Author notes: There's something I'd like to cover really quick. I've been getting questions and comments about the story, or more specifically, about how it doesn't seem to differ too much from the original. For those of you who were expecting a completely redone story, with a new plot, new characters, and whatever else, right from the beginning... sorry, but that ain't gonna happen. There WILL be differences, but the story won't be bursting at the seams with them, and they won't all happen right away. The further in we get, the more new stuff will be added. Some scenes will completely new, others will be tweaked, and still others will be overhauled (though not completely), but more than half won't get much more than a facelift. If you read the original and get disappointed because you were expecting something radically different, they you're outta luck. That said, I encourage you to keep reading, just to see what I've got in store.

Chapter 4: The Art of War

Hannah Shepard felt like her head was spinning. Ever since she'd made her report to Admiral Hackett, she'd been constantly on the move, trying to stay ahead of the storm as reports trickled in about repulsed probing raids along the Alliance's borders. Between trying to placate the Quarians' fears about working alongside synthetics and keeping FleetCom informed of everything going on, she hadn't had more than ten waking minutes to herself in the last four days. And the five Quarian admirals in front of her weren't making things any easier.

"I'm sorry, Admiral Gan. At this time, the Alliance is not willing to provide the Quarian people with any technology related to synthetics. To be blunt, they don't trust you, and considering our people only met a week ago, I can't say I blame them. It'll take time to convince my superiors that there won't be a repeat of the episode between Rael'Zorah and Hal Patricks."

Gan replied, a bit of frustration creeping into her tone. "Captain Shepard, we understand your position on this matter. But you must understand ours; when word of our cooperation with the Alliance reaches the Council, our people will be branded as traitors to the rest of the galaxy. There are hundreds of thousands of Quarians on pilgrimage at this very moment, and the tragedy of the situation is that some, possibly many, of them will face imprisonment, retribution, and potentially even death because of what we do here today. We must have something to show for our commitment to your cause. If we don't, our own people may very well revolt. The Admiralty Board is not an all-powerful body."

Hannah sighed internally. She wouldn't be this frustrated if they hadn't been over this ground a dozen times already. Still, she kept her growing impatience in check, ever wary of the… political repercussions hasty words could have. The next time she saw Hackett, he was getting a piece of her mind. That sneaky SOB knew this was coming when he gave her this appointment, and he hadn't warned her.

"Perhaps we can come to a compromise." she said diplomatically. "My superiors have authorized me to offer you certain non-military technologies in exchange for your technical skills. If you were able to convince some of your people to accept positions in our various engineering and R&D departments, we could begin the development and manufacture of racemic medigel and advanced immunoboosters. They won't let you ditch your suits entirely, but you may be able to take them off for brief periods of time in controlled environments. And if your people happen to pick up any… scraps of information while they assist our scientists, well we can't help that, now can we?"

"Hmm…" That was Admiral Shala'Raan. Hannah had taken a liking to her immediately. It might have been because she and Rael were old friends, and he had helped smooth the introductions. Then again, it could just be that Raan seemed to despise politics almost as much as Hannah, despite her position. "An interesting suggestion, Captain. The only problem will be finding people who can work with synthetics without causing an incident. Even so, I believe we can accept your proposition."

"I'm pleased we could come to an understanding, Admiral." said Hannah with a small nod. "There is, however, one final item of business we need to discuss. We have almost no information on the Turians, or the Council for that matter, beyond what you've provided us. While we're deeply indebted to you for this, we still need more intel on what we can expect the Turian response to be, so we can plan accordingly. To that end, I'd like to request that any captains or officers in the Migrant Fleet that have had dealings with the Turians in the past be made available for debriefing."

"You make it sound like you're intending to go to war with the Turians, Captain." said Admiral Tagrin. "While I agree that preparations are warranted, given the circumstances, seeking a full scale engagement with the Hierarchy would be... unwise."

"With all due respect, Admiral, we are at war." countered Hannah, her patience with the man all but exhausted. Tagrin was the worst kind of politician, and that meant he was good at his job. "In the past two centuries, Humanity has fought four different World Wars. The first was conventional. The second was both conventional and nuclear. The third was conventional, nuclear, and temporal, not to mention Yuri and his Dominators. The fourth and most recent was mostly against synthetics that we created, with all the technology we developed in the past three wars, as well as the Mass Effect based technology we discovered in our home solar system. Humans have never shied away from a good war, and we're not about to."

The admirals stared at her for a moment, obviously taken aback by her straightforward revelation. Gan posed the first question. "You make it sound like you enjoy war, Captain. And did you say temporal?"

Raan picked up where she had left off. "And we've heard you mention this man, Yuri, before. Who was he, and why do you say his name with such disdain?"

Hannah sighed. She'd been hoping that someone else would tell them this. As if. "Well, I suppose there's no point in keeping it from you; it's common enough knowledge among my people, anyway. Yuri was… a madman, one who lived nearly two centuries ago. He managed to situate himself as an advisor to one of Earth's leaders at the time, the Premier of the Soviet Union. He orchestrated the start of The Great World War Three, a war which killed nearly a hundred million people. And he did it to cover up an even more nefarious plot."

If the admirals had seemed shocked before, they were flabbergasted now. "A hundred million…" said Raan, sounding nauseous. "And you said he had something more nefarious planned? How is that possible?"

Hannah's tone turned grim as she continued. "Yuri had… powers. He had the ability to forcibly take over the mind of nearly any individual, save those who were specifically trained to resist his influence. He used the war as a distraction to create his own, private army, as well as to build and deploy a series of devices known as Psychic Dominators, meant to enslave the minds of nearly the entire world. He was only stopped by a combination of luck, quick thinking, and the use of a prototype time machine created by one of our greatest scientists, Albert Einstein."

"Mind control!?" shrieked Gan. "You can't be serious!"

"And a working time machine!?" asked Tagrin. "I'm sorry, Captain, but you claims seem rather… exaggerated."

Hannah met his gaze with a fierce, hard look. "Admiral, one hundred million bodies would like to ensure you that this is no exaggeration. Some of our present technology is based on what was captured from Yuri during the war, and to this day, we still make limited use of temporal technology, despite forgoing the use of full blown time machines."

"Well I… I mean…" stuttered Tagrin. "This is all so unexpected. Forgive our disrespect, Captain. We didn't intend to imply you were lying."

Hannah's eyes softened, and she groaned internally. Ever the politician, Tagrin was.

"As far as our… enjoyment of war is concerned, I can assure you this is not the case. That said, I believe there's something you should read. It's a manuscript from my peoples' history…"

For the second time in less than a month, the newly promoted Captain Adiren Victus was in command of a Hierarchy vessel about to do battle with an almost unknown enemy. While the… Humans might not be as unknown now as they had been during the debacle at Relay-314, there was still far too little intelligence available on them for Victus' liking. Despite the best efforts of the Salarian STG, very little information of any worth had been gathered on the Humans, their technology, numbers, or their fleet composition. Every time the Salarians had sent a task force into Human territory, they'd simply vanished, as if the void of space had swallowed them whole. It was disturbing on a level that Victus didn't want to admit. Despite his misgivings, he was part of a force that made a single tine of a two pronged attack on known Human settlements. The larger force he was with was attacking Rapture, a sizable Human colony on an ocean planet near what were thought to be the borders of their space. The lesser of the two forces was making a simultaneous hit on Shanxi, a smaller and less defended colony not far from Relay-314.

"What's our ETA, helmsman?" he asked. That was the third time he'd asked in the past half hour. He knew his nerves were showing, and he berated himself mentally, but he couldn't stop help it.

"Three minutes, sir."

Victus fought to gather his courage for the upcoming battle. He needed to be strong for his crew. If he wasn't, he could very well get them all killed.

"Open a channel to the rest of the ship." When the tech nodded, he began his pre-battle speech. "Attention, crew of the Hierarchy cruiser Dauntless, this is Captain Adrien Victus. In less than three minutes, we will begin the first battle of a war that may well determine the fate of the entire galaxy. The Turian Hierarchy has been the sword and shield of the Council for twelve hundred years, and we will still be that bulwark in twelve hundred more. We face an enemy which has made his intent clear: he means to destroy us; our traditions, our people, our very way of life. We're going to stop him. Men, I'm not going to lie to you. We may not be able to defeat this enemy here today. We may go to the spirits having failed to secure a much needed victory over our foe. But even if we die, we die in the knowledge that our sacrifices are not in vain. We die knowing that our deaths will allow our brothers and sisters to do what we could not: attain final victory. May the spirits preserve you, and may the spirits preserve the Hierarchy."

As his communications officer switched off the ship-wide channel, Victus sat back down in his chair, his fear and anxiety under tight control, a virtue of the iron discipline distilled in every Turian from the day they turned fifteen. As the Dauntless dropped out of FTL with the rest of the attack force, Victus caught his first glimpse of the Human world. It was a perfect blue orb, floating serenely in space. It was hard to imagine that in a few hours, that water would be sullied by blood, either the cobalt blue of Turian or the crimson red of Human.

"Attention all vessels, this is Admiral Valerian. Assume battle formation, and begin advance on the enemy world."

Victus stiffened at the orders that came in over the Dauntless' speakers. They all too closely resembled those given by Captain Fabius Aren not so long ago. They'd been among the last orders he ever gave. At the order, the ships in the attack group began to rearrange themselves into tight and precise formations, and advance on the planet, passing the outer gas giants in the system. There was nothing else in sight.

"I don't like this." he muttered after a moment, barely loud enough for his bridge crew to hear. "It's too easy."

"Relax, Captain. They don't even know we're here. There isn't a ship in sight."

"That's what I'm afraid of, helmsman. It feels like we're being baited."

As the fleet closed with the planet, Victus' fringe grew slowly stiffer with the passing minutes. When they were inside the orbit of the planet's single moon, less than two hundred thousand kilometers from the surface, Victus heard something he'd been dreading.

"Sir, this is tactical. Our sensors are picking up a large number of artificial satellites in a complex grid orbiting around the planet. They appear to be inactive."

That sent alarm bells ringing in Victus' head. He rose to his feet quickly, the beginnings of panic in his thoughts. Just because the Hierarchy didn't have them didn't mean the Humans… "Communications, open a channel to the admiral's flag ship immediately! Admiral Valerian, we've detected a number of satellites in orbit around the planet. I think they might be defense satellites. We should pull back at once."

The admiral's reply was stern. "Captain Victus, the fact you've encountered these creatures before doesn't make you an expert on them. We've seen no sign that they possess the technology to create a network of the kind you describe, and I will not let your fear-"

The rest of the admiral's reply was lost forever as Victus' worst fears came true. Beginning with a ring of nearly a dozen of the "inactive" satellites, a series of all too familiar beams of light suddenly appeared, shooting towards their partners nearer the center of the circle. They ricocheted off more satellites, gathering strength and intensity as they went, before finally converging at one point, coalescing into a single ray of cleansing fire. The almost immaculate beam of death blazed a path of destruction directly into the dreadnaught that was Valerian's headquarters, leaving nothing more than a dying husk in its wake. Upon impact, the unfathomably powerful shaft of light fractured into a dozen smaller children that flew off in every direction, burning away ships and men in a single blinding instant.

The worst was yet to come. Even as the admiral died not knowing the disaster his forces had been lured into, countless other beams shot from other areas of the Human defense grid, cutting similar paths of destruction through the once neat and orderly Turian ranks. In less than the blink of an eye, the attack group had lost five of its twelve dreadnaughts, thirty of its cruisers, and nearly a hundred frigates.

The airwaves exploded in an uncontrolled frenzy as hundreds of captains, commanders, and pilots tried desperately to make sense of what had happened. The only one of them who'd seen the power of the Human weapons before could do nothing but slowly slump in his chair as he watched the chaos multiply around him. The Battle of Relay-314 flashed through his mind once again as a second volley of death lanced forth from the Human defenses a few seconds later, shattering what little control and coordination the fleet had left. Dozens of ships broke formation and scattered in every direction, seeking desperately to forestall their impending fate. Victus barely noticed as he drifted through his memories of the past, haunted by those that were yet to come.

"-ain! Captain Victus! Captain Victus, what are your orders, sir?!"

As the voice of his first officer jolted him back to the battle, Victus did for a second time what he'd never thought he would have to. The only difference was that this time, his voice was calm, almost soft. But it wasn't the calm of surety, or confidence. It was the calm of the grave.

"Signal the fleet to retreat. We need to save what we can and fall back. The Hierarchy must be informed of our failure here today."

"Sir, that may not be possible! We've just detected an enemy fleet entering the system! Our communications with command are down, and our retreat is cut off! What do we do?!"

Before Victus could formulate a reply, a voice came in over the speakers on the Dauntless' bridge.

"Turian vessels, this is Rear Admiral Steven Hackett of the United Systems Alliance Fifth Fleet. We are the hammer, and Rapture the anvil. Surrender at once, or we will resume firing upon you."

Victus' communications officer glanced over his shoulder, panic and fear in his eyes as he looked to his Captain for strength and support. Victus had none to give.

"Strike the barriers and cut the engines, helmsman. We've lost."

'Well, that went better than expected.'

It wasn't the first time today that Hackett had that thought, and it wouldn't be the last. They'd caught the Turians between a rock and a hard place, well within the six million kilometer range of Rapture's PRISM network, and those ships that hadn't surrendered had been quickly ground to dust. All in all, his task force had bagged two dreadnaughts, fourteen cruisers, and roughly fifty frigates, along with nearly two hundred fighters, troop transports, and supply ships, nearly a full quarter of what had once been a Turian fleet. Hackett had left the Enterprise and the Elizabeth carrier groups to oversee the capture and detainment of more than twenty thousand of the metal faced bastards, and even now, he was hurrying his way to Shanxi to repel their offensive there.

"What's our ETA to Shanxi, Helm?"

"Approximately 48 hours, sir." replied the aptly named synthetic. Hackett didn't understand why he called himself that. It was like an organic calling themselves Banker, or Lawyer. Then again, organic Humans did have surnames like Smith, Cooper, and Miller that were hold-overs from times long past. Maybe it was like that. But why choose Helm as a first name?

"Damn." muttered the Admiral in a frustrated voice. "I don't like the idea of giving the Turians that much time to dig in. Not to mention the damage they could do to the colony in three days. Had we known how hard the Turians would fall for the bait we laid at Rapture, we could've split our forces and bent both prongs of their fork at the same time."

"I wouldn't worry about it, Admiral. Even without an orbital defense net, I'm sure Williams will give them hell once they get boots on the ground. After all, land warfare always was his cup of tea, not to mention the Alliance's best theater."

"You're assuming they don't just bomb him into submission from orbit, Helm." countered Hackett. "From what we know of the Turians, that's the most likely scenario."

"Sir, the day Marcus Williams lets himself be beaten by a bunch of metal skinned freaks that he can't see or shoot at is the day I eat this ship. And believe me, I know exactly how big the Midway is, remember? After all, for all intents and purposes, I am the Midway. Still, if you're interested, I could always get him on the horn for you."

Hackett just grinned and shook his head. "Nah. The last thing he needs is me breathing down his neck. Besides, you're probably right. I guess we won't know until we get there. For our part though, I'm a little more confident. Considering that the Turians don't have carriers like we do, I'm hoping the Midway and the Philippine Sea can live up to their namesakes."

Helm shrugged. "What I don't get is why? I mean, twelve centuries and they haven't ever thought of carriers? That was damn near the first thing Humans did when powered flight was discovered. It took what, fifteen years? Fifteen years from Kitty Hawk until the HMS Argus was built. And you're telling me the Turians haven't done the same in twelve centuries? That's cracked."

Hackett's good humor was gone. "I know, Helm. It bugs the crap out of me too. Despite our success at Rapture, this could still go belly up. The best we can do is gather intel and be prepared."

"I hear you, sir. As they say, 'If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.' And if I may say, Steven, you're a master at your art."

Corporal Zaeed Massani was having the time of his life. In fact, he'd had more fun in the past two days than in the three years before combined. When he'd volunteered for Tesla trooper training in his teens, he'd expected to spend most of his career as an instructor, trying to teach other nuts like him how to control the raw power of the Tesla suits. That had been before the Turians.

"Fry, you god'amn metal bastards! FRY!" he screamed at the top of his lungs. His voice was already hoarse from yelling much the same a hundred times today, but he didn't care. Zaeed wasn't a religious man, but he couldn't help but wonder if god had been thinking of him when he created the Turians. The good lord, in his infinite wisdom, had seen fit to grace the Turians with skin made of metal, which made his suit's built in Tesla Coils powerful in ways that man had never intended.

Cackling like a madman, Zaeed let loose yet another bolt of artificial lightning from his hands. It jumped instantly to a Turian ducking behind a half destroyed concrete wall, arcing around the makeshift cover and slamming into her with force of a bomb. It bounced around inside her metal carapace like some sort of demented ping-bong ball, ricocheting around for nearly a full second and instantly turning her innards to superheated steam and plasma. Like a balloon filled too full, her body popped, spraying blue blood and viscera over every surface within ten meters, including three of her friends, and Zaeed himself. The blood that coated him flashed almost instantly to steam and dust as the power of the Tesla suit boiled it away like the fires of hell itself.

The Turians had had enough. One of them threw down her weapon and ran for the hills, not knowing or caring if her friends made it to safety so long as she could avoid the fate she'd just witnessed. A second, who to Zaeed looked to be little more than a teenager, stumbled backwards and vomited all over his boots. 'Still green, eh? Too bad you won't get a chance to learn from your mistakes, boy.' thought Zaeed as he waited for his capacitors to recharge so he could cook the bastard in his shell. Just as he was about to enjoy the encore to his recent performance, he found himself being slammed into the ground, several of his ribs cracking on impact. Wincing in pain, he discovered what had hit him. The third Turian, this one looking more seasoned than the rest of his former squad, leapt atop Zaeed's prone form and began hammering away at his suit with biotically charged fists, leaving deep dents in the thick metal armor the suit was composed of.

"SAREN! RUN!" he screamed, ramming his fist into Zaeed's chest once again, deepening the dent that was already there and further breaking his already cracked ribs.

'Well, it looks like one of the bastards still has some god'amn fight left in 'im. Time to fix that.' As the brave but stupid Turian pulled back his fist for another blow, Zaeed reached out and grabbed his wrist, the Tesla suit's advanced pneumatic actuators stopping it cold. He did the same to the Turian's other wrist, and then squeezed, feeling bones shatter in his hands, crushed to powder by his mechanically enhanced superhuman strength. As the Turian cried out in pain, Zaeed coked back his leg and kicked him in the chest, sending him stumbling back and landing on his ass. Zaeed heard him let out another shriek of agony as the Turian tried to catch himself with his limp hands, forgetting the damage the Tesla trooper had just done to his wrists. The Human soldier quickly climbed to his feet before walking over to his crippled foe, taking his time and savoring the moment. Reaching down and grabbing the Turian by his destroyed wrists, Zaeed hauled him to his knees and used his neural interface to make a small adjustment to his suit's capacitors.

"Pray to whatever god you believe in, you metal freak, because you're about to meet 'im."

Zaeed let raw electrical power flow from his hands into the hapless Turian, and his body went into wild spasms. At less than five percent power, the suit didn't instantly kill the poor bastard, but it did cause every nerve in his body to flare at once, sending a torrent of pain into him and ripping an agonized scream from his throat. Zaeed slowly increased the power of his suit, working his way from five percent to thirty in as many seconds. As the voltage increased, so did the Turian's thrashing and screeching, until, at last, his body gave out and he went limp in Zaeed's grasp. Keeping the juice flowing for another few seconds, Zaeed ratcheted up the power to fifty percent, causing the corpse to roast from the inside. His capacitors drained, Zaeed let the charred and ruined husk drop to the ground, sickly blue-gray smoke billowing from it's now empty eye sockets, mouth, and ears.

Coming back to reality after spending a few moments relishing in his brutal execution of the Turian leader, Zaeed looked up to see the last member of his victim's fire team scrambling over rocks and debris in the distance, desperate to escape the crazed Tesla trooper. Zaeed didn't bother to chase him. His suit was badly damaged, and he was slow in the thing anyway. Not bothering to look for more Turian troops around his position, Zaeed began making his way back to base for suit repairs and a quick patch job from the medics, eagerly making plans for his return to the fight.

"Sir, we've just gotten the latest reports from our containment facilities. The synthetics aren't putting up much resistance."

General Desolas Arterius tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Odd. Why would they let themselves be taken so easily?"

"Well…" the officer hesitated. "They seem to be afraid, sir."

"Afraid?" scoffed Desolas. "Synthetics don't feel fear. More likely, it's a programed response to a threatening situation. Even a machine can be designed for self-preservation."

"I'm not so sure, general. I've seen some of them up close. If they weren't made of metal, I'd say they were exactly the same as the organic Humans."

Desolas opened his mouth to respond, but was cut off when the door to his small command center burst open. Beyond it, a pair of guards was supporting a single soldier, who, by his armor, was a member of the Cabals. The general was about to reprimand them, but stopped when the soldier looked up.

"Brother." wheezed Saren, sounding as though he'd run a marathon. "I need… to speak… with you."

Desolas hesitated. Nepotism was strongly discouraged in the Hierarchy military, and if he showed favoritism to Saren, it'd look very bad, on both their records. Still, that was no reason to be rude, and if Saren had come in like this, whatever he had to say must be important.

"Sit down and catch your breath, soldier." he ordered. "Whatever it is, it can wait for a few minutes." Suddenly, a thought occurred to him. "Where's your CO? If something needs reported, Aurum should be the one to do it." The middle brother in his family was the commander of Saren's unit. It'd taken some favors, and a few pulled strings, but Desolas had managed to get his youngest sibling assigned to Aurum's Cabal when Saren got out of boot camp. He'd always felt more comfortable around family, and Aurum was a good teacher.

Saren shook his head and began trembling. "Aurum's… dead." he said at last, his voice sounding strangled.

Desolas was in shock. 'Dead? No.' "How… how did it happen?"

"A Human… in a silver and red suit." answered Saren, his voice ragged. "It hit our squad with some sort of lightning based weaponry. Nothing could stop it. It… oh spirits, they're all dead. Tristana exploded like-"

Saren cut off, and suddenly started dry-heaving, his stomach completely empty from his earlier bouts with nausea. After a moment, he recovered. "Aurum… that monster cooked him, Desolas! It fried him like a piece of meat! It was about to kill me, and Aurum threw himself at it, and told me to run!" Saren sagged to his knees and began to tremble, clutching his head in his talons. "His screams! I can still hear them! And that- that thing! The cackling! I can still hear it cackling!"

Desolas could tell that Saren was shell-shocked, but he wasn't doing much better himself. 'These primitives killed my brother?! Titans-damned animals!'

As a rule, Desolas wasn't usually one to make decisions in haste. But, for every rule, there's an exception. When he spoke, his voice trembled with barely contained rage and fury.

"I'll make them pay, brother. I swear it." Desolas turned to his communications officer, who he'd been talking to before Saren had arrived. "Send a message to each of the containment centers." he growled. "They are to begin disposing of the synthetics, immediately."

The other Turian's eyes widened. "But sir, they're prisoners." he protested. "We can't just execute unarmed civil-"

Desolas cut him off by slamming his fist into the table the officer was seated at. "They are not prisoners! They aren't people, and they aren't alive!" he snarled. "Council law specifically forbids AI technology! We're just doing our jobs. Now, relay the spirits-dammed order!"

The officer hesitated for a moment, and then nodded numbly. Little did he know what the full repercussions of his actions would be.

"General Williams, this is Rear Admiral Hackett, Alliance Fifth Fleet. What's the status on the ground?"

Brigadier General Marcus Williams chewed his cigar, a grim frown coming to his face as the commander of Shanxi's makeshift ground defense forces related the news.

"Well, Steve, it's a damn mess down here. The metalheads have us bottled up in half a dozen underground bunkers, and every time we poke our heads out to take a look, they rain hell on us from orbit. We managed to keep them from capturing any of our air and chrono bases and tech, but we had to activate the self-destructs to do it. The only 'spheres we've got left are the ones built into the damn bunkers. The only piece of good news is that most of my forces are intact. Our psychic radar gave us enough warning to evac the above ground stuff and dig in. Never thought I'd be playing the part of the mole, though."

"How are the civvies handling it, Mark?"

Williams growled angrily. "It's not good, Steve. I've got about fifty of my best and boldest topside in ones and twos trying to bleed the bastards where it hurts, but they've got at least twenty thousand troops on the ground. They've put the settlement under martial law, and we've got reports that they're rounding up every synthetic they can find and herding them towards a dozen different collection points. Best I can figure, they're worried about them trying to resist, and they're not taking chances. We've been trying to plan a rescue op for the prisoners, but we're stuck."

"Shit." said Hackett, his hologram punching a diminutive fist into its palm. "That's something I was afraid of when we decided to focus on Rapture first. Nothing we can do now, though. We're going to be dropping out of FTL in a little less than three hours, and I've still got the Midway and the Philippine Sea with me. From what we can tell, we should have the Turians outgunned almost three to two, even without carriers. Unless they pull a rabbit out of their ass at the last minute, we should be able to smash them flat."

"I take it you want to coordinate our efforts then? We've been cooking up some doozies for when you finally did show up."

Hackett smiled grimly. "Right in one, Mark. I want you to hit them with everything you can about five minutes before we arrive. While they're busy trying to put out a thousand fires you and your boys start, the Fifth is going to sneak up behind them and ram its' over-sized metal boot up their ass."

"I like your style, Hackett. Just so you know, I'm not gonna sit this one out. I've always wanted to roll out in one of those over-designed blocks of metal they call tanks." He let a grim smile come to his lips to match Hackett's. "Now I finally can."

Williams spent most of the next two and a half hours relaying orders and rousing his officers from their short yet surprisingly calm respite from combat. When they'd finished briefing their forces on some of the dozen contingencies he and his staff had devised over the past few days, the time for departure was at hand. Walking into the main rallying area for the forces in his sector, Williams finally got a good look at his new rolling command center.

The Mark IV Doom Fortress was the ultimate bastardization of Allied and Soviet technology, a chimera of the Soviet Apocalypse Tank and the Allied Battle Fortress taken beyond the extreme. At ten meters high by twenty meters wide by thirty meters long, the incredibly massive rolling bunker was the pride and joy of the Alliance's Armored Corps. It weighed nearly ten million kilos, mostly owing to the two meter thick composite armor that surrounded it's every side. The only reason the damn thing didn't sink into the ground was the built in Mass Effect field emitter that reduced its effective weight to less one percent of that. It was powered by a micro-fusion generator that produced enough energy to run three frigates, which was good since it cost a hundred times as much. It had everything a soldier could want under the hood: triple 500mm main guns, point laser defenses that could shred any atmospheric fighter from fifteen clicks, half a dozen built in PRISM towers run by an onboard VI, hardened electronics and firewalls to prevent hacking and EM surges, hundreds of gun ports for the company of men that thing could carry, an integrated chronosphere, kinetic barriers that could stop a hit from a meteor, and a Tesla generator that could produce a sphere of lightning and death around the thing a hundred meters across. It made Williams want to cry.

"You know, by god I, I actually pity those poor bastards we're going up against, by god, I do. We're not just going to shoot the bastards; we're going to cut out their living guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks."

"What was that, sir?"

Williams hadn't realized he'd spoke aloud. "Nothing, corpsman. Nothing."

As Williams entered the Fortress and mentally prepared for the battle, a sly, twisted, almost evil idea entered his mind.

"Communications, see if you can put me through to the Turian Commander. I wanna have a word with him."

"Sir?"

"Just do it." The general waited for about a minute before his patience was rewarded by a distinctly Turian voice echoing throughout the over-sized tank.

"This is General Desolas Arterius of the Turian Hierarchy. Who the hell is this?"

"This is Brigadier General Marcus Williams, of the United Systems Alliance. I'd like to offer you a chance to surrender your forces. If you come quietly, I can guarantee proper treatment for you and your men as prisoners of war."

"Surrender? Human, I don't know who you think you are, but you'd better pray to the Spirits that we can't trace this transmission."

As the Fortress's chronosphere charged in the background, Williams felt an evil, toothy smile come to his face.

"Well, Turian, if it's a prayer you want, then how about this:"

"Yea, though I charge through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil. FOR I AM DRIVING A HOUSE SIZED MASS OF FUCK YOU!"