Disclaimer: I own nothing. This is purely for recreational purposes.
XXX
Jil Tres was a happy Duros. In fact, he was so happy, that he was literally having to force himself not to dance on the spot in the middle of the Slave markets of Nal Hutta, the only thing preventing him from doing so was the fact that his customer was still standing right in front of him.
Still, that didn't stop him from smiling at said customer. The being in question was, from the looks of it, a Human female, covered in a particularly heavy suit of armor and armed with a few weapons under a heavy coat that extended all the way down to her ankles and a hood over her head. All Jil could really see of her was a narrow line down the middle of her chest to show her breast plate as well as the lower section of her face, her lips and chin being present, a knowing smile playing across her lips, as though she knew what Jil was thinking, but made no move to stop him. Then again, given the order she had just placed, the Duros slaver was more than willing to dance in the streets and sing at the top of his lungs, especially given the fact that she was buying his entire stock at once!
Over two hundred slaves of just about every Near-Human race he could care to name, that were present within his section of the markets, not to mention the Humans themselves. That was well over one hundred different races that were then packed up on to the Lady's ship as tightly as possible, helped by the crew on said ship, an Action VI Freighter, to pack them up as tightly as possible. One thing that he had noticed, probably something he could employ himself, was that they seemed to be putting the slaves into small, coffin-like boxes before attaching needles to them to provide chemicals to both render them unconscious as well as ensure they survived the trip. It was rather smart, though, then again, he doubted that he would be able to make it work since the chemicals would need to be measured out on a per-race basis, making it difficult to be sure what would and would not be effective for use. Then again, he considered, this group had clearly come prepared for business as he had noted a few dozen more containers filled with Non-Humans in roughly the same ratio as he had been giving to these girls. Two hundred beings, half male and half female, all of which had to be in good physical condition and well trained, pretty standard stuff, all things considered.
"There you go, that should be the last of them." He noted as he looked passed the leader of this group to see the last slave being loaded into their containers before it being closed, locked and then slide into a honeycomb to maximize the amount of space they could use. The Lady nodded her head at that, her smile still in place as she tilted her head to one side as another woman came up beside her with a briefcase in hand.
"Good. However, before we go, I'd like to make a final transaction that will be added to your final payment." The leader stated as he paid attention to what was said next. "That Zeltron I saw in your stock, the one that was bound in a small cage on her own? How much for her?"
Jil was careful to ensure that his face didn't suddenly change to show his joy at finally getting rid of that particular slave. The Zeltron had been a pain in the ass for as long as he had had her, usually to the point that no one wanted to even attempt to purchase her. This was mostly because she seemed to be able to glare down anyone that came near her cage, forcing people away even with her hands and ankles bound to the bars of her cage, a gap in her mouth, and wearing little more than two strips of leather to cover her chest and waist. Still, if these people were going to take that damned bitch off his hands, then he wasn't going to stop them.
"Ah, yes. Her, right this way..."
XXX
I had to admit, Larahin worked quickly when she decided to get the needed 'test subjects' for her sister to use to perfect any number of augments. In particular, I knew for a fact that Larahin didn't need to get nearly as many people to allow Esaley to perform the needed experiments, 25 of each gender for each race that she wanted to be able to effect would have worked just as well. However, I had seen into my Daughter's head, seen her plans and thoughts through the Link, I knew what she was thinking, and what she was planning was her own series of experiments to learn more about the races of the Galaxy.
Specifically, she wanted to learn about their psychology and biology and how to influence both through her chosen methods of control, usually by pillaging their minds with a few Melds. I had seen the results of the first few tries, usually resulting in those that she carried out a Mind-rip to become little more than barely living vegetables, but she was improving. Each Mind-rip and Meld was getting better, she was waking up certain members of each race before... Convincing them to serve as Indentured Servants for a decade or two before twisting them around through heavy use of operant conditioning. She did this through subtle uses of Melds, the new injection Bionetic implants along with a heavy spray of various pheromones to get these people thinking, and acting, in the way she wanted. Already, it had only been about two years since her trip to Nal Hutta, and she had managed to convince at least two hundred of them to be her personal servants that worked for little more than her approval.
It was rather funny that, in turn, Larahin was doing this to ensure she gained as much control of the Galaxy as quickly as possible to earn my own approval.
Still... I had asked about why she needed that many, turns out that most of them were still in Stasis tubes similar to what the Collectors used in ME2, but with a different design to them, not that it mattered, they still worked off the same principle of locking down the matter that made up the individual at the Quantum level, effectively freezing them in place until the field lost power. Since said fields were being feed by massively powerful M/AM reactors, I didn't see that happening any time soon. Though, the answer I got for why Larahin had done this was rather simple: She wanted to have an excess of races both to allow her to send them out as scouts with implanted Greyboxes and Ghost-hack rigs, along with having more test subjects at the ready in case Esaley or any of her sisters got something they wanted to test out. At the very least, it meant that they wouldn't need to make repeated, and noticeable, trips to slave markets to buy massive, bulk shipments all that often.
Here was hoping that the Hutts didn't notice, and if they did, an accident could always be arranged...
XXX
"Can you please get your thrall to stand still? I thought we were here to work? Not just stand around while your thrall tries to shrug off as much clothing as possible, Larahin." Larahin grinned as she looked over her shoulder of her Zeltron thrall, said thrall was seemingly fidgeting to try and get comfortable in a dress that, while impressive-looking, showed off what the collective Galaxy would consider an indecent amount of skin, unless you were a Twi'lek stripper. Larahin didn't really care, all things told, her thrall, or, as some of her sisters called her, 'Indentured Servant', especially since the dress was positively conservative by some of the Asari standards that she had read about from the Queen Matriarch.
The Servant in question was a rather nice Zeltron, deep red, practically crimson, skin covered her body and showed off her well-muscled figure while still allow for soft curves and developed features that would have left any male of virtually any race drooling, walking into walls and chasing after her with even the slightest sway of the hips. White hair added to the effect as it gave her a near-ethereal appearance that only seemed to draw more attention to her smooth features and virtually flawless expression, said expression was currently set in a pleasant look of adoration as she looked at the back of Larahin's head along with occasionally glancing at the other two Asari in the room, Jan'sha and Malany. As her eyes flickered around, it was easy to see the Zeltron biting her lip for some reason, one that was rather easy to figure out if one knew what the woman had experienced with Larahin, as she tried to lean in one way or another, to shrug off her clothes or to show off a bit more skin. It was something of an achievement that she managed to make it work, especially given the dress she was wearing. Said dress was made from light fabrics, in the colours of red, orange, yellow and a few whites with the material hugging her body tightly as holes were cut out of the material in certain areas to enhance her appearance. Specifically, those holes were present around the cleavage, the stomach, both sides and most of the back, along with that, a long ling was cut down the left side of the dress, running from just below the waist all the way down to the bottom of the dress around the ankles.
The appeal showed off a tantalizing amount of well-sculpted flesh, something that had attracted more than a bit of attention among her sisters, especially some of the younger ones that were looking for a quick night of bliss. Still, looking back at her sisters, Larahin knew she needed to end this, ruining her own enjoyment of her two sisters' expressions as she knew that if the Zeltron wasn't removed, then there was a non-zero chance that nothing would come of this meeting as one of them would eventually try peeling the dress off her thrall with their teeth. Rolling her eyes at that thought, Larahin stood from her seat and turned around, reaching over the sofa before clamping a hand gently, but firmly, on to the thrall's jaw before pulling her close, almost dragging her over the sofa before slamming their lips together in a kiss that seemed to cause the Zeltron's entire body to turn to gelatin as she struggled to stay on her feet before Larahin pulled back with a smile and then leaned in, whispering in the Zeltron's ear.
"Return to my chambers. I'll be along in a while, we can carry out some more... Pleasurable activities after I'm done here." Larahin stated before pulling back as the Zeltron beamed at that thought, rapidly turning and leaving the room while trying to conceal her excitement at the thought of what another night with the Asari might be like.
Let along the fact the Zeltron would be able to brag about having pleasured her mistress a bit more than some of the other 'Servants'.
"So! Now that the mild entertainment is out of the way, I suppose we can begin." Jan'sha stated dryly as she glanced over at Larahin once more, seeing her sister back in her seat as the door to the room closed behind the leaving thrall, getting a pout out of it where she smiled in return before they looked between themselves before looking into the middle of the room, specifically, the hologram that was being projected between the three of them.
The hologram showed the image of a suit of armor, large, covered in thick plates of armor over the arms, legs and upper torso while the head was protected by a fully-enclosed helmet. Under the thick plating was a layer of black that showed the protective under suit, which, while looking weak to the uninformed, was only just weaker than the armor plating itself. The armor wore a raised mantle that circled the neck from the middle of the chest before slowly creeping up until it reached the back of the base of the head, leaving plenty of room for the wearer to look around, even with the helmet in place. On each shoulder, a single pod was present with a gap between them and under them for weapons to be mag-clamped to the armor with small containers located around the back of the waist and in each thigh, along the various mag-clamps to store weapons of different designs. To further detail the armor, the figure was shown to have an Asari-like figure while the armor was painted in black with grey and white trim to it, digital camouflage patterns covering the armor while the helmet was left largely without such patterns, mostly because of the massive, grey-tinted visor that reached up from the base of the jaw line and then wrapped around the head before stopping just behind the ear and halfway down the back of the head, ensuring that the user had a full range of vision and no interruptions in it.
"Well... I've already worked out the design, along with incorporating the features that you wanted, Jan'sha, that just leaves some of the finer details like what kind of materials should be used, whether they should be from the Republic-techbase or our own, and if you, Larahin, know of anything that might make the armor better than what we've already put together." Malany explained as she gestured to the armor as it spun in the air, slowly, a list of features appearing next to it as it moved. Larahin felt her eye-ridge going up and up and up with each feature that was stated.
"Flash-forged Titanium exoskeleton covered with high-impact ceramic armor over fifteen millimetres thick. Multiple inbuilt storage areas with mag-clamps for item and weapon storage. Dual in-built Omni-tools with full fabrication, infowar and engineering suites. A double under layer of Omni-gel and Nano-machine self-repair systems. Triple redundant series of Medi-gel distribution systems. Multi-phase Synthetic muscle bundles to increase user strength and speed. Direct neural interface and VI conversion for enhanced reaction times. A triple strength Biotic amplifier connected to, and supplemented by, a trinity of miniature Fusion reactors. Mass Effect field generators to allow for reduced weight in high-gravity environments or to alter the gravity of the user. Miniature jump jets built into the armor for limited flight and hover capabilities. Trans-atmospheric capabilities..." Larahin finished with a whistle, not daring to read some of the other features that her sisters clearly wanted on a suit of armor that, according to what Jan'sha and Malany had said, was meant to be the Standard issue armor of the Sovereignty. It was more than enough to give even Heavy infantry and Mandalorians pause considering that the stuff amounted to a serious level of firepower and an expectation to use every scrap of it.
"Well, I can honestly say that it is impressive." Larahin commented, getting a half-smile from Jan'sha at that while Malany snorted, glancing at her more militant sister, obviously denoting who it was that decided that the armor was needed, even though it wasn't needed in the first place.
"That was what we were hoping for." Malany quipped back as she reached out and spun the hologram around, displaying it from all sides as Larahin took in some of the more obscure details of the design. "Now, what we need from you is any suggestions for additions, features and add-ons that you might have heard that might be common out in the wider Galaxy. Things that might give soldiers an edge when compared to the average soldier of a given Galactic polity. Think you can do that?"
Larahin hummed at that. It was true that she could do such a thing, having spent enough time among the Black Markets of the Galaxy to have picked up a few things, though she did see a rather obvious lack of need for some of these things.
"Honestly, given the inclusion of the Omni-tools and Shielding systems, including Mag-shields. You've already given this armor a hell of an edge over the suits of armor that would be available out in the rest of the Galaxy." Larahin offered with a shrug. "Most Bounty Hunters usually have weapons like flamethrowers, dart launchers, rocket launchers, Lasers and other weapons like that, built into their gauntlets, but with the Omni-tools, having those individually built into the armor simply adds to the production time and makes the forearms less durable due to having less and less armor. The only thing that really springs to mind is the use of some of the medical sensors such as Bio-scanners and life-form scanners that are commonly used to detect and track other life forms. Other sensors can easily work for non-organics while a few in-built stealth systems could work to prevent detection in turn." Jan'sha nodded at that.
"We'll need samples of those scanners to be able to reproduce and integrate them into the suits or armor. Getting copies of multiple types of sensors would probably be the best option since, then, we can experiment to see which systems work the best and then use what we wish. The stealth systems will also need some work, though, they were already slated to be added to the Commando-variant of these armor." Jan'sha mentioned as Larahin nodded.
"Fair enough." The third sister remarked as she stood up and walked around the sofa, heading for the exit, but not before asking one, final, question. "By the way, what were you thinking of calling these suits of armor?"
It was Malany to answer that question as she looks up from her own Omni-tool, details of internal systems being displayed as she quickly ran through a few more systems before grinning at her sister.
"Aegis."
XXX
Bang! Bang!
I sighed, lifting the hammer clutched in my hand even as I held the Plasma-forged steel on top of the Mass effect compression anvil, keeping the metre long strip of metal steady as I hammered on, channeling my Biotics to form a Subsume, increasing the gravity being experienced by the blade even as I artificially increased the mass of my hammer. I was pounding this single strip of metal thinner than paper with every hit, getting it closer to the absolute thinnest point it could get to.
Honestly, for a second attempt to make a Warp Sword, I figured that it wasn't that bad. Admittedly, my first attempt was rather good, but I wanted to do better with this one, I figured that after a practice run that had taken me the better part of a three years to make. This one, on the other hand, I had been working on for over a decade, if only because I wanted to make something truly impressive even though I knew that I should take my time, especially since I had so much time to spare. I smiled at that thought, even as I lifted the hammer once more to smash the strip of metal even further towards being the equivalent of a sheet steel only slightly thicker than a few molecules.
Two and a half centuries. I had been here for over 250 years now, and I was honestly enjoying it as things stood. I had long since moved passed my grievances, my old family would have been long since dead by this point in time multi-universal, flowing at the same rate across the multi-verse. Still, I was sad, but I had moved on, accepting that they were dead, that I'd never see them again meant that they may as well be dead even if time was different, or I had been thrown around in time. Now though, I had other things to focus on, my new family, my children, my daughters.
Honestly, those girls never stopped surprising me with everything they came up with. Already, they were expanding upon the nation I had laid the ground work for, they were still expanding upon that foundation, building upon them even as they gave birth to daughters of their own. It filled me with joy, knowing that I was effectively giving birth to an entire race within a universe that had never seen the Asari before, and that my daughters were giving birth to children of their own. I had grand-children now!
Some of my children had stuck with the original forty children that had been planned among them, others, like Jan'sha and Larahin, were planning so many more within the initial years of their Matron-hood, the former wanting as many as seventy children before calling it to a halt, at for the time being. The latter of the two wanted that many, plus another ten on top of that, eighty total, within the first few decades of her matron-hood with plans for a few dozen more as she progresses through life. Fifty years had already passed and the oldest of my grand-children were already fully mature on a physical level, mental development was slightly slower, but the use of Melds and teaching methods ensured that they matured quickly on a mental level as well. They still got plenty of time to enjoy themselves as children, but they were exposed to Asari culture quickly, along with their duties to any of the given Houses that they belonged to. Jan'sha's daughters were already forming the basis of the Asari military while Larahin had already taken her oldest daughters to spend a few nights properly... Learning from her various thralls, some of which were actually the descendants of the original thralls that Larahin had purchased through slave markets, set into pre-determined couples and then allowed to breed to create what amounted to lineages of thralls. These lineages each were capable of serving different roles, most were for pleasure, comfort and relaxation, though, a few of them were bred for other things, spying, infiltration and seduction of specific targets that would notice a disguised Asari.
If that wasn't enough, I'd already started seeing just how different things were becoming thanks to the increase in numbers given by the rapid-fire births. The land around the spire had exploded with construction work as small complexes sprung into existence while production in automated factories was increased. Farms were up-scaled as to handle what was, essencially, a population boom, even with dozens of metric tons of foodstuffs preserved in stasis fields, my daughters seemed to be of the opinion that such things would run out within a few decades if food production wasn't upgraded to match the new demand. It was a wise idea, to always have the supplies to last, but some of my more militant daughters went to extremes with it since food and weapons were stockpiled so highly that entire bunker networks were built to store them. I had seen one of the many chambers in one such network, you could have fitted a Cruiser into the same space if you evacuated that chamber of all the stored food. Mechs were commonly used to run constant inventory checks and maintenance on the networks, but they were left alone for the most part, a back-up in case of mass attack and possible blockade.
Aside from that, technology had also advanced rapidly within the last century and a half, honestly surprising me at the level of rapid advancement that had taken place, though, maybe it shouldn't have been. I had basically handed my daughters a 'how-to' guide on Mass Effect physics along with taught them the basic designs for Mass Accelerator weapons, they had branched off from there, creating more weapons that ranged in all kinds of different aspects.
As a whole, my daughters seemed to favor a mix of Mass Effect-propelled wedges, or darts, of superheated Uranium Hexafluoride that were then covered in a magnetically charged film of Iron as the wedges came out the barrel of the weapon. This type of ammo was planned to be used commonly since it had shown a dual effectiveness against both organics and synthetics, along with some types of personal shields that had been recovered, though it depended on their quality. Other weapons used other types of ammo ranging from Mass-compressed bolts of deionized Plasma to particle packages that were flash compressed from a storage tank of Omni-gel before being fired. All three options were common for the standard issue weapons, though I knew that my daughters were leaning more towards using the Uranium Hexafluoride wedges as whole. More exotic weapons were also present, Particle-beam weapons were coming along as heavy weapons, Lance cannons mainly, but I had heard that Teluc had been making progress with an adaptive Particle wave-guide crystalline material. Then again, I hadn't heard much about focusing the beam of unstable particles, hard radiation and Gamma rays, resulting in short-ranged cone blast that would make for a rather effective Shotgun or War cannons, especially since testing had shown that anything hit by these weapons would be lucky to even have remains.
More exotic weapons were also in the works, I had given Glailine the basic idea for one weapon of interest and she had run with it. The weapon was called a Hyperluminal Particle Accelerator, it was basically a miniature Mass Relay that would gather all the matter around it, usually the air, and then accelerate this matter to FTL speeds and flash convert it into plasma, unstable particles and a lot of radiation. The prototype was already finished and having been tested over a decade ago, the result was that anything standing within 121 metres would just die, nothing surviving being hit by the ME tunnel, let alone the resulting mass of excited matter within the tunnel. From 121 to 213 metres away, the targets would be looking at being blasted apart by a cone the formerly contained matter, over that would lead to a target experiencing what could only be called a shower of Grenades, and before dissipating into hard radiation at around the 274 metre mark.
The weapon itself was potent, useless in vacuum due to the initial design, but anything hit by it within atmo, whether it was inside a super heavy tank, in a castle or in a fucking starship, it was going to die and not have much left to even bury.
Of course, Glailine decided this wasn't enough and decided to experiment with the design, resulting in her, by accident, creating what could be considered one of the most powerful weapons in ME. She created a chamber that used plasma to flash-melt a nickel feedstock in an overpressurised environment to prevent it from transitioning into a gas. Magnetic bottling, helped by ME fields, contained the super-heated liquid metal while it was aligned with a target, once that was done, a Mass shunt, similar to what was in the Hyperluminal Particle Accelerator, fired the molten metal at FTL speeds.
The first testing of a design that was meant to be mounted on a Frigate resulted in a target made from ten metres of solid Silaris armor being cored from one end to the other, the beam of FTL-fired molten metal still travelling onwards without a significant decrease in speed before coming to a stop at a range of ten million kilometres from the firing point.
A day later and Glialine had Jan'sha smashing down the door to her lab, demanding both hand-held versions of this weapon along with having up-scaled versions mounted as the main guns of every ship in the Asari Navy. And, if that wasn't enough, Jan'sha wanted to have these things mounted on the, now complete, orbital ring to replace the original defence guns, while still keeping the same calibur of barrels. Those guns had a bore size of over fifty cenitmtres across, firing shells of Bose-Einstein condensate-cooled Tungsten with a core of solid depleted Uranium, these shells could reach as fast as 0.75 C, three quarters of the speed of light.
Any ship unlucky enough to be hit by them, was not a ship that would be existing for very long. The fact that the orbital ring had two rings of 120 of these guns mounted along the sides of the ring, all that just meant that any attacker would suddenly find themselves suffering from a terminal existence failure.
Suddenly, I halted what I was doing as I felt something, drawing me out of my thoughts as I turned and looked just as the door opened to allow one of my grandchildren to enter. When she stepped in, I had to repress the urge to roll my eyes at what she did, along with what I felt through the Link, even as she dropped to one knee, her head dipped down and looking at the ground.
"High Ascended." She spoke, which did lead to me rolling my eyes.
"You may rise." I commanded imperiously, repressing a sigh as the younger Maiden stood and I got a good look at her, specifically, her dark blue hardsuit that hugged her body like a second skin, a large cut having been taken down the middle of her chest, showing off her generous bust while the hardsuit opened at the neck with a high collar, showing off a golden necklace-collar that actually doubled as a Biotic amp. Pieces of metal were attached to her brow through chemical bonding, functioning as a projected HUB while she was armed with only one weapon, a Disciple Shotgun that was held behind her back and just above her well shaped ass and around her thin waist. She looked like a reincarnation of Samara from ME2, but with a different colour of armor, which was funny since I knew, through the Link, that her name actually was Samara.
"You came with a message, Justicar Samara?" I asked, already knowing as much as well as her purpose thanks to the Link, drawing a wide-eyed look of surprise from her before she locked that down and bowed her head, trying to hide her surprise from me as I felt the half-smirk cross my face.
A result of some of my grandchildren looking into the old culture of the Asari also lead to a study of the old worship of Athame. Some of the more religious of them spotted a similarity between how Athame had brought enlightenment to the Asari and how I was doing it with my children, some of them had thought there were more... Spiritual and religious overtures. Namely, some of them believed I was either Athame incarnated or a child of the Goddess, hence why some called me the 'High Ascended'.
This, among other things, also lead to the recreation of the Justicar Order as my 'Holy Servants and Warriors'. If the normal Asari, both my current daughters and grand-daughters, were loyal to me to a fault, then those that had chosen to leave their Houses were fanatically devoted to me, literally willing to commit suicide to please me and they took my ability to use the Link as one more piece of proof that I was blessed.
"Yes, High Ascended." Samara spoke simply, her head remaining bowed as she spoke, not looking at me for one reason or another, not that I minded. "The Ascended wish to meet with you in a discussion within the Grand Hall. They seek knowledge of your designs for the future and the Destiny of the people." I felt my lips twitch once more at that, the Justicars, having rebuilt their Code, also made wide use of ritualistic language when talking to either myself, or any of my daughters. Even going so far as creating an entire section devoted to how to talk with us along with keeping my existence from outsides, non-Asari.
"Convey a message to them; Tell them that I shall meet with them in an hour and a quarter to impart my designs unto thee and they, bring food and drink, for the discussion shall be long and I feel that much has yet to be done." I stated, my voice sounding imperious and filled with authority to the Justicar, but my lips twitched even as I spoke. I had no idea why I had decided to speak in the same, almost, ritual language as the Justicars, but it did make interactions interesting, especially among the few that were called 'Everchosen', those that had 'curried my favor' and could talk with me without the ritual language, most of whom were immediately promoted to high-ranking positions within the Justicar Order even as they sorted themselves out into what would become the main law enforcers of the Asari Sovereignty.
"At once, High Ascended." She bowed her head a bit deeper and bowed even further at the waist before turning on the spot and leaving the room, the door closing behind her even as I could feel her moving away, my long-since augmented hearing picking up the click of her heeled boots, I shook my head at that. Honestly, the only reason that they even had heels like those was simply due to some thinking of it being needed to talk with me, regardless of what I actually said. Why I didn't order them to remove the damned things was simply because I couldn't be bothered, that and they could be retracted into the back of the boots when needed.
"The only easy day was yesterday..." I muttered to myself as I pinched the bridge of my nose, quickly flicking a button on the other side of the room with a light Biotic Push before watching as the steam rising from my Anvil froze in mid-air thanks to a Stasis field while the flames of my Forge did likewise. Reaching over and grabbing a jacket from a spare chair, I moved to leave my workshop to talk with my daughters, though, not before getting a quick shower and a change of clothing.
It would help me relax for a moment, if only to ensure I wasn't day dreaming about other pet projects I was working on. I glanced off to the other side of the room at that thought, seeing something half hidden by a sheet of white cloth, a smile on my face as I looked at it.
It was going to be beautiful.
XXX
