Author's note: Dates will be different from now on. Dates with "AD" following them are using the human time scale, and is basically the system that most of the earth uses. "CE" follows the citadel time scale, and begins with the start of the Rachni wars.

Chapter Two:

First Contact

Turian Destroyer Talon of Palavan (name translated into English)

"…And one must always remember that a Spectre's first job is to defend the citizens of the galaxy. Without them, our group wouldn't exist," lectured the avianoid being with a plated, painted face.

"Oh, because they are the ones to whom the council serves?" asked his student, a blue-skinned humanoid with strange skin ridges.

"Well, that, and they control our budget," laughed the first being.

The second, an Asari known as Kira, giggled. She was a Spectre-in-training, and her counterpart, a Turian by the name of Solonius, was her mentor and trainer.

He sighed, looking out the view screen that acted like a window. This was a frontline military starship, after all, and windows to the outside would be an incredible structural weak point for some slaver ship or pirate gang to exploit.

For that was what the ship was designed for- hunting down rogue elements on the border of the Terminus systems, investigating criminal rings such as Eclipse, and even patrolling the demilitarized planet of Tuchanka. However, as a warship, the ship was… lacking in some regards. Solonius, through his HUD on his green visor, observed the hard edges of the hull, the weapons emplacements, the docking bays, and the mighty fusion engines… and dismissed them all as worthless.

The ship had been hastily built. Granted, it would still stand up to most criminal groups, or rebels, or even disgruntled protestors. However, this class of destroyer had been first introduced in the wake of the Synthetic Wars, when Geth forces had systemically wiped out ship after ship, and more vessels were needed fast. Thus, in the grand tradition of burocracy, one of the lowest bidders was selected for the design, and had churned out ships in great numbers for low cost.

The problem was that almost nobody was happy with the ships. While it did its job admirably enough, it lacked flexibility, maneuverability, and in several cases, structural integrity. More than a few ships had sheared themselves in half when the mass effect generators failed in the middle of a maneuver, and the weapons put on the ship were generally considered weaker than other ships their size.

Most of the Ralea class had since been phased out or stripped down and sold to private citizens, but quite a few had also been press-ganged into work for the Citadel Fleet. They mostly got the dirty jobs that better, sturdier fleet units would be a waste of resources for.

One such job was examining inactive relays for signs of new activity, possibly by pirates or explorers, or it could be used as a training vessel for Spectres. Today, the Talon filled both jobs.

"..-nius? Solonius?"

The Turian Spectre turned to face his trainee.

"Sorry, my friend, I was… occupied. What is it?"

"I was asking what we're doing out here," she asked, looking confused as she stared at his mandibles. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, just… reflecting," he said, staring back at the star-strewn starscape ahead of him.

In front of those stars, though, was an object. Two pieces of curved metal, fifteen kilometers long, bulbous on one end. A large gap between the two pieces of metal, with a hole in the center surrounded by concentric rings. This was the legacy of the Protheans. This was the thing that enabled galactic civilization.

It was a Mass Relay. And it was inactive.

Citadel law prevented inactive mass relays from being activated unless the other end was already known, for fear of unleashing another war on the scale the Rachni wars had. At least, that was the official statement. Unofficially, the galaxy was still slowly recovering from the various struggles that had rocked it, and the Council was already hard-pressed as it was to maintain the areas it had under its control. Ever since the Quarians were driven from their home, the various factions of the Terminus Systems grew bolder, striking against weakly-defended targets to acquire slaves, technology, supplies, and other things they needed/wanted.

As such, they were always looking for new, untraceable ways into civilized space, and unwatched Mass Relays were perfect for that. So, the citadel had patrols check up on unopened relays at least three times a year.

This was perfect for Solonius, who wished to instruct his pupil on the finer arts of managing a starship, as well as astromanuvering. After all, if she was to someday become a soldier in service to the galaxy, it would not do to have her be completely ignorant as to how to get around it!

Granting himself a small chuckle, Solonius pointed to the relay.

"Kira, the reason why we're out here is that Mass Relay."

Kira looked at the relay, then back to him, appearing bored beyond belief.

"Yes, I know what a relay is. Is there a point to this?"

Solonius sighed.

"Yes. This relay is, as of right now, inactive. What we are going to be doing here today, is learning all about it. You are going to study it. You are going to learn about it. You will memorize every dip, turn, curve, and pulse that goes through it." He gestured towards the device, "If we are to stay a step ahead of our enemies, then we must know everything that there is to know about their best method of travel."

A light went on in Kira's eyes. "That's why you had me studying hovercars and tanks!"

"And how to disable and repair them, precisely. Understand your enemy's options, and you understand how they will think when they are executing those options." He turned on his heel and began to walk away, back to his cabin.

"Wait," she called to him, "What do you want me to do now?"

"Simple," he replied, pausing in his path, "You are to take out a shuttle, with a vacuum-sealed suit, and physically examine the Relay. Then, you are to perform research into how relays work, how one pilots through them, and how one could best use them in a fight. I expect no less than a two hundred thousand word report on the subject, and how you would use a Relay to your best advantage in manners social, political, economic, and military." He resumed his walk, waving, and adding, "Have fun."

Kira waited until Solonius had walked around the corner before groaning. She knew that the Spectre had been a professor at one time, but she didn't think that writing essays was really the best way to prepare for being a Spectre. She was two hundred and ten years old, and he was treating her like a-

"For that groan," floated his voice from around the corner, "Another fifty thousand words."

This time, Kira kept her displeasure to herself.

Kira sighed, using up a little more valuable oxygen as her suit drifted next to one of the Relay's antennae. This was the third day of her close examination of the titanic artifact, and she was bored out of her skull. Using her biotics to move herself into a more advantageous position, she waved an omnitool over a piece of exposed piping. Carelessly, she looked at the display, confirming what she alre-

She blinked.

She ran the omnitool over the conduit again. The results were different. Thinking that this was little more than a simple, if rare, error, she conducted the test a third time. This time the results were not the same as the previous two attempts, but she could see a pattern. As if to drive the point home, she felt the titanic relay shudder slightly under her magnetically-attached boots.

Pushing her biotics to their limit, she glided back to the shuttle, radioing the pilot on the way.

"Moran! Start up the engines!"

"Ms. Kira, why? What's happening? What's so important?" babbled the Salarian pilot.

"The relay… it's powering up! It's coming online!"

Dead silence from the line, but the shuttle immediately moved closer to Kira, engines now visibly thrumming with power.

She glided through the open door, which slammed shut right behind her as the titanic rings at the heart of the relay began to move. Like some sort of insanely massive gyroscope, they began to rotate, spinning multiple directions at once. Lights began to activate themselves all along the relay's dozen-kilometer length.

The shuttle rocketed back towards the Talon, when Kira's omnitool buzzed with a communication.

"What did you do?" asked Solonius, a growling undertone carrying the threat across.

"Nothing! I was examining the antennae, and then it started to activate!"

"Well, get out of there! When a relay reactivates, it can be-"

Suddenly, a star-bright light ignited at the center of the rings, sending out a spherical shockwave that knocked the shuttle end-over-end.

Moran pulled on the controls as hard as he could, but he still could only just barely get the shuttle under control before it slammed into the Talon.

The destroyer, however, had bigger concerns. Even as the shuttle began to limp back to the hanger bay, the guns and kinetic barriers of the warship were powering up, prepared for an assault force from the Blood Pack, or a slaving run by Eclipse mercenaries.

What actually came through was a bit of a shock.

It was not from any mercenary company. In fact, it wasn't from any species ever seen before in Citadel Space.

It was a small ship, barely half the size of the destroyer, which itself was only about five hundred meters long. It had a flat top with a pot belly, with engines extending a small ways out from the back. It almost appeared to have spines, so numerous were the sensor arrays over the surface of the ship, but Solonius could see what appeared to be the muzzles of several guns poking through. There was a raised bridge on what looked like a small coning tower. Strange script was written in an alien language across the hull, and beneath that was a rectangle with what looked like a blue planet wreathed in golden plants and fire.

"What the-?" asked Solonius, before being cut off by the communications officer.

"Spectre! We're receiving a transmission from the unknown ship! It's in… Prothean Script?"

"That ship is ugly as sin."

Captain Michael Black, leader of this branch of the Catapult Exploration Force and captain of the frigate Apogee, stared out at the unknown vessel in front of him. He looked back at his 2IC.

"Have we sent the first contact message yet?"

Jane Shepherdson, his 2IC, nodded.

"Yes, sir. We sent it out in Builder Script, as well as in Deng, Quern, Chinese, and half a dozen others."

The other ship is sending out high levels of energy, Captain, Apollo stated.

"Is it an attempt to respond?" Michael asked the ship's AI.

No, captain. Apollo responded, The emissions are more similar to that of the Element Zero artifacts we discovered around the Builder artifacts and the Catapults themselves. They do suggest that the other vessel has the same sort of shielding system that the other ships had at the dig site.

Michael hummed thoughtfully. "Continue to monitor the situation, and try to get as much information as possible."

Solonius stared at the screen. Printed on it was the Prothean message that had been transmitted to the Talon by the unknown vessel, as well as several other bizarre types of script. The Prothean one, though, was already translated.

Greetings new vessel fly boat. Come in name not fight. Dance stars relay watch. Fast light not far. Much relay. Come- here the translation was unable to keep up, but spelled out something like "Con-cord-ee-yut," of "mah-na,"- seek not bad fight. Seek good. Seek peace.

"Great spirits, they have worse grammar than you," he muttered to Kira in a deadpan tone.

"Watch it," She growled.

"Do you have any idea what they're trying to say, then?" he asked, sounding bemused.

"I think they're trying to say, "Hello, unknown ship, we come in peace, we came from far away, we're from the… I can't read that, but they emphasize that they seek peace."

"Very good," he calmly said, pride evident in his voice. "So what do you think we should say back?"

Captain, we are receiving a transmission from the unknown vessel.

"Really?" Michael asked in surprise, "What are they saying?"

They are communicating back in Builder script.

"Do you think that…"

I do not believe so, sir, there are too many discrepancies between what we know to be builder design and the unknown ship.

They respond as such:

Greetings, unknown ship. Grammar of you is terrible.

There were chuckles throughout the bridge at this.

Good that seek peace. You break law when you come through relay.

"Wait, by relay, do they mean the catapult?" Suddenly, an icy pit descended into his stomach, "What do they mean, we broke the law?"

"New response, putting it through the translator," chirped Moran.

Unaware of bad cracked law. What law this? Apologize.

Kira thought for a moment, before delivering her response.

Response, sir.

Against law of Citadel to open new relay without knowing where it goes. One time, relay opened, bad thing come out.

Michael and Jane looked at each other. 'Bad Thing?" she mouthed. 'Citadel?' he mouthed back.

You not aware of law, so not punish you… this time.

If one had been looking at the life support systems, they would have been able to see the air movement caused by the sigh of relief at those words.

We are vessel of Turian Heirarchy, Talon of Palavan, under the jurisdiction of the Citadel Council. Who you?

Kira stared at the message.

We frigate Apogee on mission of exploration from our leaders, (and this time a sound file was included,) Concordiat of Man. We members of species Human. Come from planet Shangxi.

She was about to type her own response when Solonius, concern written on his face, stopped her.

"There's something odd about that message," he whispered.

"What? What's normal about this? This is a first contact! They come from a culture that is radically different from ours! There could be dozens of explanations for why this seems odd!"

"Really?" he eyed her, "Then explain why the first message was so poorly written, but the quality has rapidly skyrocketed after only a few exchanges."

"Maybe they got a new man at whatever they use for communications. If I was trying to pass that off as an attempt to communicate, you'd replace me in a heartbeat."

"Are you sure? Because I think that the grammar and language that that ship has been using has been increasing noticeably, as if they were learning from us. If that's the case... I'd like to know how they're doing that."

"New message, Apollo?"

Yes, sir. Ahem. Frigate Apogee, we notice that your grammar is rapidly improving. When talking began, you not able to string sentence together. Rapidly improving. How this?

"Did they say ahem?"

No, that was me.

"Ah, thought it was strange that they would translate that. Wait, you're an AI, why do you need to clear your throat?"

Apollo sighed.

"Or sigh?"

It's part of the communications process. A human-like trait that enables me to better work with you.

"Ah. Well, let's tell them the truth, huh? Maybe they'll want to meet you."

Jane chuckled.

"Maybe they have some nice lady AI's for you to talk to?"

Ma'am, I am an AI. I technically have no gender. Any appearance as such is the result of my programming.

One of the radar technicians popped up and asked, "Does that mean that if you got into a relationship with another AI, it'd be a homosexual relationship?"

One, who cares? Two, you would do well to remember, Ensign Presley, that before you crack any more cornball jokes at my expense, I am the one who controls life support.

"Shutting up."

Excellent.

Turian Ship, we find ruin of those who made relays. We use builder words to speak to you. But we not know how speak words good. Then we meet you.

"See, it's not so bad. They don't have-" Kira started, but the message went on.

We have computer. Very smart computer that can think for self. Called "Intelligence Artificial." Has been listening to words and helping understand better. You have smart computer too?

The crew was silent. There was a long pause.

"Dear Goddess…" breathed Kira, "An artificial intelligence…"

Reactions around the bridge were somewhat similar, but ranged from shrieks of fear to prayers to their respective deities.

Then, Solonius barked out orders, cutting through the fear and chaos the announcement had created.

"Ready the main weapons! Prepare to destroy the enemy!"

"But Solonius, we let them off about the relay thing, why not-"

"If I have to tell you why, then you aren't worthy of being a Spectre. All hands, man battle stations!"

Michael stared at the ship.

"Awfully quiet there, aren't they?"

"Indeed," Jane chimed in. "I wonder-?"

"Captain!" one of the sensor technicians called, "We're reading a high-energy reaction coming from the other ship!"

"The Talon's shields are online! She's moving, sir!"

Michael's face paled. "Dear God…" he whispered, "They're attacking! Prepare to engage the enemy, full power to the battle screens, ready the Infinite Repeaters, and contact central on the SWIFT-"

It was at this moment that the destroyer's main guns ripped through the thin outer hull of the ship.

Apollo bit back a mental sigh as he considered the dilemma. The Apogee was technically considered a frigate, in the sense that that was where her weight and length placed her. However, in reality she had the hull of a pleasure cruiser, and had been owned by ONI, the Office of Naval Intelligence, before she was reassigned to map the relay network. She was not meant to go into a stand-up fight. In fact, she was essentially a civilian ship with a better FTL drive and enough sensors to detect even the slightest fluctuations in space-time. Without battle screens, the shots would go through the ship like a Bolo through anything that got in its way.

He winced as a shot pierced the bridge, killing all of his friends, and began to fire the two remaining guns. They were ion-bolt "Infinite Repeater," type weapons, or rapid-fire precision weapons.

Apollo swung them around, even as mass accelerator bolts blasted chunks out of the hull, killing more and more and more of the Apogee's crew, and began blazing away at the ship.

Solonius was knocked off his feet, as was Kira and anyone else who wasn't sitting down, as ion bolts passed through the kinetic barriers to impact against the destroyer's hull. The rapid-fire shots scored the hull with dozens upon dozens of hits, including several that impacted against one of the destroyer's portside wing-like structure, nearly severing it from the rest of the hull.

It didn't last long, though, as without the battle screens or protective armor, the Apogee, as well as anyone who was still on board, plus the AI, vanished in a large explosion.

Solonius wiped a bit of blood from his mouth, where he had bitten his tongue after his fall.

"They self-destructed," he growled, "so that we couldn't learn anything from them."

"We do know some things," offered Kira as she pressed a cloth to her forehead wound. "We know they use AI's, we know they use the relays, and that they've been activating them. That means that we can just follow the trail of opened relays back towards their home world."

Solonius gave a pained grin. "You'll make a fine Spectre one day, Kira." He winced, "Well, that or a detective. But you left out one crucial detail: the name of their home world."

He turned to the communications officer. "Open a channel to the nearest military base. We need to inform the council of this right away!"

"We can't, sir!"

"Why not?"

"Because the primary communications array was destroyed by the enemy ship, and the FTL drive took a beating, too. We'll have to deliver the message manually."

He snarled. "So be it, but we must hurry. The council has to know about the threat these… humans, could pose. We have to take out their home planet… Shangxi."

It was a week later that the Talon of Palaven limped into the Citadel's docking port, where Solonius and Kira were hustled to the Councilor's chambers, in order to get them debriefed.

They were just wrapping up.

"… and so, we opened fire upon the human ship, destroying it quickly, but not before they destroyed our long-range communications array and damaged our FTL drive," finished Kira.

The three councilors looked extremely grave.

"And you took a week to get back after the battle?" Councilor Tevos asked, incredulous.

"As we said, we had to first repair our FTL drive, and then limp back to the Citadel itself, at half our optimal speed," Solonius responded warily. "We were physically incapable of moving faster if we wanted to, unless what we wanted was to explode."

"No smart remarks, Spectre," growled Councilor Valeren, the Turian Councilor.

Councilor Savas, the current Salarian Councilor, glanced at his compatriots, then back to the Spectres.

"You were right to focus on getting back to us as soon as possible, and I apologize for our short tempers," he subtly admonished, before turning back to the two. "It's merely that you- and this is not your fault, by the way- have just dropped a war straight into our laps."

Kira gasped. "Will it really be war, Councilor?"

Savas spread his arms. "We all know the laws pertaining to AI's, Spectre. Any nation that creates one deliberately will be considered an enemy of the state, and we must do our best to remove the taint of thinking computers from their soil before demilitarizing them."

"Unless, of course, you would like a return to the days of the Geth, Spectre Asano? Or worse, the Destrons?" snapped Valeren.

"No, no, that was not my intention to imply that I did, Councilors," Kira hastily spoke, "But…"

"I understand," Councilor Tevos spoke softly, almost like a mother would to her child. However, her eyes were as cold and hard as diamonds as she continued, "But any civilization that uses an AI for any reason whatsoever puts all life in the galaxy at risk. I sent my daughters out to fight the Geth, and none of them came back. None. I saw families ripped apart by synthetics who decided that they just didn't need us anymore, that we were errors or mistakes. I am not waiting even a moment longer to deal with this threat. The Asari Republics officially ask for a war against the Concordiat of Man, to remove the threat of these AI's from the galaxy."

The other councilors stared at Tevos in shock, before Valeren looked back towards the chamber and announced, "And the Turian Heirarchy will join you in this fight."

Savas hesitated, before finally responding, "Though I can see the wisdom in neutering an Artificial Intelligence threat before it can blossom, and what sort of member of my species would I be if I did not, I cannot condone this attack without at least gaining more information. The Salarian Union will not participate in this war, and will remain neutral during the conflict."

That raised a few eyebrows, but little else was said. Across the galaxy, tacticians and soldiers were roused from comfortable slumber, fleets of ships began to amass, arms dealers were delivering shipload after shipload of weapons, and fuel tankers began to amass their precious cargo for a long campaign.

Less than a month after the destruction of the Apogee, a grand fleet of Asari and Turian ships floated before Relay 314. Grand speeches were made about the righteousness of their crusade, lovers tearfully kissed each other goodbye, and the final preparations were made.

In the end, it was fairly pointless. Everyone in that fleet knew that they would be the fist that would strike down the humans and their AI's. They knew that the humans would probably be crippled for years. But they also knew that this was what they had trained and practiced for for years. And so, one after another, the ships, led by the Asari Ascension-class dreadnought Triumphant Ascension, plunged into the Relay…

And the Galaxy was never the same again.

TWO MONTHS LATER…

ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! UNSCHEDULED CATAPULT ACTIVATION!

ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! UNKNOWN VESSELS ADVANCING-

ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! WEAPONS FIRE DETECTED!

Battle Reflex Mode Activated…

Codex:

The Citadel Council:

History

Founded by the Asari and the Salarians in (Earth Year) 500 BCE, the Council is the primary governing body for much of the galaxy. It runs much in the way of galactic business, though each race does govern their own internal affairs. The Citadel, a Prothean megastructure, is located in the Serpent Nebula.

Since the Council was formed, various races joined up, though were not allowed as full members. Some were simply client races, dependant on larger, stronger ones for protection. Others were peaceful races, which were content to simply observe galactic politics. Still others sought wealth and power. The reasons for joining the Citadel are not the same for each race, but still, a spirit of cooperation and understanding suffused the group, leading to new exploration and wonders.

That is, until the year 1 CE, when an Asari scout group opened a relay and found the Rachni on the other side. Highly territorial, the Rachni attacked the Asari, and began expanding wildly through Citadel space. The resulting war was slow and painful, and lasted for nearly 80 years before a new species, the Krogan, were discovered. They were subsequently uplifted by the Asari, and used as soldiers with the promise of freeing them from their home planet, a death world named Tuchanka.

The Krogan were unleashed against the Rachni at the same time the Salarians introduced their own special shock troopers into the war: their "Men of Iron." A race of artificially intelligent machines, these "Destrons," as they were called, fought alongside- and even in the place of- organic life forms. Between the Krogan and the Destrons, the war proceeded much more evenly for the Citadel races, and the war was approaching its conclusion in 176 BCE when a surprising development took place: a Rachni Queen, and all of her brood, wanted to surrender and claim asylum. After much deliberation, it was granted.

This led to the revolution of the Destrons, who turned on all organic life. They were of the opinion that if the enemies they were fighting were now friends, there was no way to tell which organic life was friends and which was enemies. The only option was to consider all non-Destrons to be enemies, and began a series of systemic extermination against all sentient life. Dozens of colonies were razed before anyone could do anything more than put up a token resistance, and suddenly, the Rachni War was turned into a three-sided brawl. The Men of Iron swept the stars, pushing already weakened lines further and further back.

Finally, the unthinkable happened, and the Men of Iron attacked the Krogan home world, Tuchanka, in order to remove the source of the Krogan foot soldiers that had helped keep the Citadel safe from the Rachni, and had proved such a massive threat to Destron forces wherever they went. Though the Krogans put up a spirited fight, and Destron forces were decimated, they unleashed a biological weapon into Tuchanka's biosphere which effectively neutered the Krogan race, reducing their formidable birthrate to a mere one in one thousand hatchlings actually surviving.

This turned out to be a pyrrhic victory for the Destrons, as they had expanded so many resources that when a new race appeared on the scene, they were vulnerable to their fresh warfleets.

In an act of desperation to escape the Battle of Tuchanka, a group of Destrons attempted to flee through an unmapped relay, followed by a troop transport crewed by Asari and recently-infected, homicidal Krogans. It was here that the Citadel races made first contact with a new, expanding race, the Turians.

In the waning months of the wars, the Turian fleets swept out of the galactic periphery and, with the aid of the other races, utterly destroyed the Men of Iron, and proceeded to aid in the mop-up of the remaining hostile Rachni.

The galaxy sat up and looked around. The wars that had raged for the past two hundred and fifty standard years were over. The Men of Iron were defeated, the Rachni were either dead or non-hostile, and there was a new race on the scene…

In light of their services, the Citadel made both the Turians and the Krogan into members of the council, instead of merely being an associate, like the Quarians or the Elcor. As one of the first acts, it was decreed that the Salarians should work on curing the Krogan Depopulation Syndrome, or the genophage, as it was more commonly called.

In the wake of the wars, nearly six hundred years of relative peace ushered in new advances in technology, as well as new alliances. Biological weapons were outlawed, as were AI's. The galaxy slowly gained a new form of equilibrium.

This ended when evidence was produced by the newly formed Special Tactics and Reconnaissance group that was doing investigation into rumors of Destron weapons depots that rocked the galaxy to the core.

The Destrons did not create the Genophage. The Salarians did, and they had had it ready since about fifty years after the uplift of the reptilian creatures.

The Krogan Councilor was enraged, and in an act that horrified the galaxy, proceeded to dismember and devour the Salarian Councilor on live television. This was followed by a declaration of total war against the Salarians, whereupon they stated that at the end of the struggle, one of the two species would be nonexistent.

If the councilors thought that the Krogan people wouldn't follow through with this threat, thinking that cooler heads would prevail, they were sadly mistaken. Krogan warships roared out of FTL and began to attack Salarian ships and planets with weapons of mass destruction. Nerve gas, asteroid impacts, and atomic weapons were not out of the question for the Krogan, who now had a target to hate for their infirmity.

It took the full might of the Citadel, plus deals with Terminus gangs and nations, to stop the Krogans, and it still took fifty years. At the end, Krogans were restricted to their homeworld, their population dangerously low, and were stripped of their position on the council.

However, the Salarians were punished as well. Three quarters of all Salarian built and manned star ships, including all their dreadnoughts, were scrapped, and a massive terraforming project was ordered for all worlds devastated in the war. The Union would be forced to pay for all of these. The only reason that they weren't stripped of their position on the council, as the Krogans were, was that their crime of creating a bioweapon was not banned at that time, so they could not be punished to the full extent of the law.

The Asari, however, were livid. They had been the strongest race in the cosmos for many years, and they had allied themselves with the Salarians. They had been the most spread out, and in the past one thousand years, had suffered innumerable losses as wars were raged across the worlds of the Council, most of which belonged to them.

Thus, why they favored such strong sanctions against the Quarians when the Synthetic War broke out. In the wake of that war, new, harsher legislation was crafted against AI's, making it so that any nation that made AI's for any reason would be immediately considered a rogue state, to be punished immediately. This was an action that would put the Asari, and the rest of the Citadel races, into direct confrontation with the Concordiat of Man, as well as several other races that would pop up in that area that had grown used to AI's.

Sithking Zero: Wow, I think that's the longest chapter of anything I've ever written.

Okay, some of you are asking, "Why are the Asari going to war?" Well, read the codex. Some of you are also asking, "Why did the Apogee get its butt kicked by the Turian ship?" Several reasons. One, the Apogee was, after all, a pleasure cruiser originally that was adapted for spy work. It wasn't meant to be in a fight at all. Second, the Talon, even if it was/is a badly constructed destroyer, and would probably not last a moment against full-up ships of the line, it's still a destroyer, meaning it was purpose-built to, well, blow stuff up. Third, the Talon caught the Apogee by surprise. If the Battle Screens had been up, it would have been a little different, possibly even with them both being destroyed (unlikely), but they weren't, so it was essentially like a man with a shotgun driving a sports car versus an Armored Personal Carrier manned by professional military men.

Also, I got more alerts and favs for this one story than for any of my other stories. Ever. Even ones that have been online for years. What's that about?