Author's Note: Alrighty than! Another week down, another story published, Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!


Chapter 33: Asari Space Part 2

Hive Fleet Gorgon was a particularly nasty lot among the various hive fleets. It had the benefit of chewing through several groups of Lithoid ships and integrated the crew directly into their skeletal structure, consequentially several of the ships developed the ability to process minerals into Mots, Plasma and Crystal, and weaponize them.

Hive Fleet Dracula on the other hand spent a bit too much time around Lich worlds and so consequentially learned their techniques for reanimating the dead, multiplying the damage they were capable of exponentially.

Hive Fleet Surtr was perhaps the simplest, and thus the most dangerous in a fight, for they had learned from the Draconian's and their pyromancy, and their psionic swordsmanship.

Hive Fleet Echidna, no remarkable details about it to differentiate from the others, other than being the oldest, largest and most stubborn of the Hive Fleets that entered the Galaxy.

These were among the most powerful the opponents of Hive Fleet's Chimera and Hydra, their mission simple and straight forward, bring the other Hive Fleets to heel, either through diplomacy or through force which didn't matter. What did though was for the time being they'd be doing so at reduced power.

"I advise that the three of you use the opportunity to integrate with my own spores." The Thorian's consciousness informed the other three portions of the gestalt hive mind. "I do not intend to take a long period of time away, only long enough to deal with this problem."

The Other three parts of the Consciousness had been informed of the situation on Lessus. The Council and Union had been informed too. While everyone was moving to deal with the situation the Thorian was one of the entities already there.

"It seems..."

"Unlike me?" The Thorian replied to the question. "That is par for the course apparently. According to some opinions 'I' as an individual doesn't even exist, merely a collection of personalities of those that I have consumed." The Thorian looked to Baol knowingly as it said that. "Perhaps the 'down time' will let me sort things out."


The Lessus temple was a flurry of activity. The Thorian had access to the greatest minds in the galaxy to help it speedrun the group through the technology needed to get a Ardat Yakshi combat ready. They had one chance to get it right after all. Rila had volunteered, despite her mother's protests, but the same seed of duty that had fallen from Samara had born a daughter who was just as capable of bringing her wroth upon the heads of those who threaten her family. Rila had been stripped of clothing and submerged into the Thorian, where wires of synthetic tissue had been inserted for the purpose of performing the Ai guided surgeries to augment her. Samara was looking away from her daughter, at the landscape before her, for half of her life Samara wanted nothing less than to keep her family safe, and now one of her daughters had made much the same decision that Samara had made, and as much as it shamed her to admit it for far better reasons than she had.

Samara never knew that pride could hurt so much, and so she looked at the landscape of Lessus though the view wasn't much better. The once Beautiful forest the temple over saw was on fire, and Samara had a feeling she knew who was responsible.


With a Kick one of the Volus Abominations was sent flying crashing into a Charging Banshee, the exotic gas inside of the once Volus body ignited the biotic field and exploded. The latest ball of fire had added to the inferno that the forest had been consumed in, the fire and the smoke meant that the Husks had a harder time finding and shooting at him, as opposed to Smok who could sense them with psionics, with exception to the Collectors that is. The mutilated Prothean clones had retained their ancestors ability to track by sensing the remnant psionics in a given area and were trying to use that to snipe Smok and coordinate the other husks to kill the big lizard. Speaking of which, a Brute charged through the flames slamming his fists down to strike at Smok. Smok stretched out his hand and a nearby stone was ripped out of the ground, vibrated into a super heated mass, flattened and tore through the Brute like a hot knife through butter, splitting him along his torso. Space warped and a Adjutant appeared next to Smok attempting to tear his helmet off, and Smok snapped it's neck with one hand before it had the chance, right on time for the invisible stabbing hand of a Ghost to nearly take Smok's head anyway. Even if Smok was wearing dragon scale dealing with all of these attacks was taxing his mental stamina.

"I could really use some 'Justice' right about now." Muttering that through a psionic link, Smok heard some whistling in the air. "Well, I guess I asked for that." Several boulders had been biotically hurled into the air and were coming down like an artificial meteor storm, Smok using his psionics to guide the stones onto groups of husks. As Smok finally thought he had room to breath a group of Hunters swarmed him from the fire and smoke, some of them on fire, others only burned and healing, meaning that they had already cracked fire proofing, and if they got away then fire would no longer work on them, as they were in process of doing now. Dragon he hates dealing with these things. "Alright if that's how this was going to work out."

Fire is all about movement on the molecular level, when molecules start to move really fast they heat up, that's why your food is hot after taking it out of the microwave. Then what about the opposite? What about when you decide to take molecules and make them snap stiff in but a few moments? The Answer: Things get very cold very fast. With a loud snap the fires in the immediate vicinity were extinguished, the entire area covered in a layer of frost, all of the energy in the vicinity was released as a single bolt of lightning popping the organ sacks of several Ravagers. Harvesters and Collectors who were circling around in the air fell down and smashed against the ground, invisible Ghost assassins were revealed frozen stiffly, and then shattered collapsing under their own weight, not even the Hunters had been spared in the attack with several rocks being hurled through the air and smashing them. In a single attack all of the Husks that had gathered to attack Smok were all wiped out, Smok fell backwards landing on his tail as he caught his breath, flash freeze was a potent technique but exhausting, not to mention that he was a cold blooded reptile. He didn't want to use it sooner because then Smok would be surrounded by an unknown number of enemies without any stamina, kind of like what he was now. Marauder Gunfire bounced off of Smok's armour as he let out a sigh and got up.

"It's too damned cold here anyway." And thus Smok walked away from the scene of the carnage in order to hunt for some more husks. Smok's hunt continued on throughout the night, at first he would deal with the occasional possessed, now no longer, and as he started to circle around the area chasing, avoiding, harassing and slaughtering enemy forces as he went he gradually understood why when he noticed that someone was cleaning up after them. All of the remains of the husks he was defeating, no matter the state that he left them in, as well as any of the vegetation or wild life infected by the Reaper's nano-technology, was gone. "That can't be good." A roar answered Smok's concern.


At the temple Rila's augmentations were flowing as fast and as efficiently as possible, lightning surged through the room at the sheer mass of psionic power that was flowing into Rila's body from the Thorian's telepathic link across the galaxy. When the Thorian reached it's limit on how much psionic energy it could muster to transfer into the alien woman the Custodian's acted, a single needle plunged into Rila's brain vibrating at the exact frequency to turn a very narrow section of brain no wider than a penny to goo triggering an aneurysm, the with the last of it's consciousness before it fell asleep the Thorian gathered it's spores and swarmed on this exact spot remaking this part of the brain.

"Comparing, Comparing..." A Custodian gave a impression of a loading bar as it watched the data flow into its positronic matrix. "Success! Miss Rila's neural chemistry is now identical to Miss Takira's."

While the Asari celebrated The Custodian's were long since busy. Synthetic Muscle tubes were spread throughout Rila's body, correcting her muscle memory and providing a conduit of Medigel, which entirely replaced the Thorian's presence inside of her skull thanks to the liberal application of fungicide, the strings of silver muscle were paired with subdermal implants, sockets in which cables directly connecting her body's muscles to her future mechanical exo-suit/tactical gear would plug into. Over three hundred models of Psionic Aplifiers and Dampeners were sorted through by the Custodians, after taking into consideration Asari bio-chemistry and Neural map, devices performance and efficiency, and user reviews the total number of possible devices were narrowed down to twelve, Rila as the recipient made the final decision, which resembled rows of Crest piercings with Rila commenting on the Irony of her mother finally letting her get her crest pierced. Through the use of medical nano-technology the Newly Developed L4 'Banshee' Model of implant was implemented by upgrading Rila's existing implant network synchronising the high precision and high power effects of the L3B and L3C, a high capacity Grey box was slotted into the gap between the two hemispheres of her brain filled with all the memories that she would need to utilise her newly enhanced biotic, psionic and cybernetic abilities on the battlefield.

"Good evening Miss Rila. I am Syntho Organic Link System or SOLS. It is my pleasure to act as your inbuilt cybernetic interface. It is my responsibility to regulate your Biotic and Psionic implants, as well as download and upload memories of relevant training to a given activity or at your request." Rila recalled that the scriptures used to describe artificial intelligence or anything like it as a bane on organic life. Now she had one speaking to her from inside of her head. That was going to take some getting used to. Also a set of artificial kidneys, since it was apparent that she had crossed the limit of what's considered a 'safe' number of cybernetic implants. It also had a built in emergency boot to shut her implants down and restrict her powers in the event that she lost control.

In the mean time the Tebrid's were working to assemble a new suit of armour using their fabricators on board the ship and was going to send it down to Rila so that she will have more to protect her than cybernetic implants, the design was based on one of the armours prepared for Valhalla's Valkyrie program, the Fenrir Exo-armour which had the heaviest armour, the strongest cannons and the highest mobility. Also the one that Samara was most familiar with having seen its battle prowess in action herself. Rila may switch over to the long distance Hugin or the stealthy Kraken in the future but for now she was taking comfort in the familiar. A clock began ticking down, three minutes that was all it would take to finish turning her daughter into a monster.

"I could use some help down here!" Smok had the common decency to extinguish the fire he started, but in its place something else was tearing through the forest. Something massive. Samara read the reports of the abominations that crawled out of the Citadel, the Tebrid's call a mass of three or more husks combining together a Scion, a reference to the process of grafting different species of plants together to form a unique organism, apparently a reference to how no two Scion's were the same. Even if a Cannibal absorbed the same kind of husk as it's neighbours the damage the corpse had sustained would determine the physical capabilities of the new organsm. Samara prayed to Athame herself that held true here, she never wanted to see the likes of this again for the rest of her life.

Rather than referencing the artistic process of grafting, this was more of a Grotesque, a giant hulking mass of flesh from multiple aliens stitched together with and laced with the Reaper's techno-organic infection and tumours that was shambling like a tide through the woods. A Batarian Cannibal was at the core, followed up by the body of the Brute Smok bisected, several Banshee's had been strapped to it's back reduced to inflated organ sacks on top of which was the corpses of several Ravagers. The Hunters had been turned into a layer of extra armour which was doing a good job of increasing the Grotesque's durability. The forelimbs were replaced by two separate Harvester husks, whose tips of the tentacles were in turn replaced by the forelimbs from other husks, Tyrant shields, stabbing claws, Particle beam totting Collector limbs and the heads of the Adjutants. This shambling horror was all being carried on the backs of several Tyrants who had the unfortunate distinction of having several lengths of synthorganic tendrils knitted throughout their bodies connecting them back into the Grotesque above like some kind of deformed centaur. Worst of all, it was Possessed. Smok had been busy, now he was running for his life. While the Grotesque trotted various tendrils were ripping through Adjutant teleportation powers to strike at him all while Smok could currently only run away under a rain of ravager weapons fire. He wasn't having a good night.

"We'll buy time for you to reposition!" Samara said into the communicator as she and her fellow Justicar's prepared more ammunition to attack the hulking monster with. "Throwing stones worked last time, prepare to hit again, in the mean time snipers line the ridge, lets see if some gun fire can tear that thing down a few notches."

The Asari lined the cliff weapons drawn, weapons glowing with the light of biotics as they fired Warped shots into the body of the Grotesque one after another, popping the sacks of biotic organs on it's back like zits and tearing off the heavy weapons that was being used to harass Smok. Then the creature turned it's attention on the Monastery, the rest of it didn't even have to move, if not for the Justicar's barriers and armour then the finger blades would've torn through their skulls. And yet someone had grabbed hold of one of the tendrils anyway as it was about to attack Samara.

"You, will not, touch her!" Rila crushed the tendril with her bare hand as she looked down at the Grotesque that was below. "The Fenrir is now arriving." A streak of fire appeared from the sky, bits of packing falling away as the tactical gear unfolded itself and entered terminal velocity. A flash appeared in Rila's vision as she was treated to memories that were not her own.

"Alright ladies, you have biotics!" The Huntress instructor indicated the artificial rock wall behind her. "Use em! Create a nice Zero G environment for yourselves and yank yourselves up this wall!"

Rila used her biotics to lift herself into the air a few feet off of the ground.

The Gym instructor clapped his hands to get the attention of the classroom.

"Alright everyone! We're practicing move around with psionics today!" The artificial gravity in the gym was disabled. On the planet their Psionics was barely strong enough to fetch a cup of coffee, here though? Everything being effectively weightless had its advantages.

Rila's own mind caused her to rocket through the air as she rapidly approached the wolf shaped tank, the unit's torso splitting open as Rila slipped into the ready made cockpit which closed on her, as she was wondering how she was going to see out of this thing several telescopic units jammed into her body, attaching to her thighs, fore arms and the base of her neck. The entire unit landed on the mountain sliding into place on the monastery's landing pad as Rila felt her point of view changing to that of the Tactical gear. Already Rila was trying to stand up but the front heavy machine wasn't letting her.

"Whose a good girl!?" Master was waving a treat in front of my nose as I danced on my back legs.

"Woof, Woof~!" I am Give me!

"Yes You are! You are!"

Rila settled into the mechanical dog body like it had been hers her entire life. She'll question who was the one who picked out these memories later, for now she didn't have any problems moving. For now there was a monster that needed killing. With a feeling that Rila distinctly remembers as her right ring finger twitching Rila loaded a Mjornr shell into the main gun of the Fenrir and fired. The Canister was ripped off under the force of the friction, the gas inside ignited and crashed into the Grotesque, with an active biotic field protecting it. The ensuing blast tore away at the monster's armour, leaving behind a damaged but alive hulk. Enraged the creature forgot about Smok wholesale and slammed it's fists into the ground in frustration as dozens of synthorganic tendrils were flooded out to attack the wolf-like machine.

As I stepped off of the shuttle Plates of tech-armour formed in the midair around me riding on top of my biotic fields. I can keep them up indefinitely with the help of support from my own biotic field so why not?

Plates of Omni-gel formed in midair suspended by a biotic field, which was then reinforced by a laser grid around the body fiering into the biotic field turning the entire machine into a haze of purple and orange. Rila wouldn't be fighting long range like this, but the trade off had dozens of synthorganic tendrils being burned out of existence.

"AAARRROOO!" Howling into the night Rila jumped off of the mountain, claws of vibrating Biotic fields and rare crystal lasers popping out of her front paws as she pounced on the grotesque. In terms of brute strength the two of them were roughly equal, in terms of biting into the enemy while coated in a high energy biotic field, less so.

The Grotesque was subsequently torn apart like it had picked a fight with a rabid animal, it spoke volumes of just how tenacious the creature was that it so thoroughly refused to died even after being torn to pieces, so Smok took the usual path to solving difficult problems for him and he set the damned thing on fire and kept it on fire until all that was left was a big pile of ashes.

With the enemy dealt with Samara flipped a switch disabling Rila's implants and rendering her unconscious, because as much as she loves her daughter she would really like to have not allowed the Thorian to make her into a monster. Rila was returned to the Justicar's custody where a full medical scan was conducted on her, and by every measure the Justicar's had, which they've been using to identify Ardat Yakshi for thousands of years, she was completely cured of her condition. A situation none of the Justicar's would believe if not for the precedence that had recently been set by Takira, now though? Now as soon as the Thorian woke up they'd be using it to do it again.


The Council was happy to hear about the good news, especially since Rila and the other Ardat Yakshi had chosen to stay as citizens of citadel space, meaning that this hoard of extremely powerful combatants were remaining in the council's employ. Course each of the girls would be receiving the full range of training needed to manage the various powers and abilities being given to them by this super soldier program by the Union, just one of many things the council had to discuss in their chambers, and one of the many reasons they were eating in again.

"So than." Sparatus started things off as he forked a Dextro Dumpling into his mouth. "I'll start things off with our work then." With the back of his fork the Turian Councillor pressed a button and brought up a holographic schematic. The Union didn't completely destroy Sovereign, several pieces of it's body was salvaged and in a move of great magnanimity given to the council to work on reverse engineering, this wasn't a surprise to anyone. The Council's entire history of technological development has been built on reverse engineering bastardised Reaper technology. So each of the Council Governments were given the task of trying to reverse engineer the technology in question. The Turian Hierarchy had been given the guns, and they also had the benefits of the blueprints lifted from the Batarians.

"Test fire with the Thanix is proving to be successful." The Test fleet in question was even given permission to use Omega's broadside as a target. "We're reasonably certain the Thanix can punch through most ship hulls." A hologram of Omega's asteroid played, featuring hunks of uranium, tungsten and Iron composite being fired into the asteroid with enough force to leave a huge crater in the thought to be indestructible mass. "But there is a problem." As there usually was. "We currently aren't able to produce a energy source powerful enough for a weapon on the same size of the one used by Sovereign." Meaning that the Reaper's would have them out-gunned. "This on the other hand we've had more success with." A second weapon schematic, the Reaper Blackstar secondary cannons, the black hole guns.

"This is called the M-490 Blackstorm, this weapon uses high yield energy cells to encase small particles of matter in a high powered mass effect field elevating the gravity of the particles to as close as we can get to infinite as possible. This in turn creates a small artificial singularity that draws in everything around it crushing it for an extremely short period of time, before quickly, explosively restoring normalised gravity." Another section of test footage played out, the heavy weapon firing a dense black and red mass effect field into a group of targets explosively ripping them out of the ground, compressing them together, before exploding them into a mass of shrapnel and leaving behind several hunks of smoking shrapnel in the process. "It doesn't match the performance of the Blackstar exactly, but it doesn't have to either." They weren't going to beat the reapers by ripping off their technology one to one after another.

"My turn then." Tevos put down her cup of instant noodles as she produced another hologram, this time depicting broken hull pieces. "We've determined that the Reaper hull is composed of a composite of Super conductor materials that has been forcibly compressed into a high density neutron mass, if the Union's research is correct, likely reinforced by a high power Mass Effect field 'locking' the molecules of the hull into place around the field in question." This the council already knew. "The issue here is that we don't have access to the same type of Power source used by the Reapers. So we can only do this at a tenth of the thickness that the Reapers utilise, and we have to come up with additional layers on top of that." A new hologram, depicting multiple layers of different materials, and several miniature black holes.

"Instead though we used more durable materials, what you are looking at is a layered composite consisting of Superconductors and Carbon Nanotube sheets." Weirdly enough Carbon Nanotubes are only super conductive when in contact with other super conductors. Why wasn't important. "Using industrial grade Mass Effect fields we've been able to crush these layers together into a high density neutron mass for the purpose of making a hull. Hideously expensive process by the way, and not just because of the amount of material consumed." It also pretty much blew their previous research into multi-layered rotating, deflector type mass effect fields into the 'useless and counter productive bin.' Instead though. "This on the other hand is the fruits of our research into combining Rare crystal with Mass Effect fields, which allows us to create a protective energy field to destroy or reduce incoming targets." Previously the Standard issue strategy in ship defence was a mass effect field to reduce the mass of incoming projectiles and a Guardian laser grid to shoot them down. Now the combination Mass Effect energy field should be able to destroy and deflect in coming projectiles and if not? What was the point of a hideously strong armour if you're afraid of letting it get hit?

Esheel put down her take out container and chop sticks as she presented her own people's research, not technological as the others had been but biological.

"Thorian mass has been fed Vorcha Cells, learned to accurately copy and create them." Two Holograms were produced by the Councillor, one a cluster of fungal cells mimicking Vorcha cells, the other, a sinister looking nanite. "Samples of Thorian being fed Reaper nanites, adapt to infection, transmit details back to nearest Thorian cluster, infected sample disposed of, test is conducted again. Intend to eventually produce Thorian sample immune to Reaper nanite infection." Thanks to Sovereign's techno-organic corpse of a core they had a lot of samples that they could conduct this experiment with. A second hologram was produced, this time of a canister full of red viscous liquid with the symbol of a red cross on it. "Union has shared medi-gel biotech with the Salarians." Medi-gel was a type of bacteria that has undergone extensive genetic engineering and gene-splicing with stem cells from a variety of Union races, recently samples of Thorian spores were being experimentally mixed in. "VI Program designed to mimic Asari gene mapping has been developed. Intend to reverse engineer Medi-gel for Dextro compatibility." Which will help to improve upon the survivability of Turians across citadel space, however this was not the main goal of the program. "Exposing medi-gel to Thorian psionic influence, am hoping that this will cause similar psionic inducing effects as the Thorian itself, also subjecting Thorian to reverse gene mapping as well to try and create compatibility with Turians and Quarians."

Sparatus knew damn well that the Salarian hadn't gone through the trouble of creating a reverse gene maping AI to help the Quarians.

"Increased Guard or Patrols?" Sparatus asked before popping another dumpling.

"To be decided." Esheel stated simply before eating some more of her takeout.

"That just leaves us then." Din Von put his protein shake down as he brought up a budgetary report on the projects everyone had been working on, intending to bankroll and provide schematics. "The union has already provided schematics for the Mater Disentegrators and the Energy Absorbers." Meaning that they had four different kinds of weapons to cram onto their theoretical warship now. Lovely. But the Union found exactly two weapons that would be effective against the Reapers and they wanted as many of them in circulation as possible. "If we use the energy absorbers then when we fight the reapers we can use their own energy to power the ship!" Tevos snapped having been struck by a moment of brilliance. "If we can get close enough to use them." Like that the four of them continued to pick through Sovereign's corpse in search of more useful data or technology that they could use against the other reapers.


Review Section:

Clown2107: May I suggest a compromise? You're enjoying reading the story, I enjoy writing it, so let's both do our parts and have a good time.

RonaldM40196867: Not as Charming as they like to think. Yes.