Chapter 8

Mankind has had ten thousand years experience of warfare and if he must fight he has no excuse for not fighting well.

— T.E. Lawrence

April 1st , 2216

"I find it hard to believe, Mister McGraw." The ancient being said, slowly, as she digested what the Human before her said. "Your theory relies upon an event personified... You are taking a rather romanticized, and... Perhaps... Biased, and closed-minded... Approach to this."

Christopher McGraw grinned a lopsid grin as Matriarch Benezia T'Soni spoke to him. "Go on."

"What I mean to say is that it is quite foolish to believe that your entire species' culture and evolution is dictated by a... Deity, so to speak, personifying a romanticized event." She continued, "it would be like saying the Asari evolve on a technological scale, so quickly, because some ancient deity is guiding us to have a proclivity towards it."

"Oh no, that's the Salarians." McGraw rebutted, "you want to look at you people... I'd say you were evolved around sex." He paused a moment, and looked Benezia over. "Yeah." He nodded, "sex."

"I -"

"And the Turians would probably have been evolved from Honor. Unification Wars being an example, Palaven had to defend its honor so it defeated the colonies, and created the Hierarchy we all know and love today." He said, with a shrug. "But you distract me, from my main point."

"That Salarians were guided by a personified -" The blue-skinned woman was cut off by the pale skinned Human.

"And romanticized!" He said, holding up a finger, before using the same hand to make a pass through his unkempt hair.

"And romanticized technology deity. And the Turians were guided by Honor, the Asari by Sex... And Humans by War." The Matriarch made a mental note to pursue McGraw's reasoning behind the 'reason' for Asari evolution. "I cannot help but wonder what makes you think you are right."

"Well, there's a religion out there that worships a seven armed goddess." Chris shrugged, "just because I say I believe it doesn't make me right or wrong."

"Do you believe yourself?" Benezia couldn't help but ask.

"No." Chris said simply, "but it's fun to look at things like that. It puts things into perspective. Remind me to talk to you about the cult of six-one-two, fun story, that."

"You do not believe your own words and yet you still speak them... I was raised by the Regius' ancient philosophies, everything is precious and nothing should be wasted... Words included." She said slowly, as if she were speaking to a child.

"Yeah? Well I was raised by a scientist who didn't believe in god, so you can kind of see why I preach this stuff." Chris deadpanned.

Benezia nodded as she took a sip of wine. She thought of McGraw's words, not spending far too much time trying to make sense of them. One thing she had learned during their frequent luncheons aboard the Citadel was that, alone, Christopher McGraw's words could not make sense. Very little of what the scientist said could make sense on its own, not unless one stuck around for the words that would explain it. One infamous example of this had been when they had been speaking of the similarities among the reproductive cycles of species, and one Salarian/Human couple had accidentally been privy to a point that had begun with the words 'Mammals lay no eggs, they bleed them, preferably once a month and while making any Man's life a living hell.'.

Thinking upon that made Benezia ponder the exact nature of how she'd come to be a part of these lunches. That day they had first met, she had stumbled across him in this very cafe. They had gotten to speaking, and never again, afterwards, had she found herself so intellectually stimulated by a Human. Soon after the two met again, and after a year these lunches had become a bimonthly meeting.

Setting the glass down, Benezia spoke slowly, choosing her words carefully. "I still must comment upon the wisdom - or lack thereof - of believing that a personified event dictates an entire race's advancement." She paused, "it makes little sense."

"Religion never does." McGraw's smile turned to a grin, as his eyes followed the two new C-Sec officers that had entered the café. McGraw chuckled faintly to himself, even in alien territory, his reputation for making things that blew up preceded him, mostly in the form of precautionary law enforcement agents. "Think about it. All throughout our history, our advancements have been dictated by war. War taught us to make sticks into spears so we could war with the animals, to fight for simple survival. War taught us to make steel and leather to fight neighboring tribes and coalitions to protect our lands. War taught us how to make tribes and coalitions, because stronger enemies required unified numbers and peoples to prevail." He explained, "then, War taught us to make technology, when raw numbers weren't doing anything except get legions of us killed, because we had become so good with what we had at that point, that our people were equally matched." His grin was becoming unnerving for the Matriarch at this point, but centuries of experience disallowed her face to betray her inner thoughts. "Then, when our old tactics failed to mesh up with our guns, we made new tactics. War taught us that to continue to survive as we were, we needed better technology. So we made cars, planes radios, computers, nuclear weapons, tanks, ships, missiles." He listed them all off in rapid-fire, as if he'd had it all memorized. "But even then, they proved not enough. War told us, through what we called 'the cold war', that we needed more! We needed to control the stars. But we couldn't do it, at least, not initially, with Men. So we made machines, and those machines were dictated by War to evolve into War Machines, capable of delivering and using the weapons we did, in a more 'expendable' way. After we conquered machine, War taught us that to stay on Earth would prove our undoing, through World War Three."

"The one where you used nuclear weapons upon yourselves?" Benezia clarified.

"The second one." He said, "so War told us that to stay on Earth would prove our undoing. So we sought to conquer Space. But even then, War told us that we could not protect ourselves in Space without Armies. It did that through the Second Contact War. But we didn't find challenge enough in the Turians, we put our Human versus Human mindset upon them, and made energy shields, annihilation weaponry, super soldiers. We brutalized the Turians with these inventions. So War taught us of scare tactics, make a big entry with a scary face, and no one will mess with you." The Human explained, "then -"

"Your Sarailia, mister McGraw." Said the kind Asari waitress, as she laid a plate with a light-blue steak upon it, in front of the Human.

"Oh, thank god!" Chris said heartily, "I've been waiting for this thing, Tira! Steaks don't compare!"

The Asari smiled warmly, "you said that the last time too, sir."

"And I fuckin' meant it last time!" McGraw chuckled, and after she left, he continued his conversation. "Back to what I was saying." He cut into the Asari steak, "then War told us that simply having power won't do much. But our power had grown too great for War to contain, seeing as how we took down a dozen mercenary organizations in about a year." He explained, "So War, as it desperately sought a new lesson to teach us, placed our focus on the only enemy that could actually satiate us, the only enemy that could equal us in ferocity: Ourselves." He took a bite, and with his mouth full, prodded Benezia to continue the conversation, "so now we're fighting Batarians. What do you think War's trying to teach us now?"

Benezia thought for a moment, "to defend your ideals, no matter the enemy?"

McGraw made a buzzing noise with his mouth, "guess again."

Another pause, "to… Keep your promises?"

"Give up?" McGraw smiled, as he swallowed the steak, reveling in its spicy-sweet taste, and juicy texture. "War is trying to teach us something it already has. We are the only opponents that can keep up with ourselves. It's been one damn day, and already we've obliterated one planet's navy, and we're working five other's. Two of the ones in question are the weaker planets, yes, but we're still working on the three strongest, and we're already burning through Batarian defenses on the ground, on the planet we've isolated." He paused, "war is the only reason we've been progressing as we have. It dictates anything and everything we do. Humanity, the Systems Alliance, we cannot function outside of war. The Quarians have already figured out, and you know how bad their soldiers are, coming home."

"No, I did not." This was something few people, Benezia included, actually knew; she'd heard rumors, but the finer aspects of Alliance life were kept within the Alliance.

"We're too much for 'em. Our wars are brutal in ways they haven't seen since their Geth Rebellion, which was literal centuries ago!" And the man wasn't lying, more Quarian soldiers had suffered from Post Traumatic Stress-Disorders in their time in the Alliance, than they had in the entire era of the Migrant Fleet. Some Quarian soldiers had even called even the smallest of Human conflicts 'demonic', and had said that they only knew the definition of 'hell' after experiencing a Human War. Many in the Citadel Council did not believe them, save for the veterans of the Second Contact War, but even then, there were so few Turian survivors of said war, that had seen action against the Humans, that their voice was a small minority at best.

One Quarian in particular, a veteran of the Second Contact War, the Mercenary Wars, and several engagements in the Rebellion, had summed up his entire experience in the Alliance Military with merely a single phrase. "If you want to know peace, you speak to an Asari. If you want to know intelligence, you speak to a Salarian. If you want to know militarism, you speak to a Turian. If you want to know war, to know Hell, and to know all that makes one the exact definition of the other, you speak to one of the warriors of the Human Race."

"I have not heard of these sentiments…" Benezia mentioned.

"That's because the pansies in the Board of Directors want the Galaxy to see Humanity in the greatest light possible. Have you noticed how nearly every Alliance breakthrough is heralded as a Human breakthrough? The only reason Quarians are still on the map is because we made one a Director, but even then, that's not much." McGraw was referring to the Director for Quarian Affairs, Hera'Zight vas Arcturus Station nar Osugnai. She had gained Directorhood and kept it in the months following the Second Contact War, and her opinion certainly held sway over both the Humans in the Board, and the Admirals of the Quarian Admiralty board, but in the end she was seen more as a 'necessary evil' than an equal, by the other directors. "The Directors want to show the Galaxy, falsely, I'll add, but still, they want to show them that we can go from Diplomats to Warriors at the change of a hat, and then from Warriors to Diplomats at the ejection of a magazine." He explained, "but I'm getting off topic. What do you think it's going to give us, because of this war?"

"I could not even guess…" Said the Matriarch, as the Human's smart watch pinged, signaling he had a message.

"Neither can I. And that's what excites me." He smiled widely, "this war, compared to the other ones, is going to be easy. Our boys, and I can state this confidently, will be home in time for Christmas. But easy wars are never, this is just the beginning, there's a storm coming, Matriarch, and the Batarians are only the first step." He said with a grin, before he went to check his watch. His grin was wiped away when he saw the sender, it was not his friend Harper, informing him of operation VANGUARD 01, nor was it an informant from his cell. In fact, the name of the sender alone was what caused McGraw to get to his feet abruptly. "I'll have to cut this short. Business." He said, hurriedly, as he whipped down with his cybernetic arm, and grabbed his messenger's bag.

"What?" Benezia looked up, slightly alarmed, "why, if I may ask?" She looked at him curiously, already considering ways to extend his presence.

"Important stuff, lady." McGraw said quickly, slapping a credit chit on the table.

"But, McGraw, if you leave -" Again she was interrupted.

"Can't stay, I've got to go, no -"

"Have you considered why exactly the Batarians targeted the Alliance?"

McGraw paused, he had just turned to face away from her, his cybernetic hand hadn't yet let go of the seat he'd pushed back against the table. He looked back at Benezia for a moment, his one visible eye wide, the pupil dilated. Benezia silently swore to herself that the emotion she was seeing in McGraw's eye was that of panic, fear, and perhaps determination, but her gaze was stolen by the sound of metal grinding upon metal. Startled, she looked down and saw that McGraw's literally steel grip had dented the chair he'd been holding onto. She looked back at McGraw, whose eyes looked less urgent, as if he'd figured out in that split second that whatever had put fear in him was unfounded.

"Yes. I have. And you would not believe what I came up with to explain it." He stated simply, his voice holding not hints, but an outright tone of seriousness the likes of which she had never heard of before. He looked down at the dent his hand made in the chair and released it, staring at the dent for a moment before he looked back to the Asari. "Now if you'll excuse me, Matriarch, I'll be off." The sudden urgency in his voice was lost upon her.

Quickly, the infamous Human made his way to the nearest Rapid Transit hub. The message was too sensitive to open on the Citadel, so after he took the fifteen minutes to travel to his ship, and program it with a junk-warp destination, he sat down gingerly in his quarters, feeling the ship catapult itself forward and over the wards, at speeds so blinding that few could actually dedicate the mind-power to quantifying how fast he was going.

The message's sender was a simple, MLaws09. McGraw knew that the sender in question only had eight Alliance Mail accounts, and one private one she had set up a month after her trip to Sparta. The only reason McGraw knew about it was because of his informant in the Lawson household, who had gained the trust of the young teen.

The message was short, and simple.

I know what I need to.

Get me connected to Sparta. You know which one I'm looking for.

Get me an opportunity.

I want in.

On my terms.

- Miranda Lawson.

Chris smiled, it had taken her six months longer than he had expected, but she pulled through in the end, just like he'd planned.

He logged into his Cerberus account. Gladys, Harper, and over a dozen advanced Artificial Intelligences had worked to make this email account the most secure in Alliance Space. His response was less short, but simple as well.

You make a date, I'll bring the cake.

If we're thinking of the same guy, it'll take me at least 2.16 hours to get you that connection.

An opportunity will present itself, you're actually right on time for a perfect one, provided you get the information from your Friend.

You'll have to open the door, if you really want to get in.

Your terms are the only ones you can live by, remember that.

- The Intuitive Man.

"Gladys, cut-warp."

"But Chris, we have not reached -"

"Gladys…"

"Cutting Warp."

A few moments later the ship decelerated as it reentered real space. McGraw sent the message a few moments later. One advantage of the Warp was that it could make active scans of Real Space, as the ship flew through Warp Space. Warp Physics was still a largely untested branch of science, because the Warp Dimension was an incredible unknown to the Human Race. They knew not exactly how the Warp functioned as it did, how it sped up ships to blindingly faster than light speeds, or why they could still make active scans of the galaxy and solar systems around them, as they were traveling through what was essentially another dimension entirely. They did know, however, that going through Warp Space cut off communications entirely. The Alliance Advancement Task Force had tried setting up DS/C Satellites in the Warp, but they had never heard from them again, even over a century after deploying them. The Warp, despite being the Human Race's biggest advantage, was also the Humans' biggest weakness, due to the simple fact that they knew barely anything about it.

McGraw was shaken from his thoughts with a new message.

I've got a plan, I just need help. I don't trust anyone in this house, and before you ask like I know you are going to, the only reason I've contacted you is because someone gave me the tools - shall we say - to find the path I had to follow.

…

And because you can get me the connection to Sparta I couldn't get otherwise.

McGraw got the hint. Before he attached a complex series of files and programs to the message, he simply wrote:

Good for one time only.

If you convince him, he'll work out the second time.

On the Batarian world, Siler, Jillian Sampson couldn't have been more terrified if a SIGMA Operative had shown up at her home with a mean look, and a license to kill. Unconscious, a few feet behind her, lied Saira, her Asari friend. The two had taken refuge in an abandoned building, thinking it a good place for a night's rest.

Oh, how Jillian regretted this decision, now that morning had hit.

Overnight, the Alliance had decided it was time to make a huge, violent push for more territory on Siler. The Batarian forces had caught wind of this, and had set up camp a mere dozen blocks to the abandoned, evacuated district's west. The Admiral in charge of the assault must have wanted to go for shock-and-awe, because Jillian had been awoken by the text-book definition of an Alliance stacked invasion: First came the OD3's, then the Marines, then the Army, which - according to the radio waves Jillian had hacked her way in to, thanks to the insipid drills and lessons her father had given her, that she had never been so thankful for - had arrived just that morning, bringing literally hundreds of thousands, if not just over a million, fresh-faced Human and Quarian warriors, ready to fight. That, bolstered by the Marine, OD3, and rumored SIGMA and N7 reinforcements that had come with orbital/spatial supremacy, meant the Batarian Military on Siler was in for a rude awakening.

Now, it was barely past sunrise, and the war for this small section for Siler was in full swing. Jillian's father was a Death Dealer, she knew how hard he fought for simple things, like who she dated, or the right for a morning shower, or the keys to a car, so she knew that the OD3's, the Marines, and the Soldiers would all be fighting to claim every single inch of this planet. Her preconceptions were proven everything but wrong simply by looking at the battlefield two stories below her.

There were, effectively, two lines and a no-man's land, that was shrinking in size by the minute. The western line consisted of Batarians and Slave-Soldiers, they fought with Mass Accelerated weaponry and their infantry fighting vehicles. The IFV's launched hyper-accelerated slugs at the Human offensive line, but Human MSG's - Massive Shield Generators - took the brunt of the blows, before they would shatter, and whatever force was left hit only slightly worse than a brick thrown by a professional MLB player. The Batarians fought with their take-no-prisoners weapons, which were designed as advertised, they did so much raw damage to their enemies, that they weren't supposed to be used to take prisoners. The infantry and tank weapons had taken out their fair share of Human and Quarian forces, and the results were not pretty. Cellular fluid could perform miraculous medical feats, especially modern Cell Fluid, but it could not regrow limbs, create new organs, or heal brain damage. That was what the Batarian weapons did to the Alliance forces, if the limb wasn't violently torn off of its owner's body, the projectile tore into the body on one end, and exploded out like a cannonball on the other end. Jillian knew, Allied forces wouldn't be taking many wounded home with them, these weren't Human Bullets, or Mercenary Mass Effect Slugs, they didn't pierce through, or expand, flatten, and shatter within. They practically exploded.

But, of course, the Humans gave their enemies no quarter, either. They fought back with tanks, gunships, and raw numbers. They all, Quarians included, used conventionally accelerated weapons, which left slightly noticeable trails in the ozone-smelling atmosphere. These bullet-guns made veritable walls of rifle fire that the Batarians couldn't pass. Their tanks, upon which the MSG's were hooked on to, were at the rear ranks, spitting high-explosive death on their enemies. The gunships were making strafe-runs on ground forces, and quick missile-locks on the enemy air forces, which couldn't even consider engaging ground targets, because the Alliance Air and Space Force's fighter-craft were brutalizing them in the air.

The differences in weapons and armor appearances weren't the only things that helped Jillian differentiate between the two sides, it was the tactics with which each side fought, and the discipline with which they did so, that helped Jillian differentiate between friend and foe. The Batarians were simply scrambling to hold their ground, and kill as many as they could. If one of their own fell, they were simply left there to die, be it by fighting still or by bleeding, it was up to the wounded warrior. But the Humans had begun using tactics adopted during the Mercenary Wars, it was, at its core, 'fight for the people, not the territory'. Alliance soldiers defended by evacuating civilians, destroying their own infrastructure, and making every attempt to kill enemies and survive as they could. They evacuated each and every single wounded ally they could, and provided as much medical care as was possible. This proved not only to keep their numbers up with experienced soldiers, but it won the hearts and minds of the civilians, who would soon take up arms and fight with the Alliance, instead of against it, or simply running from it.

They attacked by shock-and-awe, they moved in, and fought only those who raised weapons upon them. They created 'safe zones', to which they evacuated any civilian in enemy territory. In these safe zones, the Alliance set up operating bases and care-centers, the primary concern was admittedly wounded allied soldiers, but everything that could be afforded to civilians, was. The Civilians in enemy territory were treated fairly, after being searched for weapons, and every affordance was made to help them, be it by simply providing a set of ears for the civilians to talk to, or by helping them find family. That helped the Alliance because soon, rumors would spread by word-of-mouth, and eventually the enemy's own civilians would be won to the Alliance's side, and the enemy forces would be fighting themselves as much as the Human and Quarian warriors.

But here in Siler, for the Batarian War, the Alliance had adopted a new doctrine: If they had an iron collar, they subdued them. And as the no-man's-land shrank even further, that was exactly what the Humans and Quarians were doing. They couldn't switch to non-lethal ammunition for the slaves, of course, but every chance they could take at simple incapacitation was taken, and when they could pull the soon-to-be former slaves back behind the Alliance's offensive line, they would try.

All of this ran through Sampson's mind as she watched the horrifying battle unfold in front of her. Humans and Quarians moved with deadly efficiency, seeming to flow into and out of battle, the Marines and Soldiers didn't care who was with who's squad, one would shift position just as another would replace him and ask for a situations' update, and then would proceed to get right into the thick of things. If Jillian would put it into her own words, it looked like the Alliance's offensive line was a flowing river, which had some pebbles in it that divided the flow, but didn't detract from the overall current. The Batarians, on the other hand, were a raging river that was desperately fighting against a fifteen-meter thick adamantine dam. Where the Humans flowed into the battle, helped anyone that wore their colors, and fought with deadly efficiency and brutal accuracy, the Batarians were fighting the flow of their own river. They slammed into each other, stumbled and tripped over each other, and were fighting themselves and their training, as much as they were fighting the Humans and Quarians a mere half dozen meters from them. The Batarians seemed practically untrained, against the might of the Alliance War Machine.

Jillian lost herself in the battle, but was shaken back to reality when she heard deep voices shouting from within her building.

Oh god! Thought the wide-eyed Human, she knew it was only a matter of time before one or the other tried to get the cover and height advantages the building offered. The flat, destroyed, bombed out, apocalyptic-like city-streets upon which they were fighting would only prove to be useful for so long, until someone wised up. From the tone of the voices she heard, it didn't sound like it was the Humans who had done the wising up.

Jillian had to think fast, she probably had seconds before the Batarians got to her room. She knew shouting for help would do her no good, she couldn't hear herself think, above the noises of war, so the soldiers in the middle of it wouldn't hear her shouts. She saw what looked like a Batarian excuse for a book, and decided it was as good as anything. She grabbed the book and looked out the window, she spied a man in what she immediately recognized as the armor of an Orbital Dropping Death Dealer, and prayed his shields were full as she hurled the book at him. The shields were charged, thankfully, and the Dealer immediately slammed back into cover at the feeling of the book slamming into his head, and being violently deflected. The man looked up, his frosted, slivery-blue motorcycle helmet's visor snapped up to her, she wasted no time making the universal 'help me!' sign, she waved her hands as wide and as fast as she could. The Dealer got the idea, he tapped on the shoulder of his buddy, and pointed to the building. His buddy got the picture, and in seconds, the first dealer, the buddy, and an assortment of marines and soldiers were rushing, bent-over, into the building.

In seconds, the building too was filled with the sounds of gunfire. Jillian made a run for Saira, and shook her friend, trying to wake her. It was just as the door to Jillian's room slammed open, and she heard a Batarian battle cry, did the Asari awaken.

"What is -"

"YOU DARE INVADE MY PLANET, YOU WILL PAY HUMANS!" The Batarian roared, as he fired wildly down the staircase he had just ascended.

There was a brief pause before the narrow staircase was then filled with Human bullets, and the Batarian's shields and armor were overwhelmed, and his chest was turned from taut, yellow skin, to oozing red hamburger meet. Another heartbeat's length of time passed before three Humans - all Marines - stormed into the room. Saira gasped loudly, drawing the attention of all three.

"Civilians!" One shouted, before his friends lifted their weapons to scan the rest of the room.

"Three windows! Elevated positions, -" His voice cut out for a split second "-we need snipers in the marked position!" He said, bringing his hand to the side of his head.

"Get the slaves out of here!" The first voice shouted.

"Floor clear!" The third added late.

And just like that, a fourth soldier - this one in the powered exoskeleton that was Orbital Dropping Death Dealer armor - stormed into the room, saw the two, and pointed at the door with his rifle. "You two stay on my ass! If I move, you move! You listen to every word I say as if it were the word of God! Are we clear?!" He roared.

"We're clear!" Jillian brought Saira to her feet, and clasped her hand in hers.

"Then we move!" The OD3 shouted, motioning for the two to follow him.

Just as Saira, Jillian, and the OD3 descended the stairs, three other soldiers with large rifles stormed up them, no doubt to set up a sniper's nest. The OD3 ordered them to keep their heads down, that he'd get them behind a tank where they'd figure out where to go from there. A three second countdown to catch their breath and to synchronize their minds was all he afforded them, before the three of them barreled out of the house, Jillian nearly tripping over a Human corpse as she did so.

Outside was an even worse hell than Jillian initially thought so. She felt the Mass Accelerated slugs whiz past her head every odd moment, and always - always - felt the sudden urge to duck her head, to leap for cover, to find something to protect herself. She held the Asari's hand with a death grip - which the Asari returned - as they ran through the battlefield. Amazingly, the Humans had already managed to dig trenches, in the mere hour they'd been fighting for this position, these trenches were what the two Humans and Asari were running through as they made their way to the tanks at the rear of the offensive line.

Several panicked moments passed before they made it to 'safety', though they had to stay vigilant for artillery, destroyed enemy fighters, and the odd grenade. The OD3's hand reached up to his head, and he began a quick, heated conversation with his commanding officers.

"Goddess! Jillian!" She heard Saira scream, over the sounds of battle, "why would the masters send us here?"

Jillian felt the urge to yell at the ignorant Asari, but resisted it as she saw the Dealer make several angry gestures. She couldn't hear him over the sounds of war, and he no-doubt had muted his armor's external speakers, but he looked angry. A minute of him arguing passed before he shook his head, made an angry bellow, and slammed his gloved fist into the tank behind him, which fired just a moment later, deafening the two without armor.

Through the ringing in Jillian's ears, she was able to understand the gist of what the Dealer had to say: The Batarians had set up laser-AA Cannons, and civilian evacuation vessels would be put into too much risk in this zone, if they tried to make a landing.

"What does that mean for us?!" Demanded Jillian, as the tank in front of them inched forward.

"You RUN!" He removed a smart-watch from one of the pockets on the skin-suit he wore underneath the power armor. He slipped it onto Jillian's right arm - as the left was still adorned with the Master's omni-tool - and it activated and showed them a map. "Our FOB is two klicks south of here! That's all Human territory, but we're still cleaning it up! We can't spare any manpower to protect either of you, you'll have to make do!" The man ordered. He looked to his right, saw a fallen comrade, and stripped him of his sidearm and the magazines. "Do you know how to fire this?" He demanded, Jillian nodded, deciding not to mention the gun in her left pocket, and was given several magazines and the Standard Infantry Pistol. "Take no chances! If it isn't Human, execute it! Now MOVE!" He ordered, over the sudden whine of mortar fire.

Jillian and Saira - the former armed with the SIP, and clutching the latter's right hand with her left - fled the battlefield, as the Batarian defensive line exploded in a cascade of mortar shells. The last thing Jillian heard before the sounds of war became distance thanks to her fleet-feet, was the bellows and roars that indicated the very imminent use of human-wave tactics.

Jillian and Saira practically flew through the decimated suburban/cityscape. It looked like it had been torn right from a scene of the quintessential 22nd century apocalypse movie, the buildings that hadn't been torn apart were standing with massive holes ripped out of them. The streets that weren't littered with bodies, were littered with pock-marks, spent Human bullet casings, and destroyed vehicles. The signs of war were everywhere, even in the reddened sky. Jillian heard a loud roar overhead, and managed to look up just in time to see over a dozen Alliance jets soar by, the sonic-boom that accompanied them just before they exploded forward to join the distant, advancing fight.

The Human and the Asari only stopped after five straight minutes of fleeing. The two were coughing and wheezing at this point, but that did not stop the Asari from making amazed comments.

"Goddess, Jillian!" She wheezed, over the still-present ringing in her ears. "Are..." She swallowed hard, "are you certain you are going the right way?" Her eyes squinted, "did the Master even send us here?" The ancient slave questioned.

Jillian looked at her confusedly for a moment. She sweapt a shaky hand through her shoulder-length auburn hair, before it clicked for her that she had neglected to tell the Asari about the other species in the Alliance.

"I..." Jillian breathed, "He said..."

"Jillian why is the Human military here?" Saira inquired, "I thought rescue was impossible..." Jillian couldn't help but blink when Saira connected the dots as fast as she did.

"I told you they would come, Saira." Jillian said, still breathing heavily.

"But... I..." She looked back to where they had just run from, "how can they be fighting the Masters? Do they not know it is better to let sleeping varren lay?"

"That..." Jillian exhaled deeply, she could not get in to Human ethics and reasoning with this woman, not right now.

"I think we should turn ourselves -"

"Look, Saira, I know you have a lot of questions, and, god bless you, I'll answer as many as I can… Later." Jillian cut the Asari off, and raised her right hand. One button press and the Smart Watch's holographic interface was called up, Jillian reveled in the feeling of Alliance tech back on her hand. The map told her that they had another kilometer and a half before they would reach the Alliance's Forward Operating Base. She thought it was too much time to travel by foot, walking or running.

"Saira, can you still pilot a sky car?"

"I... No." The Asari answered, sheepishly.

Jillian gave Saira an exasperated look before she remembered that the ancient woman in front of her had been a slave for centuries, teaching her ways to escape was probably very low on the masters' priority list. "Then we need get moving... We do not want to stay in these ruins for long." Jillian stated, as she straightened then stretched her back, and before long the two were making the trek through the dusty, devastated ruins of what had been a Batarian sub-city district, heading south, as the OD3 had directed them.

He hadn't said a word. Bill Sampson hadn't said a single word to his daughter, he'd seen her there, he'd been the one to guide her and her Asari friend outside. He'd pleaded with the FOB to send a bird over to pick them up, but they couldn't risk the machine, or the pilots. Even a UAV wouldn't be able to come pick them up in this heat, so with a heavy heart, the Alliance Orbital Dropping Death Dealer had ordered his daughter to run, as far and as fast as she could. The only things he could take comfort in, were that she was armed, she had a biotic with her, and that the area she was fleeing to, was, for all intents and purposes, Human territory.

Sampson shook his head, he had a battle to win and enemies to kill. He was reinvigorated at the knowledge that his daughter was, in fact, alive, and she was still kicking. The second the mortars fell onto the Batarian defense line - slaughtering the slave-soldiers and the enemies alike, but that was unavoidable - the entirety of the Human/Quarian forces acted. The Humans were the first to do so, this sort of blind-rush was more the style of a Human than it was a Quarian. With deep roars and deep bellows, the Humans had hefted themselves and their weapons over the trenches, with numbers, thousands strong, they stormed forward, joined a split second later by similarly acting Quarian soldiers.

The Batarians couldn't have seen it coming. First the mortars, than mass-wave tactics. In seconds they were overwhelmed, and the rifle-battle was turned into an enormous brawl. Humans had their hands on whatever they could use in lieu of their first, mainly rifle butts, or pistol/knife combinations. The brawl quickly became raw chaos, and Sampson found himself going up against his own opponent. His shotgun barked loudly, shredding the shields of the Batarian soldier, and after a second to pump the shotgun, and then fix a bayonet onto the weapon, he was back in the fight. He viciously stabbed the blade through the chest-piece of the nearest enemy Batarian, and - with his mechanically enhanced strength and momentum - carried them both forward. The dying Batarian served as a meat shield for the Death Dealer, who slammed into another Batarian, and another, and then a third, before his shotgun barked again, and the pellets killed two and buried the third underneath the bodies.

The shotgun was pumped, and Sampson quickly found himself surrounded by Batarians, their rifles raised. One made a confident, smug gesture, but was suddenly crushed by a violent torrent of Humans and Quarians, as they surged forth and fired from the hip, tearing into the enemies and robbing them simultaneously of their territory and their kill. Sampson didn't waste a second getting back into the fight, his shotgun barked again, killing another Batarian, and again, killing another. Soon enough, the enraged, slightly gratified adrenaline rush of finding his daughter wore off, being replaced by the cold, calculating personality of the OD3 he'd trained to become.

The battle was as bloody as it was brutal, but in another ten minutes, the soldier Batarians were either dead, dying, or fleeing, and the slave-soldiers were incapacitated and placed into protective custody.

"We've got AA Cannons we need to take out!" Sampson roared into the communicator, as tanks quickly crossed the distance between them all. "Let's go! We've got a war to win!"

"Hell yeah!" He heard his Human counterparts in the Orbital Dropping Death Dealers shout.

"Oorah!" He heard the marines roar.

"Hooah!" He heard soldiers bellow.