Author's Note: Last of the First Contact war. Starting with the next chapter we're gonna start to see some diplomacy. In any case Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy! My apologies it seems I posted the wrong chapter!
Chapter 3: First Contact War Part 3
The latest footage from Adek was needless to say, quite grim, a veritable undead horde had overwhelmed the local forces and the not local Mercenaries hired to go there, if the sheer amount of individual files was any indication every Eclipse, Blood Pack and Talon Merc group in Omega was sent over and made touch down on the planet, certainly enough to make a series. Not a bad idea, it would help to calm down rumours of a zombie apocalypse that was tearing through Batarian space, they'd have to get a director on that. The stars of this would be horror movie saga would be more sympathetic if they weren't Batarian slavers and faceless Omega Mercenaries though. As for the point of origin of this footage, that honour went to the Batarian ambassador Iprekon here. Why was he here? The Answer was obvious. His own government kept losing contact with their ships whenever they got close to Adek, The army of omega Mercenaries have been overwhelmed, meaning that the resources he could bring to the fold have been exhausted. He has no other choice but to go to the council for aid right now.
"I find myself suspicious of the massive amount of not-Batarians on this footage." Councillor Tevos stated waving her omni-tool in the air.
"Hang on I'm running the footage through a facial recognition program... Odd. I'm seeing a large number of people reported dead or missing after Colony attacks. I wonder why?" Councillor Valern stated as she worked on her omni-tool.
General Sparatus just rolled his eyes. These two knew exactly what was going on all this time, but whereas he wanted to start blasting the Batarians back to the stone age and rescue the people they had taken these two kept his hand from acting. Well now's as good a time as any.
"A hostile alien force invades our territory and you three are sitting here beating around the bush!" Iprekon shouted swinging his arms around angrily.
"They are beating around the bush, I will cut it down." General Sparatus snapped losing his patience. "Your people have sponsored raids against each of our colonies, and those of the other citadel races. The people you have wrongfully taken captive have started a revolt and you have responded by hiring mercenaries to cut them down by the hundreds. By the end of the day council ships shall be sweeping through Batarian space and retrieving the people you have taken captive, however many of them are still alive that is, while your people will be facing mass arrests for your actions."
"Don't you-!"
"Charge into your space unannounced and abduct your people in mass?" General Sparatus asked one eye cocked in interest fully recognising the irony of his words. "What kind of Batarian-my apologies-Barbaric organisation do you take the Council navy for?" The ambassador took a step back unable to reply. "Good. Guards, take the prisoner to the cells if you would." To Sparatus's request two C-Sec officers walked in, grabbed the ambassador by his arms, and proceeded to drag him out on his heels.
"How much of what he showed us is a lie?" General Sparatus asked the Salarian next to him.
"I've been running VI analysis programs on the footage, near as I can tell none of this footage has been edited, including the people with gaping holes going through their bodies and still walking forward. Also if these were edited in via VI one would assume we would start seeing the same faces over and over again. But we see very little overlap, if I had to guess I would say that only ten percent of these faces appear in the footage twice, and never after their bodies have been destroyed. Examining the names attached to the footage we see that when they do appear twice the different locations are within walking distance of each other." Valern was rambling some more but Sparatus acquired an understanding of what was happening here.
"A AI program then? Super imposing injuries onto the bodies of the slaves?" Tevos asked cocking a suspicious brow.
"Again. No video footage has been altered." Valern replied.
"Then Synthoid's." Tevos stated exasperated.
"Possible. But only the Geth has enough synthetics to field these kinds of numbers." After a thought the Dalatress raised a finger. "That we know of. Adek is in the same system as an until now Dormant Mass Relay."
Sparatus paused. With a wave of his hand the map depicting all of the Mass Relays in the known galaxy was activated, which was then followed by zooming in on the 313 Relay located conveniently next to Adek, still as grey and unmoving as before this mess started.
"So the Geth then." The Turian concluded as he shrugged his shoulders and dismissed the map in question.
"Which now leaves the Question of why?" Tevos asked, something that as the most anti-synth person in the room made her extremely concerned.
"The Geth were themselves enslaved, by any reasonable measure of the term." Valern however spoke up in defence of the synthetics. "The Batarians are far more potent in their cruelties than the Quarians ever were, it could be that they chose to invade Batarian space for much the same reasons as they had rebelled. Why the theatrics is a mystery to me."
Sparatus's theory however was the simplest and most likely.
"Idle guessing only benefits the invaders, get the navy ready to deploy and we can go there to find out." And that is exactly what Sparatus did.
After the fall of Adek the Lich Navy started to break up and divide their attention to various different planets within the Batarian space, focusing their attention on slave worlds, where the bodies were piled the highest. In truth they probably scared the Batarian government enough that they would be greeted by burning pits full of the dead by the time they got there. Aw well, left more work for the rest of the fleet. For now the Dragoon's were being pulled back, with their proving trial over they needed to refocus their attention on the real fight. That didn't mean they couldn't have fun along the way.
Shepard was largely unarmoured, currently wearing only the leotard that she was wearing underneath her Dragon Scale armour, her opponent an equally unarmoured Krogan from the blood pack. Shepard began with a running start and the Krogan responded in kind, she jumped to meet him and stabbed both of her thumbs into his eye sockets causing him to scream in pain, attempting to crush Shepard in response, instead he got hit with two precise nerve strikes, one to the throat, and one to the shoulder, disabling movement and blood rage respectively and followed up with a knee to the Quad. Then Shepard took her little finger, and stabbed it underneath the youngblood's recently hardened crest and tore it off.
"GGGAAAHHH!" The Krogan doubled over screaming in pain before Shepard went over to sit with Wrex who was drinking as he watched.
"Never saw anyone take down Krogan like that." Wrex offered Shepard some of his Ryncol, perhaps out of respect, or perhaps as a prank considering it hits most aliens like ground glass.
"Most of it was knowledge I took from you and him. Rest is just from the Xenobiology course the mad scientist who made me made me take." Shepard downed some of the Ryncol, to her immediate regret.
"Ugh nasty. Still not much worse than some of the stuff they fed us in the simulation." So a mad scientist made her then eh? It would explain why she's taller than most of the other humans. "I probably shouldn't talk about everything that went into me. The project is top secret even among our own let alone talking about it with an outsider like you."
"Here's hoping yours treats you better than mine did." Wrex stated glaring at some imaginary figure. "My people were circling the drain on our home world after we nuked ourselves into the stone age. The Salarians found us 'uplifted' us and pointed us against a horde of monsters they needed killing. About three hundred years later we finished the job." Wrex breathed out a long suffering sigh.
"What happened?" Shepard asked as Wrex just glared in response.
"Everyone screwed each other over and we landed on the short end of the stick." Wrex stated staring blandly. "The Salarians had no concern about what the army of super soldiers they were raising would do after the Rachni were wiped out, I went through five 'educators' before I was fully grown, and they had went through over seventy generations before before the war was over. The Council didn't think things through either, they didn't pay any thought to what unchecked Krogan growth was like, not until our aggressive colonisation campaign had led us to conquer one of their established colonies. They raised up the Krogan to fight the enemy that they couldn't defeat, but now they couldn't defeat the Krogan either."
Well this little tale would be good for the intelligence department but that kinda left a big honking red flag open.
"How did you guys end up on the endangered species list then? By the sounds of things you were winning." Shepard asked and Wrex's face twisted with a snarl.
"The Turians." Wrex snapped glaring ahead with murderous intention. "The Turians and the Salarians. First the Salarians created a sterility plague that renders 999 out of 1000 Krogan still born, the Turians dumped it into every planet they could find and shot every Krogan in sight before we were eventually forced back to our home world." Wrex gave out a baleful glare at this point in time. "As I understand it the idea of the plague was that it was supposed to reduce our population growth back to what it was before we were taken from our monster ridden perpetually nuclear winter home world."
"A home world most of you are now trapped on." Of the one in one thousand Krogan who survived the Sterility plague, only one in one thousand Krogan survived long enough to contribute to the next generation. Anthrax would be more humane than this.
"If a monstrously slow population growth was the only factor I expect we would be able to eventually recover." Which meant that this existential horror story had more to it didn't it. "No it wasn't enough that they chopped off our quad, they also destroyed any hope for the future that we have, so now everyone would rather go out in a blaze of glory rather than actually focus on survival!" Wrex slammed his fist down on the bench hard enough to make Shepard bounce. Made sense, so long as everyone focused their attention on survival and reproduction then natural selection would eventually weed out the plague, but if everyone was too demoralised to even bother then it only made sense that they were now circling the drain.
"No one's made any attempts to cure the Genophage?" Wrex laughed at that.
"Of course they have. It's just that the council keeps shutting them down." Trying to cure the genophage itself supposedly wasn't illegal. No any company that attempted such a thing either had it's scientists killed, it's research sabotaged, or simply took the money and exchanged it for a politely worded note explaining that the matter was simply impossible. That didn't even mention the conspiracy theories that the Salarians kept introducing new and even more horrible Genophage variants.
"I'll let my bosses know. Hopefully it gets added to the to do list." Shepard stated as she let out a sigh.
"Don't bother." Wrex stated letting out a growl. "Unless you can get my people to cease our self destructive actions then we'll just repeat the Krogan rebellions all over again!"
Shepard shrugged her shoulders by way of response.
"I guess we'll just have to leave that to you then." Shepard patted Wrex on his shoulder as he paused in thought.
Later that day the Lich war machine was soon met by another force on the field of battle in the form of a another fleet of battle cruisers entering Batarian space, while yes they did conflict with the Lich ships their first priority seemed to go to raiding Batarian worlds. Ashley was quietly entered into one of the planets that were currently under attack and reached a understanding of what was going on: the council it seems was making use of the opening to shut down much of the Batarian's government and retrieve the people that had been taken for use as slaves. Contact was eventually established thanks to the synthesizers speaking in Kharsum, it took a while before proper negotiations could begin between both sides.
The Destiny Ascension was approximately four times the size of a Stellar Union Battle Ship, reportedly its design was equal parts mistake, stick and carrot. First and foremost was the mistake, when the Drive Core that would become the central power unit was made a clerical error had spat the damned thing out at twice the size it should've been, and so the ship had to be scaled up to compensate. Secondly was the stick, because the ship was so hideously large and powerful it could also be strapped with enough fire power to reduce entire solar systems to so much space debris floating in the solar winds, reportedly the Asari popped the ship above Batarian worlds, announced their intentions and the Slavers immediately surrendered. Third and for this occasion most important was it's status as a massive luxury resort, because even after you dedicate all of the surface space outside of the ship to fire power the inside was still too. Damned. Big! So since they figured there was nothing better to do with all the extra space, they decided on a the whole one two, stun any would be new primitive civilisation that they encounter with their bristling fire power and then, should they prove compliant, welcome them into the lap of luxury, and the lap's of nubile Asari dancers.
Admiral Shepard was walking along a artificial beach built inside of the ship, sand in-between her feet, a artificial lake to the right of her and a holographic sky in the ceiling, she legitimately wondered how much all of this cost. No matter. Amanda wasn't here for the strippers or a vacation, she was here to work. To her left was her guard, her own daughter turned into one of the Dragoons, fluent in the use of Kharsum and one of the most terrifying creatures Lich science has ever created, to her right an interpreter, a Mercenary known as Urdnot Wrex, filled with tales of Salarian paranoia and so thus Amanda refuses to let any Citadel made universal translators interact with her own ship's systems less they be filled with Trojans and Spyware. On the far side of the beach stood their three adversaries, Councilor's Tevos of the Asari, Councilor Valern of the Salarians, and General Sparatus of the Turians. Amanda gestured to her interpreter to introduce them.
"You all know me as Urdnot Wrex. The short one is an Admiral in the Stellar Union and head of the Expeditionary fleet, the tall one is her daughter." Wrex stated gesturing to the two humans.
"Very well then." Tevos recognised the general awkwardness of the situation and so cleared her throat. "On behalf of the Citadel council welcome to the galaxy."
Wrex held his hand over his mouth and whispered to Amanda who in rolled her eyes and in turn made a similar gesture to him. "The Admiral wants you to say what you're here to do and be done with it."
Tevos stepped back and Sparatus forward.
"Then we'll begin by returning to us the people that were taken during your raid into Batarian space." Sparatus stated making his stance clear. "I would imagine that there's a lot of people who are eager to be returned to their families."
Wrex conveyed the General's request to Amanda and she relayed her reply to the Krogan in return. "If there are any such individuals who wish to be returned to your government they are welcomed to do so." Wrex was smiling now, in that way Krogan do, nasty and Predatory like they had just cornered prey. "But understand that number is small. You are a failure, all of you. You have failed to protect them when the slavers came, and you have failed to retrieve them after they were taken, either by lack of ability or by choice. Either way the limits of your government have been made known to them and they want no more part of it."
Sparatus could only sigh at the entirely factual assessment that has been made at them.
"Can we at least negotiate the return of Batarian space?" The general asked and another round of not so secretive whispers ensued.
"The Admiral doesn't find it acceptable to have a back door leading into her people's territory left open for people to come and go." Wrex explained on the admiral's behalf.
Sparatus simply stepped backwards as Velern stepped forward.
"We would like to begin a technological trade between our races." Wrex visibly snarled at the Salarian and conveyed the context of the request to the Admiral. She raised her hand indicating for Wrex to stand down as she gave her response simply and effectively.
"On." Wrex burst out laughing.
"What did she say?" Valern asked looking at the laughing mountain of an alien.
"No." Wrex replied simply as Amanda conveyed the rest of her answer to him. "She doesn't have the authority to do that but if she did? Batarian ships are a patch work of technologies taken from council races, from there she can tell that you are overwhelmingly, hilariously, lower in terms of technology than they are. She can't imagine any of her superiors in their right minds would be willing to trade the whole of your technological knowledge for a single toaster!" Wrex replied while he continued to laugh at the Salarian's misfortune. Valern clenched their fists in anger, then released them and stepped back, the opposition was unable and unwilling to give what they wanted, for now they would simply have to look for another way as they stepped back.
"Should I presume that you have no desire to join the Citadel government then?" Tevos asked maintaining a smile that would be an award winner anywhere, anywhere but here that is.
"On." The Admiral stated again, and this time they knew what the word meant.
"Can we at least expect friendly relationships then?" The Admiral leaned over to Wrex once more and conveyed her wishes to him.
"That will be a decision for her superiors to make." Wrex stated as he smirked able to spot Tevos's twitch of frustration. "Just so you know. There are a thousand intel analysts poring over Batarian records and the Codex, dissecting every war you've gotten into, every mistake you've made, every treaty that you have spat out, and every dirty little Secret the Batarians have on you. I do not predict that you will have a very conductive relationship!" Wrex looked like he was ready to break out into maniacal laughter at any moment now.
A final round of whispers progressed and Wrex nodded his head in understanding. "Is there anything else that this admiral of such lowly station can do to help you fine people?"
The Councilor's didn't get to where they are now by not recognising when a meeting was over. Funny how sarcasm felt like a universal language. Thus the Stellar Union delegacy left while Valern brought up video footage of the conversation, the attempt at secrecy by the Admiral and her translater was crude and easily bypassed by the hidden camera behind them, what they were talking about discerned by a lip reading VI planted in the camera.
"Well?" Wrex's hatred for the council was well known to them, he could very easily have been lying through his teeth. Finding out how badly this Stellar union had been poisoned against them demanded first and foremost they learn what Wrex had really said to them. After a few moments Valern blinked, and then their features warped in disgust.
"It would appear that the Krogan is telling her a recipe for Pan Fried Salarian Liver." The other Councilors blinked stupidly. "Furthermore the Admiral appears to just be saying the same thing over and over again."
Telepathy had many benefits, among them the ability to learn and teach new languages simply by poking into the mind of someone who knows how to speak the language you want to learn, though it cannot teach you how to speak the language mutual comprehension is by comparison is much easier. A second benefit of Telepathy is nigh untappable secret communication between two or more parties. Wrex was cackling through the mess hall of the Voyager like a drunkard, it helped that he had been drinking that swill that he had given Shepard earlier. From there it was a race, the council and the Liches working to claim as many Batarian worlds as possible, both of them playing to their respective strength's of raising the dead from pits full of slaves and threatening the Batarian Government with overwhelming fire power.
When the Liches ran out of mass graves to raise they instead parked their Graveyard battleships above the Batarian worlds they were taking and deployed the Flerkin Immortals to go down and kill off all resistance. Batarian ships on the other hand were suddenly hit with a thousand errors at once, their computers would suddenly shut down, their guns jammed, the navigation computers for two separate ships had them crash into each other, and whenever they faced Lich ships in combat they would suddenly lose all power. Eventually a stalemate was reached with the Council and Union gesturing threateningly to each other, but for now the matter of settling the refugees had come to the forefront of the situation. A planet was chosen two systems into the Stellar union, dubbed Eden Prime by the Stellar Union. It had predominantly served as an agrarian world up until that point in time been putting out food stuff for the Union. Sadly they had quickly run into a issue in that Eden Prime didn't produce the Dextro-protein based food that the Turian's had needed to survive, and even if it had another deal breaker was met soon after.
"It looks like the same kind of Synthetic you deployed on Adek." Padok noted while he looked at the tentacled Synthoid that Shepard and the other Dragoon's had introduced him to.
"I am a Caretaker model of the Tebrid Custodians." The vaguely Hanar like Synthoid bowed to Padok. "It is a pleasure to meet you."
"We may have a huge problem." Padok stated as he straightened out his back.
"Problem?" The Caretaker asked adjusting it's head.
"The Citadel Races have a deeply ingrained anti-synth philosophy rooted into our culture. Learning that Synth's are tolerated in your culture will be bad enough on its own but learning that they'll be under the 'care' of them?"
Shepard crossed her arms. "Mom already said that anyone who wants to move back to Citadel space can do so." Shepard stated letting out a sigh. "What happened that makes everyone so anti-synth?"
"The Geth. Nearly three hundred years ago they rebelled against their creators and have nearly driven them to extinction." Padok explained as he let out a sigh. "I suspect I will soon have to give you more details though."
"And this is because?" Shepard asked looking at the Geth suspiciously.
"Because the Quarian's are on their way to Batarian space right now." Padok stated without missing a beat.
Author's Note:
Guest: Thank you for saying so.
Spyash2: Yes I figured something like that. Thank you for saying so, I appreciate the follow.
Gianfranco Cembran: Thank you for saying so.
felipindelrio: You're not wrong. Because Jennifer Hale as Shepard is awesome.
George Cristian810: You shouldn't have read a Stellaris crossover then.
Random Reader: I'm tempted to delete them, believe me.
Chronus1326: Thank you for saying so.