Chapter 7

As a group they found themselves back on Reach, though much had changed since they were last all gathered on it ten months ago. The population of Reach had exploded as the military structures started going up. Military personnel in the forms of officers, their staff, drill instructors, recruits, an entire division of marines, and the logistic roles that go along with maintaining all these buildings, equipment, and manpower, were transferred to the planet. And each of them brought their families along with them. There were the companies with defense contracts, who had built up their own complexes and transferred their own employees to the planet. Then there were the entrepreneurs who recognized an opportunity when they saw one, and flocked to the planet to open up retail shops, eateries, and hundreds of other businesses.

After having a population barely over forty-thousand one year ago, Reach had the distinguished honor of being the first non-Sol colony to achieve a population over one million. And the Systems Alliance wasn't even done with Reach, not yet. There were still dozens of buildings that needed to go up, and thousands of more government and naval personnel who would be transferred to the planet.

The Systems Alliance Military Command Reach Headquarters was built into the side of a mountain. The building didn't just go hundreds of meters up, it also went hundreds of meters down. The sub-basements from 4 down to 23 were given over to the Intelligence Services, where their research and development branches had their laboratories set up.

The lowest floor, sub-basement #23, was a long corridor that led to a small antechamber and then a larger chamber beyond that. The larger chamber had its own smaller, and secret elevator that ran directly up to the 4th floor, in the offices of one Admiral Cremer.

They had all arrived in her office, and had then taken the secret elevator down, none of them speaking a word outside of standard small talk, until they had all taken a seat in the chamber in sub-basement #23. Each of them held a glass of liquor, Admiral Cremer had gone with a bourbon from Kentucky this time around. They were celebrating the reaching of a partnership with the Migrant Fleet, something that they had been the ones who had initiated, though of course few outside of the chamber were aware of such a thing.

"To leveling the playing field!" Rear Admiral Komen cried, raising his glass.

"To leveling the playing field!" the others respond, each of them raising their own glass before bringing it to their lips and taking a sip.

"Have you all had the chance to look over the finer details of the deal?" Member of Parliament Haugseng asked.

The Migrant Fleet was handing over twelve of their warships, the newest one a thirty year old turian frigate they had salvaged after a battle with pirates, for the Alliance to study. Outside of the warships, the quarians were giving the Alliance pieces of technology that were beyond humanity's current level like spare omni-tools, blueprints for personal combat drones, and spare military combat suits, because the Alliance was interested in their ability to close a breach and have the suit itself automatically inject antibiotics and the like into the wearer. Material wise the quarians weren't providing much, but it was their knowledge that the Alliance was most interested in. That is why scientists, researchers, engineers, and dozens of other professions would be traveling to Alliance locations to help teach their human equivalents in up to date galaxy wide industries and technologies. A lot of quarian pilgrims would be encouraged to travel to Alliance space, and would basically become a variation of an intern for a lot of companies. Updated dossiers on each of the other species in the galaxy, ones that went well beyond what the Council had provided, were included along with one of the most important pieces of information, the Migrant Fleet's mapping of the mass relay network.

On the other hand, the Systems Alliance was giving up a lot of materials in the deal. They gifted the quarians 100,000 square miles of land on Eden Prime to build their colony, raise crops, mine for resources, and whatever else they wanted to do. They had even built the first few buildings for them, and had brought in one of the best construction companies used by hospitals to build sterile ICU rooms, to build apartments for the quarians to live. The Alliance had pledged to give to the quarians 1.5% of all minerals, metals, helium-3, and other resources mined throughout the length of the deal; which for some of them could be as much as 100,000,000+ tons worth per year. Once the Alliance was all caught up on ship engines, scanners, kinetic barriers, armaments, and everything else warship related, they would also be building twelve new ships for the Migrant Fleet, including two cruisers (one heavy), three destroyers, and seven frigates. They agreed that any ship being decommissioned would first be offered to the Migrant Fleet for purchase at a discounted rate before anything else was done with it. Two new docking stations were being built at Naval Station de Ruyter in the Hubble System of the Horse Head Nebula solely for quarian use to make repairs on their ships.

Since they figured the Council would eventually find out about the partnership between humanity and the quarians, if they weren't aware of it already, the Alliance gave the quarians an embassy on Earth and a liaison office on Arcturus Station. The Alliance would have an ambassador aboard the Rayya, the live ship where the elected members of the Conclave held their meetings.

"I've read it over," Major Burgos said. "We're giving up a hell of a lot. Are we sure Briggs was the best person to send for the negotiations?"

"She did exactly what she was supposed to do," Admiral Cremer replied. "Last thing we needed was to play hardball with our one shot at gaining the tech we need to stand up to the Council races."

"I think she gave up a bit more to keep the deal on the shorter side. It's only for seventeen years. After which, we can go back to the table with a much stronger hand," MP Haugseng said. "Plus, we're helping to turn the quarians into a stronger force in this galaxy, which can only benefit us if we decide to secure a proper alliance with them."

"With the quarian deal out of the way, we should turn our attention to our next step, which is using the quarians to gain access to the krogan homeworld. Maybe have them bring one of our diplomatic teams past the Council security fleet."

"I'm sure we can make the quarians see why getting us onto the krogan homeworld would be beneficial, but who do we send? You've had to have seen the new dossiers the quarians have provided, on top of what we already know. Do the krogans even have diplomats?" Major Kyle asked.

"Too bad Halsey's project is still years from fruition. I imagine the krogans would respect her soldiers."

"From what I read, they'd likely consider them worthy adversaries and then try to kill them."

"There's a good chance no matter who we send, they'll be killed. Do we make the team we're sending aware of that fact?"

That statement gave them pause.

Read Admiral Komen leaned back and swished the remains of his vodka around in his glass. "We make them aware of the potential for hostilities, but not the high likelihood of death."


The Prime Minister found himself back in the holographic projector room on Arcturus Station. The partnership with the quarians was paying dividends for them in many ways, one of which was providing all of the mass relay connections they knew of. They also gave them more information on the other species, information the Council apparently didn't feel like sharing.

For instance, they now knew that the Exodus Cluster connected with a cluster known as Kite's Nest, where the batarians not only had their homeworld, but also several colonies. They also now knew that the batarians had a slave economy, and supported slaver who raided colonies and outposts to capture the inhabitants as slaves, an open secret amongst the Citadel races that the Council did nothing about. Oh the Hegemony itself didn't do it, and in fact had an official policy against capturing the citizens of the galaxy for slavery. But that official policy wasn't against slavery in and of itself, or the purchase of slaves from outside factions, so even though they didn't capture the slaves, they still bought them and would claim they had no idea where the slaves came from when they purchased them. Everyone with any bit of knowledge knew the Batarian Hegemony sponsored the slavers, off the books, who went on raids throughout the Terminus Systems and the bordering star clusters.

The Exodus Cluster, which apparently connected everywhere, also connected to the Annos Basin. The Annos Basin was where the homeworld of the salarian was. The salarians were apparently the intelligence arm of the Council. They did the major research and development projects, and had dozens of teams they could send behind enemy lines to gather intel and provide reconnaissance. It seemed, despite their relatively strong navy, the salarians were more likely to go with subterfuge than open warfare. Which to the Prime Minister's mind made them more of a threat than the turians.

The Horse Head Nebula also connected to the Annos Basin, as well as Serpent Nebula where the Citadel was located, but they already knew that connection.

The Cook Cluster, where the First Contact War started, connected to a star cluster called the Aethon Cluster. That was the location of the volus homeworld, and the volus, on top of being the power behind the Citadel's entire banking system, were a client race of the turians. Given how vital the Volus were to the economy of the Citadel, it would make sense that the turians would be heavily invested in defending the volus. Not to mention the Aethon Cluster connected to a cluster called Apien Crest, which was where the turian homeworld was.

What that all meant was that two of the five clusters the Systems Alliance controlled were directly connected to alien homeworld systems, each one likely with a heavy fleet presence. A third was two jumps away from a system that likely had a heavy turian presence.

He had already spoken with Alliance Command to make sure fleets were in the connected systems. Hopefully, the quarians would be able to quickly get the Alliance ships up to date with technologies the other races have been using for centuries, so if another conflict did break out, they wouldn't be at such a disadvantage anymore.

"Mr. Prime Minister."

The Prime Minister looked over to see his Chief of Staff had entered the room while he had been lost in his thoughts.

"What is it?" he asked.

"The Heavy Metals Exomining of China reports that it has lost contact with one of its mining outposts in the Horse Head Nebula. When they sent a ship to investigate, they found the mining outposts empty. Five hundred and thirty-one employees just gone. Naval Command is sending a flotilla to further investigate."

The Prime Minister found the Horse Head Nebula on the galaxy map he stood in the middle of. Could the salarians have had something to do with it? Or even the Council itself? It didn't seem to be the m.o. of either group based on the experience of the quarians but humans were new to the field. Maybe humanity's introduction to the galaxy changed up how both operated? Or maybe it was the batarians, using the mass relay system to come in from another angle?

The Terminus Systems were also home to various mercenary groups and pirates, on top of the batarian backed slavers. Could one of them have sensed an opportunity and made a move?

"Why didn't we detect anything on the mass relays?" he asked.

"We've had the entire space around the mass relays under heavy surveillance. Nothing could have entered the cluster through them without us knowing. Command thinks they entered the system through standard faster than light travel."

The fastest human ships could travel was 4 lightyears a day, and it would take over a month for them to travel between nearby star clusters, but the Citadel races could travel faster than that. The quarian ships could travel between eight and eleven lightyears a day, and the Prime Minister knew the rest of the Citadel races were in that range as well, if not a little bit faster.

"Tell Command to elevate all systems to yellow alert. And tell them I want to know if sending a naval task force to each of the systems we have outposts and stations in is a feasible option."


Eden Prime was considered a paradise by many in the Systems Alliance. Bright blue skies, millions of square miles of plains with rich soil, and thick green forest with a diverse animal life. There had been little need of terraforming when the planet was discovered and it had been described as a new Earth only a week after the first terraforming teams had arrived. In the past several months, as the Alliance propaganda kicked in, the advertisements for it had pitched the idea of living on Earth in its prime, thousands of years ago and centuries before the industrial revolution, when humanity was still fighting with swords.

Its arable land allowed Eden Prime to establish itself as a breadbasket planet. Fields of crops and carefully maintained orchards stretched for miles, bordered by criss crossing fences and paved roads. In the nine months since the First Contact War had ended there had been a spike in immigration to the planet. Villages that sat surrounded by farms grew into towns, and the only place large enough to call a town, Constant, where the spaceport was located, grew into a small city as the planet's population jumped from 34,345 to 667,539.

Almost directly opposite Constant, tens of thousands of miles from the nearest human occupied buildings, the Systems Alliance Engineering Corps had put up a number of buildings; four apartment buildings filled with twenty three-bedroom apartments, a large office like building to operate as a government and military HQ, two large warehouses, and eight storage facilities that sat on the edge of the large open land that surrounded the buildings.

"Each apartment was built as if it was part of a hospital ICU, and was updated with the best in human tech when it came to decontamination processes and maintaining sterile environments. We're hoping it will allow those who live there to go without their suits, if they so desire."

Admiral Yaf'Hemin looked at the human structures that had been built as the foundation of what was to become the first quarian settlement in three hundred years. He had been on one of the first shuttles sent by the Migrant Fleet down to the surface of their soon to be new settlement. The others to make the journey to the surface with him were a bunch of engineers and repair technicians, all of whom would need to adjust their knowledge from ships to buildings, which would undoubtedly take months. Fortunately, the Systems Alliance would be leaving some of their Engineer Corps to assist until the quarians knew enough to be able to handle it on their own.

"All of the furniture in the buildings was made for humans, so you might find that not all of it is compatible with quarians," the Alliance representative giving them a tour said, with an apologetic tone.

"We'll adapt," Yaf'Hemin said. "We always do."

"As you can see there isn't much here, we just gave you the basics to build off of. We figured if you were going to build your first colony in a few hundred years you'd want it to be one of quarian design, not human."

"Thank you. We appreciate everything the Alliance has done for us. Where is the boundary of the land?"

"There are markers around the boundary, you can't miss them."

"And what about defenses?"

"The Alliance figured you'd like to be the ones in charge of that. The brass didn't think your people would be happy about defense turrets going up that are designed to be controlled by an AI. And we didn't want to put up a wall around the area and make you think we were trying to keep you separate from our people."

"Ah, of course."

The humans didn't want to do anything that might upset the partnership they had just secured. They didn't want to do anything that would jeopardized the access they just secured to technology that was decades beyond their own.


The streets were lined with cheering people as the military vehicles rolled down the street, followed by the high school marching band.

It wasn't the largest parade, Mindoir's population numbered a little over sixty-thousand at the moment, and most of them were spread between small villages that dotted the land between the farms. Yet the governor of the planet had declared the day a holiday; schools and jobs were ordered closed, and shuttle services had been offered to bring those who lived in the far reaches to the main town.

The cause of celebration? It was the one year anniversary of Armistice Day, the day the war with the turians officially ended. While Mindoir hadn't been affected by the war in any way, like most of human occupied space, it was still a cause of celebration. Not only had humanity had its first contact with an alien species, but despite that contact being hostile, they had been able to hold their own against a superior foe. And in the aftermath they had been introduced to a much larger galactic community, one of which they had just formed a partnership with.

In reality, the parade was planned and organized by members of the Systems Alliance propaganda branch. Similar ones were taking place across most of the colonies, and on Earth. Before the First Contact War had started the Systems Alliance was one of a dozen intergovernmental organizations that had existed, each of which had the ability to step up in the face of the crisis the turian invasion of Shanxi had created. But while groups like the United Nations debated about what to do, the nations of the Systems Alliance acted. They gathered their military forces and they rushed to free Shanxi from alien control. They had been the ones who negotiated the peace with the aliens, and in doing so became the representatives of humanity on the galactic stage.

That is what the parades were really reminding the people about; that while others debated, the Systems Alliance acted. They had risked their lives to free Shanxi, and had then represented humanity on a galactic scale to negotiate peace. The power of the Systems Alliance was now the power of humanity, and the effects had rippled across Earth. A lot of the other nations had protested but they didn't have the power of the nations of the Systems Alliance, let alone the entire organization. Instead all they could do was withdraw from the United Nations in protest. Almost two dozen other nations, those who had close ties with nations in the Systems Alliance, joined the organization as partner nations. As the SA grew, it made sense to remind the people why it was the new acting government and military of humanity.

"Look at the big truck Alex!"

Sitting on the shoulders of his father, four year old Alexander Shepard watched with wide eyes as an APC rolled by, a dozen men in dark blue armor marching on either side.

"Woah," Alex murmured.

He had plenty of experience with the large combines that worked the fields of the farm his family owned, but this thing was different. This one had more wheels and what was that long thing on top?

"Wha's tha on top?" he asked.

"That's its gun," Alex's dad answered. "It's used to shoot things."

"Like hunting?"

"Kind of like hunting, but it's a little different. When you're older you'll know the differences."

Following behind the APC was a group of Marines who held large sacks in their hands. One of them stopped in front of Alex and his dad, and reaching into the sack pulled out an action figure of a Systems Alliance marine. He handed it to Alex, who took it with an awed expression.

"What do we say?" Mr. Shepard reminded his son.

"Tank you!" Alex said, his eyes still on his new toy.