Author's Note: So then, if there's anyone who has been feeling annoyed that the Union has been an upstanding paragon of governing virtues up until now then I have good news for you! A Antagonistic Union Faction! Well semi-antagonistic anyway. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!


Chapter 28: Prethoryn Part 2

General Victus was not having a good month. It started with a failed attempt to attack The Union's bloody clot up, resulting in their entire ship being bitten in half. As the main component lost was the engine they suffered a only 30% lost of crew, which may seem pretty large but most times that you lose a ship and you lose less than ninety percent of the crew then you've gotten off lucky. That was the extent of the good news. The flesh outside of the ship was laced with a powerful acid. It was probably just this thing's saliva but it was strong enough to eat through their boots in almost an instant, and it was eating through their ship. A cabal of Biotics were working on shifts to try and keep what was left of the ship out of the acid. After they managed to finagle their ship to a location that it wasn't slowly dissolving in acid the Biotics were diverted to float above the acid and try and scout the area.

Technically they were eaten, the Citadel or the Union won't be sending anyone to look for them, in that case rather that sit around and wait for them to die, the Turian's had opted to make the bastard choke to death. The experimental ammunition was collected from the ship, carefully floated over to where they believed they found a weak spot and fired upon the floating canister, triggering a explosion from the exotic plasma and the biotic field combination. The entire creature shifted uncomfortably, and a giant hole was blown into the back of the creature's throat. The entire creature rumbled, and then stopped. It wasn't dead, not yet anyway, it had already started to heal from its injuries but Victus was happy if this meant that it would take longer before it destroys another planet then he was satisfied with that much.

The ship shifted, the creature readjusted it's jaws, probably in response to the damage it just received, and the entire ship shifted. Victus was sent careening down the bridge and landed feet first on the boot destroying flesh outside of the ship. Victus screamed, not only from the acid. His hard suit's VI detected the biological contaminant that entered his body through the acid burns and with a mechanical grind both of his legs were severed at the knees but that wasn't the extent of the damage. The ship's septic tank was broken open on the grinding teeth of the Prethoryn monster, and a month's worth of Turian waste leaked out into the mouth of the creature and down it's throat, and into it's wounds. The entire creature rumbled, flesh swelled and the entire creature entered a state of anaphylactic shock as the entire creature violently rumbled. Victus wished he thought of it himself, but now there was no time.

"Get into your helmets right now! We're on our way out! The hard way!" The broken wreck of the ship was violently expelled, the creature's wounds were greatly exacerbated as it's various veins and arteries swelled as its circulation was cut off and it slowly died in the process. In the meantime the Turian ship was pulled into the relative safety of a passing joint patrol of Citadel and Union ships.


With the latest Union developed stealth technology, a combination of psi shielding to prevent telepathic probing and heat-sinks to capture and contain the emissions from the ship that the Prethoryn rely on to see it, it was relatively easy to avoid the patrols of Prethoryn packs and spy on them, so long as you don't attack. So imagine everyone's surprise when one of the Prethoryn suddenly keeled over and spat out a mangled Turian Ship.

"You made the Prethoryn sick?" The leader of the patrol unit, a Flerkin woman, asked while looking incredulously at the story she was being told.

"I wish we thought of flushing down those damned toilets a month ago." General Victus let out a good natured chuckle, even despite his injuries. Double below the knee amputation was a career ender in most situations, in most of them anyway. "Those blasted toilets smelled horrible." Of course considering the Prethoryn tooth pinning the hatch closed it was a little difficult.

"For what it's worth..." The Flerkin woman saluted General Victus, and the General saluted back.

She and her men left to deal with other matters, and in her place a group of Tebrid's floated in on their hover platforms and took up positions on three sides of the General's bed. From the platforms holograms of Turian legs emerged lining up with the general's stumps.


The sudden reappearance of Victus and his men sent a wave of good news through the allied forces, as had news of their unexpected success.

"Have you tried bio-chemical warfare against these things before?" General Sparatus asked as he looked through the files of what had been happening. Esheel was making arrangements with Salarian laboratories, Tevos was still managing what Refugees they had managed to evacuate, Din Von was managing the council's flailing economy.

"Once." Admiral Shepard had been providing a lot of details concerning the Prethoryn to the council as well. "We found out that their immune systems were so god damned hardy that anything that could make them so much as sneeze would be a dramatically greater threat to us then it would be to them."

"Now it seems that immune system is a weakness." Esheel commented as she moved onto the next topic of conversation. "The Question becomes a matter of the most effective way to utilise it."

"We'd probably burn through Agri-world's worth of organic matter trying to get rid of all the Prethoryn in council Space, let alone the rest of them." Din Von commented as he looked at the logistics of the situation. "That's even assuming that they don't know what happened and we could force feed them some Dextro amino pills." That would be rather difficult.

"Possible solution." Esheel flipped over the screen on her omni-tool revealing what might resemble a strain of DNA but with a few abnormalities. Sparatus looked at the file with his own omni-tool and smack himself in the face.

"Why in spirit's name have you been splicing DNA and DAP!?"

"Science." Esheel simply replied bluntly. Dioxide Nucleic Acid and Dextro Amino Protein's were supposed to be incompatible on a bio-chemical level, so naturally some Salarian mad scientists had set out to prove that assumption wrong.

"I should've known." The General slapped himself in the head.

"Results are currently mixed. Proving difficult to replicate DAP from DNA or vice versa. May have to resort to DAP biochemical warfare for now." Esheel brought up a variety of rare specimens from Palaven, a variety of poisonous insects, reptiles and fish. "Focus on DAP neurotoxin, increase lethality several times over with smaller doses."

Course neither the Union nor the Council had been pulling their punches. Sparatus opened up a video file of Thuban when she pulled a particularly memorable stunt, using a worm hole to intercept a Prethoryn as it was about to crash into a planet and opened the other-side of the hole onto a another Prethoryn that had yet to reach it's own target and gibbed the both of them in the process. Currently the Prethoryn were being limited to a single sector of space, with a focus on interception and redirection, standard Union policy when it comes to the Prethoryn is 'turn it around or turn it to ash.'

"What about the Queen that you captured?" Tevos asked looking at the Admiral suspiciously. "You haven't been able to establish communication with it yet?"

"The Draconics are still trying to get her to talk back to them, they think that she can understand them but we're still having a hard time getting her to talk back." Admiral Shepard explained bluntly. "To put it in simplest terms, they think she's suffering from 'learned helplessness.'" The Admiral explained letting out a sigh. "Just letting her watch footage of Sovereign is enough to elicit a feeling the Draconics can only describe as mind numbing fear and pain."

"A common reaction to the Reapers I expect." Tevos stated and the Admiral had to agree with the Councilor's suspicion.

"And your Valkyrie's?" Desolas asked suspiciously.

"Working on it." The Admiral stated as she looked down at the latest report.


Valhalla Industries, the largest Synth Cabal in Union territory. Here thousands of minds from war vets be they retired or dead see second life as semi-immortal Einhergar model synthetics. That's what the brochures say, in reality considering the fact that the main opponents of Valhalla has been the Prethoryn the majority of the Grey Boxes come from death row inmates with multiple life sentences to carry out in a cybernetic hell. In these military grade humanoid mech's Grey boxes are installed providing valuable data from as much as a centuries worth of front line combat experience is uploaded, whether that be the heavy YMIR Model, Medium sized LOKI or even the light weight and small DWRF. The people here are also responsible for manufacturing such weapons as the Mjornir tank gun, Gungnir rods, Draupnir mines the list went on, not only are they a mercenary company but they also deal in arms and armour. Right now though their newest project wasn't synthetic at all, rather they were dealing in rehabilitation, turning a niche category of former Batarian slaves into front line warriors.

Inside a personalised chamber was a mostly nude Asari, the important parts had been covered, in that pastes had been attached where important, and she had a large hood that covered most of her face including her eyes and ears, but she as well as others were having issues. The main issue here related to several piercings in their crests, under normal circumstances these roughly three to twelve glass like piercings would just be written off as a fashion accessory, however they were anything but, and the contents of their history could be summed up as a horror story.

Compliance Needles. When Batarian's get Asari young enough, at least twenty years old but the implants can be done as far as forty, they insert these needles into their brains between the ridges of their crests. Stage one, the needles monitor the Asari's brain waves and build's a neural map, as the Asari grows older more material is fed into them and root deeper, eventually, around the time that they reach sexual maturity, the needles will emerge out the back of the Asari's crest. Stage two has the additional functions activated, using the aforementioned neural map the needles can act as a aphrodisiac and mood balancer, delighting the wearer and relaxing them, mental path ways are monitored, specific thought patterns are encouraged others dissuaded, even one's memory and language skills can be manipulated. Perhaps most horrifying of all, once fully grown in the implants are impossible to remove without killing the subject, and even though they can be rendered inoperable they are equally prone to hacking.

The technology has a great deal in common with indoctrination, considering the fact it was supposedly the Batarian's brain child it only made sense that the two shared similar origins, all the benefits of studying and figuring out how to counter Reaper indoctrination, none of the getting indoctrinated yourself. While at it the Asari go through additional physical conditioning to advance their grade as sex slaves, their vision and hearing get cut off in order to enhance upon their sense of taste, touch and smell, their sensitivity is further enhanced and their bodies made to take on a very specific shape through the use of hormone laced lotions and body oils. The Batarian's had truly perfected a method for taking a species and making them into a living sex doll, and yet the scientists of Valhalla can still see a way of rehabilitating them.

The Compliance Needles? The false memory technology means that entirely new forms of training can be uploaded into their minds within hours. The sensory issues? Cybernetics can be used to fix and replace both the eyes and the ears, while similar methods as to how they got to be like that in the first place can be used to realign the overly sensitive bodily tissues. Brain damage? Not to mention a distinct lack of Biotic implants because the Batarian's had no desire to arm their sex slaves? The Thorian, which is both capable of repairing damaged neural tissues and once it lodges itself in the bodies Eezo nodes fully capable of assuming the role of the latest implant technology, not to mention enhancing upon the Asari's existing psionic potential. Further Biotic Amp and necessary Psionic Amplifiers and Dampeners can be attached through the same compliance needle technology. Strap the subject into a appropriate Hard suit with armour plating whose thickness is measured in inch's and strapped with plenty of reserve power generators and you get one of the most violently destructive one women wrecking crews the galaxy has ever seen since The Dragoons AKA a Valkyrie.

Aren't there problems here? Of course there were, lots of them, instead of a living sex doll fully capable of being reprogrammed at a moments notice there was instead a living weapon of mass destruction that could be mind wiped at a moments noticed, brainwashed into a unfeeling killing machine, and still looked good enough in a black dress to be let into half the evening parties in union territory. No one ever accused Valhalla of being upstanding citizens, but a mostly synthetic foot soldier contingent each with a Quantum Entanglement uplink directly to Valhalla's floating servers meant that they were also the Cabal with the lowest casualty overturn against the Prethoryn, and their plethora of weapons of mass destruction also meant that they had the highest success rate.

A Tebrid doctor, the station's chief surgeon who was still doing largely experimental surgeries on the Asari, floated into one of the medical rooms that had been prepared for the former slaves. Progress had been made with her rehabilitation, the surgery to replace her defective sensory organs had already been completed and were now fully functional, and she had reached the point in time where she could wear clothes again without breaking down into orgasms, and thanks to her new false memories she believed she always had. "Good even Takira." Artificial eyes blinked as the Asari stiffly turned her head to meet the six eyes of the Tebrid that had been overseeing her rehabilitation.

"Good Morning Doctor-Doctor." The asari spoke in a monotone deep female voice.

The more fashion conscious of the crew suggested orange iris's to contrast with blue skin, which Doctor-Doctor complied with, aside from that other augments included a head band like artificial auditory sensor, an artificial voice box because apparently she's never used her own before beyond moaning in pleasure and a artificial spine in order to support and realign her spine and on a related note breast reduction surgery in order to prevent further damage to the spine. There was also a basic psi Dampener-Amplifier package tacked onto her head which currently took on a cybernetic hood, pending removal depending on the Thorian's success in teaching her psi control. Aside from the implants attached to her head and spine there were several ports underneath her clothes buried into her major muscle groups for when she inevitably gets outfitted for her hard suit, connected together via tubes of artificial muscle fibres and although they weren't visible as the Asari exceeded a 10% body mass of cybernetics she also had a pair of extra artificial kidney's installed, for the purpose of filtering out the metals that slowly bleed off of her cybernetics, she already had her immune system redone to accept them without rejection. All together in a effort to rehabilitate these Asari sex drones into something more useful they ended up making them even more drone like. Ironic. Aside from all the implants there was also a tattoo located on Takira's left butt cheek that seemed to have something resembling a hidden QR code in the image, which apparently served as the equivalent to a Batarian cattle brand.

"I was wondering how you were adjusting to life on the ship?" The Tebrid asked looking at his data pad.

Takira had no idea the details of her past, at least not the real ones, currently she was labouring under the belief that she had been a Asari commando that had lost her hearing and vision in a explosion, one who had since been outfitted by Valhalla and was now being rehabilitated back to full health.

"As well as can be expected Doctor. Tor has been supporting me and we've since engaged in several rounds of coitus." Tor a name that blights their very existence. Here they were attempting to rehabilitate these women away from being one dimensional living sex-drones and then actual, literal, plowing Tor...!

"It's good that you've been making friends." It was then that the Tebrid actually looked up from his notes and noticed the presence of pieces of hardware that weren't listed in his notes. As a start: ears, not Asari ears, canal's located just underneath the start of the third crest ridges as one would expect, but rather triangle shaped animal ears such as what you'd find on a variety of domesticated earth native animals, not only that but his spinal implant also now led into a bushy tail. Doctor-Doctor nearly snapped his tablet out of sheer unimaginable rage. Only a handful of the station's crew were high ranking enough to have their own personalised auto-doc, and fewer still had the parts necessary for this kind of procedure, but only one would actually do this. "TOOORRR!"


Down in the Vehicle bay for Valhalla station a muscular black haired man with a grotesquely oversized pompadour was controlling a crane via remote control and was using it for his own pet project. The man's sheer bulk might've given the impression that he was some kind of professional weight lifter, but looks can be deceiving. Across exposed 'flesh' thin lines of chrome could still be made out indicating the presence of cybernetics, where one might wonder? Everywhere. This man's entire body was composed of a combination of military grade hardware and high quality customised synthetic skin and where appropriate hair in order to create a approximation of Elvis Presley if he chose weight lifting and body sculpting as a vice instead of drugs and alcohol. As he was putting the finishing touches on his pet project he heard the familiar synthetic screeching and high pitch chirps of his sitcom arch-nemesis.

"Tor you-" Several chirps echoed out for a prolonged period of time. The Auto-translators don't process swearing. "-miserable blight on-" Another round of Chirps, shorter as the floating starfish zoomed into the vehicle bay, having cursed all the way from medical. To be fair there truly was no words in English that would accurately describe what the Tebrid was saying. Tor learned some of them just to mess with him a while back. "-my very Existence!"

"Hey Doc. Just putting some finishing touches on my masterpiece here." Tor indicated the machine that he had been building but Doctor smacked the controls out of his hands with a lash of his tentacles and wrapped around Tor's head and glared at him with all six eyes at point blank range.

"I wonder, how our superiors are going to react to you turning one of the people that we were working to rehabilitate into functional members of the unit into one of your personal sex units!" The Tebrid's eyes twitched as they glared filled with hatred. The android moved Doctor's Tentacles away as he turned to face what he was working on.

"That's how." Below was a heavy weapons platform, similar to the Hammer Head, a so-called Tactical Gear, but smaller, likely only big enough to fit one person. It rolled forwards and backwards a few times like a tank, unfolded into a hover craft, and from there unfolded even further into a form that was shaped like a giant dog, albeit a giant dog with missle launchers attached to it's shoulders, a tank gun to it's back and a long spindly tail that then pulled out a long high frequency chain saw that had been sheathed onto one of the back legs. And then at the push of a button it walked over and joined the other two Tanks Tor had already assembled and turned back into its identical base form. "I call em Fenris."

"Your doing I take it?" It was easy to forget when you get caught up in Tor's antics that he was legitimately capable of impressive feats of engineering, more understandable when you realise that the stupid brute never bothered to learn any of it himself and instead keeps a back up server dedicated to other people's memories of hot-rods, cybernetics and fire arms. "How does this relate to your highly unethical tampering with my patient!?"

"Suggested that before we strap them em into the units that we should get them use to extra body parts, make sure they don't get hit with Dysmorphism when they get plugged in." It would be one thing if the Fenrir's were humanoid walkers, but it was quite another that four legged were easier to build and a lower body profile made them more stealthy. As for the reason tactical gears were being used at all. "It's one thing to convince those three that they used to be Asari Commando's, it's another to not have any of the actual physical conditioning. So you can explain to them what they really used to do, or we can strap them into machines that can do for them what they cannot?"

"Meaning not only did you make fundamental changes to her body through your unethical implants, but you also had her running around your apartment acting as a dog, while you had her over your bed post I assume!" The longer the conversation progressed the more enraged the Tebrid became. "And why are you talking about 'them?' Are you planning an entire pack of these mechanical abominations!?" Tor Handed Doctor a Data pad.

"Psi results on Takira, Kali and Halla." The Tebrid looked down at the chart, their eyes nearly bugging out of their fleshy body.

"10's!? All three of them?" The Tebrid looked at the file. There were a number of possible explanations for the Asari sister's potency, looking through the file the three of them looked like they had suffered the heaviest brain damage from the implants particularly around the area's of the brain related to memory and pleasure indicating that their owner's had gotten particularly enthusiastic with the use of the Compliance Needles, the Thorian could've eaten the affected tissues and replaced them with more of itself and included the Prothean cipher which would bump up their psi-grade by another notch. However that didn't explain this highly active area of the brain that goes beyond every other asari they've examined, even Sha'ira who has had her entire brain rebuilt by the Thorian. Doctor-Doctor next looked at their personal file, all three Asari were second generation purebloods, both them and their parents were bred from the Batarian's stock of Asari slaves, which makes even less sense as this makes the three of them a investment that whatever Batarian family has been raising them that they've sunk literally hundreds of years into. So why have they been treated so much worst than all the other former slaves that are currently aboard the research station? Then again, the Batarians weren't the only ones who mistreated the girls. Reading their files further Doctor-Doctor saw that not only had this pervert had them acting like dogs, but he also took advantage of their Compliance Needles to make them think they were too. "I'm amazed, I should not be able to able to physically feeling disgust but that is the only way I can describe this feeling."

"You keep telling me that." Tor stated as he looked down at the trio of tactical gears he put together with a smile.

"I hope your glorified sex-pets are at least able to help us deal with the Prethoryn." Doctor-Doctor stated letting out a sigh, and then the ship shook, as if someone was knocking on it's front door.


Author's Note:

RonaldM40196867: True. Not a lot really, aside from it's stealth drive and the ME2 Upgrades we don't really see alot of it in action.

Guest: You were saying? I'll deal with the typo when I have time.

Gianfranco Cembran: Glad you find it interesting.