Primarch Promius Sparatus
Turian Military Command, Palaven, Trebia System
Council Calendar: Day 14, Year 2657

Primarch Promius Sparatus walked with haste through the cavernous complex into the bowels of the seat of military power on Palaven. Here, three kilometers underground in the secure bunker, the ceilings were nearly claustrophobic. The walls, all a down-to-business gray with simple red accents, were covered with tapestries of companies, battalions, armies, and fleets throughout Hierarchy history. The founders felt it was imperative that those at the very top never forget from whence they came.

The primarch's omnitool, a type of portable computer with a holographic display ubiquitous throughout known space attached to a forearm, glowed vibrantly on his right hand. A popup titled "high command emergency meeting" from his task manager was clearly visible. Other than the sender, no further information was given.

"Sparatus," yelled someone from behind him, "are you headed to the meeting?"

Sparatus paused to look back, swiped a few floating buttons to hide the note, and gave the admiral in charge of the Hierarchy Intelligence Department the traditional turian salute of his right talon over the heart. "Admiral Paliculus, I am. Why the secrecy?"

Admiral Galvus Paliculus responded with own salute as he caught up. The two continued down the hallway in tandem. "First contact," the admiral responded with a slight shortness of breath, "hostile."

"Another rachni invasion?"

"I don't believe so," Galvus caught up with a deep breath, "but we'll let the facts speak for themselves." The admiral walked slightly ahead to fit through the narrow door. It opened smoothly, red light on the lock turning green, as he strode forward.

The pair arrived at a small conference room with circles arranged in arc in front of the curved walls- holographic projectors for each group in the meeting. In the center, a larger circle rested- the central display. Another turian was already seated in the room. "Ah, welcome," she turned around in her chair, one leg crossed over the other.

Paliculus saluted, "Councillor," before taking his seat.

Sparatus did the same. "Councillor Octados. Why are you not at the citadel?"

"I received word that I am now a great-grandmother," she smiled by raising her mandibles ever so slightly, "so I'm visiting the child."

"Congratulations, Camicia," Primarch Sparatus returned the smile in kind before taking a seat next to her. The aging Councillor had been been a mentor to Promius all his life and the two had remained close. "Right, shall we begin?" Sparatus made his way to a chair as the thick sliding door behind him shut with a heavy thump.

Paliculus moved his forearm slightly, the motion activating the holographic, haptic interface of a computer he, and most others, wore on his wrist- his omnitool. The admiral's overwrought wristwatch picked up the communication consoles and dialed into the meeting. Over a dozen primarchs, admirals, and generals, the entirety of the top of the Turian Hierarchy, shimmered into view as the pedestals connected.

"Thank you for joining us," Paliculus began as a bevy of acknowledgements rang out from the participants, "Primarch Vituvius, would you like to begin?"

"Thank you, Admiral Paliculus," responded a turian with bright red skin and a white colonial tattoo, "yesterday midday, by citadel time, one of my patrol groups had discovered that a dormant mass relay had been activated. In accordance with protocol, they investigated, of course, and discovered that two quarian-owned ships were attempting to reactivate some kind of alien super-dreadnought." Murmurs of shock rippled through the attendees. "Spectral emissions from the ship suggested that the reactor was online but kinetic barriers were not. The combat-capable quarian ship, an old Hylactor-class we had built however many decades ago, had weapons and barriers powered to combat load and pointed at us as our patrol group entered the system. Our fleet captain preemptively defended himself. Unfortunately, the alien dreadnought shredded the patrol group save for a single vessel."

The attendees began arguing immediately before Sparatus yelled out a stern "quiet!" He turned to the holographic projection of Vituvius, "please, continue."

"Thank you, Primarch. The sector fleet was assembled, along with two sensor support cruisers, and we went in to apprehend the renegade Quarians. As we approached the secondary relay in question, however, the remaining quarian freighter and the alien dreadnought exited through that very relay, engines apparently operational." Vituvius sighed, momentarily, before continuing. "The admiral in charge, Legionary Admiral Adorior, ordered communications to be opened but the fugitives immediately resumed hostilities before any such communications could be established. The quarian freighter suicide-bombed into the fleet and the alien ship somehow jumped into FTL through the plane of the solar system-"

"Yes," Admiral Paliculus interrupted, "Hierarchy Intelligence Prime Researcher Suldas should be on the call."

"I'm here, Admiral," another hologram responded.

"Good. His team was tasked with explaining the technical ramifications of the alien ship. For now, please continue."

"So," Primarch Vituvius gathered his thoughts for a moment before resuming, "the fleet pursued the alien ship through yet another unopened relay, primary relay 314. On the other side, we found an alien world with a bunch of other, similarly designed alien ships. The rest is all fighting." Several attendees looked at each other with worried glances as Vituvius continued, "Admiral Paliculus, Researcher Suldas," the primarch announced as he fidgeted with his omnitool, "you were tasked with the combat analysis. I've handed control over to you."

"Thank you, Primarch," responded the admiral of the intelligence agency, "let's move on to the battle recording and overview." Paliculus activated the omnitool on his right hand and pulled up the battle recording. A few additional presses of the holographic buttons and the central projector was displaying an in-system view of the new solar system. "This is the solar system beyond relay three hundred fourteen as the first of the frigates entered. Notice the garden world, here," the admiral pointed, "the position and distance of the relay," as he zoomed out, "the other celestial bodies, this stationary base, and the pair of alien vessels."

Paliculus zoomed in on the base. "First off, this base did not appear to serve a defensive purpose, yet it was in synchronous orbit with the mass relay. We're not sure what it was there for, but we believe it to be a research station."

He then waved his left hand over his right wrist and dragged the display around. "This is the alien ship that we had discovered behind the dormant secondary relay." The admiral rotated the display around the ship, giving all of the attendees a good look at the floating column of gray metal and orange gouts of fire.

"That's very odd design," noted a primarch.

"How is it still moving under its own power with all of that damage?" asked another in a muted tone, rhetorically.

"Note the symbols on this side of the ship," pointed out Admiral Galvus Paliculus, "and the icon itself. On the other side," he rotated the vessel, "the surface is heavily marred, and the icon is not visible, but either the beginning or the end of the same series of glyphs are present. Also note the almost wave-like structure of the ship. We believe this to be some kind of damage from a prior explosion behind the ship, compressing its entire superstructure." Another view focused on the front of the vessel. "These are its pair of main guns. From the relay battle, we can determine that the muzzle velocity of the guns is extremely low compared to ours, but the overall energy output per shot is dramatically larger than our ships."

"How much larger are we talking here?" asked a primarch.

"There's a point in the fleet battle at the relay where it becomes apparent. We'll discuss it then. Speaking of which," the central view zoomed out to the sensor overview of the space. "as we were warping into the system, another ship moved to defend the first one," the display shifted to a simple, white near-rectangular prism with thin, blue exhausts on the back. "This one is closer to a standard cruiser in size. Notice the different color of the armor. That's not paint, that's a different material. Additionally, it's equipped with extremely strong barriers." The view rotated to the side of the ship, minus the front. "We never got a view of the front of the ship, so the VIs couldn't reconstruct its shape. Now, the weapons. Rather than using projectile-based point defenses like the others, this ship used something akin to our GARDIAN lasers in at least effect. And look at the emblem on this ship; it's completely different. We have some hypotheses, but nothing is set in stone.

The primary display zoomed back out. "Continuing forward, initial sensor logs showed only minor amounts of activity in orbit of the planet. Our admiral ordered an initial defensive formation anyway due to the alien FTL mechanisms. We began pursuit of the ships as soon as the fleet was ready, but the aliens had mined the relay with several hundred nuclear warheads." The display showed a field of light appear briefly right near the fleet, causing dozens of green dots to disappear. "Losses were extreme. Moments later, a small fleet jumped in." Red dots suddenly showed up on the screen. "Ten additional belligerent ships in total warped in, plus another three at the far side of the planetoid for a flanking run. The immediate ten contained a heavy dreadnought, three cruisers, and six light cruisers of various designs. The flanking group consisted of three additional cruisers." The central display shifted to a view of the intercepting ten-strong fleet. A variety of different designs were shown clustered together for display purposes- far closer than the distances of the battle.

"Note the logos on these ships." A display zoomed in on a stylized logo of a bird behind a shield with the symbols UNSC across a banner. "While the logo differs in actual shape, the glyphs on this logo are the same as those on the first super-dreadnought. We believe these ships to belong to the same faction. This ship here, the one of the light cruisers, has a different design than the others. Notice the large, sloped armor plates on the front- we've measured them to be about two meters thick, yet the ship maintains a surprising degree of maneuverability. Again, notice the twin cannons on the front of the vessel unique to it and the dreadnoughts. We believe this to be some kind of anti-heavy dreadnought ship, perhaps a foil to ships like the first one we observed."

The members of the meeting were kept in now-rapt attention as the head of intelligence continued the summary. "The enemy ships immediately opened fire to divert our fleet's aggression away from the original alien super-dreadnought. Their opening volley was a combination of projectiles and missiles, both conventional and nuclear. While our ships were largely successful in dodging the rounds from the cruisers, the alien dreadnought rounds did successfully connect with our second dreadnought, the Claw of Aephus. The first round sapped its shields and put it into an extremely fast spin. Given the energies involved, we expect the rotational forces alone to have killed everyone onboard. The second shot from the alien dreadnought completely gutted the Claw. Each projectile is thousands of times more massive than ours, and each is fired with at least one hundred times as much energy," he emphasized. "As for the missile barrage, the large volume of conventional missiles saturated our GARDIAN lasers and the subsequent nuclear blasts wiped out most of the fighters, along with a handful of our frigates. Future attacks won't be nearly as effective as we've now identified which missiles are conventional and which are not."

Sparatus found himself unconsciously making a chirp of surprise. "Admiral Paliculus, why use projectiles that heavy?"

"A good question, Primarch," Paliculus responded, "the alien ships seem to operate on a completely different set of paradigms to ours. They are incredibly heavily armored, largely barrier-less, and, by virtue of their considerable mass, not particularly maneuverable. Against similarly armored enemies, such a design would be potentially advantageous. Even their smallest cruiser, relatively lightly armored with about sixty centimeters of their armor, stood up to more than thirty seconds of constant barrage from twenty one of ours before succumbing to its wounds."

"Strange. We've been building ships to be as maneuverable as possible. Do you have any ideas why their line of thought has been different?"

The Prime Researcher's hologram shuffled in his seat. "I can answer that, Primarch," he responded. "The working hypothesis that they do not make use of the mass effect in their craft."

Sparatus raised a single mandible. "Do you understand how preposterous that sounds?"

"Of course, but the data supports it. The alien ships are able to warp through mass-heavy environments, like the plane of a solar system. When the alien ships warped in, there was no detectable gravity wave. When the alien ships synchronously fired at the beginning of combat, there was no detectable gravity wave. There was a weaponless base surrounding the system's in-system mass relay, something that could be a research base. Their ships are slow, heavily armored, and only four of them had barriers. It's the simplest explanation we have for their designs."

"Researcher," Sparatus paused to process the man's words before tilting his head in confusion, "how do their ships have kinetic barriers without the mass effect?"

"We do not yet know, Primarch, but impacts from kinetic barriers tend to have certain spectral emissions. These mass effect-less barriers had non-negligible differences in the response behavior."

Admiral Paliculus turned to Sparatus, "Hierarchy Intelligence feels this to be an acceptable working theory, Sparatus. Among every council species, historically, the advent of the mass effect pushed ships to be evasive rather than defensive simply because it was a more effective defense. Without such an impetus, I could easily see an arms race diverging from ours.

"Regardless," the admiral resumed as he turned back to the central monitor, "the battle continued. Three additional cruisers flanked around the planetoid and fired on the port-side of the fleet as some of the cruisers and the dreadnought deployed their own, limited quantity of fighters."

The holographic projector showed the three new ships. Whereas the other cruisers looks almost like guns floating through space, these were more squat, more elegant, more simple, and almost predatory in appearance. Two long, triangular sections sat up front, reminiscent of a vacidain river reptile's maw, with the upper portion housing a menacing barrel. The ship straightened out after to give way to glowing, blue ports on the port and starboard and a squat conning tower on its topside. "Note the fighter bays on either side of this ship- not physical doors but shielded. To add further credence to Researcher Suldas' conclusions, no kinetic barriers we are aware of are capable of sealing atmosphere in like this.

"The alien cruisers came in, fired multiple times in rapid succession to slow their velocity, and formed a wolfpack. Our frigates responded by forming counter-packs to chase the new vessels, preventing them from further damaging our cruisers and dreadnought. Our heavy ships continued firing at the alien central defensive fleet inflicting heavy casualties.

"A minute later, the initial super dreadnought warped out along with the strange white ship. The defensive alien dreadnought launched lifeboats and blew up in the same way that the others did- likely a supercritical reactor overload. While the overload did destroy some of the lifeboats, we did manage to scavenge a few. The boats and their passengers are safely back on Abicolus. Primarch Vituvius has been charged with their well-being until Hierarchy Intelligence can move them to a more secure location. We'll get to the creatures in a moment."

Admiral Paliculus' hands scurried across his omnitool until the central display changed from the barriered alien ships to a large, floating gun. Measurements crawled across the hologram denoting its sizeable width- five hundred by seven hundred meters- and length- over one thousand three hundred meters. Its barrel seemingly took the entirety of that. "This was our last obstacle," resumed the admiral, "two floating defensive platforms around the planet's space elevator."

"Space elevator," queried a primarch, "like in those old science fiction stories?"

"That's right, Primarch," acknowledged Paliculus. "For those of you not aware, a space elevator is a theoretical device used to ferry material to and from a planet's surface. Well, at least it was theoretical. The aliens have been using it to evacuate the local populace. If these aliens truly do not know of the mass effect, moving ships into the gravitational well of a planet would be an extremely energy-intensive task. A space elevator neatly solves that issue.

"Legionary Admiral Adorior ordered the elevator captured intact for future study. The defense platforms next to it posed a problem for our ships, however. When we warped a small number of frigates nearby, its point-defense coilguns proved to be a match for our kinetic barriers, and the main cannons are something else entirely. Each shot was fired at four percent the speed of light, or almost four times faster than our newest dreadnought, and weighs between one hundred thousand and two hundred thousand times as much as one of ours. Each platform is, quite literally, firing heavy corvettes at us. Energy for the weapon was transmitted wirelessly from the ground, though the actual location of the reactors is as of yet unknown to us. The Legionary Admiral neatly handled the situation by using asteroids from the nearby asteroid belt, however. Our soldiers are preparing for pacification as we speak."

Councilor Octados stood up and joined the admiral at a closer examination of the space station. "Is there any danger of such a weapon being placed on a ship?"

"Maybe," Researcher Suldas' scratched his neck before resuming, "the only reason that our ships are the size they are is the exponentially larger amount of element zero required for each extra amount of mass of a ship. If our theory about the lack of element zero in the alien ships is correct, there is no technical limit on the size of their ships save for structural stresses during maneuvering."

"But they have no GARDIAN lasers and seemingly no knowledge of the mass relay network?"

"Only the single white ship has GARDIAN lasers, but otherwise yes, that is correct, Councillor," affirmed Suldas.

"Interesting. Let us examine these aliens, then," the councillor softly demanded as she continued staring at the central display.

The holographic projector responded to her demands moments later as several unclothed bipeds shimmered into existence in from of the group. "These are the aliens, Councilor," elucidated Admiral Paliculus to the congregation. "Like us, the salarians, et cetera, they are sexually dimorphic. The smaller of the two genders, these ones," the display dimmed the aliens not of interest, "are extremely similar in shape to the asari, except the skin color and the follicles on their heads, which are reminiscent of the quarians. Given this opening here," he pointed, "we believe this gender of the alien species gives birth to live young. These other ones are, on the whole, larger, and our VI calculated them to be seven point one percent more aggressive, on average, though both have been proven to be nearly as aggressive as the krogan. Initial attempts to communicate with them have been unsuccessful. None of the aliens respond with anything but the same phrases over and over again, possibly some kind of defense protocol or standard operating procedure in the event of first contact.

"In terms of what is onboard the lifeboats, we discovered a set of armor- unshielded, with plates made of the same material as the external armor of the lifeboat itself- and multiple sets of weapons. All of their weapons are projectile-based. They use a black powder derivative, just like ours did some one thousand years ago. Initial tests suggest it is only marginally more powerful than our final black powder refinement."

"Fascinating!" Councillor Octados circled around the display, examining the naked aliens. "The similarity of the female ones to the asari is, indeed startling!" She moved her mandibles in surprise, thoughts racing through her head. "The aggression is worrisome, however. Admiral Paliculus, do we have any estimates of their naval power? Number of colonies? Anything of the sort?"

"Suldas?" Paliculus passed the question.

"Since there are no other relays in-system, we believe the extent of their controlled space to limited," explicated Prime Researcher Suldas, "and the existence of a space elevator, a major industrial endeavor that would likely only be placed on the most important of colonies placed on such a small colony, supports the hypothesis. It is unclear what kind of response they will have, but multiple of fleets of similar size and composition could and should be expected."

Admiral Paliculus pressed the implied point further. "I would like to point out that Legionary Admiral Adorior's strategy during combat was severely flawed. He should have moved his vessels into knife-fighting range to leverage our superior maneuverability.

Councilor Octados continued to stare at the creatures on the screen. "Could you put the first super dreadnought on the screen? Thank you." She examined the ship, with its strange protrusions, menacing forward-facing double barrels, plethora of point-defense cannons, and cavernous engine depressions with fascination. "These aliens are simple and most certainly new to space. They only recently discovered GARDIAN lasers and barriers, they have no knowledge of the mass effect, and no knowledge of relay network. Their savagery will need to be guided by a steady hand. As a client race under the Hierarchy, they could be capable of great contributions to the galaxy. Who would the commanding general for the invasion be?"

Paliculus answered quickly. "General Desolas Arterius, council-"

Sparatus stood up. "Councillor," he interjected, "we've been making a lot of assumptions about these creatures. We don't know how fast their faster than light drive is, what its range is, and by extension, what their actual industrial capacity is or number of colonies actually stand at. They may not even be willing to be a client race- they may rebel. We may be falling into a trap."

"Then we must fall into it, Sparatus," she countered. "You've read the white power projections. In two thousand years, the galaxy will be a client state of the asari. Through their biology, their soft power will ultimately give them complete control of the council, the citadel, everyone. The hierarchy as we know it will cease to exist as asari culture overtakes turian customs.

"These aliens have evolved on a totally unique axis. They are clearly capable of great feats of collaboration and engineering. By capturing these creatures and their novel technology in their infancy, we can leverage our prestige over the council and, if not prevent the fall of the hierarchy, then at least prolong it. These aliens will fall in line, just as the volus have, or just like the krogan have, for if we fail here then we may very well fall as a species."

The councilor paused as continued to glare at the projected ship. "Admiral Paliculus, do what you need to do to translate their language." The admiral nodded. "Primarch Vituvius, keep me apprised of any updates on the ground and recommend to Admiral Adorior and General Arterius that they cut off civilian evacuation through the space elevator. The hastatim will have an easier time of pacification with more non-combatants. Primarch Bellatus, you will send your excess fighter craft to Primarch Vituvius who will, in turn, send them to the front. You have your orders, everyone. Dismissed." The councilor turned around and walked out of the room, the admiral of the intelligence service following her lead a few seconds later.

Various holograms shimmered out of existence as the assorted primarchs and admirals in attendance logged out. Sparatus continued to stare at the now empty pedestals wondering what the Hierarchy had just gotten itself into.


Captain Michael Sullivan
HIGHCOM Facility Bravo-6, Sydney, Earth, Sol System
UNSC Military Calendar: February 4, 2561

"Human Soft Power and Long Term Reconciliation," began the ONI white paper. Michael glanced over the abstract- "given no major changes, the Swords of Sanghelios will become a natural client state of the UEG within 200 to 250 years," summarized the authors.

Michael closed the file. "Not exactly relevant anymore, is it," he asked rhetorically.

"It's very relevant," countered Admiral Serin Osman in her ever deliberate tone. She turned her chair to face Michael. Her brown eyes, hard features, and icy stare advertised a fearsome intelligence wielded by a fearsome person. Even seated at a desk, she towered above anyone in a room. "Operation Truth And Reconciliation was a master stroke, Michael. The sangheili and humanity have never been closer. That's why you're here." Praise from the head of the Office of Naval Intelligence was something few people ever experienced. Michael let a small smile reach his lips. "We'll need to see if the arrival of these new actors, this 'Turian Hierarchy,' can benefit that in some way."

Michael nodded slightly, then took another sip of his coffee. The fruity notes of the Ethiopian yirgacheffe warmed his throat and gave him a moment to compose a reply as the caffeine coursed through his veins. He gently placed the cup down on a rounded coaster on Admiral Osman's transparent aluminum desk. "We got lucky here- hostile first contacts attacking both Shanxi and the Horizon works to our benefit. The sangheili are always receptive to throwing themselves on their sword." A few gears turned in the captain's head. "We'll need to be quick, though. The Arbiter needs to hear about the attack from the UNSC and not his intelligence network. Sangheili honor has always been about being as blunt as possible. After the bonds forged from the Jiralhanae Pacification Campaign, I suspect he'll offer military assistance and then we'll need to accept it. I'll check with Sanbhal on some updated projections after whatever Operation Hypodermic sequel we do with the Turians, of course."

"Do it." Serin turned back to the right, lifted a datapad, and scanned its text as she continued speaking. "You've had a chance to read over the report compiled by the Everest's AI, right?"

"Of course." Sullivan smiled a broad smile. "I'm excited just thinking of the possibilities, though elements of the report are worrying if ONI doesn't find a way to get on top of them."

Serin moved her pad down, and craned her head back. "Dominating the citadel council is a possible solution, but another is merely to increase military build up by both sides to record levels."

"A cold war? What would that bring us?"

"I'll read you into it after the meeting." Serin stood up and pushed her chair back with the back of her legs. "Let's go." Her enormous height, nearly two full meters, and, by extension, lengthy gait propelled her at a brisk pace past Captain Sullivan. The captain stowed his pen atop his right ear, grabbed a small stack of papers, and followed his commander. She exited out of the office to two saluting marines standing in a drab gray hallway and pulled a left.

Michael followed his superior through the extensive hallways of the Bravo-6 bunker, examining the pre-war architecture in all of its imposing, brutalist glory. Massive ceilings this far underground harkened back to a time of plenty from a now distant past. The pair made a right turn, past a pair of guards, then a left turn past an open meeting room, and into the main hallway towards the security council chamber.

Past yet another layer of guarded doors, inside of the waiting room to the security council chamber, on the wall next to the imposing council door hung a famous painting. A recreation of the original still hung in the lobby of the ground floor. A menacing, turbulent black background with dim, smeared pinpricks of light was set as the backdrop to a battered and bruised, yet defiant and unyielding Valiant-class heavy cruiser. The ship was firing off-painting into covenant ships. Purple chips, presumably from Covenant vessels, littered the outer edges of the piece. On a golden plaque atop a genuine, oaken frame, the words "Admiral Cole's Last Stand, Psi Serpentis, 18 April 2543" were inlaid.

Serin looked at it briefly before moving past the security officers and into the chamber.

Michael followed. The chamber itself had a large, U-shaped table with massive, vaulted ceilings at least seven meters tall. On the floor was the redesigned eagle bearing a golden shield atop a globe, the letters "UNSC" atop the shield and a golden banner reading "United Nations Space Command" above the globe. The bird looked ready to leap into the air, like a phoenix awakening from a long slumber. Inside sat the people at the very highest levels of government and military.

On the far left was General Nicolas Straus, head of the UNSC Army. A dour man of Germanic descent, he had close-cropped, black hair and black eyes atop his gaunt, modestly-wrinkled face. In the year and a half that the captain had known the general, Sullivan couldn't recall a time when Strauss had been seen outside of his pair of worn, olive green army armor. As befitting a man who was never late to anything, Strauss had arrived to the room early and was examining his cuticles out of sheer boredom.

As Michael stood in the room, finding his place, a motorized wheelchair strolled past him. The man sitting in it was Spartan Musa-096, a would-be Spartan II-series supersolder whose augmentations didn't take, and now de facto leader of the Spartan branch of the military. Prior to the formation of the Spartan branch in '53, he was a Rear Admiral for the Navy. His arms were in repose on the armrests at either side and his face deep in whatever thoughts consumed him as his neural lace commanded his chair's movements. The chair made a mechanical whirring as it guided him to his place at the security council table. The pale, white man glared at Michael with his piercing, brown eyes that belied a wisdom beyond his years. His thin face was topped with curly, brown hair and sat atop his thin but defined neck. Michael had always found it interesting that Admiral Osman and him were close, but details were, like all of his boss' past, shrouded in secrecy, and the captain knew better than to pry.

Next came the legendary Fleet Admiral Lord Terrence Hood of the UNSC Navy. He was bald, though not by choice, and tall: a sliver under two meters. The british nobleman was already seated at his well-worn chair in his standard naval dress whites, reading whatever new report came across his desk. Even in his now advanced age, the eighty-year old never seemed to tire of his role and responsibility as de facto leader of all of the UNSC.

Admiral Osman sat on her chair, shoulders square and attentive, eyes scanning everyone and everything with vigilance. After working under her for a year, and letting go of the near-constant state of fear of working under the most dangerous being in the UNSC, Michael found his most common emotion was surprise- be it from unorthodox strategy or ethically questionable situations even for a die-hard such as himself- he was almost never bored. The one time the captain was, he had tried to find information on Osman's previous secretary only to find his email inbox entirely deleted, save for a single email that informed him to stop prying. The fear came back a bit that day.

General Hogan, head of the UNSC marines, had already been seated right of Osman. He was a large, heavyset man, with thick, silver hair and amber eyes. Numerous wrinkles graced his now aged face. The man was friendly, outgoing, and generally gregarious, though he was noted as being a ruthless commander when he was stationed at the front. Michael had once been invited to General Hogan's home in Tehran for a barbeque three months ago. There, the general explained in detail his current incarnation of the perfect hamburger. Hogan constantly experimented with new and bizarre ingredients, and while he was physically fit, his experimentation ultimately led to the accrual of an additional chin no matter his exercise regiment.

The last military man to sit down was General Reginald Dellert, leader of the UNSC Air Force. He was a man of chinese, korean, and texan descent who spent his entire civilian life in the New Texan Republic, on the outskirts of Austin. His balding, black hair was thick with lines of gray. His thin, black eyes always looked heavy on his thin, but muscular frame. The man had once spoke in a heavy southern north american drawl about his beloved 'Buck' being killed at the battle of earth. Michael had learned that 'Buck' was not his horse, but his grandson, at Hogan's barbeque.

The last person to walk in was President Ruth Charet. She was above average in height- one point seven, maybe one point eight meters tall- and had short, gray hair. She sat down next to Dellert at the far right of the council table. Michael had always found it odd that Charet wore glasses over her blue eyes, preferring not to get cloned replacements, even though they were easily available.

Fleet Admiral Hood looked up Michael. "You look lost, son. First time?"

Sullivan smiled back. "Yes sir."

"Grab a chair from the corner over there and place yourself front and center," came the Fleet Admiral's reply.

Captain Sullivan thanked Lord Hood, pulled a chair over, and remained standing. "Let's begin?" Several members acknowledged the request and the room quieted down. Michael cleared his throat, centered himself, and turned his datapad's display on. "A few minutes past twenty three hundred hours," he looked at each of the people present in the room as he talked, "on the thirty sixth anniversary of our last first contact, our colony Shanxi was attacked by a hostile alien force. The artifact that we found three years ago, the one that Oni's Boulder base orbited, turned out to be some kind of gate to another section of the galaxy. Harvest Protocol was initiated and the UNSC has assumed control of the civilian government." The president moved uncomfortably in her chair. "Martial law is under effect across our space."

Hood immediately asked the obvious question. "Is this another forerunner artifact that they left laying about?"

"No, sir," Sullivan responded with air of deference, "the whole milky way is littered with them, apparently, except our corner of space. We're not sure why, yet.

"Regardless, the short form is that Vice Admiral Preston Cole apparently made contact with another race, the 'quarians,' who helped repair his ship. Then, another group of aliens, the 'turians,' found the two, opened fire, and only Cole's Everest escaped. He jumped through a series of these gates and just so happened to have found his way into Shanxi's orbit.

"There, the Everest's AI used its tight-beam laser to give us a series of documents known as the 'codex,' a kind of alien encyclopedia." Sullivan couldn't help but smile a bit as he continued, "we know almost everything about these attackers- culture, general technology, government, but they likely know next to nothing about us, so where shall I begin?"

Gears started turning in everyone's head as they began to formulate avenues of questioning. President Charet asked first, however. "What is the turian government like? What are their citizens like? What kind of species are we dealing with here?"

"That's a complicated one, Madame President," Captain Sullivan responded as he pulled up his datapad, "the turian hierarchy is a hierarchical meritocracy," he began to read from the translated codex file, "with twenty-seven levels of citizenship spread across some large number of actual positions. Someone known as the councillor is the leader of the hierarchy, with primarchs ruling over colony clusters and handling top-level administrative and a few military duties. Their government is also their military, much like the UNSC was during the great war. The government itself is rather laissez-faire in handling its citizens so long as those citizens do their duty.

"The citizenry itself is generally militant, stoic, and disciplined. A close analogy might be some kind of alien Roman Empire. They have a client race- the Volus- and everything." Michael frowned for a moment as he clicked a button on his pad, "but this brings me to another wrinkle. The citadel council is an interspecies hegemony of which the turians are a part of."

"There are three species at the top of the hegemony- the turians, the salarians, and the asari. The turians are more military-minded, the salarians are more interested in intelligence and scientific endeavors, and the asari are diplomatically focused. They effectively rule over a number of other species," he scrolled down a bit, "the drell, the elcor, the hanar, the volus, the batarians, and the keepers: nine species in total. Other species live outside of their purview- the geth, the krogan, the vorcha, the collectors, the yahg, and the quarians. One non-council species, the rachni, was exterminated, and another, the krogan, will soon join them through a council-induced plague." The members of the security council all leaned in a bit closer at those last two.

"In general, the asari are the leaders amongst the leaders. They're long-lived- a thousand years- and tend to take a long view of things. They appear to advocate for peace and shy away from conflict, supposedly. Interestingly enough, they're a mono-gendered species and look remarkably like human females." Sullivan pressed a few buttons to and sent the image of the alien wirelessly to the other members of room. The creature had blue skin and tendrils of some form in place of hair but was otherwise identical in form to a human female.

"Damn," General Hogan grinned. Strauss chuckled in response.

"These creatures can be reasoned with," Admiral Osman intervened to steer the conversation back on track. "Wiping out the turian fleet and issuing a strong counterattack would force the asari to put the turians at the negotiating table. We'd have a strong upper-hand here in any discussions- we were attacked and we defended ourselves thinking we were the subject of yet another alien invasion."

"That seems reasonable," President Charet consented.

Admiral Hood cleared his throat, "What are the chances that this backfires on us, Serin?"

Serin turned to the aged Fleet Admiral, "Extremely low, and if all else fails, we can go for the throat and deploy NOVA bombs on their population centers. We have a prowler in orbit around Shanxi and they haven't detected it, so that'll be our delivery mechanism. We already have the location of all of their publically available planets, including their homeworld. There's no reason the plan wouldn't work that I can think of."

President Charet's eyes widened a bit. "We still make those?"

As the now secretary to Admiral Serin Osman, Captain Michael Sullivan had once read a report on the topic. The bomb was a creation of wanton destruction, a nuclear weapon powerful enough to be capable of cracking open a planet's crust. Its only known activation was when a covenant fleet had accidentally detonated one in their care, destroying a little over three hundred ships, vaporizing a nearby moon, and irradiating a nearby planet, wiping it of all life. The only survivors were the handful of ships orbiting the world in the umbra of the blast.

"Why would we have ever stopped?" Serin answered incredulously, "the first one was a resounding success."

"The fight," Hood changed the topic, "thank you for marking the report for me, Captain. Your team did a good job."

Sullivan let his smile grow a little larger for a brief moment. "Yes sir."

"I assume you've all read the naval combat summary forwarded from Shanxi. The alien ships operate on a completely different axis than ours," Lord Hood explained. "Our ships hit like a truck compared to theirs, but they can run circles around us. They came in with over four hundred ships, but not a single one even hit cruiser weight, and each one makes our Piranha-class fast attack corvettes look as maneuverable as a quadriplegic. We've been building ships to break apart five kilometer-long Covenant capital ships and our designs reflect that- by comparison, our ships are slow and plodding but when we hit, we turn theirs into space dust."

Hood looked at his pad, scrolled down a bit further, scanned a few lines, and looked back up. "Our only truly effective offensive option are the super MACs. The orbital defense platforms performed better than expected, so ship-mounted ones should work well when we take the fight to them. Given the differences in capabilities, the alien admiral should have moved his ships into extreme close-range to press his advantage. I don't think he'll make the same mistake again.

"Possibly minor note, slipspace-wise, we," Hood looked towards Admiral Osman for a moment, "believe we have them beat. When these aliens ships chased the Everest, they had to execute two jumps- one over the system plane and another back towards Cole. Whatever they're using for FTL, it's somehow dependent on the amount of stuff in real space. That gave him time. At bare minimum, our drives don't have that drawback."

"Besides getting some lighter MAC rounds for the ships- I'll talk to logistics and operations about quickly rearming our ships after this- the natural foil to this strategy is our fighters. They get in close and we'll punish them for it. The report showed no mention of dedicated carriers, and neither did this 'codex' of theirs. That's our ace in the hole. Second fleet's Punic-class supercarrier, as well as their Vindication-class battleships are undergoing retrofits right now above Partition. It'll be a week until that's done, then second and fourth fleet will be tasked with the reclamation of Shanxi."

"Both fleets?" asked the president.

"Disproportionate response," Hood deadpanned.

"Woah, what about our boys on the ground," warbled General Dellert. "While the navy's busy putting toys on its ships, the army and airforce are getting pounded. Men and women are going to die because you're twiddling your thumbs."

Hood never got visibly angry, but his eyes squinted ever so slightly. "This strategy will save the greatest number of lives," he said in an infinitesimally deeper a tone, "and material. Spartans can be deployed to lighten the load. Musa-"

Spartan Musa-096 immediately picked up on Hood's train of thought. "Yes, we can augment existing ground forces using Spartan fireteams by way of long range stealth drop pods launched from slipspace. It's been done before. We'll need ships-"

"For deployment, yes," Hood completed the thought. "You'll have them. Now, assuming we succeed at reclaiming Shanxi, first fleet will take whatever additional ships it needs from second and fourth and begin an counterattack at some colony. We'll figure out the specifics later."

Dr. Charet rubbed her temple slightly, "We still have loose ends. Our own aliens, plus Cole, and his new alien friends."

"ONI recommends immediately informing the sangheili of the development." Osman criss-crossed her fingers together above the table as she talked. "They're blunt and care about transparency, plus they'll hear about the incident regardless. Better if it's from us. This is an easy win."

Fleet Admiral Hood nodded. "Agreed. I'll call. The Arbiter and I have a rapport."

"And Admiral Cole," prodded the President, "and the friendly aliens he met. What does this codex say about them?"

"Umm," Captain Sullivan reached into his mind and tried to remember a word he had heard for the first time twenty minutes ago. "Quarians. Yes, the quarians." He pulled up his datapad, and began typing the word in. "They're a nomadic race. About three hundred years ago," he pressed send on his datapad, beaming the information to the others in the room, "the artificial intelligence network they made tried to take over their colonies. The quarians fought back, but were nearly destroyed, so they fled. Rather than helping, this 'council,' who banned the creation of artificial intelligence, sentenced them to exile from any and all colonies, and the council itself."

"Brutal," said Dellert quietly.

Sullivan flipped a little further down the page. "They're considered some of the best engineers in the galaxy. During their exodus from the worlds, they constructed their own Infinity-like projects out in space, except they made ships for growing food rather than fighting wars. In fact, the Everest's AI made a note here that Cole felt a level of kinship with the quarians." He paused for a bit to collect his thoughts. "Beyond that, they helped the Everest get back online- raw materials and the like to fix their destroyed engines and slipspace drives."

"They sound like valuable allies," Charet concluded.

"Says here they're also galactic pariahs," countered General Strauss. "If we ally ourselves with the quarians, we'll receive flak for it. By even talking to them, we could be weakening our position."

Admiral Serin Osman turned to the wiry man. "While true, ONI believes that repaying them materially is the correct diplomatic move. Equitable trade and repayment of debts is smiled upon by every council species." She turned to Fleet Admiral Hood and President Charet. "My recommendation is that the Infinity be sent as a diplomatic envoy. Cole did release the existence of the Covenant to the quarians, so depending on the outcome of your talk, we may want to consider the Horizon either in lieu of the tenth ventral escort frigate or as an eleventh, external escort."

"Why the Infinity?" asked Hood, "I'd prefer to have her for the action."

"The Quarians are a race of space nomads- their ships are their homes. The Infinity sends a few messages. Firstly," Osman raised her pointer finger, "regardless of what Admiral Cole told these aliens, we're bigger, better, and stronger than they are," followed by her middle finger, "and secondly, despite our obvious superiority, we value their assistance and friendship. Think of it as putting our best foot forward. If things get too exciting at home, we can always recall her quickly."

Lord Hood glared back at Osman, measuring her unmeasurable response for a few moments. "Alright, you'll have her for the duration of this op. Who's our diplomat?"

President Charet's eyes lit up. "I have someone who would be perfect."

"Who, and why?" asked Serin.

"Anita Goyle. She's our softest touch. That may not work well with the sangheili, but she'll be perfect for these quarians."

Admiral Osman ruminated on the idea for a few moments as the President looked to her for approval. "An interesting choice. ONI's representative will be Captain Michael Sullivan."

Michael's smile got just a little larger. "Yes, sir," he affirmed. He had long ago learned how to maintain his jovial exterior in spite of however nervous he felt internally.

"Serin," Hood spoke up as he continued looking over the battle summary, "during the battle, Ryder ordered a general evacuation of his ship. Did any lifeboats survive?"

"A few. We've already begun search and recovery efforts. We won't have any loose ends, Fleet Admiral."

"Good." Lord Hood looked up and turned to look at Serin for a few moments. "Try your best to bring them back alive." Serin nodded an affirmative.

"Right," Sullivan found his place in his executive summary, "so moving on, 'element zero' is some kind of apparently naturally occurring meta-material that alters mass locally in a region when an electrical current is applied. It forms the basis of almost all of their technology and has a couple of interesting technical repercussions. It's apparently ubiquitous throughout their territory. We've been working and refining theories that seek to explain relative galactic abundance of materials for over five hundred years. The total lack of this 'element zero' in our territory is completely anomalous."

"Interesting," President Charet said quietly. The others, Admiral Osman included, sat and listened quietly.

"Generally, this 'element zero' is used to lighten the weight of their ships to improve maneuverability, to increase the mass of their projectiles while magnetically accelerating them through their barrels, and to provide a type of shielding called a 'kinetic barrier.' On the ground," Sullivan turned to the various generals, "the material allows them to provide shielding to every single ground troop. It's also used in their ground weapons by firing extremely small projectiles at extreme speeds."

"That doesn't make sense to me," commented Charet, "why shoot faster on the ground? Faster speed means more air resistance. And it's not like soldiers can dodge a bullet."

"Stress," responded Dellert, following the aliens' train of thought, "or force per area. Possibly harder for their armor and shields to stop.

Strauss was thinking along a different line. "The amount of energy that can be put into each shot is way higher while maintaining the same amount of recoil. Classic bullet weight versus powder argument. Does ONI know what it'll do to army and marine armor?" asked General Strauss to Admiral Osman.

"No-," began the head of the intelligence agency.

"-but the army is going to find out," Strauss, the head of the army, finished with resignation and disappointment.

Hoot sat up in his chair. "Cut the shit, General. We've done this song and dance countless times during the great war and we'll do it again we have to. Please, continue captain."

"Sir," Sullivan nodded an acknowledgment, "additionally, some aliens develop special abilities involving element zero," Sullivan explained, ignoring the general's outburst. "They're called biotics. They can manipulate objects seemingly telepathically, lower their mass to run faster, and create repulsive fields around themselves that function as a second shield."

Strauss' eyes opened at that one. "So, what, my boys are fighting the jedi?"

Musa cleared his throat before speaking. "How many of these biotics are there?"

"It's species-dependent," responded Michael. "Every single asari is a biotic while very few turians are. For the Turian military, those that are placed in specialist ground units known as a 'cabal.' It all depends on in-vitro exposure to this 'element zero.'"

"Clustering is good," explained Musa as he turned his head to General Strauss, "Depending on numbers, spartan fireteams can counteract these 'cabals.' Regular troop exposure will hopefully be as limited as possible."

General Nicolas Strauss grimaced, then nodded in acceptance. "I can work with that. Anything else," he asked as he looked to Captain Sullivan.

Sullivan looked down at his pad. "Just one: the food situation. Both turians, the race invading us, and quarians, the supposedly friendly race, have an issue with most kinds of food we eat due to some evolutionary circumstances. These turians are going to have supply chain problems."

"So we use prowlers to harass their supply ships?" asked Dellert.

Osman disapproved. "That'd be giving away a distinct advantage. We'll use their supply chain to find the lifeboats from the Lusus and destroy their ability to wage war."

President Charet leaned forward on the U-shaped council table, palms resting on the table's edge as she looked at the head of intelligence. "Are we really preparing for total war, Admiral?"

"Intelligence shows the turians to be a completely militaristic society," Osman explained. "Their military is also their government. While it is likely that this citadel council will attempt to prevent total war, the possibility exists that they will not. I think we'd all like to prevent another Harvest campaign if we can avoid it."

The Harvest campaign quote made Lord Hood visibly wince. "Admiral Osman's assertion is correct," he stated, "Retrospective counterfactuals show that we could have prolonged the fall of Reach by close to five years if we had correctly geared up for total war back in '25 when our industrial capacity was its peak. The delay could have prevented the fall entirely, nevermind the Battle of Earth."

Charet leaned back. "Alright," she resigned, "so it goes. Osman, after this, let's talk about the other aliens offline."

"Of course," Admiral Osman smiled gently, "Captain Sullivan, could you please elaborate on these krogan and rachni aliens that you had mentioned?"

"Of course, ma'am." Sullivan hit a few buttons on his pad's screen to get to the relevant page of the codex. "I had mentioned that the council had exterminated a race and effectively exterminated another earlier. The first, the rachni, was some kind of hive-mind insectoid race. About two thousand years ago, another race, the 'salarians,' were exploring the relay network and stumbled upon the rachni homeworld. The rachni in-system ships captured the salarian vessel and reverse engineered faster than light travel from it. From there, they expanded rapidly and aggressively ushering in an era known as the rachni wars.

"Communication with these rachni was seemingly impossible. The still nascent council races were being pushed back until they found an equally hardy and hostile race, the krogan, and uplifted them to function as their soldiers."

"Gee, that doesn't sound like it could blow up in their face," quipped Dellert.

Sullivan chuckled. "Right? Well, three hundred years after discovering the rachni and two hundred years after uplifting the krogan, the council nuked the rachni homeworld into a radioactive wasteland.

"So, as General Dellert pointed out, over time, the krogan wanted more and more territory until their aggressive expansion turned into yet another war. The council had then-recently discovered a race known as the 'turians,' a militaristic but disciplined culture that we are already duly familiar with. The Turians were offered council membership as equals in exchange for fighting the krogan as the main force. Krogan reproduced extremely quickly, faster than the council could kill them. Ultimately, the salarians developed a plague known as the 'genophage,' which caused the krogan to miscarry most of their clutch, and the turians deployed it on their homeworld, and effectively ended the war. The entirety of the krogan is effectively sterile and their civilization has been on a precipitous decline since the end of the war."

"Brilliant!" exclaimed General Hogan as he looked at Osman. "There's no way ONI didn't try something like that during the war." Osman's expression didn't budge a millimeter.

Rather than waiting for any kind of response that would never come from Osman, Sullivan just continued. "That was about four hundred years ago. There hasn't been a major war since then." Sullivan put his datapad down and looked up for the next question. "Anything else?"

The various security council members looked around for the next question. When none came, Osman stood up. "Good, that concludes the meeting. ONI will keep you all apprised of any updates. Now, we all have a war to prepare for."

The other members followed the intelligence head's lead and began walking towards the door, small discussions forming. President Charet made a beeline for Osman and Captain Michael Sullivan followed suit.

"So what are your initial thoughts on the politics of alliances with these various aliens," inquired Charet. An open-ended question would require more than an empty response from the intelligence head.

"There's no reason to open or close any doors at just yet, Madame President. Let's judge the galactic reception before making any decisions." Osman did her best to disarm the president with a feeble attempt at a warm smile.

Charet crossed her arms across her chest. "A solid non-answer, Admiral Osman. Care to elaborate?"

"Not particularly. You have as much information as I do at this point."

"Well, keep me updated on your thoughts, Osman."

"Absolutely, Madame President." Seemingly satisfied, Charet lowered her arms, picked up her datapad, and left the conference room. Osman turned to Sullivan, the only remaining person in the room. "A fine job, Captain."

"Thank you, ma'am."

"Three things- first, you spent too much time looking down at your datapad. Eyes up, back straight. You'll appear more confident that way."

"Apologies, ma'am."

"None necessary. Just constructive criticism. Secondly, please forward any information you have about biotics and element zero to Doctor Catherine Halsey and myself."

Captain Sullivan nodded gently as he put the implications of the request aside. "Consider it done, ma'am."

"And lastly, gather your belongings. You're due on the Infinity at twenty-three hundred, sharp. I understand that you know her commanding officer?"

Captain Sullivan smiled. "Yes, ma'am. Rear Admiral Lasky and I both attended the Corbulo Academy of Military Science back in '26, though neither of us graduated. Covenant attack destroyed all of the printers for the diplomas."

"Good. I'll see you back here in a few weeks." Osman began to turn away before she sarcastically added, "enjoy your vacation."

Sullivan saluted. "Best of luck managing without your dutiful assistant, Admiral." He grabbed his datapad off of his desk, began collecting all of the requested codex entries, and walked out of the room.


Author's note:

Hope everyone enjoyed the chapter! Updates are slow, but I don't have a lot of extra time to dedicate to this story (or much of anything else for that matter), so this is the update speed that readers can expect: once per month, maybe less. As always, I'm interested in constructive criticism about my writing. Additionally, I'm looking for beta readers to proofread my work before release. Let me know if you're interested!

I never really bought into the idea that citadel councilors or politicians are inept. I think having rational actors for a story makes it more convincing and less overtly "HFY." Naturally, everyone has some degree of cognitive dissonance, bias, preconception, and approaches towards risk management. Hopefully, by discussing their positions with their peers, my characters reflect that, but not without making them cartoons. By looking at the circumstances leading up to first contact war from the Turian perspective, I hope to say that the turians are not idiots but merely cut from a different cloth than humans.

With that out of the way, space guns. Last chapter, I promised a continuation. For the remainder of the chapter, we'll use the following notation

- m for mass
- v for velocity
- a for acceleration
- p for momentum (p=mv)
- K for kinetic energy (K = 0.5mv^2)
- U for potential energy
- E for total energy in a system (E = K + U). Often expressed in units of Joules (J).
- c for the speed of light; ex: 1.1% the speed of light is 0.01c.
- Scientific notation for expressing particularly large numbers. Ex: the number 5000 can be expressed as 5*10^3, or in scientific notation, 5e3. Ex: 0.01c is 1.1e-2.

In the intervening time since The Fight and this chapter, numerous inquiries about recoil have popped up. There were a lot of great questions around the topic and I didn't broach the issue with nearly as much depth as it deserved previously so we'll rectify that oversight of mine first.

In the classical approximation, momentum (p) is simply mass (m) times velocity (v), or p=mv. Whether it's a bird, a plane, a speeding bullet, or 1.5 kilometer long spaceship hurtling through space, depending on their velocity relative to you, they have momentum. If you are traveling with the projectile in question, your velocity relative to it is 0, so p=mv=m*0=0. No momentum! Once your relative speed or the speed of the other object changes, there is a difference in momentum.

For example, when you're driving your car next to another car at the same speed on the highway, your momentum relative to each other is 0. If you drive your car into, say, some poor chap on the sidewalk, from the perspective of the poor chap, your car's momentum is really high (m*v=p, where m is the mass of your car and v is the car's velocity relative to the chap). From your perspective, the difference in velocity of the chap and you is 0 but the chap has much less mass (like, 80 kg). Now, on Earth, we usually look at the earth as a frame of reference, but in space, there is no such thing- there's no fencepost that someone can use to ground their speeds to a galactic standard or anything. Everything is done in relativism. Let's take that and apply it to something even more violent.

Recoil can be summarized as this: Newton is a tough son of a bitch no matter where he is, be it on the ground or in space. For every action, there must be an equal and opposite reaction. In a closed system, p_before = p_after! Momentum of all kinds is what's known as a "conserved quantity," and understanding how laws of conservation function is one of the keys to achieving a better understanding of how the natural world works.

We mentioned a boisterous, gun-toting American uncle in the last chapter. Let's look at how momentum works with that gun of his. Hint: the answers are in the previous paragraphs!

Uncle is standing at the firing range, pistol in hand, bullet chambered. What is the sum of all of the momentum in the system, from the uncle's perspective?

In the infinitesimally small split second after the bullet has fired, what is the momentum of the gun, p_gun, in terms of the momentum of the bullet, p_bullet? Additionally, what is the sum of all of the momentum in the system as the bullet is fired, from the uncle's perspective?

For the first question, the answer is 0. The bullet is standing still (v_bullet=0, so p_bullet=0) as is the your uncle.

For the second, the answer is p_gun = -1 * p_bullet. Remember, p_before = p_after, so if your bullet is going one direction, your gun will go in the other direction. Now, the gun is heck of a lot heavier than than the bullet, right, but m_gun * v_gun = m_bullet * v_bullet. The second part of the question has already been answered: p_before = p_after, and p_before = 0, so p_after = 0!

A bullet is dangerous not because it has some enormous amount of momentum- American uncle just held that amount of momentum in hands, right?- but because the bullet places a large amount of stress on a target (force per unit area), piercing skin, and damaging the fragile organs underneath. The uncle dissipated his portion of the momentum by standing on the ground, expending energy to hold the gun back, etc, and the bullet dissipated that momentum by impacting on a target down the range.

But what about the kinetic energy, K, of the bullet? Remember that K is proportional to m * v^2, so the bullet takes much more of the energy from the gunpowder explosion than the gun itself does.

Let's take this idea of conservation of momentum, throw it in our railgun from the previous chapter, and put it into space. A good railgun will move a bullet from a momentum of p=0 to a momentum of very deadly (an approximate quantity), so by the law of conservation of momentum, the railgun and its attached components (such as a spaceship) will get equal parts momentum in return. Here, p_bullet = p_spaceship, but the mass of our spaceship is just much, much more than the mass of the bullet, so the spaceship goes relatively slowly in the opposite direction.

The only difference between magnetically accelerated projectiles versus powder accelerated ones is the mechanism by which the change in momentum is achieved (using electromagnetism to pull a projectile forward instead of exploding a substance to push the projectile forward), but since a change in momentum occurs, the spaceship must necessarily feel a change in momentum of equivalent magnitude in the opposite direction. They don't call them Newton's laws for nothing!

It's up the the job of the spaceship's main engines to counteract that change in momentum by pushing in the opposite direction, so if a spaceship's main engines are disabled, firing its main gun may cause all sorts of complications, such as orbital decay. Note that momentum (p) is conserved because velocity (v) has a direction (forwards and backwards in this case), but a heavy spaceship does not feel the same amount of energy in reverse, since kinetic energy, K = 0.5 * m * v^2. In fact, a spaceship must expend an amount of additional energy equal to K_spaceship = K_bullet * (m_bullet / m_spaceship) to counteract the change in momentum imparted from firing the bullet. Notice the (m_bullet / m_spaceship) factor; if your spaceship weighs a thousand times as much as your bullet, you have to spend an additional 1/1000ths of your bullet energy to keep your orbit stable. Depending on the energies involved, that may very well still be a huge amount! Note that in the following paragraphs, we simplify our equations by treating our spaceship as fixed in space (and therefore ignoring recoil) but we are going to be off by a non-negligible amount.

With recoil out of the way, let's crunch numbers on the UNSC ships. In Halo: Reach (the book), the author states, "a standard frigate-mounted magnetic accelerator cannon averages at 183 feet and fires a 600 ton ferric-tungsten projectile with a depleted uranium core at 30,000 meters per second." A quick aside: this is almost certainly a mistake by the author since a Halberd-class destroyer supposedly weighs 7900 metric tons (itself also likely a mistake), but we'll use the numbers presented for the duration of this discussion and pretend they aren't apocryphal.

We recall that the kinetic energy (K) of an object with mass m moving at a constant velocity of v is K = 0.5 * m * v^2. Assuming 'tons' refers to metric tons (1 metric ton = 1000 kilograms), a fully powered-up shot from a run of the mill frigate at the time of Halo: Reach contained 2.7e14 Joules of energy. For reference, the Little Boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima in World War II released approximately 6.3e13 Joules. A run of the mill frigate can deal just a little more than four times as much energy every single time its gun fires at full power.

Using our railgun knowledge from Chapter 6's author's notes (The Fight), we know that the kinetic energy output of a railgun, K, is proportional to the length of the railgun squared, d^2, or K=q * d^2, where q is some constant that we can solve for. This constant encompasses things like the strength of the magnetic field in the railgun and the power of the reactor.

In cutaways of the UNSC Pillar of Autumn, we see that its central gun runs about 60% of its length. Assuming the UNSC Everest's main guns follow the same ratio, we can estimate their length to be 911 meters in length. Then, we assume our constant, q, remains constant, and we just solve for energy. Under these assumptions, the kinetic energy of a shot from the Everest hits with 6.7e15 Joules of energy, or approximately 106 times more powerful than Little Boy. In this model, our 600 metric ton projectile travels with a speed of 149,300 meters per second, or about 5e-4c. As we talked about in the recoil section, UNSC ships must be very, very heavy to counteract the energy output of such weapons feasibly.

We've talked about UNSC weapons, generated models for them, and crunched the numbers. The UNSC frigates are pretty powerful. The cruisers are devastating.

Now it's time to move onto the mass effect and how it might work in conjunction with magnetically accelerated projectile weapons like railguns. Full disclosure here: I don't have a fully fleshed-out model for the mass effect, so this is speculative and subject to retcon as the story progresses. If you know of anyone who's attempted to figure out this kind of thing with any degree of physical rigor, feel free to let me know in the reviews or PM!

We begin with a codex entry from the games: "Mass effect fields are created through the use of element zero. Element zero can increase or decrease the mass content of space-time when subjected to an electrical current via dark energy. With a positive current, mass is increased. With a negative current, mass is decreased. The stronger the current, the greater the magnitude of the dark energy mass effect." Biotic wrestlers can make weigh-ins much more easily with such power at their fingertips, but what about railguns?

Let's look at our two classical conservation questions from before and frame the question in terms of kinematics*:

Kinetic energy is conserved (K = 0.5mv^2; K_before = K_after)

Momentum is conserved (p = mv; p_before = p_after)

A moving object with a fixed mass, m, has a certain amount of kinetic energy and momentum. Notice how changing the mass for the energy equation causes velocity to shoot up quadratically yet changing mass for the momentum equation causes velocity to shoot up linearly. By changing mass, the mass effect field will violate one of these equations and, therefore, must "steal" either momentum or energy from somewhere (most likely the field itself).*

Now, in the last chapter, we've already worked out some equations for railguns. We can call upon these equations and play with proportionality to give us an intuitive sense of how a mass effect field might interact with a magnetically accelerated projectile launcher.

First, some groundwork. The codex states that current must constantly flow through this element-zero material to change mass. The greater the magnitude, the greater the change in mass. If the current flow to the element zero is shut off, the mass returns back to its original , fields get weaker at a distance. The equation is usually that field intensity is proportional to (1/distance)^2.

If you think of a balloon as you inflate it, when the balloon is small, the rubber is thicker on average per unit area. When you put more air into the balloon, the rubber per unit area (distance^2) is less. This power law is extremely common in real life- gravitational fields, the intensity of light, magnets, you name it, are all subject to it- so let's just assume that a mass effect field works in the same way.

Since a mass effect field's intensity falls off quickly, we must limit ourselves to inside of the ship. By increasing the mass of the bullet inside of the barrel of the railgun, we can think of the mass effect field here as kind of coiling a spring up. Of course, we won't have to take my word for it since now we're going derive an equation which demonstrates this quantitatively.

We can actually demonstrate this in real life, together, right now. First, get a chair that can spin (like an office chair). Then, start spinning in it- faster is better, but don't vomit all over yourself. Once spinning, if you put your legs out, your speed slows down, and if you pull your legs in, you speed up. By increasing your rotational mass about the center of rotation, you increase your effective mass and, therefore, lower your velocity. This is an example of conservation of [angular] momentum at work! As you raise your feet up, kinetic energy is lost and turned into potential energy, so energy is still conserved, as well. Lowering your feet converts potential energy into kinetic energy.

Let's take a look at which of the two we're going to violate and what kind of numbers we'd need to hit the magic numbers: a 20kg projectile moving at 0.011c smacking into a target with a total energy of 1.1e14 Joules.

First, let's keep momentum as the conserved quantity. Since we know m_after (20kg) and v_after (0.011c), we know p_after. We can create an equation where we can measure how much energy is added by changing m_before- and by extension, v_before- in terms of p_after since we keep this as the conserved quantity. Therefore, what we are after is an equation which takes the final speed of the projectile (v_after), the final mass of the projectile (m_after), and the amount by which mass of the projectile has been changed in the barrel of the gun (m_before) to see how much energy is imparted. We simply use the following: K_after - K_before = K_difference and solve for v_before in terms of our other three terms through the conservation of momentum equation: v_before = v_after * m_after / m_before.

Solving the above system of equations gives us this burly beast: (0.5 * m_a * v_a^2) - (0.5 * (m_a / m_b ) m_a * v_a^2). The first half is K_after and the second half is K_before, which equals (m_a / m_b) * 0.5 * m_a * v_a^2. The interesting term here is (m_a / m_b) which essentially states that increasing mass asymptotically increases energy gain from the gun. If you double the mass of a bullet in your gun, you can increase your kinetic energy afterwards by an additional 50% if you hadn't used the mass effect. Likewise, decreasing the mass will actually rob you of energy and make your shot weaker. In the limit that you make the mass of the bullet approach infinity, you can at most double your energy per shot.

In this model, the mass effect field is storing potential energy, almost like a spring, and shutting the field off lets the bullet take the potential energy stored in the field (which itself is coming from the reactor of the ship running current through the element zero) and shoot out said projectile at prodigious speeds. There are issues with this as a working model, but this is fanfiction, not a scientific paper, so we're rolling with this until we can come up with something better.

A quick aside to this much longer aside: there is an optimization problem here that council designers must solve. Since the mass effect requires current to run and the railgun requires current to run, how much current must they devote to each to find the most optimal firing configuration?

Note that we can also solve this by keeping kinetic energy as the fixed quantity and varying momentum, but this is left as an exercise to the reader. The energy one is very slightly more reasonable, though, as fields can carry energy in the real world (see: electric field).

Okay, wow, that was a lot of math! Now let's compare our results. Using the numbers above, let's say the Everest fires 2 rounds every 2 minutes with a total energy of 6.7e15 Joules per shot, making the Everest output about 1.1e14 Joules per second in firepower alone, or about 1.8 Hiroshimas per second. A turian dreadnought outputs around 5.5e13 Joules per second, or a little less than 0.9 Hiroshimas per second, or about 50% worse by this measurement. Note the disparity and speed differences per shot. Still, though, we can now quantitatively show that run of the mill UNSC and Council ships are much closer to each other in power output than most people thought, myself included!

If you got this far, congratulations! It wasn't easy! I hope these notes were enlightening in understanding why things happened the way they did. These were definitely more math-heavy and less hand-wavy than prior notes, but the topics discussed were relatively simple. Future notes will probably swing back to waving hands if only because fanfiction as a website has no ability to add mathematical notation to stories and the math can get very complicated.

If you have any questions about how things work, let me know and I'll prioritize them in future author's notes. If you're wondering why something has a different magnitude than you expected it to, also feel free to ask and you'll get a long-winded response like this one in a future chapter. Here's what I've got on the backlog (paraphrased):

- Mf0012: How would futuristic sublight space engines function?
- A random guy: How would mass effect shields function?


*For the more technically minded among you, I didn't derive a model for the mass effect field problem in terms of the relativistic mass/momentum/energy equivalence or a Higgs field interaction because I was too lazy and not smart enough to figure it out, respectively. If anyone has anything on the topic- thoughts, ideas, similar diatribes, etc, I'd love to hear about it.