Grissom Academy, Orbiting the planet of Elysium

Year: 2185

-/\/7-

Ward and Jason stormed into their cabin to find Emile leaning casually against the wall, arms crossed and speaking to a quiet Abigail, who was busy reading through a data pad. At the sound of their entrance, Emile addressed his comrades.

"Ahh my friends, I see you've been busy moving 'round Grissom. Did you like what you saw?"

Ward stopped and leveled a stare at the Cajun that could be politely described as lethal.

"Have you lost your goddamn mind?! Do you have any idea what you have done by bringing Students in on this? How long do you think it will take before the ANN gets wind of the Batarian invasion now that the information has been leaked to a bunch of school children?!" Ward's voice barely rose above a whisper, but the tone could have sent lesser men cowering.

Emile merely raised an eyebrow. "I do not think that you have the full picture on the situation here my friend."

"Oh I beg to differ. You and Woolf are completely out of your depth here. What good do you think it will do by telling students about this invasion? Has Captain Woolf forgotten the meaning of espionage?!"

"Really First Lieutenant, hear me out on this matter. It don't pertain to what you think it does."

Abigail, who up until this point had been waiting quietly for a moment to interject, began to speak. "Ward, this isn't about the Batarians. That's important, but this has to deal with other issues. Let the man speak."

Ward glanced between the two individuals for a long moment, fighting the urge to call Abby wrong. Despite every muscle in his body believing otherwise, Ward knew Abby wasn't wrong: The woman was a human number cruncher who dissected data at prodigious rates. If she put stock in whatever Emile believed, then there was little chance that he could be wrong.

That little chance was what Ward feared.

"Go ahead Warrant Officer, tell me your story and so help me god if you leave anything out this time you will regret it."

Emile smiled. "Excellent, let me heat up some grub and we can get straight to the details of the real situation."

The four marines sat around a mid-sized circular table in their quarters, eating a very late dinner and allowing Emile to talk about the real reason they were here.

"So, there is a Batarian invasion? That part isn't just a load of crap?" Jason asked between bites of a Cuban sandwich.

Emile nodded, swallowing a bite of his sandwich. "The Batarians are coming, and that fact hasn't changed. The mission parameters aren't any different from what you were briefed onboard the Seattle. What is different is what we will do while bringing the students into the fold. Tell me First Lieutenant, were you satisfied with what you saw today onboard the Academy?"

Truth be told, Ward wasn't at all okay with what Emile was saying. He wasn't built for subterfuge and the kind of complex work that Woolf relished. He preferred his missions to be simple and his enemies tangible, even if their difficulty was immense. But despite these feelings towards the subject, he knew what he had seen today crossed every imaginable line on his moral chart.

"The antics going on here at Grissom are appalling. Students are verbally and physically abused by their instructors and I am sure the buck doesn't stop there."

"Quite right: It gets far, far worse. You see, Augustine cloaked herself in both the Colonial protections of Elysium and her family's money and influence. Even then it wasn't enough to make her impervious to the probings of the Alliance. In order to keep Grissom at the superior level of learning and education, her facilities needed top of the line equipment and other technological investments far beyond her own reach. So she turned to the businesses of Earth and the Galactic Community to fill in the blanks: Augustine takes money from 46 companies, both large and small, in return for bulk shipments of supplies and preferential testing of yet unreleased products. The graft is nothing short of incredible, with hundreds of millions of credits flowing into Augustine's accounts."

"The majority of the faculty is in on this scheme as well: The higher up the ladder within each department you are, the more likely you are taking gregarious sums of money from a business that is using your students as the guinea pigs for their products. It's not all sinister mind you, but the ethics violations alone are enough to bring down the entire school should it become public knowledge. The Engineering department however..." Emile did his best to explain the situation without setting off his N7's. It had mixed success.

"I'm sorry, but you need to go through that one again: The students are being used for slavery?"

"In principle basically, but Isaacson would find a way to tell you otherwise. The top performing students are basically told to design technological improvements for corporations. Completion of these schematics counts as a final examination pass, which then allows the engineers to be sent to the cushier jobs in the Alliance. The lower students and those that fail the Task are practically shoved into the Alliance Engineering Corps, destined to spend their days building bridges on Therum and Refineries on Gas Giants."

"So these students basically have to complete thesis papers to go onto better parts of the Alliance military? Am I missing something?" Jason asked, still not understanding the concept clearly.

Emile shook his head in disagreement. "The top performers are all but confined to their dormitories, they work long days and are given little to no freedom. On top of all of this, Isaacson doesn't even allow them to collect credit for their designs: He instead auctions the designs off to corporations or uses them as bartering chips to further his own research into synthetic intelligence."

"What about Augustine? She can't be in the dark about this?"

Emile shook his hand back and forth. "Yes and No: She knows something is up in the engineering department, but she doesn't investigate. Ivory Tower limits and all that academic bullshit. Even if she did though I doubt she'd do a thing about it. She and Isaacson have been rivals for a long time, and Isaacson has no qualms about throwing her under the bus if she tries to bring him down. His research would allow him to negate any kind of legal repercussions, while Augustine would be buried under the sheer number of ethical violations, misdemeanors and even felonies that come with her deeds."

Abby spoke up next. "But wouldn't the students be able to get Isaacson removed? They have the evidence to bring him down, right?"

"They could, but at what cost? These kids know that their imprisonment is only temporary, and that if they suck it up they can fulfill their dreams within the Alliance and beyond. Isaacson keeps all of his alumni on short leashes, and his own connections and blackmail keep them quiet. The few that have ever threatened to reveal the truth of the matter are reminded of the backlash that will affect them: Finding work within the Alliance R&D after selling out one of its most respected and charitable scientists would be tantamount to career suicide. That kind of ambition killer weighs heavier on the mind of these students than anything else, especially after having to work so hard for it."

The three N7's remained quiet, contemplating the Gordian knot before them. There seemed to be no way to diplomatically bring down the injustices being committed at Grissom. "These kinds of treatments and actions do not go unpunished chere. That is the reason why we are here. Grissom represents the best kind of Alliance asset: A school where the best are given the tools and training they need to rise up within the Alliance. Under its current management however, the school is incapable of being anything more than endless cycle of academic abuse and corruption."

"We are going to bring down this cycle and slip Grissom back into the hands of the Alliance. Only then can it can be used to fight the Hegemony efficiently."

"So the wolf pups…"

"Students deemed loyal, perceptive, or rebellious enough to help end the cycle. In order to build enough evidence against Augustine we need the assistance of the students. Once we shut her down we can actually begin training the students to combat the Batarian threat. Obviously the students need to be discrete, but with one in every section we can only hold the charade so long."

"Brilliant move there by the way." Ward scoffed.

"If this were a simple mission, then we could afford to keep the students out of the equation. Guess what 1st Lieutenant? It isn't simple. It's complicated and it's messy, and it sure as hell won't go according to plan. If you hadn't noticed chere, the outside is going to hell and a hand basket, and the Alliance needs every asset it can get if it wants to win this war. If that process needs to be sped up through student involvement, who are we to stop them? If nothing else we should be encouraging them."

Ward wasn't having it. "So you think the solution is to inform malleable students that we need them to bring down the sole organization of their building, cost be damned?"

Emile didn't seem to care. "You keep looking at these recruits as though they are children. Fatalistic mistake Lieutenant Thompson: These recruits are going to be among the most seasoned killers the Alliance has ever seen. In war, you either act or you die. These students won't be green forever and soon a day will come when the threat is real, when the shade of death upon their doorstep. Either they will be trained to handle it, or they won't. Which would you prefer?"

When Ward failed to reply Emile sighed and pulled a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket, lighting one up in the process. As he exhaled he waved the cigarette at Ward. "Do you know what my first job in the N-Division was, Ward Thompson?"

Ward shook his head no. Emile nodded, satisfied with the answer. "I expected as much. Not exactly public information, or even military information for that matter. When I finally graduated from N-Division training in Rio, they sent me straight for Houston. That fiasco with the Krogan had brought the Alliance to the brink of anarchy: More than a thousand dead and no council restitution? How many Turians died to hold the line against the very aliens they were brought in to replace? How much money did the STG pour into putting down the mad Warlords who rose up from the Genophage? How much aid did the Asari give when the Alliance sent entire battalions to their deaths just to hold the line?" Emile took another long drag of his cigarette.

"Not a damn soldier or credit made its way to Tuchanka following the wave of insurrections. The council sat back and let its races observe humanity's progress in solving their problem. And when the smoke had cleared, when the insurgents lay dead or surrendered, how much aid did the Council send? Nothing."

"So it was little surprise that the Anti-Alien movements sprang up as fast as they did. Most were isolationist groups, a few were radicals. They were contingents of the dissatisfied and bitter, widows and orphans determined to see Earth withdraw from the Citadel and become a rogue state, much as the Hegemony was about to become. Most of them were of little note. All except one, The Terra Firma party."

"Following the catastrophe on Tuchanka, Terra Firma's numbers swelled with support: The Krogan had left more than a thousand Alliance personnel dead, and the Council had merely watched. For all intents and purposes there was no one else in the Galaxy. And the Terra Firma played on those fears extensively: Propaganda involving the other races featured Turian Conquests of earth, Salarian inflicted bio-weapons, Asari cultural degradations and pervasions; The Volus wanted to economically own the Alliance, the Hanar were double crossing heretics, the Krogan planned on taking earth over in place of their irradiated hellhole of a world, and the Batarians replaced the bogeyman as the new threat to humanity. Every race was slandered, every institution was vilified, and every alien living on Earth was suspect."

"The Terra Firma grew exponentially, turning whole cities onto their thinking. Longstanding patriots who viewed the North American Unification as weakening and the integration into the Galactic Community formed the most vocal of the party's supporters. Anti-Alliance tensions and old grudges carried from before the First Contact war all came to a head in Houston. One of the largest marches in the country was scheduled at the Systems Alliance Spaceport. 70,000 plus people carried signs demanding the eviction of aliens from the planet, demanding the departure of humanity from the Citadel, demanding the seclusion into Sol."

"I was on the ground there, leading the riot teams that held the perimeter of the spaceport: We were just there to keep the peace, it was all supposed to be routine. No different than the guards at the political rallies and Civil Rights Marches of the early 21st century. I remember the survivors of the fallen from Tuchanka, the families gathered in protest. There was a woman, no older than thirty who was shrieking at us. 'Traitors, traitors!' She couldn't believe that the Alliance would stand behind opposing their own people."

"We all differed on the subject. Some of us wanted to fully integrate into the Citadel; others wanted nothing more than to join the protests. But most of us were just doing our jobs. 'It's the nice thing about being a soldier.' I thought at the time. 'You don't have to think about your mission, you can just point the gun and pull the trigger. You get your orders and you follow them. No grand questions to ask, no cosmic answers to seek. Just follow your orders and you can't be at fault.'" Emile stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. Ward glanced at the clock and saw that it was just shy of 2:00 AM.

"We had tech shields, Omni-Tools, Riot gear with ablative plating. We could have taken on an army with what we had, so none of us thought that kinetic barriers were a high priority. The woman, I don't remember her name, moved through the crowd, passing between the bodies to get to the front. I remember her hands being at her sides, she wasn't armed from what we could tell. She made it to the front of the line and raised her hand. She managed to get out two shots before we reacted."

"I didn't know the kid who got hit, only that he was young and that he was on the cusp of leaving for the crowd. The bullets were obviously armor piercing, because no thermal clip can break through tech armor and then hit the Ablative pieces underneath. The second round broke through those and killed him."

"It was quiet for a moment, and in that moment there was infinity. It was a train wreck we couldn't look away from, let alone agree with. But we all felt it, and we reacted to it as soldiers did: We followed our orders, firing upon the enemy combatants when fired upon first. Of course, the crowd reacted with equal force. Kill or be killed, do or die, fight or flight. We shot them and they rushed the wall. We were no more than 400 men, in lines of three. They were over 70,000 protestors. It was like watching a tidal wave hit a sandcastle. Men were pulled through as the protestors lost all thinking, turned mob in mere seconds. After my commander went down I pulled everyone back behind our barricades."

"400 men went out there to hold a line, and 57 came limping back behind our walls. I didn't know at the time, but Suzette Saracino became a martyr when we shot her down, and the effect was spontaneous. Cities all over the world erupted into riots. Thousands were left dead, with more than triple that number injured. Billions of dollars in property damage was done to every manner of building on every side, rioter, government or neutral. More than three hundred aliens were lynched in the ensuing chaos. When the Alliance finally labeled the Terra Firma criminals and had dozens of party members arrested did the violence finally begin to ebb. I was singled out as the man who saved face by pulling our men back. Feeling beaten wasn't an accomplishment, but looking beat was what prevented anyone from labeling as the instigators of the whole clusterfuck."

"After three weeks of devastation the riots were finally extinguished, and the world became a place far worse for wear. The Alliance advocated the kinds of totalitarianism that would have choked Governments several hundred years prior. Still, it was necessary and it encouraged colonization of the rest of the Sol system, Mars in particular." Emile put out his second cigarette and took a sip from his glass before looking Ward dead in the eyes and continuing.

"Do you know what kept me alive during those times? During my service on Omega and elsewhere? It was my training. It was my training that allowed me to survive what killed men ten times as seasoned as I was at Houston, and later it was my training that allowed me to survive deep cover on Omega. Without it I would have had skills and instincts, which are fine and dandy for some situations. For others… it was better to have learned them before having to use them. But really all of this is more to give you my side of the situation, because regardless of what you think Mister Thompson, It won't mean jack shit in the long run."

"I am the extension of Captain Jackson Lee Woolf, and my word is his during this mission. As for the students, this attempt of yours to 'protect their innocence' is grating at best. You aren't a white knight charging over the mountain to save the princess; You are the man who is going to set them straight along the paths we need them to walk. It doesn't matter if those roads are clean or dirty, they will be walking them for the greater good of their countries, their government, and their race."

The table was silent, with Ward staring holes into Emile's brow. Emile didn't seem to be fazed by this either. Abby and Jason sat silently, allowing the officers to keep talking.

"So Lieutenant, do you still want to challenge me on this, or do I need to call the big bad Woolf to clarify your issues with the chain of command?"

Ward's shoulder slumped slightly as he thought over what Emile had said. Emile had command of this mission, and regardless of rank and moral disagreement he wouldn't dare turn down an order from the Alliance.

"No sir, I do not." The words were void of emotion yet spoken with equal firmness.

"Good, now you three ought t'be getting some rest now. You'll have a long day tomorrow with making sure all of our students sign up."

CODEX: Tuchankan Resurgence (AKA The Second Krogan Rebellion)

Several years following humanity's entrance onto the galactic stage, the tumultuous Krogan clans of Tuchanka rallied under the joint leadership of clans Weyrloc, Jorgal and Forsan sought to crush the Turian forces stationed with the Krogan DMZ. The Turian Hierarchy, knowing the Krogan to have limited spacecraft and few weapons capable of harming their fleets, sent token forces to blockade the upper atmosphere of the planet. Humanity, eager to prove their worth to the Galactic council and in an attempt to curry favor with the Hierarchy, deployed several ground battalions to Tuchanka to deal with the rogue clans. Unprepared for waging war with the Krogan on their home front, the System Alliance suffered staggering casualties over a period of months. Intense close quarters fighting between Krogan warriors, Blood Pack Vorcha & Varren, and Tuchanka's local wildlife took its toll on the Alliance forces. Eventually Clan Forsan was completely routed, Clan Jorgal surrendered when their leadership changed, and Clan Weyrloc was brutally beaten down, with its leader Guld transported off world for a public trial and execution on the Citadel on the Citadel. Over 2500 soldiers and military personnel were killed during the resurgence.

CODEX: The Terra Firma Riots

Following the disastrous engagements of the First Contact War and the Krogan Resurgence, many humans became disillusioned by the prospect of joining the Galactic stage. Capitalizing on the prejudices and fears of many citizens, the Pro-Humanity Terra Firma party campaigned to have Earth withdraw from the Galactic stage all together. As their numbers swelled, crimes against Aliens and their sympathizers sky-rocketed, alongside anti-alien sentiment and calls for Revolution. During a large scale protest outside the Houston International Spaceport, Alliance Riot squads were forced to deploy lethal measures to contain the crowd. Enraging an already hostile presence, the crowd retaliated and began a mass riot within the city. As the news spread, hundreds of cities around the world became engulfed in fighting between Alliance personnel and Terra Firma revolutionaries. In the end, the Alliance prevailed. Billions of credits in property damage and awe inducing casualties marked a recalling of hundreds of Colonists back to their home planet to bury the dead, repair the damage, and balm wounds.

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