Disclaimer: I own nothing, this is purely for recreational purposes.
XXX
"Who are they?" I commanded, my face impassive as I looked down at the kneeling form of a group of three Humans, each of them wearing casual clothing, thick, layered and with an under layer that could double as a vacuum-sealed space suit with a helmet slammed on to it in a moment. Out of the three men, the one on the left was the least injured of the three, only having a black eye and swelling around his jaw from one Commando hitting him sufficiently hard with the butt of her rifle. The one right in the middle of them, the 'highest ranking' one of them, was missing his left arm from the elbow down, his face was also horribly scarred from being exposed to Warp-fire while showing off raw muscle tissue and spots of white showing through, especially around the jaw, left side of the head and a bit of the neck on the same side. The last man, on the other hand, was a mess, his hands shaking and his entire body twitching and tensing erratically, he was also missing his right leg from the waist down.
Honestly, all of these were injuries that could have been easily fixed by the medical science of the nation I had built from the ground up for the last three centuries. Of course, that all depended on the fact that I allowed it to happen, and, unfortunately for these men, I was not.
"Pirates and Slavers, Mother. State-sponsored Pirates and Slavers." Jan'sha growled out through gritted teeth as she sat at her own throne in the Great Hall of the Towering Heaven Spire, the name given to the massive totem of Silaris and steel that I called home. Around the room was a series of 21 thrones with one being a significant bit above the rest while a lower platform stood in the middle of the room, where the three men were current kneeling with their hands, or hand, bound behind their backs. In terms of order, from where I sat, the room went counter-clockwise to show my daughters in relation to which order they were born in. It didn't really matter, but that was how they had decided to sit themselves.
"Explain." I stated simply, never taking my eyes off the three men as I glared down at them, none of them dared move from my gaze even as they glanced to Jan'sha, who was wearing full armor, wondering what we were saying as we spoke in High Thessian, a native Asari language which, among the original Asari, would have been considered a dead language.
"They appear to be what remains of an ancient colony from over three thousand years ago, during the time of the Great War. During said war, their colony lost contact with the rest of the Galaxy before disappearing, forgotten, along with a significant number of other colonies that never got around to re-establishing contact with the rest of the Galaxy beyond the Tingel arm. During the time between then and now, at some point, the legitimate governments fell and were replaced with a feudal system of warlords and such that has been in place ever since. These three belong to one of the closer ones that had been scouting for resource rich systems for the last decade before finding this system. That one-" Jan'sha pointed at the man in the middle with a hint of disgust. "-saw the ships flying around, believed they were primitive despite their size, numbers and capabilities, and believed that he could capture some of their crew and bring them back as slaves, set himself up as a new Warlord while claiming this system for himself."
I felt a sneer cover my lips at that. Utter fool of a man, I already knew most of the details through the Link, but getting a second accounting of it helped solidify details that I might have missed from my own investigation. The idiots had charged right down the barrels of a Patrol wolfpack, composed of five Frigates two Light Cruisers and a Heavy Cruiser, admittedly, they had a numerical advantage since they had come with a large fleet of seventeen ships, but those ships were old, outdated and how they had managed to keep them in service was anyone's guess. Seven of the ships were old Hammerhead-class Cruisers, three equally old Valor-class Cruisers, five KT-400 Military Droid Carriers, each carrying four hundred Sentinel Droids, and at least another two empty Wanderer-class Transports, the cargo holds of which were filled with empty cages and the like.
Standing up from my own throne, I decided to end this because, quite honestly, I was rather offended by what these fuckers believed they could get away with, their arrogance for a group of barely civilized Pirates and thugs was severely inflated. It needed a good stomping on, one that I was all too willing to give it, especially with the information that I had in my mind, especially after ripping whatever last vestiges of knowledge from these three men, leaving them with the thinking ability of a vegetable, collectively. Walking down, I noted how Jan'sha followed me, a slight quirk of the lips present even as she came down, probably thinking that I had something planned, which I did, while the Justicars that were present within the room stood at attention, weapons of one kind or another already drawn and aimed at the three men.
"I must admit, when we entered space, I believed that we would encounter a much more peaceful contact with those out there... What we encounter, instead, is nothing more than a band of slavers and a would-be Warlord that has become drunk on his own ego." I remarked, switching to basic, I smiled slightly as I watched the eyes of the three men widen before the leading one, the 'would-be Warlord', narrowed his eyes at me. He made to rise before a firm hand grasped his shoulder and forced him back down.
"Kriffing whore-faced, Bitch!" He hissed through his teeth, wincing in pain from his knees hitting the ground once more as I tilted my head, letting him continue even as one Justicar looked about ready to blast his head off for that comment alone. I waved her off, just to be on the safe side. "You think you're all that, huh? Well... Let me tell you something, Bitch-face. Even if you kill us, the others will know what happened, we're well passed when we were due to call back for a status update. They'll be on their way... With a fleet... A fleet numbering in the hundreds!"
The man, even with his face burned off along with most of his flesh and in pain, seemed to be trying to grin in some belief that he was in a better position than we were. How wrong he was...
"And, I suppose, that you are about to tell me that, if we surrender... That, if we beg upon your mercy... That you will convince them to spare us... In exchange for our servitude, of course." I remarked lightly as I turned to Jan'sha, who was smirking to herself and biting her lower lip as she and I watched the other two suddenly grinning, or trying to in one case, as they thought that the situation, somehow, had been reversed.
Arrogance, born of ignorance, it seemed, was what drove these men to make such a fatal mistake, especially while attempting to intimidate myself and my daughters.
"Well, when you put it like that, Whore, why don't you just bend over now and we'll all just have a grand old time." The man to the right, who I had been mentally calling 'twitchy', spoke with a slight lisp to his voice, his lips bending and forcing themselves to become a cross between a sneer and a leer as his eyes seemed to scan my body. I repressed a shudder as I turned to him in return before offering a single, thin, cold, smile...
He didn't even get a chance to scream in pain before a Subsume I had just created had increased the Gravity he was experiencing to well over twenty Gs. He was reduced to a smear of red, white and various colours of stained cloth within an instant, the other two jumping as a result of the suddeness of the action, along with how there wasn't any obvious cause for whatever had happened. I turned back to the two other men before looking down at them, that same smile still on my face as they paled significantly.
"I must say that, truthfully, arrogance and ego the size of what I see in both you two along with your... Late-comrade, are rather unbecoming for beings with so little power." I commented right before a Slam lifted the man on the other side of the would-be Warlord up, off the ground before slamming him into the ground hard enough that he was reduced to yet another red stain on the otherwise light blue, white and silver metal and stone flooring. That little demonstration left the warlord shaking as he turned his head between his now-dead men before looking back at me, his eyes wide and full of fear that was as clear as day to see. A subtle gesture, and he was suddenly floating in mid-air, eyes level with mine as my face remained the same even as I crossed one arm under my chest while reaching out with the other, gently tracing my fingers over his cheek even as he froze like a dear in the headlights, paralyzed with fear. I'd happily admit that I was attractive, the lust in the eyes of these men was easy to see, but seeing me butcher his two remaining men in front of him was enough to get him to realise that just because I was beautiful, did not mean that I couldn't kill him with a thought.
"Please..." He begged, his voice coming out as a whimper as I felt my smile grow ever-so-slightly.
"It appears that I will not be the one begging for mercy, but that hardly matters today. After all..." I leaned forwards as another casual gesture locked his limbs in Stasis along with the air around his neck, ensuring that he would not be able to move. "Mercy will be the last thing on your mind when I'm done with you... Embrace Eternity." I whispered as I held his face in place even as I spoke into his ear, my eyes flashing black as the Meld was made. I surged through his mind, seeing and interacting with the natural defences that were always present for any given individual, but blew right passed them, crashing barrier after barrier as I ripped into his mind before pulling out after I had ripped every memory, every skill and every last shred of information from his mind. My Biotics cut out a moment after I was finished, the end result being the last Human male dropping to the ground, foam bubbling up from his mouth even as his eyes rolled back into his head, what was visible of them was unfocused, vacant and glassy, signaling his cessation as a sentient and sapient being and leaving him as little more than a barely living piece of meat. I glanced down at the wasting flesh with apathy.
"Can someone please deal with that?" I asked as I turned around and walked back to Jan'sha, who was waiting for me a few steps from the centre of the room. I didn't even jump as I heard the roar of a shotgun, probably blasting the head off the now-present corpse.
"What is the status of the fleet?" I asked Jan'sha as she brought up an Omni-tool and smiled.
"Over 550 ships, 350 Frigates, 150 Light Cruisers and fifty Heavy Cruisers. All of them fully armed and staffed with crew, mostly Mechs, but the Captains are all Asari. All the Frigates and Light Cruisers are still their original specifications, but the Heavy Cruisers have been upgraded. Teluc already went through them all and replaced the forty millimetre Heavy APP Mass Accelerator cannons with Thanix Cannons of the same bore and arrangement, so that will be another edge over whatever these Pirates have."
"157 Hammerhead-class Cruisers, 93 Thranta-class Cruisers, 37 Valor-class Cruisers, just over five hundred armed Wanderer-class Transports with another thousand other ships, not counting Fighters, most of which will have had weak, homemade Turbolasers bolted on to them along with a generator just powerful enough to make them work, but of little utility otherwise. All of which is currently spread across three systems to defend, or oppress, twenty planets that all belong to various Warlords." I rattled the information off easily, it was still fresh in my mind as I smiled slightly. "Another good thing was that the idiot's attack on us was meant to be his ticket into getting a domain of his own, no one but his Captains even knew what was happening. There is no attack coming."
"Perfect." Jan'sha noted, purring at how everything seemed to come together. "That means that if we strike them once everything is in place, then we can come at them with the element of surprise on our side."
"True, but should we go with such a heavy handed strategy to begin with?" Larahin noted as she stood from her own throne and walked down to the centre of the room. "For that matter, do they even have anything that we really need?"
"Multiple Tibanna producing Gas Giants, a number of still working, some Great War-Era weapons and suits of armor that are still in vaguely good condition, dozens of wrecks that are floating around, being used as a source of spare parts while a few of the smaller ships have already been used for raw materials over the centuries. Probably the leftovers from a big battle here, maybe even one of the first battles that took place in the Tingel arm." I remarked simply as Larahin nodded in thought at that before Jan'sha spoke once more.
"The raw materials would be of use, especially since we might be able to use them as a measuring stick to compare with where our own armor and weapons rank up against them, especially when compared to modern technology to see how large the gap in technologies is." Malany spoke as she came down from her own throne before clasping her chin in thought.
"That still leaves the question of whether or not we should actually bother invading and conquering them, let alone the question of how we would actually enforce our rule of them since our total population is just a little under fifty thousand at this point in time. Hardly enough to put down a possibly revolting population of millions, on multiple planets." Larahin retorted, getting a half shrug from Jan'sha at that.
"No one said that we really needed to conquer them, only that they shouldn't be a potential threat to us. Simply wiping them out with orbital bombardments would do the trick." That got a short from Malany and Larahin in turn before Malany spoke once more.
"True, but that would ruin a lot of planets that we might have wanted to settle in the future. Sure, it would be the most effective method, but we'd need to still tidy up the mess that was made in the aftermath. If nothing else, we could just add them to the current population of Indentured Servants and carry out mass Poly-Melds to quickly ensure their obedience to the Asari Sovereignty." Larahin smiled at that thought.
"It would give us a rather large work force that could be put to use doing any number of tasks for us." Larahin noted as I nodded in amusement at that.
"Already thinking about using them to infiltrate the Republic enmasse?" I asked, getting a smirk at that, as Larahin crossed her arms and turned to face me even with the smirk growing on her face.
"With even a few million infiltrators? Oh Yes... The first generation of them would be easy enough to set up, just Meld with them, implant them with Ghost-hack rigs, Greyboxes and self-replicating Nano-machines linked to a QEC. We'd give them a ship, hack into the Republic database and make sure they exist before letting them spread out and infiltrate, convincing people to go along with certain views while forming groups of like-minded individuals into what could be called Cults. We could have those Cults worship an image of any kind, one that we just happen to fit, giving us access to an already established network and range of influence." Malany gave a slow clap at that, even as she grinned.
"A rather well thought out plan, though, I can see one glaring flaw with it. Most races only live for a century, a century and a half if their lucky, how do you plan to have these infiltrators manage anything of note before we arrive?" Larahin grinned at that.
"By having the nano-machines in them replicate only within their bodies, and passing themselves on to the next generator as they progress. Once in a child, they would get to work installing Greyboxes and the various other systems as needed. If one of the infiltrators dies, then the nano-machines would simply self-destruct along with disassembling any implants to ensure that nothing could be traced back to us. Sensor jammers and auto-hack systems would be used to ensure that anyone trying to scan them would find nothing out of order." Jan'sha nodded at that.
"Sounds good. That just leaves us with the problem of actually conquering them." Jan'sha quipped dryly as a few other girls snorted, the Justicars remaining silent for the matter even as we continued to plan amongst ourselves.
"Of course." I started, my voice too innocent to be true while I looked at my daughters. "We aren't fighting them because of resources. We're fighting them to avenge the lives of the 43 young Maidens that suffered terrible deaths when they attacked that poor, defenceless Patrol group."
"Of course, Mother." My daughters replied in a similar tone and with solemn nods, though, I will admit that the effect was ruined by the various grins and smirks that some of them wore.
I was mostly just wondering how I had managed to keep a vaguely straight face while saying that...
XXX
"Targets are within range of our Thanix cannons, High General. Orders?" Asked one of the few Asari crewmen on her ship. Jan'sha didn't give any orders right away as she leaned forwards from her seat, looking at the viewing screen ahead of her and over the shoulders of the pilot, co-pilot and three weapon coordinators. Ahead of them, as they decelerated into the system, was a large, but scattered fleet, six planets with another two Gas Giants, all of them inhabited on some level or another with the Gas Giants being home to massive space stations that reached deep into the atmosphere to suck up fresh harvests of Tibanna. In orbit, ships moved around to transport items from place to place, often to simply keep the various ships in working order given their age and poorly made quality of repair patchworks, or the poor quality of parts used to make them.
Still, that didn't mean that they were useless, only that they were far, far less capable compared to a factory fresh version that could have been created during the Republic's apex as a military power. This was even clearer when none of the Pirate vessels reacted to the Asari battlegroup as it returned to normal space from FTL, well inside the sensor range of the ancient ships, if their sensors had been working at full capacity. This was, perhaps, the greatest fuck-up for what was to come, as it allowed the fleet of over one hundred Frigates, fifty Light Cruisers and ten Heavy Cruisers to appear within the system without even a token patrol to attack them or warn the rest of the system.
It would be the first of many mistakes that the Pirates made.
"Have the Frigates form into Hunting packs of five and to start moving through the outer edges of the system towards the sun, have them focus on any fleeing vessels as a priority before moving on, disable if possible by shooting weapons, engines and communication systems, but I will not complain if they have to go for kill shots. Light Cruisers are to stick with the Heavy Cruisers as we move into the system, have them cover us as all ships release Turret Drones. Have them priorities larger ships first before moving downwards. The only exception to this is the Fighters, bombers and smaller shuttles, I don't care too much if those are destroyed so long as they fail to leave the system." Jan'sha ordered quickly as she turned away from the crewman, one of her own daughters as well, before turning to one manning the communication/Infowar suite.
"What is the status of the other fleets?" The House Matriarch demanded as she glanced to one side, noting her daughter with approval as she, like the others, was wearing a full suit of Aegis armor, the helmet retracted into her collar for the time being as weapons remained mag-clamped to her body.
"They have reported that all systems are green and that they have arrived in their target systems without difficulty. I have already sent them copies of your orders, they are merely waiting for you to send the word to begin." The comm. tech announced, not taking her eyes off the Haptic display even as she started the process of queuing up Infowar programs to attack the enemy systems once the fighting started.
"Good. Tell them to begin on my mark." Jan'sha remarked before turning back to the screen before her with a grin on her face. Looking at the haptic displays around her, she noted the fleet already moving, spreading out as Frigates used short-range FTL jumps to rapidly maneuver around the system, range, once limited by static build-up, was now much less restricted thanks to the inclusion of Neutrino Radiators. Fuel was now the only thing that really mattered, or, more accurately, the power being supplied to the Eezo Core responsible for the FTL system functioning, the fact that most ships used a mixture of M/AM reactors, Fusion power plants and dozens of small Eezo cores simply meant that running out of fuel, in the short term, was not an issue.
Range favored them, as did their ability to 'flash-step' across the void and out of the way of return fire, allowing them to keep the enemy at range even as they tried to close the distance. That thought alone was more than enough to cause a feral smirk to cross her lips even as she spoke the words that would spell the end for this coalition of Pirates and Slavers.
"Open fire."
The Void was suddenly filled with light and, if it could be heard through the vacuum of space, the screams of the soon to be dying.
XXX
To the Pirates of the Aberosa system, one of three systems of the Coalition of Mutual Self-Interest, things seemed to go from normal to hell almost as if someone had flipped a switch to turn off the lights before flipping every damned table in the room.
While everyone was still having a drink at them, to boot.
Dozens of beams of red light blasted out of the darkness of space faster than their sensors could even register before slamming into any number of Cruisers. The armor and shields of said Cruisers offering little to no protection as the Shields didn't even trigger, and what few that did trigger weren't much of an obstacle, before hitting armor-plated hulls and blowing straight through them like they weren't even there. More than one ship was unlucky enough to be hit by a piercing shot that had snapped one ship in half before hitting, and snapping another in half while a third, in one rare occasion, found itself nearly snapped in half by being lucky enough to be out of position. Said ship was a Hammerhead-class cruiser and was only saved in the fact that the upper front section was sheared off by the insanely powerful beam of death that had appeared from outside of their sensor range before blasting a hole in the fleets in system, each belonging to a different Warlord, before they even could figure out what was going on.
A moment later, while they were still reeling from the sudden strike at them, they found themselves facing unknown ships, looking like rings with sticks welded to them, appearing from nowhere, a slight spike in energy, but nothing similar to the tell-tale flash of Hyperspace. Moving in groups of five, the smallest of these ships advanced, guns blazing as ships found themselves being ripped apart, engines, weapons and communications, strangely enough, were the only things targeted by these unknowns before they moved on.
The Pirates were familiar enough with their own tactics to see what the aliens wanted, to take them alive for whatever purposes they may have, and most either refused to allow it to happen without a fight, or refused to even give the aliens a chance to take them. Dozens of ships immediately turned to either face the aliens or get ready to run, the former barely lasted long enough to get into weapon range of the alien craft, their ships being blasted apart by incoming fire while being left to drift through the void as the alien craft seemed to jump around space in ways that didn't seem possible. Fighters were often better suited to getting closer to the ships, but what few that did make it were immediately swarmed by odd silver orb-like machines with guns mounted on either side of them, the end result was the fighters dying in droves. Shuttles and transports trying to flee the system weren't any better, the former was often just shot down by the Orbs, or crashed into by them, while the latter experienced sudden failure for their systems to even respond, all systems simply cutting out and leaving them with emergency Life-support systems being active.
Within thirty minutes, the entire system's fleet, all six fleets of ships, belonging to the six Warlords of each planet, were dead in space and either left the crew trapped within their own ships... Or dead. From viewports, the crewmen could look out and see the strange ships moving passed them, some floated close by as they moved around, using Tractor beams to pull all the ships to one side before setting up a group to patrol them. While that was happening, the heavier ships seemed to split up and move towards the various planets in the system. From their ships-turned-cages, they could look out as what looked like Shuttles flew down to the planets below, leaving them only to wallow in despair.
Whatever these beings wanted, it was rather obvious by now that they were going to get it, their objections be damned.
XXX
"Kirff it all to the Nine Hells and back!"
Alec Devac was not having a good day. This couldn't have been more clear as he tried to take a peek out of cover only to be forced to duck as another impact hit the top of the Durasteel crate hard enough to almost rock it over, crushing him even as he popped his arm over the top of the crate to blaze away with the heavy Blaster Rifle in his hands.
Honestly, he had to wonder why he was even bothering, even as another soldier dropped to the ground, blood flowing out from a gap in the neck of the armor even as he looked down to see the rather large hole placed in the middle of the T-shaped visor. The enemy they were fighting wasn't just another band of Soldiers under the command of another Warlord, no, these were skilled, determined and utterly devastating in their application of brute force. All of them were coming to the fight in full armor, stuff that most would thick wouldn't look out of place on a tank and with the weapons to match, and whatever they fired, it sure as hell wasn't some kind of Blaster. Most of their weapons seemed to favor solid, if small, bullets, on the surface it seemed primitive, but he had seen the aftermath of more than one soldier being downed by those, supposedly, 'primitive' weapons, most were lucky if a glancing hit didn't take off their limbs or blow a hole in them large enough for someone to poke their head through. Which, was especially true when medics had found that the metal of the projectiles was both radioactive as well as capable of giving them Heavy Metal poisoning, two things that they were incapable of treating, especially on a battlefield.
And, of course, these aliens didn't just have those, but were also packing all kinds of other weapons from their own version of Blasters, that seemed to pack twice as much power in every shot, to beam-like weapons that cooked and burned everything that they touched. One of his men was unlucky enough to be close by with a medical scanner to one of the few survivors to one such weapon, a quick scan showed that he had been exposed to enough radiation to ensure that he would be lucky to live passed two weeks, if that, and would be utter agony for the entire time.
"RUN!" BOOM!
Alec was suddenly cut out from his thoughts as he heard a voice screaming from a barricade ahead of him, between him and the enemy. Looking up, he saw one of the metal, ad hoc barriers being blown open by a massive blast of dark blue and black energy that ripped through the durasteel plating, those too close to the blast found themselves being burned alive as their armor was instantly melted by the intense heat generated by the blast. However, what happened next was more than enough for Alec to see just how outmatched they really were as a figure walked straight through the blast, seemingly uncaring of the still raging Plasma fires that remained.
Peeking over his cover, Alec saw the attacker as said attacker seemed to pause for a moment as it looked around, giving him a clear view of the alien's form.
It stood tall, well over the average man with a body covered in thick, angular plates of armor that wouldn't have looked out of place on any of the few armored vehicles that were still in use by the various Warlords. The armor itself was all hard angles, sharp corners and flat, triangular panels that rarely, if ever, met at a right angle to one another, under that was a smooth undersuit of a uniform black and grey with lines of dark blue that almost looked like circuits while that same blue seemed to outline every major plate of metal on the body as it all pulsed softly upwards towards the high mantle that covered the entire neck of the being, extending to almost the same level as where a Human's ears would be while leaving the front section only coming up to halfway up the neck. That same mantle extended outwards to two massive pauldrons that further extended outwards to increase the width of the figure while a screen of fabric seemed to descend down from the shoulders, obscuring both arms as they hung by the sides of the figure, before wrapping around the figure like a cape or a semi-opened cloak. On the fabric, there was a eye-watering patterns made from non-Euclidean geometry that hurt his eyes to look at for any more than a few moments before he was forced to look away from them, even as his eyes were drawn back to them by that same pulsing of dark blue that dominated the black armor plating.
However, the most striking detail was the head, the helmet. The armor-plated cover of the alien's face and head was smooth, shaped like a slightly elongated human helmet but utterly featureless except for a pair of bright blue optics that pulsed in time with those strange, circuit-like designs. These designs forming into two likes that ran parallel to each other, over either eye before moving onwards before joining together on a leaf-shaped plate that extended outwards and backwards from the temples of the helmet. The plate widened outwards as it moved away from the temples before narrowing into a point at a distance from the helmet, just slightly above the top of the helmet.
Honestly speaking, the figure on its own was pretty damned intimidating, in Alec's personal opinion, but the fact that the being seemed to carry some kind of sheathed sword by her side only made it more dangerous since he had seen what these aliens could do with their 'swords'.
Especially when he saw one of the lower ranking soldiers use one to cut an armored walker in half from front to back. However, if that wasn't bad enough, the air around this being seemed to fizzle and warp as though the figure was standing in the middle of a heat-haze, only made worse by the sizzling of the duracrete under its feet and the fact that a nearby corpse seemed to be either evaporating or dissolving as he watched, armor, blaster, flesh and all.
It was, quite possibly, the most terrifying thing he had ever witnessed in his life.
"Fallback! We need to fallback! Now!" He shouted as he never let his gaze shift from the figure even as he brought his Heavy Blaster to bear. He knew he was going to die, but the least he could do was to allow his men to escape to prepare a more thorough defence in depth within the Warlord's Palace. Blinking as the figure turned to him, regarding him, as he opened fire with his rifle, the figure didn't bother moving as he fired, the bolts of plasma firing through the air before impacting the same shield that seemed to surround every single one of the aliens, literally fizzling out of existence even as he stood and kept firing. The figure didn't react for a long moment, even as one hand seemed to grasp the handle of its impressive sword, before raising a gauntleted hand towards him.
Alec Devac kept firing, or trying to, even as he was ripped off of his feet and pulled towards the armored alien faster than he could react, a weight wrapping around his neck before he saw a flash of black steel.
Then he saw no more...
Becoming yet another cooling corpse in a city filled with corpses.
XXX
Looking away from her latest kill, Jan'sha turned her attention back to the Palace that she was advancing on, one of the strongholds of the supposed 'Warlords'. Truthfully, it wasn't really that impressive, a rather large mass of Duracrete and Permacrete with a plating of Durasteel thrown over the top of it and coated in a rather dazzling and showy mixture of colours, including bright gold. The sides of the structure were covered with a dozen terraces and balconies, hanging gardens were also present, while a massive gate of Durasteel blocked the main way into the compound's heart, easily a full metre thick.
Yes, the Palace of this worlds Warlord was impressive to look at, but Jan'sha didn't care so much about that. No, she cared more about the tactical layout of the entire place, which, according to deep-penetrating scans, was an absolute nightmare for any kind of defensive action. Dozens of entry points, hundreds of easy lines of sight for the attackers while the defenders would suffer from having too little cover, virtually now choke-points that were easily held, and not a single weapons emplacement to speak of. The only reason they even needed to enter the building was to deactivate the still barely working planetary shields that had their command centre buried under the Palace.
Not to mention the retrieval of half a dozen examples of Great War-era technology that were still in good condition, mostly from the fact that they were rarely, if ever, used by the fools that had become the Warlord of this planet.
Even then, Jan'sha was half-tempted to give the order for her daughters to pull back and order a full scale orbital bombardment of the Palace to simply deal with what few combatants remained of the original force that had tried, and failed horribly, to resist them. Still, that wasn't to say that even with her daughters and herself washing over them like a wave, that they hadn't managed to inflict so measure of damage in turn. No, seven of her children lay dead from the combined attacks of a number of Heavy weapons, adding to the Butcher's bill of this conflict. She was just glad that the Justicars, the Mechs, and the daughters of the other Houses were present as well, both to beef up their numbers as well as to crush further opposition. Still, at the end of the day, it meant that Jan'sha had already lost over twenty daughters with the other thirty deaths being split between the other Houses that had allowed their children to join what was to become the military of the Asari Sovereignty.
Even as she carried on, walking towards the now-sealed entrance of the Palace, Jan'sha hoped to end this conflict as quickly as possible, if only to spare a few more of her daughters a needless death at the hand of these barbarians. Then again, Jan'sha had her doubts that, even with these idiots trying to entrench themselves, that they would fall in short order, they just had too many disadvantages to even consider being able to outlast their attackers. The biggest of which was simply the fact that every Asari soldier had Biotics, the ability to manipulate Dark Energy, an ability that an individual would not be able to even see unless they had properly tuned their HUDs to, or had evolved such a trait, as the Asari had.
Looking ahead, Jan'sha smiled under her helmet as she saw the flare of yet another Biotic Flare detonating upon Durasteel doors, blasting a significant section off of the, now, rapidly crumbling doors as Mechs jogged past her to create a crossfire. Her smile widened slightly as she glanced down at her still sheathed Warp sword, it was, like her armor, a birthday gift from her Mother.
And, as she grabbed the hilt and pulled the metre long, wave-shaped blade free from its armored cover, Jan'sha knew that it was time to finally see her blade, Wave-Erodes-All, bloodied with the deaths of any who would dare to stand before her.
Needless to say, many would die to this blade.
XXX
My eyes snapped open instantly as I leaned back into the large throne-like chair within my private observation platform at the top of my Tower, the massive room giving me a breath-taking view of the rapidly expanding city below as I smiled at what I felt through the Link. Jan'sha was just finishing up the last of the Pirate and Slavers, I didn't even think that they would be able to last a few minutes longer with the only reason that the 'battle' had taken over five hours already being that the Pirates were simply more wide spread. I felt her joy at finally being able to use the gifts I had given her, her Warp Sword as a gift for her first century of life while the armor came with the beginning of her second century, Jan'sha had cherished both gifts greatly and was currently making great use of them.
Suddenly, my smile turned into a frown as I looked just a bit deeper into the Link, finding the broken connections along with the residue emotions of those that had died as a result of this battle. I felt the regret and anger that Jan'sha and her daughters felt for the deaths of their daughters and sisters, respectively. I sighed at that, while I didn't like it, it was an unavoidable truth of war that people died, there was no real way to prevent it, only to minimize it on your own side while ensuring that you maximized it for your opponent, something that my children and grandchildren were doing quite effectively at the moment while letting the Mechs soak up the heaviest return fire and function as little more than 'meat' shields, for lack of a better term.
Still, with so many dead already, especially this early on in the development of what was effectively a new race, I knew that it would be difficult and would slow down the effect of the population bloom that had been present until recently.
Humming to myself, I smiled slightly as I considered the problem before looking at the best solution, namely the use of Cloning to function as artificial wombs. Truthfully, I was hesitant to even go for it straight away, especially since Asari born through these methods required a significant amount of care and attention to them to ensure that they grew and developed fully. Not only that, but to ensure that they were fully developed, you also had to run around-the-clock tests and scans just to ensure that everything was working as it should. I could get around that problem through the use of Medical Mechs and Droids, but it would take a fair bit of time to develop the facilities and infrastructure needed to properly allow for the use of artificial wombs in massive numbers. Luckily, there were still a number of rooms in my section of the Tower, completely empty and currently slated to be used as little more than storage space. I could easily have these spaces repurposed as areas for the artificial wombs, Cloning banks and secret elevators to take the released new-borns out into the city with all the needed information having been downloaded into their minds.
A bonus of this idea was simply that I could start creating large numbers of Ardat-Yakshi to incorporate into my personal guard. Creating them was a simple piece of genetic work to switch a few genes along with activating a few key pieces before allowing the resulting mutation to be born. Another interesting note was that Melding with an AY was only lethal if the AY was the one to initiate the Meld, mainly due to their own nature, but if another Asari was the one that initiated the Meld, so long as it was a low-powered Meld, then it would work perfectly fine. I was rather amazed with this little note of trivia, but kept it to myself as I revised a few things with some notes I had, namely things to do with the idea for my Blackhand. I smirked at that thought, it would certainly make them a lot more dangerous.
Standing up, I turned as I felt a presence coming towards the room I stood in. The door opened a moment later to reveal a group of three Justicars with Justicar Samara in the middle of them, all three of which were walking together with her being slightly ahead of her two fellows. A quick glance at the three, both with my eyes along with through the Link and I knew that they had just come back from the battlefields across the 'Coalition of Mutual Self-interest', both due to their own satisfaction at completing their objectives along with the few marks that were present across their armored Hardsuits. They came to a stop a few paces from me before dropping to their knees with their heads staring firmly at either the floor, or, in Samara's case, my feet.
"High Ascended. We come bearing a message from the Ascended General that stalks the former fields of battle where the Heathens learned not to dare question your might. The War Ascended asks for your Council and wisdom in how to deal with the remaining Heathens that begged for your mercy and forgiveness." Samara stated in an almost ritualistic style of speech, I hummed in thought as I considered that. Reaching out, I felt Jan'sha again before looking through her thoughts on the matter. I found that my daughter was not truly concerned about what happened next with the inhabitants of the planet, but she wished to know what to do with them now that they had been forced to bend the knee, as it were. Within her mind, I could easily see a few ideas of what to do with them, though, due to her own military mindset, Jan'sha was rather in favor of simply gathering everything of worth before carrying out an equivalent of a Base Delta Zero on every planet that was once a part of the Coalition. Personally, I understood her reasoning, both to remove a potential threat and to remove a potential strain of resources, but those were merely idle thoughts that had swam to the surface, not serious considerations.
"Have her gather the Unenlightened together before searching through them for those that catch her eye, she and her House may take these Chosen as her Spoils of War while those that remain will be divided up into gatherings before being Enlightened by the hands of my children, Malany the Cunning and Larahin the Seductive." I commanded simply as the three of them bowed slightly before standing, turning around and leaving the room without another word, clearly hearing a dismissal once I finished speaking. I turned back to the window once more even as the door shut, enjoying the view as I saw the distant sun reaching the edge of the horizon, the sky being lit up in hues of orange, red and yellow that simply looked amazing. I had already seen plenty of art work coming from Larahin's house, many of which made heavy use of the contrast between the setting sun and the still active lands, often including pieces of cloud cover while showing large amounts of stars above, as though to show all phases of the day at once.
Still, the art work, while spectacular, never really seemed to be nearly as good as the real thing, especially when one could simply sit back with some tea and watch as the world went by.
Then again, I knew that I had the luxury of time, unlike so many others in the Galaxy.
People that didn't even know that they were running out of time...
XXX
