A further irregular chapter. It only consists of one huge speech by Shepard, and since I did not want to take this over an entire chapter, it's now here as an interlude. If you want, you can completely skip this only knowing that Shepard is holding quite a rousing anti-Alliance speech after his victory on X57, pointing out in detail just what is wrong the Alliance. It will find great resonance.

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Shepard's hand stroked over his sleeve. He was thoroughly unused to the clothing he was currently wearing. It was all too official and stiff. However, he could not just appear at a public event in his colonist leather outfit, and he most certainly could not appear in a uniform. He was resolved in general to never wear the uniform again, and it would be very inappropriate for what he was about to say in particular.

Scott, the capital of Terra Nova, was a surprisingly modern city for a colony world, complete with busy streets, high-rising skyscrapers and all necessary infrastructure. Asgard, Terra Nova's sun, shined high above the city as thousands of people assembled within the city's central square. Tens of thousands more spread out into the streets behind it. Dozens of camera drones buzzed through the air. They all waited for Shepard - the new hero of Terra Nova.

It was inevitable: Since he had saved the world, he would get to hold a speech, mutineer or not. Nobody on the planet would dare to actually enforce the Alliance's arrest warrants on the Normandy crew - not after that crew had just saved them all from an otherwise inescapable doom. This also meant they could not just ignore Shepard. They had to give him time for a speech. And Shepard was prepared to give them a speech they would remember for the rest of their lives, as well as something for the media to write about.

Stopping Saren was more important than speeches of course, but Shepard was still forced to wait on others before he could resume travel to Ilos. Terra Nova was grateful enough to provide the Normandy with as many basic supplies as necessary, if not more, and a hospital on the planet was nursing Liara back to full strength. However, for special military supplies, Shepard still had to wait on Admiral Hackett.

The Spectre had already sent battle logs of the fight on X57 to his usual contacts in the asari media. The asari journalists were delighted with the steady stream of new material coming from him. Some within the Alliance would call even that a form of treason, that it was specifically the asari media Shepard always turned to. However, Shepard did not care about such sentiments; there certainly was no getting the truth through the local media channels in the Alliance. Too many of them were owned by large corporations who had an interest in keeping him quiet. As it was, his asari contacts were now even talking of establishing a channel exclusively for human affairs intended for human consummation. In general, all channels of the extranet were available everywhere, and due to translation programs also understandable everywhere. However, usually there just was no reason for a human to watch salarian, asari or turian news channel, since they would report salarian, asari and turian news respectively. However, a channel ran by asari media dedicated to human affairs could break the media monopoly of humanity's native corporations. It was definitely a hopeful prospect for the future.

Right now, Shepard stood on a raised podium, and wore one of the strongest shield generators on the market. There were an unbelievably large amount of people out there who wanted to see him dead, and anybody could hide in such a large crowd. Besides, what he had to say could convince some people that maybe he needed to be silenced. Behind him stood a giant 2d screen which would show his face (and some other scenes for rhetoric effect) to the entire crowd. It was ran by the few members of the Normandy crew supportive of what Shepard had done. This way he ensured that nobody would temper with the vid stream. Flags stood right and left of the screen: One of Terra Nova colony and one showing the insignia of the Spectres (and Shepard wondered where that flag had been procured from), but notably none of the Alliance.

The audience was clapping and cheering. Shepard walked to his podium, breathed out and began:

"Thank you, thank you..." he told the people and waited for them to quiet down. "Honourable people of Terra Nova, esteemed viewers in the Alliance and the wider galaxy - I don't think I should be standing here. I don't say this as a show of modesty, I have precious little of that." He said so with a cocky grin, and the people laughed. "But normally, this should have been a simple job for the Alliance Navy. A single frigate was enough to prevent the eradication of four million people, and the Alliance has hundreds of them. Terra Nova is their largest colony, housing that many people, and controlling four percent of the galactic platinum market. Yet where was the Alliance Navy? Instead, mutineers had to arrive to save the day!

Now first things first: Yes, we are mutineers. I am a mutineer, and many consider me a traitor. I have thrown my Star of Terra to the feet of Ambassador Udina on the Citadel, and have been dishonourably suspended from the Alliance Navy. Coming from them, I wear that as a batch of honour. I have uncovered their dirty little secrets, have published their crimes, tried to do justice.

If you still hate me for what I've done, then I can live with that - but it saddens me that so much of humanity is rather appalled at the revelation of crimes than at the crimes themselves. Why is that? I cannot, not at all, wrap my mind around such a logic. Surely, if people say they want a strong humanity, they will look how to make it a just humanity, will look for errors to correct, will look to truly make humanity great? That is what I do, and for that the Alliance considers me a traitor. How can people say I wish harm upon humanity if what I'm doing is helping humans?"

There were shouts from the audience. Some people apparently disagreed with him - very much so.

However, Shepard quietened them down: "But that... please people, that is not the point here. What is the point is that it did take a bunch of mutineers randomly stumbling over the system to avoid four million deaths. So again, where was the Alliance Navy I ask you? Yes, the big disaster was avoided in the end, but we cannot just ignore this fact. Because it's not mere incompetence on the part of the Alliance; that would be tragic, but understandable. We're all humans, we all make mistakes, and sometimes with horrifying consequences. However, it's systematic!

I don't think I or my crew are particularly heroic. Any single of the hundreds of Alliance Navy ships in service could have stopped the batarians. However, none was here, not even at their single largest colony. Not due to some oversight, not due some scheduling error or mistake in the deployment plan. No, the reason you all would nearly have been killed is because the Alliance Navy is too busy protecting the grand human expansion out in the Attican Traverse and Skyllian Verge.

Oh isn't it great? Humanity controlling hundreds of planets out there! A vast stretch of space, surely a sixth or eight of the known galaxy, and that in a matters of mere decades! Surely the Alliance can rightfully consider itself a great power!"

Shepard paused. There was some confusion in the crowd. His voice had been ironic, but his words had sounded like straight praise for the Alliance – something entirely unfitting to his past actions and to the speech so far.

"Or can it, after it wasn't even able to protect its single largest colony?

What does 'human expansion' even mean? It means on most of those hundreds worlds there is just a single small village, consisting entirely of shoddy prefabs, with no infrastructure to speak of: No streets, no running water, only spotty electricity. The people there have to work against alien biospheres and hence need to labour all year just to farm enough to eat. Proper healthcare is a dream out there, and do you think the children will get proper education? No, it's generally accepted that they'll go through life with insufficient chances at it! And yet, we don't speak about some developing country on Earth which is hampered by problems ingrained throughout generations. No, we speak of something the Alliance chose to build up that way from scratch!

And living impoverished lives is even the best scenario for the people in those container villages. After all, this is not the only place threatened by batarians. Last year, three hundred forty eight people were taken away by them. The year before, three hundred thirty seven, and the year before that, three hundred thirty one. And you and me, we all know what this means. Three hundred forty eight people is a mere statistic - it hides the true horror behind it. The horrors batarians subject their victims to... I could talk for hours describing them. How animals are treated better, how slaves perish by the hundreds in mines, how pain is their constant companion. And yet this happens to hundreds more people every year.

Think about this ongoing, constant tragedy! Think about what it means! Already the Alliance cannot defend all its one-village worlds out there. Already they cannot defend even their largest colony. And yet they go on 'expanding'. This is what this grand term 'human expansion' means. This is the shabby truth behind it.

And it's not like those colonies serve any purpose. If 'colony' can be used to describe some prefabs slapped on a single location on a planet, anyway. We have hundreds of worlds like that. Hundreds of worlds which have less than 5,000 inhabitants. Do you really think such worlds have any economical return? All they do is make the people on them impoverished and the Navy overextended. There is no economical or strategical value to the vast majority of them. How could there be, as most of them consist of a single village each?

The only ones profiting from them are the batarians.

And it's also not like there aren't alternatives. I've seen this world of yours, Terra Nova. Our largest colony, and yet even here most of the world is still wilderness, untamed and full of potential. Your world has a great future ahead of it; now more so than ever. Humanity can fulfill its destiny in the stars on places like this. However, does this destiny really command us to overextend ourselves? Does it lie in Attican Epsilon, thousands of light years away? Do we really need to have a single little village on every damn world we encounter?

We could organically expand at places like here, gradually extend the already existing infrastructure into the 99% of the planet which are still virgin and unspoiled. People could settle there, at much better places than out there in the galaxy, with already existing infrastructure and under proper Navy protection.

So the question is: Why don't we? I mean, what I've said here isn't exactly the revelation of big mysteries. All I said is just public knowledge; facts the Alliance knows as much as I do. And this... this" Shepard's fist slammed on the table, to awaken everybody to this part of the speech and to stress its importance, "is really the crux of the issue: Despite all I've said, the Alliance has not made mistakes. Oh no, the Alliance has always known what its policies would result in. And in fact, they go further on to 'promote human expansion'. All I said is acceptable to them.

Because, different to what I've just said, there actually is a purpose to all those idiotic mini colonies, to all those container villages that are constantly preyed on by batarians. There is a resource to be won there, there is a demand to be fulfilled by them. And that demand is the Alliance's vanity. You would nearly have all been killed on account of the Alliance's vanity."

There was unrest in the audience. Shepard had come to a radical conclusion, so of course some people were unhappy with it.

"Please!" he shouted over the tumult. "What other purpose could there be to hundreds of worlds that each just have a single village on them? There is no economical use to them, no military use to them, hardly any scientific use to them. And the Alliance knows that. Our government isn't collectively stupid. They aren't making mistakes, they're just incredible vain. They know the one thing those mini-colonies are good for: Bragging rights. All the space those colonies control, at least legally, makes the Alliance appear like a great power. If that means you people have to go unprotected, hey, so be it!

I had to deal with some of our political leaders, and I tell you their ego is their main concern. They find it mightily inconvenient how they are not on top of the galactic food chain. They're narcissist enough to consider that an insult to themselves. And so they'll do everything to appear as representing a great power. Thousands of people impoverished? Hundreds lost to batarians every year? Hundreds nearly 'purged' on Feros? What is that to them?

Why do you think the Alliance has endured all provocations, all insults, all aggressions by the batarians? Thirty years of dealing with batarian slave raids, tens of thousands of humans lost, and most of them are openly sold in the Hegemony. I tell you, even now, even after four million people nearly died, the Alliance will not do a damn thing; mark my words! The Alliance fears to treat on the toes of a rogue state outside the Citadel, a state where human slaves are openly sold. Because after all, that might tarnish their precious reputation. Preoccupied with actually defending humanity, the Alliance could not focus on power-mongering, on setting up even more dirt poor, indefensible mini-colonies. So rather, they let hundreds of human slaves perish in atrocious conditions on batarian worlds.

In their quest for 'human expansion', that is in their greedy and vain endeavour to appear as a great power, the Alliance would do almost everything. Just consider the corporate colonies. Corporate colonies! A normality to us by now, but come on, think about it! The Alliance not even allows, but actively encourages the establishment of places which are for all practical purposes corporate dictatorships. Where the settlers, the employees, are subject to every whim of the corporations. On Feros that went as far as letting hundreds of them be painfully enslaved by an alien plant mind! And then, when ExoGeni's crimes were about to be revealed, they tried to 'purge' the evidence."

The screen behind Shepard show a vid of several Feros colonists. Shepard pointed to it: "This is not evidence, these are people!"

Another of Garrus' records from Feros appeared on the screen. It showed Jeong saying: "Nobody is going to miss a few hundred colonists."

Shepard spoke again: "And that is what the Alliance tried to cover up. A planned massacre of hundreds of people! As long as ExoGeni appeared vital to 'human expansion', the Alliance would have done anything for them, and the people on their colonies be damned!

Is it not the core mandate of governments, their entire purpose, to protect their people?"

Shepard listed some of the corporate scandals of the recent years: "The Lagos Incident. The Derrier Case. NeuroProm. The Ivanov Files. Feros. That's the sad reality of human society. And instead of doing something about that, the Alliance only cares for the power these corporations provide.

So you see, we don't talk about Alliance mistakes. We talk about Alliance crimes, Alliance callousness and Alliance vanity here. And if that wasn't bad enough... hah, it gets only worse and worse. Because it isn't just corporations. Cerberus is a terrorist organization that stared out as an Alliance 'black ops unit'. Which of course is a nice euphemism for 'state terrorism unit'. The Alliance felt the need to have a state terrorism unit. No wonder that unit eventually killed off an entire settlement. In the name of human power and development, to test an alien weapon technology! For the same ideals the Alliance upholds!

Hell, when they killed off -" Shepard breathed out and clenched his teeth. This was not for rhetorical effect; he had to fight his own emotions. "When they killed off dozens of people on Akuze, and tortured and mistreated one for years, it was scientists officially signed up with the Alliance who did this. And records about this ended up in Alliance databases! Think about that. At this stage I would put nothing past the Alliance.

I know some of you might point out that we are talking about humanity's power here, about humanity's standing in the galaxy and humanity's reputation. But is that so? It's true that Alliance propaganda emphasizes the need to be strong in the face of the aliens. However, humanity, or at least the part the Alliance is responsible for, lives in impoverished conditions, is constantly threatened by slavers, is dominated by corporations and/or exploited by the Alliance itself. I'm sorry, but that's most definitely not a strong humanity!

There has been alien aggression of course. Nine hundred humans died on Shaanxi. That many people we lost to turian aggression. Their deaths should be mourned and we should seek justice. But you know what? That number is barely more than the population of Zhu's Hope, the population ExoGeni wanted to 'purge.' And yet, the Systems Alliance, our supposed defender, tried to hush everything up!

So what we're actually talking about is Alliance power and Alliance standing. And considering how few the Alliance seems to care about humans, that's a different thing all together. Political leadership, corporate leadership, they're all so distant to humanity and uncaring about humanity that it might as well be aliens ruling over us. What's the difference? You can approach turians on Elysium or the Citadel, but can you approach big time CEOs or the leaders of the Parliamentary Committees? So, maybe, instead of worrying about the 'alien menace' we should worry about the menace our own leaders represent!

So let us care about human power and human standing instead! Different to what my detractors claim, hell yeah I'm all for that! The victims of BAaT, or the colonists on Feros, are they not part of humanity? What is humanity, if not all of us? Let us hence strife for true human patriotism! True human patriotism is not blindly following your government. It isn't 'my species right or wrong.'It's making our species right! If you truly care for humanity, then help it progress! Do not maintain illusions of righteousness, have it be righteous!

I cannot at all understand why people would rather accept crimes than their revelation, and really, I don't want to understand it, either. That's why I belabour the points I make in this speech over and over again: Having knowledge of them, I cannot with good conscience do nothing and neither should you. There is no way to say 'I'll do nothing and will wash my hands clean of this.' The decision to non-action is already an action in itself! If you think so, then you already have sullied your hands! There's no escape!

'My country, right or wrong' is just another form of ego-stroking. So many people would rather revel in a righteous feeling of pride, even if it means accepting and ignoring crimes. It is not patriotism, it's mental masturbation. True patriotism is being active for your country or your species. True patriotism is leaving your mental bubble of feeling smugly content and instead actually facing what is wrong. True patriotism is correcting what's wrong, instead of claiming there's nothing wrong.

And so we have a duty to oppose the government if that government takes our country, our species, down a path we know to be wrong. After all, patriotism can also mean making sacrifices of yourself. Sometimes to help your species, you have to sacrifice your life - brave soldiers are doing this maybe even as we speak in battle with slavers and raiders. However, sometimes it's not your life that's required to make things better, but your pride. Sometimes you have to give up your pride to help humanity. That is true patriotism.

General Williams was a patriot. When he was the commanding officer at Shaanxi, civilians were dying around him. The brutal and atrocious nature of turian warfare killed people he was sworn to protect. Because that is the entire purpose of the military: To protect civilians. Many of his soldiers had already given their lives for it, but it was not enough. So General Williams sacrificed what needed to be sacrificed: He swallowed down his pride and surrendered: for the sake of Shaanxi's colonists, colonists like you.

And what became of him? He was stripped of his rank and ended up doing construction work in the colonies. To this day he has not been exonerated. Apparently, the Alliance would have preferred it had some more hundreds of civilians, hundreds of others died and suffered rather than them losing face.

Vanity. Just as I have said. It is vanity that leads to the Alliance accepting hundreds of victims of the batarians every year. It's vanity that leads them to allow corporate abuses and corporate dictatorships. It's vanity that let to the condemnation of General Williams. It's their vanity that would very nearly have led to the death of everybody here. You really wouldn't have been the first victims of their vanity, either. In fact there have been much more excessive cases.

I speak of course of BAaT.

I accuse!" Shepard shouted now. "I accuse the Systems Alliance, which claims to represent and defend humanity, but doesn't. I accuse it of abduction. I accuse it of wrongful imprisonment. I accuse it of child abuse. I accuse it of torture. I accuse it of accessory to murder. I accuse it of criminal negligence. I accuse it of illegal medical experiments. I accuse it of grave bodily harm. I accuse it of libel and slander. I accuse it of obstruction of justice."

Shepard leaned over his podium. There were first mutters and angry shouts from the people. His hands made a wide waving gesture over the audience. "Have you seen the reports? Have you seen the vids? Have you heard the survivors' reports? I ask you, have you seen how turians beat down children? Have you heard how they were systematically broken? Or about the lifelong pains the L2 implants have forced on them? Forced on them as children!" He shouted the last sentence from the depths of his lungs, and slammed his fist on the podium. "Or have you heard the tales about ruined lives, of estranged families, of broken minds and existences in misery? And we aren't talk about the victims of a criminal syndicate or of a foreign invasion here. We talk about the victims of our own damned government! Had this been a criminal group responsible for that atrocity, we would go to any length to find it and exterminate it - and why should this be any different for the Alliance?

And maybe worst of all was that BAaT happened purely because of the vanity of our leaders. It was official policy not to make Earth look 'weak' - which of course means not to make our narcissist leaders slightly uncomfortable. They were too cowardly, too self-centred, too egoistic to simply ask for help, nevermind how much our status as newcomers would have justified it. So rather than have to go through the trouble of asking for help; they tortured children." Shepard bolted upright again, and his voice burst forth as a shout: "Because the Alliance was to vain to ask for help!

Can we really accept such a government? A government which has tortured children? Again: This was official policy. This was the Alliance. It still is official policy to keep this entire atrocity under wraps. Fifteen years this secrecy has been enforced. They did this because the overriding desire to create a 'working biotic' was in fact an Alliance policy. A policy of the government, not just some rotten apples. And so here we are, with a government which has tortured children.

Many people would simply ignore that. However, I implore you, ask yourselves: What if this had happened to you? What if this had happened to your children, your siblings, your cousins? There were deliberate cases of contamination out here in the colonies. So imagine it, every one of you: Corporate suits appear at your door one day and simply take your child away, giving you no chance to resist. You never hear a single word from them for six years, because they've all been isolated from the rest of the galaxy. And then, one day, your child comes back... and is a psychological wreck. The suits who return him or her do not give any explanation, because it's all under wraps, but your child is utterly traumatized and afraid of everything. They also have problems with limb movements, personality changes or periodic pains from the L2s.

So your child is home again, but even though they're not even of age yet they're already utterly broken. They haven't seen their family or even only natural sunlight in nine years. They've been beaten, broken, terrorized, and then simply dumped off. And the stories your child tells - they're terrible. But nobody believes them. After all, who believes a L2 - we all know what they're like, the Alliance has told us! It's probably just hallucinations. Nobody believes your child and nobody believes you. Your child has just been abused and dumped, and that's the end of it. For the Alliance, that is. For your child, the battle with the implant and the constant pains will continue for the rest of their lives. There is no way your child can have a normal life again.

And there is no closure: Because it was all classified, your child can't even go see a psychiatrist about it. After all, in their vanity, the Alliance government could not take responsibility for its atrocities; rather they had their victims suffer further. They did not allow them to talk to anybody about what has been done to them. First they had abused them as children, and now the victims' suffering continued into adulthood. For fifteen years the biotics still suffered, alienated from their families by Conatix' systematic lies and hurting from their implants. Have you read the suicide statistics? Between the sheer trauma, the fact that nobody believed them, the never ending L2 pains, the ruined relationships to family and everybody they've ever known, the inability to get any amount of justice and the continued marginalization of biotics in society... Between all that a fifth, a fifth of all BAaT victims have committed suicide since '69. All because of the Alliance government!

Now given all this, could you still simply ignore what the Alliance has done? For that matter, can you be sure, any of you, that they won't pick you the next time an unknown biological phenomena comes around? That our political leaders, the Alliance, won't pick your children, put them into isolation for years, and then abuse and torture them for their own gain? After all, the Alliance has hushed up matters for fifteen years, it's clear they've never moved past that. So what if you happen to belong to their next 'target group'?

Oh yes, I know what some of you will say now: hey, biotic children nowadays have the Ascension Project, so the Alliance has fixed its 'mistakes'." Shepard paused. "That's a goddamn travesty to say in the face of all the victims of BAaT. Victims who have gone fifteen years without compensation or justice. All the Alliance has done is to not create even more wrongs. It has not at all righted the wrongs already committed. Oh, the Alliance doesn't torture children anymore, are we meant to applaud that?" Shepard demonstratively made a slow, sarcastic golf clap. "So much progress - they merely cover up their old atrocities and spread rumours about their victims, instead of committing new ones. And meanwhile, the BAaT survivors still suffer.

Yes, now that the Alliance has profited from its atrocities, that it has gained knowledge about biotics from their abuse of children, now it can afford not to go on with that anymore. The Alliance has not become morally better, just better informed. The Ascension Project is based on the suffering and abuse of children, and the crimes against them are still hushed up. So how can anybody honestly claim the Alliance has become better? That's ridiculous!

I tell you, if they need knowledge about another biological field in five or ten years, they might use the very same methods again to gain that knowledge. The Alliance has not fixed its crimes. It is still the same Alliance that allowed the torture of children.

Not that Grissom Academy is any ideal anyway. Children with biotic potential are no longer forced anymore to undergo biotic training, but they are still expected to by our society. Even when they'd rather be craftsmen, artists, or academicians instead of biotics. However, society just assumes they have to go to Elysium and get trained. Why? Why is that? Can you not let those children choose their lives for themselves? Why do we need to train minors? Let them have a normal childhood, and then as young adults they can go to an academy like they'd visit a university! Or not, if they so choose. But, at least let them decide as informed adults! There should be no social expectations, and there should be laws protecting minors from them!

Grissom Academy is a sterile station, confining its inhabitants to close corridors, again without any natural sunlight. The children there literally can't even go outside to play, and they're isolated from wider society. After all, their natural development is unimportant; the only thing that counts is their development as biotic. And it's not like they or their families can realistically say no to that. This is just utterly wrong! Imagine: Biotic training in a college or university, situated in a lively city and integrated into society, where informed adults with biotic potential can sign up for training – again, or not, if they so choose. Would you not feel much more comfortable knowing your child is at such an institution instead of spending their childhood at a far away boarding school in a tin can simply because it is expected of them?

Everyone sees us biotics merely as tools! As tools to be used and, as far as the Alliance is concerned, to be broken if necessary. That's what the turians did to the children on Gagarin Station after all; breaking them so working biotics would be produced. That's all the Alliance ever cared about, then and now. And I won't stand for it any more! I am a biotic, and I will get justice for my people!

But then, the Alliance not only does not care about us; it doesn't care about anybody - not you, not me, not anybody! It only cares for its own power and standing. It cares for its own vanity - just as the corpations it protects only care for their own greed. And you can be sure pride, gluttony, and envy are well represented among our leaders too. Against that litany of sins, we only have one: wrath."

Shepard picked up a paperback copy of the Alliance Charter from his podium, and held it cover first to the crowd. Printed texts had become rare in the age of extranet and datapads, but some still existed, and this one would do its purpose.

"Tell me, friends: why should anybody who has been abducted by the government, who has been tortured on authorization of the government, who has gotten a constant source of pain shoved into their head, and who could not have gotten justice for fifteen years feel any loyalty to the Alliance or its laws? Why, it's not like they got to enjoy the protection of those laws themselves!

Hence -" In one smooth move, Shepard ripped his copy of the Alliance Charter apart. There were some shouts of surprise from the audience. "The social contract is broken. It is tattered and in ruins - broken by the Alliance." Shepard let the ripped out pages flutter to the ground. "The mandate of the government is to protect its people, and yet now we need protection from them! The Alliance already treats the social contract as null and void, and hence we are free to do so as well. It does not bind you anymore. It does not bind anybody anymore. It has become null and void by the actions of the Alliance themselves.

Loyalty can only be expected in return for loyalty. It may never be a one-way street. The Alliance knows no loyalties. Without a second thought it has tortured and sacrificed people. So why should those people, why should any of us, be loyal to the Alliance? Be bound by your conscience and your ethics. Do not harbor any loyalty to a government that would torture children, to political leaders who find losing hundreds every year to barbarous slavery or death is acceptable, or to a system in which corporations can kill attempt to hundreds with no consequences.

This is what I've come to tell you: The social contract is broken. The Alliance only cares for its own vanity. All we have now is each other."

His speech to the crowd complete, Shepard turned around and walked off the stage, not waiting for any audience reaction. He had definitely stepped over the line into sedition. Yet, as far as he was concerned, all he said was true. With some luck, he had managed to plant something into the collective mind of the colony. Something that could grow - if Saren could be defeated.

The screen that had been standing behind Shepard began to play vids from the surveillance cameras of the BAaT project, showing death, violence, crying children. At the same time, loud speakers began to sound testimonies:

"My father did not want to let the Conatix representatives take me. They told them of the dangers of biotics, about mental instabilities, about how it's all for our own safety - still he wouldn't. That was when they began with legal threats, about him recklessly endangering the public. Seven days later, they returned and took me. I did not see or speak with my father again for seven years, and by then he was fully convinced us L2s are all dangerous maniacs. "

"The turians beat us at the slightest things. Whenever we used our hands instead of biotics, whenever we ever so slightly stopped pushing during the pain drills, whenever we raised our voice. They beat us, and some even had electric shock staffs. We woke up every morning in fear what the day would bring."

"Both Alexa and me were from Moscow, and that was reason enough we started constantly hanging out with each other. She... she was a very good friend. Then the turians came. And then the L2s. And then the turians trying to break us with the pain drills, so we'd drop any subconscious barriers. Alexa had already keeled over two times during such drills, so one day she just refused to push on. First one turian 'instructor' beat her, then others joined in, and then they all beat her to bloody pulp. She died on that day. She was thirteen."

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Everything stated in this speech is logically drawn from canon sources, if you only stop to think about such matters for a moment. I do not describe a darker version of BAaT here, and I do not describe a darker version of the Alliance. That is their characterisation from canon sources.