3025 C.E

Aephus

Coalition Forward Operating Base Gamma

Command Center

The latest reports from the engineers had come in and Anderson was very pleased with them.

Oh yes, extremely pleased.

"All necessary work has been completed on the factories?" he asked of the head AI engineer.

The AI nodded. "Correct. Some essential parts and materials had to be delivered via teleport but now, the factory has been fully converted and brought operational. I thank you and your men for preserving and not destroying most of the necessary infrastructure."

It had taken 5 days for the engineering corps to pick over and modify the industrial facilities they had captured but it had been worthwhile. After much work and much jury rigging, the Coalition now had a suitable manufacturing base from which to begin their final assault. They had deployed light for a reason; the presence of such facilities allowed them to deploy with a much smaller initial force, and alleviating them of their supply issues. In addition, more armoured and unmanned units could be manufactured, which would greatly bolster their forces.

"How soon until we have enough numbers?"

"Given the rapid production process and the sheer number of available raw materials, within 3 days. The local materials are somewhat more sub-par then I would prefer, but they are sufficient for our needs."

"Excellent work. I extend my congratulations to you and your men as well." Turning to the ark's AB director, he asked, "Are the necrotics and exogens ready for combat?

The director stepped up. "Necessary adaptations have been carried out as ordered." he reported. "Genetic and pheromonal information were obtained from sample body tissue and live prisoners, and have been imprinted. They are ready for deployment."

"Excellent." he said in satisfaction, turning to face towards a holo-display. A large city was being shown, the last remaining stronghold of the Combine thralls. Resistance was expected to be extremely heavy; their leadership was also expected to be cowering in the command center at the center of city.

Anderson turned towards his military commanders. "Operation Last Light will proceed in three days. 1 hour prior to the operation, GhostWatch units will be deployed to extract their leadership for interrogation before the bombardment begins." Anderson ordered. "They will infiltrate the central command compound via Skyranger, and secure all targets for immediate retrieval back to command. We also have reason to believe that captured Coalition military personnel are also being held here. Secondary objectives are to secure and retrieve them."

Saluting in confirmation of their orders, the various directors and officers in the command bridge filed out, carrying out their orders in preparation for the operation. Smiling silently to himself, Anderson called up a display of a necrotic. "Oh yes." he murmured. "This will be fun."

3025 C.E

Planet Aephus

Coalition "Skyranger" Dropship, en route to objective

37,000 meters above sea level

Powered by a trio of nuclear thermal turbojets, which were in turn powered by several anti-matter induced nuclear fusion reactors, a Skyranger soared high above the surface of Aephus at near hypersonic speeds, its low profile and detection dissipating coating cloaking it from electronic eyes. Inside, it contained 4 members of perhaps the most elite division of the Coalition military.

During the time of the old world, the ancient nation states that had dotted the surface of the Earth all had their own highly elite, special forces units. The United States had their Marine corps and Delta force. The Soviet Union and its successor, the Russian Federation had their Spetsnaz. Britain had their SAS. Canada had their JTF2. During the Black Mesa Incident, the 7 Hour War, and the Occupation along with the Uprising, the Nihilanth and the Combine had also fielded their own equivalent to human special forces; the Nihilanth had his Gargantuas, while the Combine made frequent use of their Assassins, Synth Elites and Super Soldiers.

The Coalition had GhostWatch.

GhostWatch was a highly elite group of soldiers, the best of the best, the deadliest the Coalition had to offer, even more highly trained and enigmatic then the N7 program. Heavily genetically and cybernetically modified, augmented far beyond normal beings with nanomachines, and wielding an impressive array of armours and weaponry available to conventional forces, GhostWatch units were trained and equipped to deal with situations that normal special forces couldn't be trusted to deal with; operations on Xen, vital intel retrieval and assassinations, and dealing with high-profile insurgent attacks were just some of the tasks entrusted to GhostWatch.

There was Tacitus the vortigaunt, tapped into GhostWatch after a string of brutal operations against insurrectionists where he violently killed every single insurgent by forcibly imprinting his mental will upon them. He sat quietly against the wall of the Skyranger's cargo hold, deep in meditation, his calm demeanor belying his true sadistic self.

Besides him stood Nisha, a human, casually twirling a plasma pistol in her hand, a pulse shotgun strapped to her back. It was a well known fact that as a young girl, her entire family had been killed in an insurrectionist attack against a Coalition mining outpost, the root cause of her deep, intense hatred against the insurrectionists.

One of the more stable members of the group was Kaidan Alenko, an outstanding mechanical engineer who later joined the military as a combat engineer, before he was finally recruited into the GhostWatch program. He was also distantly related to Dell Conagher, a rebel fighter during the Uprising who was widely regarded as the forefather of the modern combat engineer, and designer of the popular L3 Sentry Gun, whose descendant and variants were still in use today. He was sitting at the expansive work table in the cargo hold, going over last minute check over his arsenal of his, some would argue, overly complicated custom-made equipment.

Nearby, the AI Virtuous stood by, its hulking robotic platform dominating the scene. Thick thick armour clad every square centimeter of its body; an inordinate amount of high-powered Tau cannons, liquid cooled gluon guns, energy orb launchers, pulse turrets, and gravity guns were mounted onto it, an arsenal of heavy weaponry more than capable of dealing with any foe that challenged the AI.

There was no idle chatter in the hold, nothing except for the occasionally clinking of carbon and metal parts, the high-pitched scream of the turbojets, and the occasional rattling of the Skyranger as it passed through pockets of turbulence. There was nothing that needed to be said; they had their orders, their roles and objectives, and that was all they needed. Small talk was useless amongst them.

"Approaching dropzone in 2 minutes." the AI pilot reported over the intercom. "Prepare for deployment"

The indicator light over the cargo door turned yellow as Nisha, Tacitus, and Virtuous assumed their jump positions, lined up single file. Kaiden finished packing his equipment and joined them as well soon after. Power armour was initialized and booted up; ammunition was checked, double checked and triple checked, power packs slammed in place; comms and emergency retrieval beacons were turned on; last minute system checks and preparations were made. Gravlocks were engaged, anchoring them to the deck, lest they be blown away as the cargo door opened.

"Jump in one minute."

"The massive cargo door detached from its hermetic seal with a slight hiss, and slid down smoothly. Superheated air and jets of vapour flew past the Skyranger's hull at hypersonic speeds, bathing everything in a cherry red glow and illuminating the night sky outside. An oppressive silence filled the cabin; no sound could be heard for whatever sound waves that were generate were quickly outspeed by the aircraft.

"Jump in 30 seconds."

The strobe light flashed yellow.

"Jump in 10 seconds."

The hot blue glow of jump pack exhaust flared out, as they greedily sucked in the thin air of the high atmosphere.

"Jump in 5...4...3...2..1.."

"Jump"

The strobe light turned a solid red.

One by one, the GhostWatch members lept out of the Skyranger, superheated air encasing them as they plummeted towards the ground at hypersonic speeds, the lethal temperatures kept at bay by their disrupter shields. As they plunged into the thicker atmosphere below, their jump packs fired up, bringing their velocity down towards a reasonable level, intense g-forces crushing them in their armour. Once they hit an altitude of roughly 4000 meters, high strength wings extended out, breaking their descent and bringing them into a controlled glide. With gentle corrections from their jump packs, they slowly made their way into the city below them.

The advantage of a high altitude high opening jump, otherwise known as HAHO, was in the fact that was unobtrusive, hard to detect, and very, very quiet compared to HALO jumps, making it perfect for insertion of operatives into heavily guarded and monitored positions. With Octocam camouflage blending them in with the sky, and their small detection profiles, they were undetectable to visual observation, and any radar would likely mistake them for the native aerial flora and fauna.

They passed silently past the city's boundaries, making their way to the command structure. The command structure was simply a one story building, with a small hemispherical dome rising from the middle.

Their velocity reduced to safe landing speeds, they touched down gently onto the roof of a spire rising from the structure, briefly illuminated by the flare of retrorockets as Virtuous was safely lowered onto the roof, plopping down with a small thump. So far, so good.

Kaiden pulled out several small folded up packages, and put them on the ground. Extending their appendages and "waking" themselves up, the recon drones scurried away into night towards the streets down below. They would scout out ideal locations and plant marker beacons there, allowing the Coalition teleporters to obtain the precise telemetric information they required for the upcoming assault.

Rappelling down the tower they had landed on, the crawled across the roof, stopping once they came across what they were looking for.

"Here it is." Nisha said, pointing towards a small cover imbedded in the roof. "Kaiden?"

Kaiden stepped forward, examining the cover for any alarms or indicators. Disarming the ridiculously simply silent alarm that was there, he expertly cut the cover off, revealing a thick fibre optic. "Fibre optics." he murmured. "This will be easier then I thought." He motioned for Virtuous to stand by his side.

He took what appeared to be an archaic Swiss Army knife from his toolbelt, tapping a square revealing that it was anything but. Glowing tools and gadgets sprang out of the casing: laser cutters and welders, high-end scanners, mini nano-forges, portable hacking devices, and other instruments popped out, everything a good combat engineer needed. Ever so carefully, Kaiden made two tiny incision in the thick cable, a thin red beam jetting out of the tool, delicately melting through the outer coating and shell layers. Reaching the core glass tube, Kaiden zoomed in with his helmet optics, turning the strength of the laser cutter up. The top half of the glass core vaporized, evaporating into the air. Repeating the process again, he quickly fabricated two of his own fibre-optic cables, sealing them with brief applications from his welder, before plugging them into two open ports on Virtuous' body; the optical signals traveling down the cable would now be diverted through the welded cables, into Virtuous, before returning back to the main cable.

Virtuous stood still for several moments, processing hundreds of incoming fibre optic signals. The optical signals were very much similar to Coalition signals, a burst of light traveling down a cable representing an "on" state, while a lack of a pulse signified an "off" state: standard binary computer language, something that AIs natively understood. Tentatively, Virtuous sent down its own signals, probing the system. There were firewalls and safe guards of course, but compared to Virtuous' raw processing power, they were like a wooden wall facing against a flamethrower. Inserting tiny snippets of backdoor code as it penetrated deeper and deeper into the network, it finally found what it was looking for: a simple AND-like logic gate, both inputs

currently off. It would be a trivial matter for it to inject a program that would bypass the input commands and trip both of them. That gate was the end of a hugely complicated and secured system, that required hundreds of inputs to be precisely correct, for it controlled the building's internal security. Inserting its own miniature program into the system, Virtuous smirked internally: upon a wireless command from itself, all of the buildings external blast doors would lock down,, alarms would fail to sound, communication systems would refuse to work, and internal blast doors would fail to lock or would spontaneously open. And all of that took less than 5 seconds.

Accessing the building's security cameras, Virtuous scanned the interior, scouting out potential threats and dangers, marking their objectives. Its attention was caught by one camera, showing a captured Coalition soldier strapped in a chair, surrounded by armed guards, and being interrogated by...well that was new. The creature was unlike the bird like avian xenos they had seen before; this one was a blue, almost human-looking creature. Marking the location on everyone's tactical HUD, Virtuous disconnected.

"Complete control over internal systems granted. Ready to assume control as soon as possible. Secondary objectives located and marked. Unidentified second xeno at secondary objective. Recommend capture for analysis and interrogation." it announced, as Kaiden disconnected the cables.

They made their way across the roof, the inky darkness and their camouflage systems disguising them. Stopping at the waypoint marked on their HUDs, they stepped back as Kaiden pulled out an shaped ultrasonic charge and fixed it onto the roof.

The ultrasonic pulse obliterated the concrete roof, completely pulverizing it and sending a fine mist of concrete dust showering down . Being so high-pitched, there was no sound that could be heard: the effects of the blast however, were very real. Any creature exposed to a sound wave beyond their hearing range could suffer debilitating effects; high frequency sound waves could rupture ear drums, lead to severe pain, disorientation, bleeding, or even death. Much more cleaner and obscure then conventional explosives, which tended to shower entire areas with impassable rubble, be very noticeable, and leave victims as unrecognizable blobs of flesh and blood.

It appeared that sonic weapons were just as devastating to thralls as they were to humans. Below, the thralls were clutching their bleeding ears in agony, some of them thrashing around on the ground in agony. They were thoroughly incapacitated. Protected as they were by disrupter shields and thick power armour, the GhostWatch operatives suffered no ill effects.

Tacitus lept down first. No sound escaped him as sheets of green luminescence as brought his considerable mental powers to bear. Bolts of green lightning shot out from his arms, striking the incapacitated thralls, further exacerbating the the thralls pain. Lethal currents of electricity flowing through their bodies left the thralls writhing in the throes of electrocution. The thralls ceased all movement as they collapsed onto the ground, slightly smoking, and very much dead, their guns clattering to the ground.

The rest of the operatives arrived in short succession, Tacitus landing with an enormous thump on top of a dead body. Nisha hurried towards the captive Coalition soldier, still dazed and disorientated by the ultrasonic charge, immediately cutting away the restraints. A quick scan of his nanomachines identified as Corporal Adrian Laidlaw, 2'nd Company Mechanized Infantry. Pulling out a syringe from her medpack, she jabbed it into the corporal's exposed neck; the powerful stimulants within quickly woke him from his stupor. Taking a quick look at the thralls laying dead on the ground, Adrian quickly broke into hysteria.

"What the hell are you doing!" he screamed. "Those weren't Combine! Oh god what have we done..oh god!". The corporal broke down completely, reduced to a gibberish emotional wreck.

Kaiden shook the soldier by the shoulders gently. "What do you mean they weren't Combine? Soldier, get a grip of yourself! Explain!" It was no use. Adrian continued to sob gently, muttering under his breath such phrases as "asari", "turian", and "not Combine" over and over again.

Kaiden shook his head. "No use. He's incoherent." Whatever emotional shock Adrian had suffered through coupled with the physical trauma of the sonic blast had literally swamped nanomachines within each soldier, the machines that regulated each and every soldiers emotions through the careful administration and absorption of hormones and dopamine. Unable to handle the sudden outpouring of violent emotions, the nanomachines had simply shut down, leaving Adrian in a psychological mess. "He'll have to treated back at base." Kaiden declared.

Attaching a spare evac beacon to Adrian, Kaiden opened a comm channel and contacted the Forward Operating Base. "FOB, this is GW-U528. Requesting immediate evac for one recovered soldier. Soldier requires immediate medical attention for physiological issues related to failure of internal regulating nanomachines. Evac beacon attached, designation EB-589. How copy?"

"Solid copy." the operator reported. "EB-589 located and locked on, stand by for evac."

There was a slight warping sound and shimmering of the air, before Adrian disappeared, transported thousands of kilometers away in an instant to safety via teleport.

Tacitus padded over to the unconscious blue xeno laying on the ground. Checking for signs of life, and satisfied that the thrall was indeed merely unconscious, and not dead, Tacitus attached another beacon to it, and after contacting the FOB and alerting them to the successful capture of an unidentified thrall, stood back as the thrall too was whisked away.

"Virtuous, have you assumed control of internal systems?" Kaiden pressed.

"Affirmative. All external exits and internal alarms have been disabled. I have locked down all internal communications as well; any resistance will be highly disorganized and ineffective. Recommend proceeding to primary objective immediately."

The entire command base had descended into pandemonium.

First, hundreds of unidentified objects had appeared on the horizon, streaming right towards the capital. Everybody had braced for the worst.

Then in a fraction of a second, all control over the building's systems had been lost to a foreign party. External blast doors had sealed shut and refused to budge, while internal doors stubbornly refused to close; cameras had blanked out showing only static; communications had gone offline, leaving everybody unsure as to what was exactly happening. At first, they hadn't even known that there were intruders within the building: the usual alarms had failed to sound, and everybody had concluded that the failures were some sort of systems glitch that had happened at a very inopportune moment.

Then the gunfire had started.

Absolute panic had engulfed everyone. Nobody knew what was happening, nobody knew where the threat was, and worst of all, there was no method of escape. They were prisoners trapped within their own building, with their executioners casually strolling along killing everything in site, and with no way of alerting the outside world of their predicament.

Victus, along with the rest of his command staff, and the few remaining guards that he had. The blast doors sealing the room had been pulled shut manually, and overturned tables and anything that could be sued had been piled on to form a small bulwark in the center of the room. They were currently huddling in the cover of the bulwark, guns pointed at the entrance, waiting for the inevitable. It wasn't dying that Victus was afraid of; dying in battle was considered a glorious way to die in the militaristic culture of the turian people. It was being captured that he was afraid off; he shuddered just thinking of the horrors that could result from his capture.

The gunfire had long since faded away, leaving nothing but a nerve wracking silence. But now, there was something else: an ominous heavy thumping sound that was growing steadily louder. The noise stopped right in front of the heavy blast door. Victus and everyone around him gripped whatever few armaments they had, a meager collection of a few pistols and assault rifles.

He had been expecting the intruders to cut through the door, or even blast it open. Instead, what happened next took everybody by total surprise.

The 9000 kg heavy metal blast door was simply ripped off its hinges and bathed in a orange hue. A loud humming sound increased in intensity before the door was hurled away at breakneck speeds, crashing into a pair of unlucky guards and pulverizing their bodies. Victus stared in shock; he simply couldn't believe what he had just seen.

There wasn't much time for idle contemplation though, as clouds of purple smoke began to drift in, obscuring their vision. "Stick together!" he shouted. "Move to the back of the room!"

It turned out that such orders were entirely unnecessary, as streaks of neon green electricity penetrated through the fog, bypassing their kinetic barriers, and striking them dead center. Completely paralyzed and immobilized, not to mention in excruciating pain, Victus and the others collapsed on the floor, their bodies spasming by the current running through them.

4 figures moved into view: 3 of them dressed in intimidating, heavy armour, while a fourth massive robotic platform followed behind him. Unable to move or make a sound, Victus could only watch in horror as one of the aliens bent down, took a long hard look at Victus, and pulled out a syringe, stabbed it into his neck.

His vision slowly fading to black, Victus's only thought was that he wished he could have died in a more heroic manner.

Little did he know that he wasn't about to die. He was about to face something worse.

While the GhostWatch operatives were busy securing the command complex, something else was happening outside.

Hundreds of pods had appeared out of thin air in the middle of the capital; in streets, and alleys, in buildings, everywhere. Having all received basic military training, civilians had immediately alerted on duty military personnel about the mysterious appearance. Tensions were running high: unidentified objects were flying straight towards the capital, presumably the attack they had been waiting for, and now this?

It so happened to be that one unfortunate turian soldier, along with his squad mates, were the first to bear witness to the true nature of these objects. Expecting them to be explosives or other devices of a similar nature, they were quite surprised to see the pod open with a slight hiss and a puff of escaping vapour. Peering into it, the turian gave a terrified cry as a crab like creature leapt from the confines of the pod and affixed itself firmly to the soldier's head, its beak burrowing straight into his skull. A sickening rip could be heard as the chest armour, and indeed the soldier's chest itself was ripped apart by expanding masses of muscle and bone, forming a gaping maw lined with razor sharp teeth. Large elongated claws began growing out of his hand at an alarming rate, and the now transformed former turian soldier began shambling towards his former comrades, fully intent on killing them and devouring them. Throughout it all, muffled screams could be heard coming out from under the crab creature.

Throughout the entire city, thousands of other these creatures emerged out of their pods, affixing themselves onto unlucky turians, and proceeding to mutate them into grotesque monsters intent on death. Chaos and disorder spread, as soldiers struggled to contain the situation to no avail. Shotguns and melee weapons were most effective against the creatures, but that put them at risk of the zombies highly damaging claws, or even worse, if the crab creatures were not fully killed, "zombification". Orderly battle formations and lines were quickly swamped and cut off.

The crab creatures were called necrotics. Or, as they were commonly known as, headcrabs.

Not the headcrabs that had once been such a scourge on Earth during the occupation and the years following it. These headcrabs were specially designed as bioweapons, designed to terrorize and thin the enemy's ranks; imprinted with the target's genetic information, they were breed rapidly in specialized laboratories, packaged into pods, and the released upon their targets. The natural ability of headcrabs to distinguish potential victims based on their genetic code made for a very selective weapon; they would only zombify certain targets, while completely ignoring others.

Yet the headcrabs were not the only weapons deployed. In other parts of the city, another type of pod could be found: squat, wide-based cylindrical pods. They too cracked open, and emerged another type of creature; 4 legged insectoid creatures with a hard, diamond shaped shell at the back, with 3 overly-sized teeth forming their mouth. They had no eyes but that did not seem to impede them, compensating with their sensitive senses of smell, hearing, and touch; they swarmed about, buzzing into the air with translucent wings, burrowing into the ground only to reemerge without warning, mobbing turians as they clawed and bit at them. Engineered to recognize human and vortigaunt pheromones and protect them along with ignoring purely mechanical objects, while savagely dismembering anything else, these creatures were known as exogens, or better known as antlions. Creatures that had once terrorized and decimated the people and native fauna of Earth, the antlion had found many uses in Coalition society; food, medicinal uses, and yes, even as weapons. For every one antlion a turian killed, 2 more took its place, for the amount of antlions the pods spawned were truly uncountable.

These two creatures, headcrabs and antlions, had once been feared throughout the Earth. There had been many qualms about turning them into biological weapons, especially with headcrabs. The Combine had used headcrabs against the resistance during the occupation; towns like Ravenholm and Coonersville were testament to the effectiveness and immorality of headcrab shelling. Yet as the years progressed, and the paranoia within the Coalition had grown, the advantages of such creatures could not be passed up. Perhaps they lacked the deployability and discreetness of viruses and bacteria, but even the best engineered pathogens could mutate in unexpected ways, or not be compatible with a victim's biology. Engineered creatures were much more effective; they had rapid results, spread chaos and confusion, and lead to an unorganized, unprepared enemy. The old objections and qualms were thrown aside, and antlions and headcrabs were officially introduced into the Coalition's military arsenal. The Ark's AB department had done splendidly; AB after all was an acronym for arma biologicum, which when translated from latin, meant biological weapons.

It was amongst this that the first Coalition forces arrived. High above the skies, formations of RQ-450 First Strike UAVs screeched over the capital, particle cannons ready to fire, each UAV manned by linked combat AIs. Turian flight crews, already prepping for defensive maneuvers, lifted off into the sky to engage the hostiles in dogfights, A-61 Mantis gunships and FI/SSTO-35 interceptors lifting off from their landing pads. Tracer fire and anti-aircraft missiles and flak filled the sky, VI's and firing crews doing their best to clear the skies. The UAVs responded with lethal force and accuracy, jinking and juking to avoid enemy fire with ease; particle beams and hellfire missiles mercilessly targeted and annihilated anti-aircraft emplacements; airfields erupted into spectacular explosions as fuel tanks caught on fire, and aircraft with loaded weapons were hit; turian aircraft found themselves outgunned, outmaneuvered, and outnumbered, scores of Mantis gunships and interceptors crashing into the ground, or detonating in midair, showering the ground with debris and slag.

With air superiority all but assured, the RQ-450s moved onto their secondary role: ground support. Ground sweeping radar along with high resolution imaging cameras and targeting lasers pinpointed the exact locations of whatever turian forces had managed to regroup. Targeting lasers and ground radar provided exact coordinates for Ark teleports, allowing them to deploy groups of Excelsius Ground Suppression Mechs. Already disorganized and cut off from reinforcements by the antlion and headcrab infestations, the deployment of the Excelsius mechs within their ranks caused what ever semblance of organization and leadership there was to collapse. Armed with suppressor cannons and vulcan lasers, the mechs quickly scattered and isolated turian military forces.

The roar of nuclear thermal turbojets signaled the arrival of Skyranger dropships. Settling down on the outskirts of the city, mechanized infantry divisions and armoured units left the confines of their transports and encircled the capital, moving inwards. Hellraiser MBTs smashed through the city wall, their 11 cannons consisting of a mix of plasma cannons and pulse guns obliterating everything in their path; special teams of vortigaunts accompanied them, charging the power-hungry systems of the tanks and stunning enemy infantry with psychic and electrical attacks. Engineers were busy setting up teleport beacons and sentry turrets, erecting portable ammunition stations along with building fortifications. Infantry found great use of their portal guns within the urban environment, portaling themselves behind enemy lines or flinging unlucky turians high into the air, only for them smash down in a bloody mess. Mass effect fire was countered by pulse rounds and energy weapons; hastily made barricades were smashed apart by tau cannons and gravity guns; downed aircraft crashed into buildings and apartments, sending rubble tumbling into the streets; Coalition soldiers and armoured vehicles wielding flamethrowers spat out napalm indiscriminately, the fires inextinguishable thanks to the powdered-metal oxides contained within the fuel mixture.

Perhaps if this was a military world or heavily populated core world, the turians could have stood a chance; a tiny, miniscule chance, but a chance nonetheless. But Aephus was only an underdeveloped industrial outpost, with only one city, several coastal industrial facilities exploiting the mineral rich rocky shoreline, and barely any orbital infrastructure. There was no permanent standing military unit stationed here, only a few volunteering militia members, a small garrison consisting of mostly inexperienced recruits, and a small leadership council consisting of around 8 military veterans. Who had all been captured and were in Coalition custody.

Numbers alone did not spell the end for the turian defenders. It was the turian's inability to adapt and rigidity that spelt their end. Squadrons, lines, and formations were scattered and split apart by the panic and chaos sown by the headcrab and antlion attacks. Attempts to reform, to regroup were useless, easily countered and disrupted by Coalition teleportation technology; the armour and air support that turian squadrons had grown to rely on found themselves useless in the face of Coalition aircraft and armoured units. Turian artillery emplacements were blown to pieces by Coalition UAVs and teleported explosives. Unable to adapt and regroup, the entire turian defensive attempt collapsed into pieces.

It wasn't long before a Hellraiser tank, much like the T-54/55 tank that had rammed open the gates of the Independence Palace during the fall of Saigon in the ancient Vietnam war, smashed through the main doors of the Turian command base. A symbolic move that spelt the end of the Battle for Aephus.

3025 C.E

Serpent Nebula

Citadel

Citadel Tower

When all communications from Palven had ceased, Sparatus had refused to believe that the worst had happened. It wasn't until a the captain of a military frigate from Palaven had arrived within the Council chambers that Sparatus had been forced to confront his worst fear.

The message from the captain had been simple. "Palaven has fallen."

Upon hearing that, Sparatus had, in the first time in his career, almost fainted. Instead, he simply resigned to staring into the distance in a blank stupor.

Palven. Fallen. It was something incomprehensible to him, something that he had never imagined, even in his darkest nightmares. Palaven. It's soil trampled on by some foreign alien, the flag of the Turian Hierarchy torn from its flag post in front of the legislature, burned and defiled, and replaced by the flag of some triumphant xeno civilization. The nightime not illuminated by the millions of lights from Cipritine, but by the fires of war and conquest. Palaven, the ancestral home of turian civilization...conquered.

"Sparatus!"

It was Tevos shouting at him. She and Valern were looking at him with genuine concern on their faces.

Sparatus however saw none of that. He only felt incomprehensible rage. Rage at Tevos and Valern. Rage at the asari and salarian. Rage for them cowering behind their fleets, their people safe and secure, while his people were dying in the billions.

"Are you happy now Tevos?" he asked acerbically. "Are you satisfied now Valern?". "Because this is all your fault. It is your fault for not coming to our aid! It is your fault for not sending more ships, more soldiers to defend us! It is your fault for being cowards who refuse to fight and instead are content to watch someone else die for them!"

His rant finished, Sparatus leaned on his podium, breathing heavily, struggling to control the tears in his eyes.

There was a pregnant moment of silence before Tevos spoke up. "Under section 1 of the Citadel Conventions, it is stated that in the event that if any of the Council species homeworlds are in grave and immediate danger, it is expected that the rest of the Council devote their own resources and militaries to assist that race in the defense of their homeworlds. The Asari Republics and the Salarian Union have come to a decision: we will gather our own fleets and military forces and set out to Palaven to reinforce the Turian Hierarchy."

"Now you do this? You do this because you are forced too, not because it is the right thing to do!" Sparatus spat out.

"We will not risk our own people unnecessarily!" Valern retorted. "This is not just about you Sparatus! We have our own people to worry about! Be glad you are receiving any help at all."

"Valern, enough." Tevos said, reprimanding her colleague gently. "Sparatus, you will receive our aid." she continued, this time speaking to Sparatus. "However, a diplomatic team will be sent as well, in the hopes of establishing meaningful communication with this new race. Bloodshed is best avoided; let us hope we can create a peaceful dialogue."

"DIPLOMACY! PEACEFUL DIALOGUE!". Sparatus roared. "These people have already conquered more than a quarter of turian space! There is no negotiating with these people, whoever they may be!"

"Sparatus…" Tevos began.

"Cowardly asari!" he continued, unabated. "The time is past for diplomacy and words! War and soldiers are what is needed now!"

"Sparatus enough!" The usually calm and serene asari councillor was now positively outraged. "Do you want to drag down all of the Citadel Races into something we cannot win! Think! If we can avoid further bloodshed with diplomacy and words, then we must do so! We must do so in order to avoid more death and more ruin! Do you understand!"

Sparatus growled but he knew that he knew it was futile to argue any further. "Yes." he murmured hoarsely.

The atmosphere within the Council Chambers was oppressively dark and gloating.