Author's Note: I know I said I was going to try to update more often and that it has been over a year but real life got in the way. I won't bore you with the details because you aren't here to read about my problems, you're here to read about the Borg, the Systems Alliance, and the Turians. I make no promises on when the next chapters will be done.

A Different Perspective II

Jia Siang, Shanxi. March 24, 2157 AD

Lucius was a good turian who did his duty and as a tank gunner his duty was to ride in the heavily armored and heavily shielded vehicle and shoot at the aliens. Neither the aliens laser guns nor their scientifically impossible snipers could penetrate to the tank's interior, and that made Lucius feel just a little ashamed. Fellow turians were out there dying simply because someone, somewhere had decided those people were better suited for infantry than an armored vehicle. Who's the turian that gets to decide those things anyhow? How high up the chain of command do you have to be to make such an important decision? To decide, not only someone's military career but also the likelihood of them getting killed in combat. Lucius was glad he was a tank gunner, he wouldn't want that responsibility which was probably why he had been assigned this position in the first place. So the system worked, if you didn't like it you didn't have to stay in the military after the mandatory service was up. Lucius still hadn't made a decision on whether he was gonna re-enlist or not. He liked the comfort of routine that military life brought and he was good at his job but if he screwed up people depending on him could die. That was a lot to deal with. He glanced over at his crewmates; Ennius was driving and Domitia was on sensors.

"Anything on sensors Domitia?" Ennius asked, sounding rather bored.

"No, but are you really surprised by that?" Domitia asked in response. "You've seen the weapons these aliens use. Just because I can't pick up any military-grade eezo signatures doesn't mean they aren't nearby."

"I know. I was just hoping the spirits would decide to grant us a bit of luck today."

Lucius sighed, mentally preparing himself for the argument he knew was about to come. Sure enough, Domitia did not disappoint: "You're too superstitious, forget the spirits. We can make our own luck."

"Its comments like that that keep the spirits from helping us out," Ennius shot back.

"All three of us are still alive and the tank is working perfectly despite several firefights, we seem to be doing fine without any made-up helpers assisting us."

Lucius tuned out his compatriots bickering and spun the turret around to look behind the tank. Didn't look like there was anyth-wait, that's an alien! And it's holding the hand of a smaller alien as the two ran across the street to a building. Lucius swallowed uncomfortably. Apparently none of the accompanying infantry around the tank had noticed the mad dash so it was up to him to report it, those aliens were in a combat zone and therefore were potential enemies that had to be neutralized. But. . .that was clearly a parent with a child. They weren't a threat to anyone. . .were they? Assuming these aliens grew at the same rate as turians the kid couldn't have been more than six years old, and what kind of parents would bring their six year old to a gunfight? They must have been fleeing all the fighting. Lucius spun the gun back around to the front of the tank. He was a good turian, he would do his duty for the Hierarchy, but he wouldn't harm innocent people just trying to survive.

Cruiser Pride of Digeris, Shanxi Orbit. March 24, 2157 AD

"So then Aluna tells me that among asari those kinds of jokes aren't told when meeting your bondmate's family."

"No kidding?"

"Seriously! You'd have thought I killed somebody the way her mother glared at me."

"That's what you get for marrying an asari, should have found a nice turian girl."

"Speaking of turian girls, how much longer till you get that thing put back into her brain correctly?"

"I dunno Quitus, I've never seen this sort of device before so there is a fair amount guesswork as to what I'm doing."

Doctor Remus and his assistant had been locked in the med-bay for the past three hours, engaged in delicate brain surgery on a young woman that had a malfunctioning piece of tech in her head. Remus had never seen anything like it before but that was hardly surprising; the galaxy was a big place, medical technology was making all sorts of advances and it could be several years before a new discovery made its way through the whole medical community. Apparently the device helped the woman sort her memories because when Remus had chatted with her prior to the surgery she couldn't keep anything straight, didn't even seem to remember where she was. Luckily, the device hadn't actually been damaged (at least it didn't look damaged), it had merely been jarred loose so Remus and Quitus were now slowly and carefully putting it back into the woman's brain.

"So do you think she's good looking?" Quitus asked after several moments.

"Who?" Remus asked in puzzlement.

"Aeliana," Quitus said while gesturing at the woman on the table.

"I'm up to my wrists in her skull and you're asking if I find her waist sexual arousing?"

"Why you gotta make it sound so clinical?"

"I'm a doctor," Remus said indignantly. "I don't get involved with my patients. And you're married, stop checking her out."

"Hey, I can shop as much as I want so long as I don't buy anything."

Cruiser Pride of Digeris, Shanxi Orbit. March 25, 2157 AD

Remus heard a sound halfway between a groan and a mumble from behind him. Guess that meant one of his patients was awake. The doctor shut down his omni-tool (but only after making sure to save his game, didn't want to lose all the progress he had made on Tupari Crush) and got up to see who it was. As he walked past several beds of sleeping soldiers Remus realized it was the young lady he had performed brain surgery on that had awoken. She had been out for almost a full day.

"How are your feeling. . ." Remus had to lean over to check the name written down, "Aeliana. Any aches or pains?"

Aeliana sat straight up and turned her head to look at Remus. "This body is functioning correctly. It merely took longer than we expected to learn the physiology of it."

Remus wasn't sure what was weirder, that she referred to herself as 'we', that she had to learn her body's physiology, or that she had absolutely no emotion in her voice when she spoke. That meant he made a mistake somewhere during the operation.

"Whatever you say Aeliana," Remus said, instantly going into doctor-mode. He hardened his voice to sound authoritative. "Seeing as I did just perform brain surgery on you, I still need to run some tests to make sure I everything is working correctly, regardless of how you think you're doing."

Aeliana stared at Remus with a dead look on her face. This gave Remus a chance to scrutinize her a bit more closely. One of her eyes was cybernetic. . .Remus didn't remember that being mentioned in her medical history file. Actually, she also had a couple cybernetic implants on her hands and Remus was positive that they weren't in her file. Come to think of it, he didn't remember noticing any of them during the operation, that seemed like the sort of thing that he or Quitus (especially Quitus) would notice.

Aeliana finally spoke. "You operated on this drone?"

Something was seriously wrong with this woman but Remus had no idea what. Had the implant been damaged? Had Remus put it back wrong? Had he nicked something during the operation?

"Yes. I, along with my assistant Quitus, tried to fix your implant because it was malfunctioning and messing with your memories. I thought I put it back correctly but judging from your behavior I would say I made a mistake."

"No," Aeliana said firmly. "Everything is working, you did your job correctly Doctor. It was our fault, our hypothesis on how to assimilate your species was somewhat faulty."

"Assimilate? What are you talking about?"

"You will soon find out, your knowledge will benefit the Collective," Aeliana said before reaching up and grabbing Remus by the throat.

Remus tried to push away from the woman but she was surprisingly strong and her grip was so firm that he couldn't get the breath needed to shout for help. Remus felt a prick in his neck and she released her hold on him. Remus stumbled backwards and immediately got into a fighting stance, preparing to fend off her next attack should she attempt anything. Instead, Aeliana simply sat on her bed, staring at him.

Remus slowly relaxed his stance, watching Aeliana to see what she would do. She didn't move from her spot on the bed. Not only did she not move, she didn't so much as twitch. Remus didn't even see her chest moving to indicate that she was breathing. The woman might as well have been a statue.

Making sure to keep Aeliana in his field of vision in case she did made any movements towards him or the other turians asleep in their beds, Remus carefully moved across the room to the med-bay's intercom. "Med-bay to security, I think I'm going to need assistance."

Remus didn't recognize the voice that came over the intercom, "You think you need assistance Doctor?"

Remus sighed, he wanted to snap at the guy on the line but it was his own fault for phrasing it that way. "My patient attacked me, she's calmed down now but I don't know why so I need someone ready to subdue her if she becomes aggressive again."

"I'll send someone down, until he gets there make sure to keep some furniture between you and the patient in case she does decide to attack you again."

"Will do," Remus said as he click off the intercom. Aeliana continued to sit on the edge of her bed, not moving. "I still have several questions for you Aeliana but seeing as how you attacked me we will have to have the conversation from a distance."

Remus might as well have not said anything given Aeliana's reaction (or lack thereof).

"Why did you grab me only to release me almost right away?"

Nothing.

"What was the pinch I felt?"

No response.

"When did you get those cybernetics?"

Remus was beginning to get angry. How could this woman just ignore him? Yes, there was something wrong with her which may-or-may-not be his fault but she was clearly capable of conversing, she did it just before she attacked.

"Fine, sit there until security arrives," Remus huffed annoyingly. "I need to call Quitus and tell him to find an open spot for you in the surgery schedule."

Remus turned back to the intercom. Before he activated it, Remus couldn't help but wonder why he was feeling so agitated. This wasn't the first time he had dealt with an annoying patient, heck it wasn't even the first time a patient had attacked him. He probably just needed sleep. Stupid planetary invasion was wrecking havoc with his sleep schedule, constantly having to be on call in case a shuttle brought people on board with life threatening injuries. And the damn buzzing in the back of his head certainly wasn't helping things. Remus sighed, he was going to need some medication to get rid of this.

Deciding to call Quitus after this headache was dealt with, Remus went over to one of the medicine cabinets. He was going to need a painkiller but those always made him sleepy so he would also need a pick-me-up but the only stimulants currently in the med-bay were the emergency use kind and Remus did not need to be putting something that heavy duty into his body. He wanted to stay awake till the end of his shift, not till his heart exploded. He could go to the cafeteria and grab some Tupari but Remus didn't want to leave Aeliana without a medical professional present and he certainly couldn't leave her alone with a bunch of passed out soldiers. Remus really should have had Quitus refill the medication in the medbay before his shift ended but the boy had really wanted to call his wife and the storage bay was three floors down.

Then again, the headache wasn't that big of a deal. Once he was properly assimilated Remus wouldn't care about pain. He could tough it out until enough nanites had replicated in his body to make sufficient improvements to the physical limitations biology had placed upon him.

Remus walked over and activated the intercom, "Dr. Remus to Lieutenant Quitus Axius, your presence is requested in the med-bay." Remus switched off the intercom and made his way over to stand beside Aeliana. "Once Quitus and the security officer arrive we should assimilate the other patients in here and then we can make our way to engineering, we have to lock that out first so that the Captain can't scuttle the ship once trouble starts."

Aeliana finally spoke. "Your assimilation is progressing much quicker than this drone's did."

"Of course, the nanites learned what to do based on the changes I made to neural processor in your head. As I was saying: first we need to take over engineering, then I suggest we move to the armory. . ." Remus shook his head, trying to focus his thoughts. "Once we get there. . .we. . .take over the ship?" Remus was confused. "Why would we take over the ship? I was assigned to work on this ship, I don't need to take it over."

Remus glared at his patient, whatever she did to him was clearly influencing him somehow. Was she some kind of sleeper agent from a Terminus Systems warlord? What if the cybernetic he had operated on had been some new kind of batarian slave chip? Remus needed to call security and tell them what was going on, warn them to lock down the med-bay. Before he could move however, he felt Aeliana's hand grab his arm in her iron grip.

"This drone will not allow you to discuss the Collective's plan to take over this ship with any individuals."

"How did you know what I was going to do?" Remus asked fearfully as he struggled to get away from his patient without hurting her or himself.

"We are Borg, there are no secrets between drones."

Dreadnought Cyprian's Grace, Shanxi Orbit. March 26, 2157 AD

"How is this possible? Tell me exactly what happened on the Pride of Digeris while I was asleep!" Admiral Marius demanded to his yeoman.

"Uh well. . .we aren't entirely sure what happened, sir. They stopped responded to hails just recently, that's why I came and woke you up."

"I know that," Marius said through gritted teeth. "Start at the beginning. You said that just after I went off duty you received a message from the Digeris that they were experiencing problems with their drive core, what happened after that?"

"Right, right. They told us the drive core's power levels were fluctuating for unknown reasons so they were going to shut it down for a hard reset at the request of their chief engineer. Shortly after they did that a fight broke out in engineering but we don't know what caused it. What we do know is that it eventually encompassed the entire deck, that was when the Digeris's captain radioed us to let us know the situation. He told us he was going to take security down to put a stop to the fighting and would file a complete report once it was resolved. We were contacted by the comms officer an hour later who said that the fighting had spread to all decks except the bridge which they had locked down. He said he didn't know why everyone was fighting. He mentioned something about cyborgs going nuts but didn't have anything concrete to tell us. Commander Atticus was considering sending a detachment of marines over to try and quell the fighting but since we didn't know enough about the situation he decided against it. The comms officer, his name is Cato by the way, kept the channel open and tried to provide us with as much information as possible. Eventually the fighting died down by he didn't know who had won so Cato and the remaining crew on the bridge kept themselves locked in. Some of the security cameras still worked so he told us about how some of the crew were tearing out and altering a lot of the tech on the ship. That was when the channel shut off and, like I said, they didn't respond to hails, so I came and woke you up."

"So we have no idea why the fighting started or why it spread to the whole ship?"

"Not at the moment, sir."

"Maybe some kind of biological weapon," Marius wondered aloud. "Something to trigger feelings of rage?"

"So when we take back the ship we should make sure the marines are suited up with full seal atmo gear?" Marius's yeoman asked as he began making notes on his datapad.

"At this point I'm not ruling anything out so yes. . .what was that thing about cyborgs?"

The yeoman checked his datapad before answering. "According to what Officer Cato said, a large number of the people fighting had noticeable cybernetic implants, he said he didn't think that many people on the ship had had cybernetics but he didn't have an explanation for it so he figured he just hadn't noticed it till then."

"Pull up the medical history for the entire crew when you get a chance. I don't see how it could be important but if he mentioned it we might as well look into it." Marius stood up from the chair he had been sitting in. He wanted to climb back into his bed and finish sleeping but one of his ships had gone dark because of some weird mutiny, Marius knew he needed to deal with this. "Go tell Atticus to prep a boarding party to take back the Digeris." Marius paused. "Tell him to make sure they have lethal and nonlethal ordinance."

"Right away sir, anything else?"

"Anything out of the ordinary to report planetside?"

"No sir, General Desolas reports that things are progressing about as expected."

"Very well, dismissed."

The yeoman snapped a quick salute before exiting Marius's quarters. Marius sighed. As worrisome as the situation on the Digeris was, it was just one more thing in a long list of problems that came about from trying to pacify a hostile planet. The biggest issue the fleet was facing was the logistics of keeping everyone supplied. Most of the ships had been stocked under the assumption that they were going out to wipe out some pirates, they were not prepared for a prolonged engagement. The fleet had rapidly burnt through all their medical supplies and they were beginning to run low on food. Marius had already had to send ships back into Turian space to bring back supplies, he was going to have to do so again pretty soon.

Marius was also concerned that his scout ships still hadn't reported any kind of activity in any of the nearby systems. There had to be more of these aliens, this planet had far too advanced technology and didn't have nearly a high enough population to be the alien's home planet. There had to be more of them somewhere.

New Beijing, Shanxi. March 26, 2157 AD

"Alright, and with that you've all been assigned your buildings and the order to do them in. Any questions?" Vitus asked as he looked over his men.

No one responded.

"Move out and remember, keep it quiet when possible but not it's too great of a timesink. We have to sweep this entire area by sunrise."

A chorus of "yes sir" was the response.

Vitus and his men performed a vital, though oftentimes misunderstood by non-turians, duty for the Hierarchy. They were hastatim, more commonly known as execution squads. It was their job to pacify civilian militias. Under normal circumstances safe camps would have been set up outside of the cities for the civilians to go to if they didn't want to fight but since Command had no way of communicating with the aliens and the aliens didn't know about turian military doctrine that wasn't really an option in this situation. So rather than take out militias and escort the noncombatants to the safe camps the hastatim were being deployed to any area with significant civilian resistance with orders to wipe everyone out.

Vitus slowly move to his first building, his thermal reader showed two adults downstairs, one walking around and a large one sitting down. There were two more adults upstairs, apparently asleep. This would be easy, provided the kills were all silent. Vitus would prefer not using his gun, it had a suppressor on it so it would be hard to hear but that didn't mean it would be silent like in the holo-vids.

Vitus crept up to the building and prepared to activate the torch function on his omni-tool. Keeping an eye on the alien, he waited until it was on the far side of the building before burning through the lock which took all of two seconds to accomplish. Vitus crept inside and slowly shut the door behind him. He began stalking his way toward the first alien. It was walking a basic patrol loop through the downstairs so Vitus got into position behind some furniture and waited.

It didn't take long before the alien lazily passed back into the room, it glanced out the windows and that was when Vitus leapt up from his hiding spot. With experienced precision he grabbed the aliens head with his left hand, making sure to cover the mouth to prevent screaming, and pulled up to expose the throat. With his right hand he brought his talon knife across the alien's neck in one swift motion. Once the alien stopped struggling Vitus gently eased it down onto the floor and moved out of the room.

Vitus crept forward, slowly approaching the fat alien from behind. The alien was sitting down on a couch muttering to himself. Vitus got into position directly behind the alien. As he leaned forward, about to grab the aliens head for another quick kill Vitus realized his mistake. The alien wasn't fat, he simply had a child asleep in his lap which had distorted the heat signature. He wasn't muttering to himself, he was talking to the sleeping kid. Vitus mentally kicked himself for moving too quickly and almost making a mistake. He couldn't kill the man with his knife, the child's head was resting against his neck. The man's death flailing might wake the child and if the kid screamed that would wake the people upstairs. Vitus holstered his knife and silently withdrew his pistol. Granted, it wouldn't be as quiet but it would be easier to shoot both of them. Double checking to make sure the silencers was on correctly Vitus fired two quick shots. He didn't like killing children but he was a good turian that did his duty regardless of his feelings on the matter, he would do what was necessary for the Hierarchy to win this conflict.