the Mercenary Wars, had raised the issue of Enemy Destroyers, or enemy broadside-weaponry doing the same to the Alliance, but the Alliance had solved this problem blindingly quickly by turning Space against their. Instead of going at the waterless 'sea' with a wet-navy, terrestrial mindset, the Destroyer warped in right underneath the enemy ships, giving it the appearance of being sideways, and underneath the ship, if one looked at it from the enemy's front, but it also gave the Alliance their advantage: No Human, no Quarian, no Turian, no warship, of any kind, could hook weapons onto their ships' bellies, doing so removed the possibility of having to make emergency landings on terra firma.

All of this combined made the Alliance Navy tie with the Citadel Navy in terms of raw power. The Alliance Navy stood tall at over twenty five thousand vessels, far more than the Batarian Navy's fifteen thousand, and three thousand less than the Turian's twenty eight thousand. The Alliance was still outnumbered by the Citadel's combined naval might of fifty two thousand ships, though that number was with every Citadel species, including the client races, which did include the Batarian Hegemony's navy, which was the fourth largest of them all, all contributing their entire navy to the fight. All of the Alliance's naval power had, before this day, been brought to bear in simply defending their borders and their colonies, and attacking their enemies the rebels; but now, almost the entire might of the Human Systems Alliance's naval war machine was being brought to bear upon the Batarian Hegemony. The part that made the Admiral smile widest was that his fleet, the sixth, was the smallest of them all. It had barely six thousand ships. He shuddered to think what would be happening at Heflio, the Batarian world said to have the biggest Human slave population of them all, seeing as how that planet and its system would be under siege by the largest Alliance fleet in history, and in its current existence, the first fleet, which weighed in at over ten thousand, six hundred twelve ships. All six fleets were all assaulting the six Batarian worlds reported to have Human slaves; Griebun noted with a sense of slight irony that there were only six planets reported with Humans upon them, just enough to have one Alliance Fleet assault each one, and still have their more 'special' fleets, those being the ones dedicated to stealth, Tuning Armor, and SIGMA Transport, dedicated to the more 'sensitive' operations, such as paving the way for the ground invasions of the four remaining planets yet to come under Human/Quarian attack.

"Sir!" Reported a crewman, cutting the silence that had permeated the ship for the frighteningly long fifteen minutes. "All ships reporting in, the system's ours!" She called out.

Griebun smiled widely, "Gretel, casualties?"

"We lost six frigates, and two destroyers. A carrier and three more destroyers all report varying degrees of damage, but are still fit for duty. We're already sending out rescue shuttles to look for survivors of the lost ships." Reported the synthetic voice of the ship's AI.

"Good." Griebun said, sitting back with a contented sigh. "The remaining Carriers are clear to enter planetary orbit, and to deploy their marines and OD3 forces. I want battle group Charlie working on freezing the system, and battle groups Alpha, Bravo, Delta, and Echo all moving out into patrol patterns. I want us spread out so any stragglers can be found and dealt with." He ordered, "engineering, you are clear to deploy the DS/C."

Alliance Deep Space/Communications Satellites were, in essence, portable slices of Alliance Territory. They were about as big as a house - but still nowhere near large enough to become an inconvenience on the three and a half kilometer long Alliance Flagship - and they collected any piece of data they could find. Setting one up extended the Alliance's area of influence, made communications far easier, and made scanning unknown systems and planets a breeze. Alliance DS/C's could - and have - find objects as small as a truck, that were in orbit around a planet the size of Earth's star, Sol. They gathered data at blinding speeds - thanks to a collective four AI's working at Artificial Speeds - and in hours could tell you how many planetary objects were in a system, what the projected age of the system's star was, and could give an estimate as to what the orbital pattern of any planets in the Goldilocks Zone was. In addition, it also provided an instant connection to Arcturus Station, the Alliance's capital, so communications could be made, reports filed, and orders received or changed. They were all-in-one satellites, and if they ever were threatened to be captured by an enemy, they could vent a half pound of antimatter, vaporizing the satellite, and if they were lucky, the enemy too.

"Deep Space/Communications Satellite…" A voice from the engineering deck reported, "away. We're already getting scans from the system, I think we're already winning, sir." The engineer chuckled.

This will be a short war, should things continue like this. The Admiral thought, as his eyes scanned over the holographic display in front of him.

"Send in the Marines."