Chapter 26

"Though the road's been rocky it sure feels good to me."

― Bob Marley

July 6th, 2216

In little more than an hour, John had been woken up, assaulted, taught a lesson, escorted off of the Destroyer, brought to a SIGMA Vessel, and then launched not towards home, but towards the front lines. He had concluded that the speed of departure had been necessary due to his required presence in the war, not at all even considering the fact that he'd nearly had an encounter that could have shattered the beliefs held by over half of a thousand children. He'd been brought to the belly of the frigate-sized ship and told to work on repairing his armor and fixing his Skin-Suit until Ducard came down to debrief him. Anyone else would have groaned, or complained at how damn quickly he was being sent back on to the front-lines, but John had lived his life subserviently under the boot of the military, he wasn't complaining, he'd expected it. If anything, he felt relieved to be going to the combat zones, that meant he wouldn't have to sit on Sparta and twiddle his thumbs, wondering what he should do to fill the time between war and training - because it wasn't like Ducard or any of the other Company Commanders would be there to train him, they were supervising the Twos on their various deployments and operations.

Fixing the seriously damaged armor plating that would go over his skin-suit was a deceptively simple affair. The Twos hadn't been given metal-working classes on Sparta, such a skill was largely useless in a military setting, and even in a modern engineering career, thanks to robotics and the advent of Artificial Intelligence. No, John was less hammering armor in to the vague shape of his chest and gut, and more cutting apart spare Titan Suits, taking out the pieces of machinery that were useless to his currently bio-chemically augmented body, and putting it back together in a form that was more useful for the teenaged soldier; that, he knew how to do. Every SIGMA knew the ins and outs of Titan Armor, it was an unsaid requirement - one never knew when they would have to field-strip or conduct their own repairs to their armor, and no SIGMA trusted anyone with their armor better than they trusted themselves; truly, the only non-SIGMA hands to touch Titan armor were the AI's that made the factory-models and shipped them out, after that, it was all SIGMA.

The most difficult part was in the taking apart of the spare chest-plates he'd been given. The Titan One suits were far more plate-armor suits than the II's more 'spartan' equipment. The T1 suits had been made with more of a medieval plate-armor look in mind, they weren't anywhere near as bulky as their base - much the opposite, they were far more maneuverable than OD3 powered assault armor - but they had been made before the advent of synthetic muscle suits, so Titan One armor had to be thick and all-protective in order to keep the mechanized servos secure and safe from damage. That meant that a lot of the tech inside of the T1 suits worked around these servos, so in optimizing it for his own augmentations - or technical lackthereof - he had to remove first the servo units, the machines that regulated said servo units, and then the bits and pieces of tech that interfaced with augmentations he either didn't have or were unique to the SIGMA Ones.

The end result was a suit of armor that was half of its original weight, and bits and pieces of random assorted, impossibly expensive technology thrown in a pile that, altogether, would have been worth enough money to comfortably feed a family of four for several years, or feed that same family for decades if they'd rationed it all out. John took a step back from his work and took a moment to admire his 'new' suit. The chestplate from his older one had largely been trashed - the gouges left in it by the Spartecs' superheated omni-blades had fried many of the pieces of tech inside and had compromised its integrity to a point where it would be hazardous to his health to wear it on the field, so he'd replaced it wholesale with a new set of plates. His helmet was largely still functional - all of the machinery still worked perfectly - but he'd had to pop out the visor, he'd taken a sniper round to the face during his escape and the visor only held together through surface tension and some minute biotic manipulation. With nothing else to do to it, he took a nearby knife and carved his ID-Tag in to the left breastplate, and once he finished, he made his way to the other end of his little construction bay. His skin-suit needed patch jobs here and there to stitch together the synthetic muscles and make it vacuum sealed once again; a great deal of the problems with the seal were cosmetic, and had to do with power - the only piece of machinery that wasn't strands of synthetic muscle was the spinal-mounted power unit, which had had its fusion batteries removed during his imprisonment. Therefore, his target was a small box which contained inside of it three fusion batteries, if he wanted his skin suit to enhance his strength and start repairing itself, he'd need to get it power.

The battery itself was a small device, barely the size of a baseball and of similar shape to a pod. With a little effort, as the muscle-suit was without power and thus had to be manually unsealed and removed, John removed the torso section and placed it on the impromptu desk. The only intrinsically rigid piece of the skin-suit was in the small, spine-shaped machine that looked like it had been welded onto the back of the suit. John pried open the spinal column and inserted the fusion batteries in the empty receptacle. Soon after he closed it back up and put the suit back on, he was happily greeted by the almost unfeelable hum on his back. Experimentally, he picked up one of the less expensive hunks of metal he'd stripped from his newly optimized set of armor and crushed it in his bare hand with embarrassingly little effort, the former golf-ball sized hunk of metal was now the size of his fingernail.

Everything was up, running, and good enough for combat. He didn't even have to issue to the suit any verbal or smart-watch commands for it to realize it was damaged, its self-repair matrices were already hard at work repairing synthetic muscle and fusing synthetic skin. He did a few light stretches to make sure everything was in order, and after confirming that his suit was indeed on the fast-track to being completely fixed and functional, he put on the uniform he'd been provided. It was true that he was already clothed and covered by the skin-suit, but it was very tight-fitting, to the point where John still felt nude even when he wore it, a feeling that was only exacerbated by the fact that the suit simulated nerve-endings, so it really did feel like he wasn't even wearing it when it was on and activated, thus: Why SIGMAs wore their fatigues over their muscle-suits, and under their armor.

After John finished getting dressed, his augmented hearing picked up the light clanging of boots hitting ground. He straightened up and gazed in the noise's direction, springing to attention when Ducard entered the room. He fired off a salute, which Ducard reciprocated, and soon thereafter the two were on their way to the mess hall, John needed real food, and Ducard needed to debrief him on his absence. It felt good to be getting back to the uniformity of his military life, his stint at the Spartec base had almost been unbearable due to the simple fact that he had little to do other than wait for nightfall. Even physical exercise lost much meaning after the thousandth repetition.

The area around them was quiet, lit with the sterile blue-white lighting of a ship. Their surroundings were the aptly spartan mess hall, all that was there was the kitchen, the cupboards, and a fridge containing enough pre-packaged Meals Ready to Eat to feed a budding colony for three years. John sat at a small rectangular table, of regulation size and regulation color - gunmetal gray. His MRE was to standard and would keep him and his enhanced metabolism going for as long as it took for him to get to his next meal. Their ship was a small vessel, hailing from the hundred-ship strong flotilla that constantly orbited Sparta and patrolled the Greek system, it wasn't designed for combat but rather for small-scale transport of assets, be they weapons or augmented forces. The four SIGMAs populating it were less than a quarter of its full carrying capacity, but to any civilian, it would have felt cramped and claustrophobic.

John S2-15 and Joseph Ducard S1-99 were sitting in the ship's mess hall, with John eating several helpings of the Military's 'finest' Meals Ready to Eat, his first real, solid meal, in months, and his Commander filing John's report. Ducard had made it beyond clear that this was a one-time deal, never again would he file out a II's reports if he could help it, as he already had enough to write out simply leading and training a company of them.

"So, from the top, John." Ducard requested of him a final time, the feeling of acceleration firmly present in his gut as their ship went through the Warp, not towards Sparta, but rather towards a Batarian moon-colony, the last front-line in the Alliance-Batarian War, things were gearing down, and the Alliance was calling in the big guns - it wanted this war to be over, so it could stop dedicating the economic resources to fighting, and instead dedicate those resources to their debatably misguided attempt at rehabilitating the enslaved population. The last reports had it that, on the conquered worlds, the enslaved alien population almost rivaled the free alien population pound for pound, person for person, and in some areas exceeded the free population; in other words, the Alliance's population was getting ready to increase by the billions, and many feared that their economy couldn't sustain that weight and continue the almost exponential growth it had been showing the last few decades.

"What happened before and during your capture." Ducard stated specifically, his scarred face set in stone as he waited for the boy-turned-soldier to explain to him once again how he had been tortured for months on end; that the child - if he even was a child at this point, one could even argue if he was even a Human - wasn't mentally shattered and destroyed was a testament to how well Ducard was training him. Something deep inside Ducard, in the places of his mind that fairly rarely reminded him that he was, indeed, still Human in his soul, absolutely hated him for just that reason.

John nodded, his dark green eyes not even partially glazing over as he began to recall his vacation with an almost perfect clarity. "Myself, the rest of Alpha Squad, and several other SIGMA II Squads were sent in to storm a Batarian military base confirmed to be holding multi-species slaves, many of them Human." He began, finishing his last quick-meal. "Myself and Alpha Squad's heavy weapons specialist entered the base and moved to extract the slaves while the others set up targeting beacons for Orbital Bombardments. We saw the Batarians experimenting on an unknown device, which we would learn was a Warp Gate, primitive in design, much like what Earth used pre-Alliance." He adjusted his seating position, and was now sitting straight as an arrow, shoulders-squared, hands folded atop one another. "We called off the primary strike, as doing so would invite a several dozen megaton blast that would kill our VIP's, and likely ourselves. Instead we made to extract the VIP's wholesale, but were discovered before we could sneak them out. We called in a small-scale strike to crumble a wall and make our retreat, and as we fled the Batarians activated the Warp Gate."

"What came out of the Warp Gate?" The Commander asked, his onyx eyes bearing holes into John's dark green.

"At the time I pegged them to be mercenaries, Turian in origin." John explained, "however they were using tech and gear that heavily suggested a federal funding, and was far too different to be the expensive custom jobs that mercenaries commonly used. It all looked regulation, built to code and built to last." He dropped his gaze and furrowed his brow, calling to mind everything he had catalogued for just this moment. "They used monocle-based Heads Up Displays, and wore kevlar-like clothing, however their clothing was lined with sensors that reacted to impact. A bullet's strike, for instance, would trip the sensors and the area around the impact point would harden, becoming rigid, like a hard-suit." He explained, this granted them the protection of OD3 PIAA and the mobility of twentieth century battle dress uniforms. With this armor they were as mobile as our own troops, but faster - they had less weight and could thus move around quicker. They used experimental Mass Accelerator weapons, too, designed to pierce energy shields with minimal rounds."

"Alright." Ducard said, writing this down on his report. Unlike practically every other military unit in existence, the SIGMAs still used pen and paper to write down their reports. This way they had a singular location where they could file and store these reports, and they couldn't be stolen by errant hackers, and if they were compromised, they could be incinerated in a kiloton blast. Secrets didn't exist without evidence to be kept hidden, after all, everything the SIGMAs had done - sanctioned or otherwise - could be found wherever the General kept the reports, from simple reconnaissance finds to the most secretive, damning secrets, such as proof of the existence of the legend of the Worst Hand In Poker

"After we escaped from the base..." John continued, regaining eye-contact. "We moved across a large open field, using our HardLight shields to form a phalanx around the civilians, and we evacuated them. The Turian Mercenaries saw a hole in our formation, but the soon-to-be injured Operative's suit's computers detected the aiming laser the mercenary was using. The mercenary's rookie mistake allowed us to shift position just as the slug penetrated the Operative's shields and buried into his skin suit. The Alpha Squad's sniper took aim and took the Turian Sniper's life as they rushed to meet us head

"I was engaged in hand to hand combat, the Turian seemed prepared for my powered armor but was unprepared for my Biotic Vi-Contactus, and I dispatched him quickly." The child-soldier explained, "I made to rendezvous with my squad, but saw Batarian Forces advancing upon them. I ordered our Heavy Gunner to extract with the civilians."

"Yes, Two-Sixty Six... He reports that you ordered him to extract, saying he would 'know why you did it' upon landing... Why did you do this?" Ducard picked up, he had ideas why, but he wanted to hear John's genius first hand. It took a certain kind of mind to come up with battlefield plans on the fly, and bluff the worst hand in poker into a straight flush.

"The ship we came in on was a Carrier. The shuttle we were extracting from had a very specific landing zone, right next to a re-entry capable fighter, whose pilot was a creature of habit." John explained, "I knew that, around the time George would land in the ship, the Pilot would be checking his ship and making any repairs, rearms, or cleanings needed. I knew how George thought, he thinks in heavy weapons and along the vein of 'what can't be solved with this gun can be solved with a bigger one', and therefor I predicted he would use his influence as a SIGMA to force the fighter to take off without orders, so he could give our forces air superiority."

"You ordered your squad mate to extract on the off chance that he would insubordinately use his nonexistent rank to force a pilot to take off without clearance?" Ducard clarified.

"Yes sir."

"And you watched and observed the patterns of the men and women in the shuttle-bay of your carrier, on the off-chance you may need such information later on?" That right there took a great deal of something that Ducard couldn't even identify, he'd been exposed to so many people during his active-duty days that he largely tuned out everyone but the people who outranked him, as did many SIGMAs after a good decade of service.

"Yes sir." John seemed unaware of what that suggested about him, but Ducard could almost see the challenge in the fire behind his eyes - he was almost saying that this was something all SIGMAs should do, just in case.

Boy, would this kid be in for a reality check when he really started fighting. Ducard almost felt sorry for him. "Understood." Ducard nodded and made note of John's words, "continue."

"When George took off I took control of the allied forces, we made a strategic push through enemy lines, all but three of us cloaked to get behind them. The three that stayed suppressed the Batarians with overwhelming fire, to make it seem like we had gotten reinforcements, instead of the exact opposite. Upon our breech, we ordered the former team to leave the Batarians, rendezvous with us, and in the Batarian confusion, we assaulted the base.

"However, we were met by the Turian Mercenaries. The Turians, backed up by Batarian Hunters, engaged us in a deadly firefight in which one of us was injured. Around this time George came in and launched a deadly strafing run. With several missile strikes he took out three quarters of the returning Batarians and used the fighter's auto-cannons to take out one of the Turians. I also learned from intercepted communications that the Turians were working on bringing in reinforcements from a still-active Warp Gate.

"It should be noted that, earlier, I radioed up to the Carrier and requested a priority one drop. I was and still am aware that you forbid the usage of this weapon on our mission, but I felt the situation called for drastic measures." John explained without an ounce of guilt in his pubescent voice, "I had to take down the enemy mercenaries, else we would have had casualties. So after we managed to secure a defensible position in the base, I retrieved the kiloton grenade and ordered the allied forces to bunker down, HardLight Freeze Protocol." He clarified, "my intention was to go through the gate, detonate the bomb, kill as many Turians as I could, and make contact with you when I got situated. However, I didn't know if the blast would travel through the portal before it shut, thus, the HL-F-P." He explained, "I am aware that it may have been more prudent to simply throw the grenade through the gate and end the threat then and there, but we would therefore have had an unknown threat with experimental technology, and little to no actionable intelligence on them. I had to make a judgement call, and so I myself went in to do the job, as opposed to sending someone else in."

Ducard nodded, "reports said all we got on our end was a localized shockwave and a jet of fire." He supplied.

John grunted in affirmation and let that sink in for a moment before he continued, "it took me forty eight minutes to make the trip from gate A to gate B. I engaged the Turians in a lengthy firefight as I set up the grenade to detonate. Upon its arming, I locked up my armor with HardLight and survived the kiloton and resultant megaton explosion."

"Did you attempt to outrun it?" Ducard asked, out of curiosity.

John shook his head, "I said I locked my armor, sir. I couldn't have outran it if I'd wanted to, and the room I was in had only one exit, and a lot of enemy combatants were keeping me from using it. So I made another." He took a sip of water. "After I landed, and was sure I was safe from any possible radiation, I unlocked my armor and smashed my smart-watch."

"Records say you broke the watch before entering the gate."

"The radiation from the primitive gate fried some of my watch's finer functions. It nearly broke trying to suffer the explosion."

"Alright." Ducard took down these notes, "so you took the fight to the Turian mercenaries, after which you were gone for three months, before you were discovered on a Mercenary ship, and successfully called for Alliance Assistance. What happened during the interim?"

John looked Ducard in the eye, "I learned they weren't Mercenaries, sir."

The Alliance Director for Defense's office was sparsely decorated. As was custom, each office had a planetary-feel to it, and while its foundations were in fact the same steel and adamantine as the station around it, the office itself looked like it was cut out from a building on a planet, Earth specifically. The walls were made of wood and drywall, the floor was carpeted and the air smelled distinctly of Earth. Smell was one thing few space explorers before the colonisation age had considered - every planet smelled differently, though it was, on the whole, difficult if not impossible to describe these smells, Earth smelled like Earth, Eden like Eden, and so on; no two planets smelled alike.

The lone figure in the room sat in the chair in front of the Director's desk. A mahogany creation, the desk was sparsely decorated. Upon it was a sheaf of papers, several datapads, and a computer. Off to the left – relevant to Captain Hannah Shepard – sat several pictures, of people Shepard didn't recognize, but assumed was the Director's family, both direct and extended, it seemed.

I thought I'd been called by him... Shepard thought, rubbing her aching, sleepy eyes.

Shepard had been sitting in this office for over forty five minutes, at this point, and out of respect wasn't killing the time by using her smart watch. Instead, she had spent her time involuntarily burning the details of the earthy-smelling office into her mind. The walls were adorned with many paintings and pictures, though Shepard didn't recognize any of the ancient formers and recent latters, though she did think she recognize a picture of Jason Whyte shaking the hand of Christopher McGraw, the latter's unkempt mane and idiotic grin was recognizable the galaxy over, to the point that the word 'McGraw' was largely turning into an adjective one would use to describe a person similar to the eponymous man, and rumor had it the man himself was facilitating the usage of the term, claiming he thought it funny.

The door opened suddenly, and unceremoniously. Shepard got to her feet and turned to the door, she sprang to a salute when Director Serios finally entered.

"Director." She greeted formally.

The Director returned the salute, "Captain." He said, indicating for her to sit. "I sincerely apologize for the wait." He said, his middle-aged face sagging and his voice deep with lethargy. "Asari diplomats do not cease speaking, and a great many have been visiting, with the war coming to a close." He apologized, somewhat rehearsedly.

"It is no problem, sir." Shepard skillfully lied; she wasn't honestly mad at the Director, as much as she was mad that her shore leave was being more or less wasted. "May I ask what I was called for?"

The Director sat in his leather seat and slid up to his desk. He placed his elbows on the table and interlocked his fingers, masking his face behind them. His dark brown eyes bore deeply into Hannah's soul as he considered how to word whatever it was he was going to word. "I was informed that you came into contact with a SIGMA Prisoner of War, is that correct?" He asked.

"Yes, sir."

"What happened?"

Shepard suppressed a sigh, she'd already filled out the paperwork for this, that Serios had no doubt already read. "While on border-patrol, my ship – a Destroyer, the Theodore Logan – came across a foreign cruiser broadcasting an SOS signal." She began, "after some correspondence we sent a boarding party aboard to confirm their status. Right before we reached an agreement and were about to assist them, my AI was contacted via burst transmission.

"Our ship's AI recognized the transmission as morse code, an SOS with a valid SIGMA identification tag attached at the end, and in minutes we were boarding the ship, searching for the SIGMA. After a lengthy engagement we took the ship, no prisoners. We searched for the SIGMA for many hours, and eventually found him, malnourished, injured, and lightly armed in the ship's lower bays. He'd made himself a veritable fox hole that the Turians hadn't discovered."

"I see... Then what? Did he speak to you?" The Director pressed, his tone suggested he was looking for something, but Shepard couldn't tell what.

"The SIGMA refused to make contact with us unless I was there. After my arrival he issued a challenge, which I answered correctly. He surrendered himself summarily, before losing consciousness outright." She explained, brushing a stray lock of dark red hair out of her face. "We rushed him onto the Logan and brought him in for medical treatment. We called here for orders and were told to make way for the station immediately."

"Alright." Said Serios, lowering his hands. "Did anything happen during the interim?"

"I had to quell many rumors about the SIGMA. Many were wondering why he his armor was so ruined and he looked so mistreated."

"What theories came up?" The Director urged.

Shepard blinked, wondering why the Director was so curious about scuttlebutt. "Some of the Marines thought we'd stumbled across an exercise in-progress. One or two thought he was a POW from the Second Contact War. Popular opinion was that he was deep undercover and had been found... The mercenaries were taking him to Palaven for a ransom."

Serios nodded, Shepard thought she saw relief in his eyes.

"If I may... Sir?" The Director straightened his back and nodded, his pale face as serious as his last name sounded. "What exactly did we pick up? Your Secret Service agent said something about the next generation SIGMA..."

Serios thought a moment, choosing his words carefully. "What the agent said is true, that you picked up a next-generation SIGMA. A SIGMA Two." He explained, "I cannot reveal to you the specifics of the Two's, but they are new, meant to be better than the best in every possible way. The one you picked up – a John Doe with the ID-tag Two-Fifteen – had been taken prisoner during a black ops assignment on a Batarian World, and I need to know, right now, if he said anything to you. The training for the Twos is unconventional, in a word, and after they get recruited they don't get much contact with the outside world, so anything he said or did in your presence is paramount."

Shepard racked her brains, "I cannot recall anything, sir. We had to sedate him when he got onto the ship, and he was mostly unconscious for the voyage."

"Mostly?" Serios asked, curiously.

"There was an incident when he woke up, broke the arm of one of my Marines, and took back the pistol that had been retrieved from his hip, but nothing else happened afterwards. He didn't say anything." Shepard admitted.

"Did any of the crew see his face?"

"Only the medic, our AI, and the injured Marine. I was going to check on him when we landed, but then I was summoned." She said, "I know this may sound insubordinate, but what kind of things are you doing that calls for such secrecy? I know they're notorious for this kind of thing, but I never expected this."

"All I will tell you is what I've already told you - our training methods for them are unconventional. We're trying to make them twice as lethal as our Ones. Where the Ones are jacks of all trades and masters of just one, the Twos are meant to master them all." And the way they did so was what the problem lay in, but Serios wouldn't tell her that. "The Batarian War is the first time they've been of Sparta in seven years, and they're still only half-way through their training regimen. We've learned a great deal in the time we've had the Ones, and a great deal more post-contact. We're applying all of this to the Twos." Half-truths went a long way, tell enough of the truth to satiate her, but hide right under her nose what she wanted to know, so she wouldn't look for it.

Shepard nodded, her dark green eyes flitting back and forth as she digested the information. When she looked back up, he thought she saw a ghost of a smile on his face, "but, you found this SIGMA after he'd been missing for three months. I think congratulations are in order."

Shepard accepted the hand Serios extended, but acted on her gut. "That isn't all you've called me here for... Is it sir?"

Serios nodded, not surprised at the Captain's wisdom; after all, she had birthed the child, it all couldn't have come from his father, even keeping in mind who and what his father was. "There are two things that come from this encounter. The first being a reward, the second being a warning..." He paused, "which would you rather hear?"

"The worse of the two."

Without hesitation, Serios let it all out. "As I've revealed to you the existence of the SIGMA II program, you are required to stay silent." Serios stated, "even confirming its existence, with what little information I have given you, is enough to get you – bare minimum – life in a military prison for treason." Shepard blinked, and nodded in response. "The good news, however, is news you may already know of.

"You are aware, Captain, that a Carrier, the Einstein, is scheduled to be completed and birthed soon, yes?"

Shepard felt her heart slow down, "yes, sir." She said, sitting up a bit straighter.

"As reward for your actions, and your silence, the department of the navy, the Admiral of the fifth fleet, and I myself have seen fit to promote you to the SSV Albert Einstein. Keep your nose clean and stay on course, you might make Rear Admiral in the next decade."

"During my three month imprisonment on a planet I was unable to chart or identify, I learned that the faction I'd thought were mercenaries were actually a top-secret Special Forces branch of the Turian Military... Codenamed: Spartecs." John continued, after a brief pause to take a sip of water and wet his vocal chords, "I don't know much about their origins, but from what I gathered during late night excursions outside my cell, I learned that they are a combination counter-terrorism branch and black ops organization. Unlike the Cabals, they are charged with dealing with problems foreign and domestic, and no one is supposed to know about them, explaining why they kept me prisoner."

"What else did you learn about them?" Ducard inquired.

"They hadn't expected to take a Human prisoner." John explained, "they interrogated me constantly for information, but did not get any farther than my name and serial number." John paused for a split second, "however, I have reason to believe that they – through blood work – were able to ascertain my age and... Origins."

"Explain."

"I only took two trips to the base's medical wing, but each time I was privy to a conversation between the Company Commander and their head medic. Each time they were discussing me, and the last time they almost blatantly said they knew how old I was, and what I was." John paused, "I have reason to believe, however, that the Turians won't do anything with this information, them having mentioned that backlash could be great with information we possess.

"I spent three months trying to learn everything about them I could. While what I know is not much, I did learn about their armor – Benzahn, they call it – and about their shielding units. They are melding Human and Turian shielding tech, essentially creating a Kinetic/Energy Barrier." John summarized, "I also learned that their primary goal for being involved in our war with the Hegemony is to learn our FTL secrets." This caught Ducard's eye quickly, "however, while they have a slight understanding of how we do it, I wiped out any possibility of building it by detonating the kiloton grenade... They estimated I killed about a decade's worth of work, there."

Ducard nodded, relieved but still concerned. "How did you escape?"

"I learned that every six months twelve ships leave the planet, to replace forces, bring supplies, and so on. I waited for the ship to arrive and stowed away. I chose the ship furthest from the base I was in, destroyed their primary long-range communications, and took as many of them out as I could during my escape." John explained, "they eventually got word out across the planet that I was gone, but by that time, the Spartec Ship I was on was too far away to go back. While in FTL I programmed a micro-EMP pulse so I could take out their thruster capability, and when I discovered we were in Alliance Territory, I activated it. They were forced to send out a distress call, and after I felt the ship dock, I waited five minutes before sending a burst-transmission on N7 channels to call for help. The AI found the SOS, translated the morse code, and learned what was going on.

"Following that, Alliance Marines boarded the ship and took it for the Alliance. I was discovered by allied forces, but refused to be taken by them unless I could speak to their Captain. The rest, you know." John finished.

"I see..." Said Ducard, writing down the last of what John had said. "Which captain was it? There are many Destroyers, but not too many patrol the non-relay outer colonies."

"She was a captain by the name of Anna Pastor. She passed my test, and I surrendered myself to her care. After which I was kept unconscious and sedated for the entire trip." John honestly had no recollection of when he'd awoken and snapped the arm of the Marine, he'd done it all on instinct.

Ducard felt his heart stop cold. The kid was lying to him, and they both knew it. The kid was testing him, the kid knew something was up, he'd learned something during whatever brief encounter he'd had with Hannah, and he was testing Ducard's reaction - if Ducard called him out, John would challenge him, and the kid was smart enough to back him into a corner if he did so. Hell, the kid already had him in a corner - he was in a no-win situation, because if Ducard didn't acknowledge it, John would know that Ducard had something to hide about that specific captain, and would be prompted to look into it further. Ducard had seen the footage from John's helmet cam - shattered though it may be, the audio recorded perfectly; John had only had sixty seconds, grand total, of interaction with his mother. What had he learned in sixty seconds?

"Latin, sir."

Ducard blinked, "say again?"

"I apologize, I appreciate the language. The name, sir. Anna Pastor. Latin translation for Hannah Shepard. Your translator must not be programmed for a dead language, and I slipped."

John had given him an out, but Ducard decided to go against the grain for the moment. "Why did you slip?"

"As I said, sir, I appreciate the language. I also have an affinity for German, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, and Thessian Standard." He said, "ardat dala'san niir ho-ya." 'The demon tongue that unites us all'.

Ducard was now completely certain that John was playing him, and unless he wanted to make things a hundred times worse, there was nothing he could do. "I see." He looked down and made a note on the report - Made contact with Hannah Shepard. That 'language' play was just him gloating, Ducard was tempted to think, but the II's never gloated, even amongst themselves in their perceived privacy, they just didn't see the point. So if he wasn't gloating, what was he doing?

"If I may, sir." Ducard looked up, acknowledging the Child Soldier. "What have I missed during my imprisonment?"

Ducard thought a moment, and placed the tablet down. "We are on the verge of victory. The long and short of it is the Batarians are no Turian Hierarchy, we applied our tactics, we froze planets from the rest of the galaxy, we liberated them." He explained, his eyes betraying none of his emotions. "But they've pulled some surprises of their own."

"Such as?"

"The Warp Gate you found wasn't their only attempt at reverse-engineering our technology. By some miracle, they figured out how to make mock-up versions of our ships. Pratr vessels, they call it. Thicker armor, tougher weapons, better engines, the works." He explained, "we have no proof, but rumors have flown that they've even bought Rebel ships in exchange for weapons and material. The fact is, they've got our naval tech, though thankfully they can't reproduce our FTL for these ships, which means these ships need Element Zero cores the size of trucks to function optimally, and given their mass, they need a lot of it. In other words, while they have a good fighting force, they can't use it for much - it's too expensive to deploy them on the frontlines. I'd wager that ninety five percent of the ship's cost lies in its eezo core, they would have to be massive in order to propel a ship our size to lightspeed."

"How has our navy fared against the Mock-Ups?"

"Not bad, but it's essentially a repeat of any naval engagement with the rebels: Who strikes first strikes hardest. Our shields are tougher, our weapons better, and our armor well-made, but if they hit us first, we will take losses."

"What about losses on the ground?" John knew there wasn't much else he could learn about the naval side of things - and besides, they were supposed to be super soldiers, not super sailors. When it came to naval engagements, the best SIGMAs could do would be to act as tacticians and advisors to the Captain, only one SIGMA in history had ever used his influence to take command of a naval vessel, and he eventually retired to the navy to command that very ship up until its destruction at the beginning for the Battle for Earth.

"We don't take many wounded home. Batarian military weapons are designed for brutality... Like explosive hollow point rounds." Ducard explained, "last casualty count was around a hundred fifty thousand on our end... and a quarter of a million on their end, not counting slave casualties." Ducard quickly elaborated, "Our technology is better, but they send their slaves in droves to soften us up."

"Wave tactics."

"Exactly. And when they figured out we were specifically not shooting people with collars, they wised up real fast and started sending hordes of slaves without collars against us, and used the subsequent battles as anti-Alliance propaganda for Council Support. No such luck, yet."

"Yet?"

Ducard ignored the question for now, "we're still evacuating slaves, but so far as we know we've got slaves numbering in the upper hundreds of millions, if not the lower billions. Worse, we're getting tens of thousands more added to the census each passing day." He explained, "but we've already killed tens of millions of them... The Batarians literally throw them at us unarmed, no armor, no protection, to be shredded by our fire.

"But, the Council has largely been quiet about things. This could go either way, but in the end, we're focused on ending this war before we start the next one. Leading me into my next point: We're amassing the fleets, several months ago – when the Batarians first introduced us to Mock Up ships – they took several ships from us and enslaved the crews. We've tracked them down to a moon-based outpost for slave smuggling, intercepted communications told us that selling said slaves is proving to be difficult for them, as a lot of Hegemony Slavers are wary of taking them... For obvious reasons." The veteran couldn't hold back a grin.

"Am I going to be participating?" John asked, a grin not appearing on his own face, a fact that Ducard noted.

The commander nodded, "imprisonment or not, there's a war going on and we need your skills, especially for a besieging this large-scale." Ducard explained, "in three days all of the fleets will be in position, within a ten minute warp jump, to strike at Torfan. We're planning on having a massive scale blitzkrieg, because this moon isn't a hub-world like the ones we've invaded thus far. The plan is, SIGMA One Teams will go in for the Human slaves, while simultaneously, planet-wide, our naval forces bombard the planet from orbit. A six minute sustained assault, first by space-to-surface missiles, then by MAG strikes, then joint SIGMA, OD3, N7, and Marine assaults."

"What will we be doing?"

"Essentially, we – the Ones and the Directors – want to see the Twos undertake a SIGMA Siege." Ducard said bluntly, "your brothers have already been briefed, but you'll be storming a large series of bases. High population density, primarily thieves, slavers, and smugglers, weapons free. Your goal is to eliminate the enemy, no survivors."

John nodded, he knew what a SIGMA Siege was: An attack, massive in scale, carried out solely by SIGMA Forces. "No survivors." He reiterated, to Ducard's nod. "Is there anything I need to know?"

Ducard shook his head, "I will let you know if there is, but until we get there, get some rest, eat some food, and try to build your muscle-mass back up." He ordered firmly, "we don't get prisoners of war often, but if and when they make it back, they get no preferential treatment, so you will be no different. Am I understood?"

"Sir, yes sir." John sprung to his feet and fired off a salute.

There was an incalculable distance between John S2-15 and the Batarian High Chancellor, who sat in his personal office on the one and only Batarian Homeworld. High Chancellor Seriul Hoorn could almost feel his skin aging through the stress of the Humans and their War. Six colonies had fallen to the Humans, and though, by all reports, their fleets were already moving away, having taken the colonies entirely; the only reason they were still in Batarian territory was because they'd promised to remove not only Human, and not only Quarian, but every last slave from the afflicted colonies. He growled, already the Batarian economy was beginning to suffer, he was beyond glad that the Credit was a galactic currency, and therefore the inflation would be nowhere near as worse as it would be if the Humans had done something like this to the Council proper, but still, trade and travel within the Hegemony's borders had all but grinded to a halt, and the only things coming in were the Council's 'aid packages' and 'warfare care packages', though Hoorn had seen through that immediately.

The Council, in their infinite wisdom, had figured out that the Alliance wanted only to war with Batarians. He would give the Council far more credit than the Humans did, they were wise, but the fact remained that they did not want to war with the Humans directly, so in effect, they were waging a proxy-war against them, using the Batarian Hegemony as their meat shield.

The growling, stressed, and livid High Chancellor had to give the Council one thing, their moves were wise. Through the Batarians, they were testing the Humans, seeing just how much power they possessed, and how much was boastful claims, and nothing more. It still angered him, however, that all he and his kind got from the Council, in the form of military aid, were weapons, decommissioned ships, and the lightest of Special Forces intervention in only the most important of battles - which didn't make a difference in the end, any battle the Alliance couldn't win with bodies, they would win with orbital weapons and bodies.

Currently, the Council's greatest contributions were of the ships they were giving them. Weapons they had plenty of, and food was very easy to divert to warfronts, but ships was something the Hegemony needed. Even with their massive technological advantage, anything – even a god – could be conquered by pure, raw, and simple numbers. The Chancellor knew not where to send the ships, however, the colonies the Humans had hit were the only ones with Humans on them. The only other place in the galaxy with enslaved Humans was Torfan, but that moon was outside of Hegemony territory, so for all the Chancellor cared, it could burn while he made new Pratr ships, and repaired the decommissioned Citadel ships.

He blinked, and looked up. His office was dark, the only source of light being the terminal right in front of him, and the moonlit sky shining in pale white light from the open window to his left, this only illuminated a small section of his carpeted floor and a bare amount of his walls, the rest of his office was in darkness.

Wait... The Chancellor looked to the window, it was open open, the window was wide open and a breeze was flowing through it. He'd only opened the blinds, to let the light in; who opened the window?

"Greetings and salutations, High Chancellor." A light voice, not at all like the deep voice of a Batarian, suddenly said; despite the voice's low volume and even tone, it broke the silence of the Chancellor's office like a hand cannon.

The Batarian's hand closed around a real hand cannon, but he froze when he felt the barrel of a gun press up against his head. The figure holding the gun decloaked, revealing its seven and a half foot tall frame, armored figure, and mean, masked gaze. The Batarian recognized the figure just as he recognized the voice.

"You." Hoorn's voice quivered with anger.

The Mysterious One stepped forward, his face blank. Even so many years after they had last corroborated, he hadn't changed a single bit. His hair was still short, still a color-absorbing black, still slicked back. His skin was still pale white, his suit still dark gray, and his eyes – which the Batarian couldn't help but look away from – were still dark green orbs that put one emotion into anyone who looked into them: Fear. The man in front of him – and he was a man, not a Batarian, but a man – carried himself, and spoke with such authority that anyone who interacted with him felt utter fear when they looked into his eyes. Looking into The Mysterious One's eyes only gave one promises of a life lived in ever-continuous hell, and a slow, arduous, agonizing death should one cross him.

"I don't quite like your tone, Sir Hoorn." Said the Mysterous One, his voice calm, his tone level, not too loud and not too quiet. "I would expect a little more respect -" The bastard soldier disappeared, cloaked, and Hoorn felt the gun move away from his head. "- Especially since I not only secured your re-election so many years running, but I also gave you what you so desperately wanted, so many years ago: Human and Quarian slaves."

Hoorn slammed his fist on his desk, "you gave me -"

"Watch your tone, Sir Hoorn." The Mysterious One warned, his voice deadly serious, but his tone still level. "You would do well to speak to me with respect and cordiality."

The Batarian growled, "you gave me nothing Human. Nothing but death, destruction, and war."

"Oh contraire." Said the Mysterious One, "when we met upon the Vengeance, I told you I could show you a foolproof way to get Human Slaves. I explained to you the Alliance Colonization Charter, and showed you exactly where to put deniable pressure on the Alliance, so the lonely Mindoir would be without immediate defense." He said, face still devoid of any emotion. "The war that followed, followed because you failed to heed my warnings: Leave no trace of the Hegemony's involvement.

"I told you the Alliance would find out if you left any trace, even the smallest inter-office correspondence. And they did."

The Batarian's scowl turned into a leer, seething with hatred. "You told us that if we did exactly what you said, we would not – could not – be caught!"

"You said it yourself. Exactly... What... I... Said." The Human taunted. "It is not my fault you are as foolish as you look."

The Batarian could tell the Human was goading him, but he would not give the Human and his bastard soldier the pleasure of a reaction. "Speak your piece, Human, I have much work to do."

"As I speak the Alliance is making ready to end the war, with an all out blitzkrieg on Torfan." The Mysterious One explained, "they are merely days away from finishing their slave evacuations from your planets, after which they will return the relays and give you back the contested territory."

"Why do you tell me this?" Asked a bristling Chancellor, not aware that the Human was grinning, because he hadn't refuted his words.

"Because we must discuss our next steps."

"Next steps!?" The Batarian demanded, "No! We are done! I do not work for you, I did once and it ended with death and destruction!" He leapt to his feet, his gun in hand, and now it was pointed at the unflinching Human. "Now you will leave my -" He froze mid-sentence, eyes wide in shock and fury.

Where there had once been a dark, empty office room, now his office was filled to the brim with bastard soldiers in power armor. Each one had a weapon, each one was pointed at him, each one was a single movement away from turning him into Batarian paste.

Hoorn looked from the emotionless, soulless visors of the Bastard Soldiers to the Mysterious One, and blanched at the look on his face. Instead of the blank expression, there was disappointment and, horrifyingly, cold fury on his face.

"Now, Hoorn, you listen to me." One weapon went off, the gunshot as quiet as the breeze outside. Hoorn's weapon flew from his uninjured hand, and a second later he felt a hand on his chest, he was slammed back into his chair. "When the war ends... I want you to look for something. This object, this... Satellite, is older than every society currently in existence... Humans… Tentatively... not included.

"When you find this object, you will discover something. This discovery will be of a species, far less amiable than the Krogan, but far more manipulable. These people cannot yet leave their home system, but with a little... Guidance... They could be taken from where they are, to a galactic level. And with their penchant for war, they could be exactly what you need to combat the Alliance... To regain the Hegemony's lost honor."

Hoorn repressed a growl, as much as he did not want to admit it, he was intrigued. "This... Satellite... Is it a probe from this species?" He asked.

The Human smiled, "you could not be more wrong." He sat down in a chair that was pulled up by one of his bastard soldier. "Get comfortable, Chancellor, this is a long one."