Chapter 45

When our Lord entered the temple and found it polluted by money changers and beasts, did he ask them to leave? Did he cry? Did he simply walk away? No. He drove them out. It is one thing to forgive a slap across my cheek, but an insult to The Lord requires, no, it demands correction.

—Joshua Graham

August 2220

Day Five

He was going to go down as a traitor, for all of eternity. He didn't want to make this decision, but as he sat silently in his quarters, away from the crew he would have otherwise demoralized, staring at the vid-comm, waiting for the other side to pick up, he knew that, of all options, it was the only one that could mitigate as much damage as possible. He would go down in history as an evil, despicable man, who betrayed his own species and then kept fighting their war, but if it meant that the war would not spill out of this accursed solar system, then he was willing to shoulder that burden, accept that hate. This new information, this new possibility, seemingly coming from out of nowhere, it presented something he had had to act upon with swiftness, if he wanted to reach an effective outcome.

The four-eyed Captain, acting as the de-facto admiral of his battle fleet, heard the brief, faint 'click' as audio from another source began relaying itself through his vid-com, and his dark, depressing quarters were lit aglow by the combined orange display of the vid-comm, and the myriad of colors streaming in from the video. He turned his head up and found himself looking directly at what had once been the object of his abject hate: Homo Sapiens. The pale-skinned human, clad in his tough naval uniform, with a firm, neutral frown set upon his grizzled face, opened his mouth, but Captain Heyl cut him off by raising his hand.

"Before you say anything… Anything at all. Listen to what I have to say. For I will only ever say it once, and if you miss any details, more lives than we can possibly measure will hang in the balance." The human paused, his two eyes narrowing in consideration, before he leaned back in his chair, interlaced his fingers, and nodded once. Heyl swallowed thickly, "allow me to begin by saying: We made a mistake…"

The Mk. 6 Infantry Fighting Vehicle was rated to withstand a sustained ten second assault from a Energy Lance, had armor sturdy enough to be resistant to tank rounds, was capable of going several hundred miles per hour on uneven terrain, had enough firepower to take on a small militia, and had a communications suite that gave them instant access to the Temple of the Hoomanisire in Innsua. It was meant to be a mobile command center, capable of orbiting a battlefield, providing close support, and issuing orders on all channels, from BattleVector to Tyyrahn. When behind the wheel of the IFV, one could feel the power of its engine, as it roared to life and the entire armored vehicle shook and vibrated, and even those not driving it, or even outside of it, knew when an IFV had arrived, when the vibratory, thunderous roar of the engine filled the air around it.

In the driver's seat, centered at the front of the vehicle, Jorban Sal'Naa had the accelerator pressed firmly to the floor, one hand on the wheel, another pressed against his helmeted ear, and a look that could kill set firmly on his face. The empty inbound road stretched on for dozens of kilometers in front of him, and the blue-gray sky shined brightly above, but Jorban was staring at it all without truly seeing any of it, not because he had seen it all before, but because after hours of tearing across the highways and interstates at law breakingly lethal speeds, he had caught a brief, static-filled transmission on the short-waves.

"Hasen, Hasen, Kurah." Three words, from an era of history long since past, hissed by a deep, drawling voice that commanded more than just respect. The static muffling the voice was light, and in the background there was a cacophony of gunshots an battle-cries.

"Do you have the direction on that broadcast?" Jorban demanded, pressing two fingers to his neck as he slammed on the breaks and the vehicle squealed to a halt.

"Touchdown, touchdown, Kurah…" One of the radio operators called out over the idling engines. "Northwest, but there's a margin for error, and I hear gunshots in that broadcast." The operator leaned back in his chair to look down the cramped, spartan vehicle, to the Lanceman. "How close is Kurah to Sithresi? They may be dealing with the Dregs."

"Too close for comfort. He was coming in for a crash landing from orbit, so your margin for error is wide, and the danger of running into fleeing enemies and chasing dregs is much, much more narrow." Jorban growled, and slammed his boot onto the accelerator, the vehicle taking off with the sound of a thousand roaring beasts.

"But this mistake was mine to make. Was our leaders' to make. Not our soldiers. Not the men. If this war ends and there is anything left resembling any of our societies, you punish us. Not them." Heyl said clearly. "You may think your revealing yourself to us was a mistake, and perhaps it was… But it was a fortuitous one. Before I realized there was an out… A way to end this without as many bodies as it would have taken otherwise…" He broke eye contact with the human, looking off to the side as the weight of his shame settled upon his lightly armored shoulders. "I was dedicated to victory at any costs, but now? I just want the fighting to stop. I want the horrors to end. These things… These saltorians… They need to be curtailed. Controlled. They are violent, unruly, and powerful, moreso than the krogan, perhaps even moreso than your SIGMAs. They alone, with two planets, and likely less at the time, halted and reversed the advance of the Rachni… And instead of destroying them, as did the krogan before them… They did something no one even considered possible: They domesticated them... Weaponized them…" He growled, his rumbly voice barely raising above a powerful, raspy tone. "I've already set the orders to end things on our terms… But it won't work. It will only succeed in granting my men quicker, more expeditious deaths."

The human, hovering just outside of the solar system, widened his dark brown eyes, as it dawned on him what this batarian was saying. "What have you done?" The human breathed, his slackening jaw hidden by his interlaced fingers.

Heyl slowly let his head hang, exhaustion filling his eyes as he broke contact again with the human. "If you're here, it means you've been watching them. If you've been watching them, then you have information on them." He didn't raise his head back, as he sighed deeply. "You know what we've done."

The human looked like he was about to speak, but he cut himself off and looked off to the side, as a new voice, too quiet to make out, spoke. The human's eyes narrowed in confusion, "Arcturus? What's happening there?"

"Need you even ask, human?" The Captain asked, his shoulders sagging as he slowly lifted his head back up, "it is spreading already."

The human Captain's gaze shifted between the batarian and the speaker, before he spoke, pointing a pale, meaty finger to the offscreen speaker. "Write down everything he says." He turned to the vid-comm with a stern gaze, "start from the beginning." He growled, the edge returning to his voice as he settled back into his position as an officer, intent on intimidating the batarian as much as he had to.

"Left!"

"Brace!"

Without any further warning, Jorban wrenched the steering wheel to the left, and the IFV slammed into the median separating it from the grass and dirt of the unbuilt wildlands with a loud impact, and the sound of rocks and stone exploding and pelting the armor of the high-speed vehicle. The IFV soared through the air amidst a hail of gray debris and a cloud of dust before it slammed into the ground with a loud crash, bouncing heavily before it landed again and tore apart the dirt and soil. Barely two seconds after impact and the high-speed armored vehicle broke tore across the small clearing and broke the tree line, weaving in and out of the thick brown trees. At times their dense trunks actually scraped up against the vehicle's armored shell, and at others, when the driver judged it feasible, the vehicle slammed into and through the thinner, younger trees or the felled drywood. Any other driver would have rammed into the wrong tree and killed the occupants, but Jorban was a BattleVector, and he knew that the IFV was needed to change the tide of the battle and rescue the Praetorian.

Barreling through the dense woods, the thick canopy of leaves above them casting them in a drab, gray light, Jorban leaned back in his driver's seat and pressed harder on the accelerator, as the telltale signs of a crash began manifesting.

"We're here!" Jorban roared, "get on the guns!"

As the BattleVectors in the vehicle burst into activity, changing from their previous positions and stations to newer ones more suited to combat rather than assistance, Jorban drifted into the center of a deep, massive groove torn out of the earth as if by some enormous shovel. The large fissure extended multiple meters to the left and right, and dug several feet down. There were exposed roots and destroyed, obliterated trees all over the area, so even the freshly dug earth didn't provide a perfectly smooth ride, though it was much safer here than weaving in and out of the enormous, ancient trees to their sides. In minutes, they came upon the crash sight as thick, dark pillars of smoke crested over the horizon and choked the air.

Through scanner reports and shortwave radio traffic, Jorban got a quick image of the battlefield, but nothing at all beat a direct visual confirmation, so with that in mind Jorban yanked the wheel to the right and then quickly turned to the left, ramping over both sides of the fissure before launching the IFV into the air, his speed and the steepness of the dug earth leading to a high apex. He, the vehicle, and its crew were barely in the air for three seconds, but the three seconds were all that he needed. The Praetorian and his surviving crew were fighting against three separate factions: The Batarians, whose weapons seemed to be modified to explode with the force of two handcannons, the dregs, whose innumerable hordes had heard the sounds of struggle and smelt the iron smell of blood, the musty scent of sweat, and the fiery smell of smoke, and even Saltor itself, as a pack of zestor, enraged at the destruction of their habitat and interruption of their hunting cycles, simply fought anything that moved. The BattleVectors were fighting out of the crashed, partially intact shuttle, which streamed smoke and spit out ammunition and laserfire from all directions, the Batarians pressed against them from behind the trees to the east, hammering the Praetorian's forces with everything they had, the dregs came from the north, where cold, silent ruins of Sithresi lay, and the wildlife charged in from the south, clearly a recent addition to the battle, given the chaos they left in their wake.

In the center of the maelstrom of combat was the Praetorian himself, Jun Mun'Sid, his scorched uniform and weathered armor a blur as he led from the front. With his burning blade in one hand and a handcannon in another, he and the other BattleVectors who had run out of ammunition were fighting valiantly right in the thick of the enemy hordes, stabbing, cutting, burning, and tearing them all apart, their efforts focused on and around the shuttle's cockpit, where there were so many batarians that they could not risk opening fire with their modified, destructive weapons, lest they kill their own. Despite the odds stacked against him, or perhaps in direct spite of them, the Praetorian and his surviving BattleVectors still had an upper hand over the enemy, able to use his intelligence and experience to keep the dregs at bay, his home-field advantage to undo any strengths the Batarians' modified weapons may have given them, and his superior mobility to stay out of the path of destruction of the titanic zestor. Were one less versed in combat and warfare, one may think they could win, but in those few seconds Jorban had as he crested through the air, he caught the details that proved to him otherwise.

When compared to the volumes of cannon-like gunfire being poured out of the thousands of Batarian weapons, the streams of gunfire and beams of light from the BattleVector side were fewer and less intense, respectively; the BattleVectors had taken heavy casualties from both the crash and the combat thereafter, their conventional ammunition was running out, and the charges on their weapons were running low, even the steady stream of men sprinting out of the burning wreckage with their EnergyLances lit up and ready for melee had dimmer weapons, their energy cells close to depletion. The BattleVector numbers and the Batarian numbers were largely equal, but with the modifications to the Batarian weapons, they were now able to effectively kill saltorians, and as such both sides were mounting injuries, nearly all of them fatal. With the introduction of the frenzied, starving dregs, the scales were being tipped even further against the BattleVectors, who had to fight furiously to keep the shuttle under their control while simultaneously dodging Batarian fire, and while the Batarians weren't free from dreg harassment, due to the aliens being able to move somewhat freely, as opposed to being anchored to one semi-defensible position, they had less to worry about as they outmaneuvered the rapidly increasing numbers of dregs and blasted them apart with their heavy weapons. Then, of course, there was the zestor, who towered over the enormous trees that encircled the arena formed by the shuttle's impact. The colossal, hunched creatures tore apart the Batarians, beat at the wrecked shuttle, and thrashed about under dreg assault, killing scores of foes with every passing moment.

Left to their own devices, any combination of any of the variables, both apparent and not so, the Praetorian and the surviving BattleVectors would have fallen, with a great deal of bodies at their feet, assuredly, but fallen nonetheless. Jorban growled deeply, baring his razor-sharp teeth as a plan formed in his head.

"Focus laser fire on the Batarians, light machine guns on the zestor, and heavy machine guns on the Dregs. Get the zestor's attention, I will lead them to the enemy positions where they can be put to use!" Jorban barked, as the IFV crested through the air and slammed into the ground with a heavy, metallic thud. The thick tires tore at the dirt on the ground and quickly the armored fighting vehicle began weaving through the battlefield.

Jorban heard the multiple, rapid thuds and slams of the Batarian slugs impacting his vehicle's armor and bouncing off with a loud thud and the sound of metal crunching and bending, briefly making him consider doubting his vehicle's armor. He skidded around, turning the steering wheel hard to the right, and just as he came to a halt, the entire vehicle shook violently, rocking back and forth as if hit by something massive. A small section of the front right corner of the IFV was blasted off entirely, flak and shrapnel spraying into Jorban's face, drawing blood and burning his scales and skin. The veteran BattleVector turned his gaze to the newly formed hole in the IFV, and had a brief moment to ascertain what exactly had hit him, as blood seeped out of the wounds on the right side of his face and his exposed skin throbbed from the burns. Outside of the armor plating, a half dozen meters away, was a group of Batarians in thick armor, cowering in the deep, stretching shadows behind a fallen redwood tree. All of them were hunched over the tree's trunk, the light of Saltor's twin suns reflecting brilliantly off of their armor as they poured rounds downrange at the space shuttle, all but one, which stood tall behind his comrades, pointing his glowing-hot rifle directly at Jorban's vehicle. Behind the barrel of his rifle, visibly distorting the air with its radiating heat, the Batarian slowly lowered it, his eyes wide and his jaw slack, as he saw the tank tank a cannonblast, and the driver take the brunt of what had managed to pierce its armor to his face, and merely scowl in anger as a response. Jorban made sure the creature knew that he knew it had shot him, as he slammed his foot on the accelerator.

The world snapped back into focus as the engine of the tank revved loudly, and the wheels skidded for a few seconds on the ground as they fought to gain traction, spraying one of the titanic wild creatures behind them with a shower of dirt, turning its previously gray, hairy legs and arms deep brown. The vehicle's machine gun turret revolved around on its axis with a mechanical whirring sound, before raising up and opening fire, its huge caliber rounds smashing into the zestor, impacting the stony hide that hid under its thick mane of silvery-gray fur. The rounds shattered on impact, barely even drawing blood from stony plates that covered much of the beast, instead shredding its thick mane and filling the air with its hair, which floated lazily down to the ground as the beast reared back on its two hind legs, and made a complete about-face as the IFV gained traction and tore off, heading straight for the batarian with the modified rifle.

The rumors were true, then. Modified weapons. Thought the BattleVector, as alarms blared and his vehicle rocked again and again, more minuscule slugs hitting it alongside the cannon-like rounds.

The ground shook violently as the zestor thundered after Jorban and his IFV. His vehicle shook and shrieked with the sound of rending metal, but Jorban forced it forward, crushing the dirt underneath the vehicle's thick wheels as he hurtled towards the group of batarians. The one who had shot him had some amount of sense, as it cried out in fear and scrambled away in retreat, but the others had no such wherewithall or even awareness, and didn't even realize something was wrong until the roar of the engine was right on top of them, and Jorban turned hard to the right. As the vehicle turned and began drifting sideways, Jorban threw his hand down to his thigh and retrieved his handcannon. Time slowed down for him as he focused, and just as the vehicle came to a jarring halt by slamming its side into the fallen redwood, Jorban brought his handcannon to bear. The vehicle tilted to the right as the tree absorbed the impact, giving Jorban a straight shot through the hole that had caused his face to bleed so freely. His sights centered on his target, Jorban's pull of the trigger coincided with him slamming his foot on the accelerator.

The enormous round blasted out of the IFV and through the air, just as the vehicle lurched back into a proper position with a loud crash, and then lurched again backwards as it accelerated out of the way of the rampaging zestor. Barely a second later, and the fleeing batarian's torso exploded from the force of the bullet's impact, and his death was soon followed by the deaths of the other gunners as the zestor dug its four flat, round feet into the ground in an attempt to grind itself to a halt. It skidded across the ground and slammed into the fallen redwood, breaking the tree in half and tumbling over it, flattening the batarians it fell upon, and sending the rest flying, where saltor's intense gravity finished the job. The zestor sprung back to its feet and caught sight of the IFV just as the vehicle bashed through another group of batarians, blasting some apart with its machine guns, burning others with its laser turrets, and flattening the rest with the sheer force of impact. The titanic beast let loose an earth-shaking bellow, and stomped at the ground as it bolted back forward, ripping and tearing apart the dirt and earth, filling the air and showering the ground with freshly dug debris.

In the vehicle, Jorban made hard turn after hard turn, creating a wide serpentine maneuver to both keep the batarians and the zestor on their toes and off balance. The IFV rocked hard as more batarians with more miniature cannons saw it leading the zestor on its rampage, and though the armor plating held up better on the sides than it did next to Jorban's freely bleeding face, the computers and alarms were endless in their protest, needlessly informing him that it wouldn't be long until even children's rounds could penetrate their armor and damage the sensitive electronics. The forest was soon lit ablaze as the IFV's main laser turret was dragged all over the enemy's defensive line and the zestor smashed and crushed everything in the path of its destruction. It wasn't until a group of the batarians with modified weapons turned those weapons on the zestor, and injured it, did the status quo change.

The enormous, silvery-gray creature was hit with the equivalent of multiple cannonballs to its front right leg and its torso. The leg was blasted off in a shower of blood and pasty gore and its torso was pulverized, leaving it to teeter left and right before the titanic hunter fell forward with an earth-shaking crash. Were it any other Saltorian giant, it would have ended there, but the thing's dense, thick silver hair clogged up most of its wounds and slowed the bleeding down enough such that it could let out an ear-shattering, tumultuous wail. With its chest-shaking baritone and its wild demeanor, the titanic creature wailed like a banshee, filling the air with its thunderous shriek. The batarians without any ear protection, and even some of those with, fell to the ground and clenched their heads in sharp pain, joining the wails to create a cacophony of noise, while the glass panels on Jorban's vehicle actually cracked, and he winced in pain as his ears, flattened to his head by his corinthian-style helmet, began ringing painfully, though it gave him the split-second he needed to prepare for what would follow.

The injured zestor's pack froze in place when their pack-mate began its wails, and after a few moments, they raised their flat heads and joined it. The shrieks and wails of six titanic creatures deafened anyone not wearing a helmet, even managing to stun the BattleVectors who had seen the first one's injuries and prepared for the aural assault. After ten seconds of ear-drum shattering roars, during which Jorban actually wrapped his tail around his head to keep the noises out as he smashed through crowds of batarians and had his gunners focus on burning and blasting those he missed, the zestors grew silent, but the air did not. The dregs replaced them, their pained insectoid hissing, moans and melodic shrieks chilling to the bone everyone who still had any capacity for hearing. The dregs had much more sensitive, attuned ears, used mostly for the recognition of one dreg from another and their rudimentary methods of communication, and even though they were capable of sealing their eardrums behind their thick carapaces, like eyelids blinking shut, there was little save for specially made protection that could defend one from the wails of a pack of zestor. The result was an enraged pack of house-sized hunters who could resist everything short of tank rounds and laser fire, and a frenzied horde of insects.

In less than ninety seconds, the battlefield went from totally pressing upon the BattleVectors in their crashed shuttle, to a maelstrom of chaos, as the giant beasts born on Saltor, the starving, frenzied insects that had once tried to claim it, and the invading aliens who were trying to subjugate it, were all turned on eachother. The five zestor thundered across the ground, killing batarians and dregs alike, sending them flying with powerful sweeps of their front legs, or crushing them into the ground with their flat feet. The frenzied dregs swarmed their enemies, tearing them apart with their tentacles and ingesting them, or spraying them with acid and all but drinking the sloppy puddles that formed in their wake, with some even diving onto the ground and sliding across the puddles of acid and gory paste in their haste for sustenance. Soon, what was once a partially organized, if mostly circumstantial assault against the saltorians, with clear sides and divisions therein, was now a chaotic whirlwind of death, with the only organized party being that which had been in a losing position merely minutes earlier.

The BattleVectors, instead of taking the time to break and regroup, instead redoubled their efforts, invigorated by the words of their Praetorian, flooding the air and radiowaves. "This is our chance!" He roared, "As one! Light your lances!" And with a deep breath, he pushed out from the pit of his stomach, "AMEN!" And he, his fellows, and all of the survivors of the shuttle crash, charged out and onto the battlefield, their energy lances glowing white-hot, and their hand-cannons gripped firmly in their off-hands.

First to be exterminated in this massive clash of saurian, alien, beast, and animal, was that of the animals. Combined fire from the batarians, stabs from the saltorians, and acidic blasts from the dregs took all six down and killed them, though not before they could take down a heavy chunk with them. After dealing with the zestor, the charging BattleVectors turned their attention to the batarians, who buckled under the pressure of Jorban's elusive, deafening IFV, the dregs' savage assault, and the BattleVector's unrelenting fury. After thirty minutes, it was just the saurian bipeds, and the beastial, ravenous insectoids, once ancient enemies, now simply a matter of exterminator, and pest.

The dregs, for their part, seemed to know on some level that they weren't to be fighting the saltorians, as they backed away, jittering and dithering in melodic horror as they saw the paltry thousands of surviving BattleVectors straighten their backs, breathe a single, collective, heaving sigh of relief that the true test of combat was over, and turn their furious gazes to them, as if they were nothing but a chore to be completed, a mess to be cleaned, bugs to be squashed. At the head of the army of BattleVectors was their Praetorian, his body armor hanging loosely from his chest in tatters and his jacket slashed down the middle, both caught by the heavy wind and swaying to the side as he growled and slowly stalked forward, his burning blade held tightly in his hand, the white hot metal distorting the air as its heat radiated outward. He was quickly joined, in sequence, by the other BattleVectors, before all of them were charging as one to finish off this several day long fight. Some dregs met the charge head on, others deliberated, and others still fled, happy enough to find food sources elsewhere, until Jorban's IFV cut off their retreat, and in one motion, all of its turrets rotated on their axes to face them, and the sheer amount of gunfire coming from its many turrets forced them to halt, firmly catching them in a killzone. On one end, was the unstoppable advance of the angered BattleVectors, and on the other, was the immovable IFV, and in the middle were the terrified, starving, crying, shrieking dregs. The air was filled with the smell of burning flesh and the shrieking, gurgling sounds of the dregs being slaughtered and burned by white hot metal. A score of saltorians failed to survive this final push, but a great many more survived, and at the end of an hour, what had once been a pitched combat arena was now as silent as a nuclear wasteland.

Panting from exertion, with his lance buried blade-first in the ground, pinning a sizzling dreg combat-caste, the Praetorian doubled over and placed his hands on his thighs, as around him the other few thousand surviving BattleVectors did similarly, collapsing from the exhaustion of such an extended battle. Even the greatest of the great had limits, and nearly a week of constant combat with little to no food or water came dangerously close to actually testing those limits. Crunching over dreg corpses came Jorban in his lightly smoking, blood-splattered and heavily battered IFV, whose engine rumbled and idled as he came to a halt. A few moments of relative silence passed before, from the back, came a hissing sound of air pressure being let out, and the hatch swung open. Out stepped Jorban, wreathed in the light of Saltor's twin suns streaming into the clearing in the ancient woods. He had his helmet hanging in one hand, as he stepped down from the IFV and stepped up to the Praetorian, a hand clasped over his chest.

"I am glad to see you let live." Said Jorban, with a respectful nod and a light inclination of his upper body.

The Praetorian nodded, as he swallowed thickly through his dry throat, and forced his body to stand up straight and his breathing to calm, though his hearts would not for quite a while. He extended his hand to Jorban, and they clasped and shook once. "As am I to see you here. The zestor recognized our smell, damned things, without them we may have been able to win, given time." He drawled, as a small stream of blood leaked out of a gash on the right side of his mouth.

"How long did you fight?" Jorban asked, as the Praetorian pointed at the IFV and baded Jorban follow him inside, he needed to get updated.

"Three days. First came the batarians, they tracked our descent and even made it worse. Then, yesterday, the dregs, and just a few hours ago the zestor." He swallowed thickly, his deep voice slightly slurred by the wound to his mouth, though it did little to inconvenience him. "They have modified their weapons with remarkable speed, but it matters little compared to what I learned the night before this." He said, raising his arm, from which a thin wire dangled. "This is what they use to communicate." He explained, as the two stepped inside the hot, humid IFV. "Yesterday morning I ripped it off of one of their arms and used it to listen in to them. I do not know why it broadcasts in our language, but I shall not question the Hoomanisire's gift. They know they are losing…" He said, turning to a console lining the right bulk of the IFV, some were sparking from damage, but on the whole, what he needed to be working, was. "They want to break our back. Shatter our spirits."

Jorban raised an eyeridge, "do they know anything about us?" He asked, as he wiped blood from the side of his face and neck.

"I told them very little beyond direct answers to that which they asked." The Praetorian responded, as he turned on the console and started in typing in commands, reading the smaller reports first. "But they seem to think we are a weak willed race of zealots race... Similar to this race of aquatic sting analogues they have, who worship an extinct race of space explorers. Regardless, they think if they can take the temple of the Hoomanisire, and burn it, that we will surrender." He explained, his deep green face set in a light scowl, Jorban could see some scales starting to grow back onto it and cover up the raw skin.

Jorban couldn't help but bark out a laugh, "they do know nothing, then." He said, recalling one incident in his early bi-century, when a thug had stolen one of his Markings. The thug had been fed to the dregs, alive, after an eight hour manhunt that had attracted a dozen BattleVectors looking for sport.

"Indeed, but I do not want to risk the deaths and copious slaughter that their celestial war vessels will bring if they strike the city from orbit, which would be the only wise decision they could make." The Praetorian shook his head as he pressed a set of headphones to his left ear. "I need to first get the Liquid Fire satellites in position and re-angled. One display and they will stay clear, but that will not stop them from trying to come in low, as opposed to high. So we will need to bring to life the HellFire cannons to keep our air space clear." He explained, quickly, tapping a few keys and then clearing his throat. "Innsua Command, this is Praetorian Jun Mun'Sid. Full recall - the holy city is soon to come under siege. All other cities come second, ready the HellFire emplacements for AA cover. Arm the LoH-Warheads, wake up the Liquid Fire satellites, and bring me into contact with Father Gef in regards to The Call." He stood back and crossed his arms, the headset dangling from one.

"Full recall, sir?"

"I will not allow Innsua to fall to enemy hands, no matter how unlikely the prospect may be. My legacy will not be tainted by the loss of the holy city." He said, as a grin spread across his face. "And it may not even be my wrath they must fear."

Jorban leaned against the bulk behind him, tilting his head as one of the BattleVectors rushed past him and outside, muttering something about the engine. "Sir?"

"We did not just spend our time on planet Hoomanisire inviting enemies to our door, Lanceman." Said the dark-scaled Praetorian, "the fallen void watcher, the second temple, speaking to the batarians… They gave us the tools to learn secrets that have been hidden right under our snouts for tens of thousands of years, and we intend to use them if we can." He turned to Jorban, his amber eyes locking onto Jorban's red orbs. "The Temple of the Hoomanisire has a communications complex as well, as I am certain you know. Many go there to pray. But what we did not know is that it responds to, and is linked with, the complex in the Second Temple. Once we unearthed the Second Temple and accessed its communications networks, we learned that it would be possible to activate the machines we once thought long dead. We think it to have been our final test - only those with great wisdom and the peace with which to achieve said wisdom can pass it. Much like how he gave us the keys to nuclear fusion during the Dreg War, we think the Hoomanisire left the communications suites as a clue... A key… A flare. In other words… We think we discovered how to quite literally call the gods.

"And we intend to."

"After your kind and mine had our war, my government was desperate, destitute. Rebellions were brewing almost as fast as they could be quelled. The Council wasn't willing to rescue us from having earned the wrath of the Alliance - content to maintain their status quo by ignoring us as if we did not exist. We needed a way to make money, we needed a way to obtain resources, a way to stimulate our rebuilding process… And nothing does all of those things quite as well as an influx of slaves." Said the Batarian Captain, to the softly glowing hologram of the human Captain. "We were exploring new regions of space to find new places to mine, and we discovered a satellite, predating the protheans in its age. As we brought it in for study, it activated, and we were contacted by the saltorians.

"If you are here, that means you know as much as, if not more about them than we do. The truth is we thought we could use them - a deniable army. A way to win the favor - and economical support - of the Citadel, by covertly uplifting them and turning them loose on you. If they won, they were our allies and would pledge allegiance to the Citadel. If you won, it would not be without casualties, and we had spies ready to drop scuttled batarian ships in the warzone, so it would appear as if you violated our ceasefire. The Citadel would go to war with you in your weakened state, and would most assuredly win." As he explained the bare-bones facts of their war plan, he saw the human's face grow dark, but he shook his head and continued. "But they refused. Took our technological advances and simply said no, citing their religion as why they would not join our war.

"Let it never be said our leaders were wise, because after hearing this, they declared war - right then and there. Then they used experimental technology, replicating your own methods of FTL travel, to go right in and make good on their threats… But we knew so little about them. We did not know how durable they were, how crushing their gravity was… How powerful they were, in strength, skill, and spirit. We have direct proof that they have weaponized rachni, human. These people, these creatures, they are not right, nothing in this galaxy should be so powerful… They do not fit... "

The human took this pause as a chance to speak. "Rachni… I've read about them. They've been extinct since before the Krogan Rebellion."

"They were why the krogan could rebel in the first place, human." Exhaustedly sighed the taut-skinned batarian. "They exterminated the rachni, back during the age when it was just the asari and salarians running things. Before your kind even recorded their history." He shook his head, "regardless… They are not as extinct as we once thought." He said, with another sigh as the darkness of his cabin around him seemed to close in on him, crushing him as he was forced to maintain eye contact with the human on the other side of the solar system. "These saltorians… I would not hesitate to say, at their basest, they are comparable to your SIGMAs, inviolable, determined, and simply unable to accept defeat - gods, their weapons are like miniature cannons. Just one bullet can shatter the barriers of anyone they fire upon, and still have enough kinetic energy to turn them to paste. We cannot dig our way out of this one, human… And I beseech you to go back to your people. Tell them. We need to quell this threat now, before they push us off of their world and salvage our ships."

The human narrowed his eyes, realization dawning. "Because you brought them our warp tech, they won't have any limits as to where they can go." He looked as if he wanted to say something else, but changed his mind at the last second, instead speaking a different thought. "Why do you not just leave? Evacuate?"

"Better to die by your hand, than by the hand of our inept leaders." Said the batarian, "we are ninety percent of their navy. If you bring your fleets here, you need only destroy those ships that do not follow my orders to stand down… And then the head of the hegemony is all but defenseless. If we go back, they will fight to the bitter and most bloody end."

"It almost sounds as if you're talking treason."

"I am; perhaps for the first time in my life. I hate myself for what I must do, but this will result in less senseless deaths in the long run." Said the yellow-skinned Captain.

The human shook his head, "is there anything else you need to tell me? I have to go in with my guns loaded to get this done as fast as possible, and even then, it will take a day, maybe two, before we can get a fleet in place for an expedient assault."

"I will speak to the other Captains, see who will follow me. There will be those of us who will not fire upon you when you arrive… But it is also likely I will be killed for high treason, and you will fly into an ambush. Prepare as you will… And whatever you do to equip your forces against Saltor's gravity, keep in mind some of my men are fielding modified weapons. They hit with tank-like force."

The human shook his head, "for a slaver race, you people don't like to take prisoners." He sighed, "I hope for your sake we can finish this quickly. What is your name?"

"Captain Ye Heyl."

"I've already got all of my ships in warp transit. I will now join them. For what it's worth, telling us this, you're a better man than most. Good luck, Captain Heyl." The human cut his transmission, and the Captain imagined that they soon felt the feeling of dropping a vast distance in the pits of their stomachs, as they snapped to warp and made for their capitol, post-haste.

The only thing on his mind, was that the man had mentioned Arcturus, as if there was news. It was clear that something had happened, or - even more terrifying - was happening. Heyl knew not how bad it would be, he simply prayed, as he let his shoulders droop and his neck hang, that there wouldn't be so many bodies that the Alliance would be blinded by rage now, as they had been during the Human-Turian War.

A/N:

Hey folks!

So, I've been gone for a while, haven't I?

Well, I'll be making a more in depth blog entry about it soon (both to explain the why of these absences and to get back into the habit of updating it), but the short version is I've been trudging through some depression as of late, and it's been affecting my writing.
Don't worry, it's nothing life threatening, but it's a lot of small things piling up, and it's been getting to me, but I'm working through it, it's just a slow process.

But, so we're not focused on the bad stuff, I'm hoping to pick up the pacing a bit after this chapter, get things moving a bit faster. What I want to do is get TNFW finished and try to get things moving a bit faster from here on. As I've said before, this series is something I'm using as a catalyst to test out a great deal of ideas I'd like to use in my original canon, and I've been doing a lot of research as of late with some trusted contacts, and I've begun working out ways to up the ante, as it were, and make the WarVerse much more reflective of the canon from which it draws. All I'll say in that regard is that, in canon, biotics were heavily *under* utilized, and I intend to correct that.

Finally, I've got a general outline of the specifics of the finale of the 'Prequel War' trilogy, that started with TFW. It'll tie a pretty pink bow over a lot of what I started back in 2013, and help set up the Reaper Saga, which, by the way, I've been making some serious headway on the general outline of. It's no detailed 'A-Z of what will happen and how', but I've got a rough idea of everything I'd like to have happen, from the moment Saren pulls the trigger, to the final moments of the battle for Earth. I think you'll all like how it turns out.

'Till next time!

-PFB