Author's Note: Another week down, Honestly this story is probably going to be a lot shorter than I intended it to be. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!

Chapter 90: Adek Part 3

09M 13D 10H Until the Colossus Fires

The Intelligence reports from Adek were in a word, strange. Various conflicts were breaking out all over the planet as the different forces of the cults clashed against one another. There were larger and larger groups of people that seemed to be escaping from the four cults influence. Finally the proverbial dam broke open as the Union continued to mass it's own forces on the edge of the System. With a great fiery explosion the Tree of Life that was being used as a great psychic beacon was brought down, and without it there was a vast portion of the planet that was going undefended from a invasion. Thus the Union chose this time to strike, a fleet full of ships appeared above the forests of the planet and dropped their payloads, hundreds of drop pods each of them containing the combined forces of 9000 Dragoons. Enough to take the entire planet? Perhaps not. Enough to break a few especially stubborn cults over their knee? That was much more likely.

09M 10D 22H Until the Colossus Fires

"So at last we meet, the so called great powers of the Rift." Three days of siege battles have a way of making allies out of enemies.

The Leaders of the four cults consisted of a particularly large Tzynn, one who leaned in more to muscular side of his species gene pool, a particularly moldy looking Gaian with their tree root feet buried into a tracked pot of dirt, a Gorthikian who had been stripped of their organic tendrils and replaced them with cybernetic equivalents, finally a Sathyrelian who had confined themself to a massive fish tank. In front of them a familiar woman, an Asari with facial tattoos that resemble a beard, more specifically a goatee, Aria T'Loak.

"I was expecting... more?" Aria had been dressed in the left overs of her uniform that she had been given as part of being a Fenrir pilot, months of being away from anything resembling the Union, her own general disgust towards the government in question, had cause vast swaths of the uniform to receive customisation in the form of various gang symbols.

"You've brought our representatives here child." An unfamiliar gurgling voice echoed in Aria's mind. "Now speak."

Of course Aria held no delusions that she was speaking to the actual gods of the Four Cults, merely their mortal representatives.

"I will speak bluntly then: as you are now you are going to lose." Aria spoke of the matter as a simple undeniable truth. "You are divided and warring among yourselves, in the mean time over ninety percent of the Galaxy is united against you. Those Dragoons dropping in on you from above? Those are just the first wave. They'll come after you in more massive numbers from now on. Bringing along weapons of mass destruction, and if they cannot take the planet? Boom." Aria gestured wide with her hands as she made her point known. "Their Colossus will do the rest of the work for them. If any of your worlds avoid getting popped like a balloon, it's only because the Union will be trying to take over the world instead of outright destroying it."

Planets were one of the most precious resources no matter who you are, everything you do becomes a lot easier when you have solid ground beneath your feet whether it's mining, research, or colonisation. But so what? They were also important resources to the enemy forces as well, denying them their resources was one of the most sound decisions to make. In the worst case scenario and they blow up particularly important planets or ones that they want to recolonise later? Mass Effect based technology, generate a sufficient artificial gravity well, pull the planet back together by force, apply terraforming technology to the surface to restore it's natural bio-sphere while producing sufficient cities for resettlement. Never actually been done before, just theoretically possible.

It also means that the Union nor the Citadel stands to lose anything if one or two planets are lost, nothing but the time and resources it would take to restore the planets that is.

"You've made the same mistake we did. You've made yourselves too expensive to ignore." Aria laughed at that. "Even the thought of having to put a planet or two back together again is cheaper than letting you fools keep harassing them, even then that's 'only if we have to.' Losing one or two planets they barely considered habitable isn't going to bother them much, on the contrary they might use it as a opportunity to just strip mine the entire planet for much needed resources else where. If you understand anything about what I'm telling you then I suggest you stop screwing around and start working together."

Of course for that to happen then they'll need a general who knows their forces and the enemy well enough to be able to coordinate them effectively.

"We'll take your offer into consideration. Leave." The Tzynn waved his arm dismissively at Aria who could only click her tongue and turn around to leave, confident that they would come around to her side. Aria climbed into her her Fenrir unit as she prepared to run back to her base.

That was the plan then, but then as soon as she synced with the Fenrir a giant jolt went through her body and then she lost the connection.

"How'd it go?" Dr. Heart was an unusual addition to Aria's inner circle, but she considered the Mad Salarian Doctor's expertise to be valuable, though not irreplaceable.

"I don't like that remote hook up system you put into place." Aria climbed out of the Jury-rigged chamber her inner circle had rigged up. Shepard had generously provided her with a few back up bodies during her little demonstration, Aria was merely taking advantage of them. "It felt like my limbs kept lagging behind my body."

"You always were a stubborn one, you don't even like taking orders from yourself." Aria's Krogan lover provided her own input as if what she was saying was obvious.

"It has nothing to do with her personality, I designed it that way so that we would have a delay if her body is corrupted by those freaks." Dr. Heart snapped as his colleagues/employers had insulted him to his face.

"Speaking of which I should've been about twenty clicks South of our base at the time that the connection was severed, let's have a look at what 'I' am doing." Aria had a screen pulled down as the group had a look at the damages, so to speak. Even if the body was far away it was nothing compared to being able to spy on people from orbit. "What in the Shroud's name...?"

The Fenrir was rippling. The Dragon Scale armour that Aria had purchased on the black market was bulging and making waves in the surface. Lightning was flowing into the mechanical body as Zro Crystals appeared and were compressed into the frame adding more bulk to the creature's mass. The Rubber eletrocis muscles molded and turned back into Thorian fungus before turning into raw muscle tissue, dragon scales growing over them. The entire body groaned as the head abruptly split in two, bone and flesh growing to fill in the gaps resulting in two half mechanical half organic heads. The entire abomination glowed with the light of Biotics and let out a roar that the group felt even all the way back to their base behind inches of super materials. And the new born monster with two heads ran off, into a completely different direction than the one than it had been travelling in before. It was going after the Union's Dragoon army it would appear.

"This could be bad."

09M 10D 19H Until the Colossus Fires

That countdown had been something that they had been working towards for months. And yet it had become inaccurate, according to the Engineers who had been working on the continent sized contraption.

"Explain this to me in a way that I can understand." Hackett was in no mood for games as he looked at the trio of Engineers working on the project, Admiral SpeedJunkie who was head of the scientific fleet, the Formless and Envoy the Contingency representatives.

"We made those calculations nine months ago, since then we've gotten the additional assistance of the Contingency with their own rapid building expertise, the Formless who have been continuously pulling material from the people's psyches, not to mention that the Colossus was already in a completed state to begin with, we only made a upgrade to it by adding Dragon Scales to it." Admiral SpeedJunkie explained as if it should've been obvious that their time table was moved up.

"By concentrating the conversion of material from the Draconics we consistently pull out more dragon scale material. It varies in terms of quality but it's still immensely durable." A Formless explained in the same kind of dry voice that you'd use to report a slight increase in a factory's logistics.

Indeed, instead of peeling Dragon scales off of Thuban or her spawn it was more effective to make it from scratch, this way you can include little innovations like compressing material to make it denser or utilising unique metallurgy methods that can only be applied before it's made into a piece of scale. But in compensation for this inconsistent quality, it could be made in vastly greater amounts.

"How long until it can be fired?" Hackett looked... hopeful? Stern but Hopeful seemed to be the conclusion that he had reached at this point.

"As long as it will take to get into position." Was the conclusion the Tebrid Admiral had given. It seemed too good to be true, and then more good news appeared as the Draconic representative appeared at this point in time.

"Joyous news Admiral! The Last of Thuban's young have matured and she is ready to take them out hunting!" The Monk's news did not make Hackett particularly happy, things were lining up a little too well for his liking.

"Have Thuban and her young reinforce the escort fleet for the Colossus, if we're particularly lucky we can use her wormholes to snipe the enemy worlds from afar." No matter what he said, Hackett could not get by the feeling of suspicion he had.

"Admiral." Another visitor, another intelligence officer. "A situation has appeared on Adek!" Ah just what he needed: Bad news.

While Hackett was in the midst of fending off an irrational feeling of dread, the situation on Adek was going to hell in a hand basket.

The Dragoons were waging their battle on four fronts, the Sathyrelians bombarded them with their sound attacks, the Gorthikians skilfully manipulated their environment with psionics, the Gaians charged the front line like a team of three meter tall football line backers and spreading plague like someone put wings on anthrax while the Tzynn flanked the Dragoons from behind.

But then the fronts started to mix together. The Gorthikians combined together Biotics, along with thermal manipulation and psionic lightning to generate a Biotic storm, a tornado that rendered objects below it super light and objects above it super heavy, the only ones that escaped the effects of the blowing winds were the Gaian's who were equal in size to the biotic storms that had begun to rend the landscape apart, and thus the increased and reduced weight cancelled each other out.

The Dragoons on the other hand were vastly shorter and thus began to be violently thrashed around the landscape, their bones shattering, their blood vessels rupturing, and their brains violently thrashing about. Then the exotic gasses the Gorthikians naturally produce was caught in the lightning, lit on fire and mixed with the biotic storm before violently detonating bathing that particular battlefield in flames.

The Sound Cannons of the Sathyrelians increased in intensity, opposite of the Perception filter employed by the Tzynn this was a perception magnet, which was drawing all the attention of the Fighting Dragoons towards themselves, and thus it was now impossible to deal with the surprise attacks of the Tzynn. With swipes of the creatures arm blades crippling injuries were dealt to each Dragoon, penetrating their armour in the gaps between the scales and directly piercing their vitals. Even with the automated healing of the medical suites inside of the Dragoon's bodies it was impossible to deal with enemies that they couldn't focus on short of wildly swinging and firing off their weapons.

Even if they did turn around to fight the Tzynn the Sathyrelians had a another nasty surprise waiting, as they adjusted the frequency of their sound the Dragon Scales of their armours suddenly shattered leaving the people underneath exposed to attack.

From the point of view of the people watching the battle through the now destroyed suits of the Dragoon soldiers, every person down there should already be considered dead. A tragedy yes, but not a massive loss. Each and every Dragoon down on the battlefield had been born mere days ago, their minds already backed up on the same servers they had come from, many already had new bodies being produced waiting for them.

"Order Thuban to prepare a wormhole connecting together the current location of the Colossus and Adek." Admiral Hackett gave the word, initiating a plan to burn the Four Cults from the galaxy once and for all.

Across the vast expanse of the Galaxy, a hole was punched in time and space, on one side a God and a weapon designed to rip apart planets and strip the scraps of all that they are worth, on the other it's target, a planet playing host to a pantheon of nightmares. The weapon was charged as the battle raged, and soon fired through the Worm hole. Unfortunately the Union made two pivotal mistakes, the first is that they didn't charge the weapon before they opened the Worm hole, and the second is that they punched a hole into the reality that the Four Gods of the Shroud had just finished fixing.

Reality was distorted as the beam of energy approached Adek, time was slowed to a crawl in the space between the planet and the energy beam. Entire forests full of matter were broken down and crawled across the continent, joining together and forming a great tree that reached up to the heavens. The Energy beam was intercepted by another worm hole, and then time was allowed to resume its natural course. Two worm holes were opened one directly in front of the other, enough energy passed between them to destroy a planet, in a region of space that had only barely been patched together through actual, literal prayer. Needless to say, things were quite delicate, and the Union would now be paying for their hubris as another Rift formed between the two wormholes bridged by the energy beam. And not just in the former Citadel space either. For the other end of the Four Cult's worm hole opened up on the far side of the Colossus, and it's own energy beam came crashing in behind tearing through the dragon scale armour that the Union desperately spent nine months gathering and frying the insides of the war machine in question. The fact that they still had the war machine at all could be attributed to the Dragon's scales ability to soak and disperse damage, functioning on the other hand...

"Well." SpeedJunkie had no words for how to express this screw up, instead he just got to giving answers. "We don't have too much information on the state of the Colossus at this point, but needless to say it's internal components are severely damaged. Most of the Dragon Scales shouldn't have the self repair system installed but we'll work on getting that fixed while we do..." SpeedJunkie looked up at the Hologram of the ruined Colossus. "...everything else. We'll salvage and recycle whatever we can of the internals of the Colossus, most of it is standardised components anyway so whatever is left in a usable state should be transferable. Of course, that raises the question of what kind of weapon we install in place of the planet cracker."

The Tebrid eyed his fellow admiral with concern, his opinions on the matter rather obvious by the context. The Colosus was their strongest weapon, and a war crime with an engine strapped to it, it left open the question of if they should use it again anyway despite the risks that it presents to them.

"Start by getting the engines working again." Hackett let out a sigh. "I will discuss the matter with the others, but just in case how long will it take to fix the Colossus and build a new super weapon to strap it to?" Hackett knew he wouldn't like the answer.

?M ?D ?H Until the Colossus Fires

A new Astral Rift had opened in the timeless expanse that was a by product of the Union's attack on the Four Cults, and it had sucked the planet Adek inside of it, into a place where the laws of reality no longer seemed eager to apply. For now people were moving. The Four Cults monsters had retreated, and so the process of collecting the dead and dying could resume, is what people would like to say! Suddenly a Monster of flesh, scale and machine with two heads ran onto the battle field, a sudden blow from above halting it and forcing a face plant before it could run onto the battlefield and trample over the wounded. The Figure responsible, a two meter tall figure wearing patch work armour, leapt off of the back of the monster, a ship saw in both hands.

"Ridiculously opulent and expensive armour." The Two headed monster shook its entire body as it pulled its heads out of the ground. "Redundant organs and body parts." The Two headed beast leapt forward, one of its fore legs unfolded to reveal a long scythe blade that it then attempted to use to take a swipe at the entire battlefield. "Weapons and armour built directly into the body." The Patch work figure went not for the scythe blade but the shaft that extended out from the fore leg with the blade and tore through it with the tool designed to tear ships apart cutting through the fore limbs in the process. The Monster responded with dual roars, releasing black and green mist that ate away at all the organic matter that it came into contact with. "And weaponized rot and disease. Lovely you assholes are working together now."

The Patchwork figure muttered as she whipped out a Shot gun and fired it into the mist. A loud explosion echoed out turning the mist into a ball of fire that trailed all the way up the throats of the monster.

"This is a fine mess you've gotten yourself into Shepard." With Matching roars the monster unleashed another Biotic Storm between itself and Shepard, which soon shot her into the air though she was the farthest thing from afraid. "Did you think you were the only one with Telekinetics you stupid dog!?" Shepard rode the lift straight into a slam, she used her own telekinesis to slam herself weapon first into the monster's back blade first, the weapon chewing into the beast's spine as her dramatically increased weight eventually snapped the entire thing in two, and the beast rolled over trying to crush it's opponent.

Shepard jumped first, landing on the Anti Gravity field feet first before going into the air again in time to miss the beast's roll. Already the spine was healing, but Shepard was coming down again under the influence of a Slam, and this time she had taken the ship saw to one of the creature's necks, the weapon letting out a roar as it chewed through the neck before eventually the pressure of the increased gravity tore the neck clean off of it's body. The Biotic Storm stopped, the two headed beast having apparently learned it's lesson, instead it's body was glowing with Biotic light, building up into it's throat as the creature prepared to unleash a particularly nasty blast. And it did, when Shepard whipped out the Plasma shotgun and fired directly into the throat of the beast and with a loud explosion the second head was parted from the body in three different pieces and scattered over the battlefield.

"I figured that those weren't where your thinking organs were located." Shepard spotted a face that vaguely looked like a Asari sticking out of a mass of flesh and cybernetics where the two head monster's spine should roughly be. Forming a rail gun out of pure psi-lightning Shepard took aim again and fired, this time the plasma ripped through the entire body of the now headless beast leaving nothing but ash and smelted metal in her wake. "Now to start dealing with the rest of the problems." Shepard turned around to face the other Dragoons on the ground.

Shepard felt a great swell of pride as she watched the soldiers assembled before her getting to work. The wounded were being picked up off of the battle field, alive but barely the dead were being collected and cut open, the Grey Box, Recorder organs and anything that can be salvaged and used to help the still living. A mistake yes but Shepard could still feel a moment of pride for them. Then an unexpected face showed himself.

"Shepard, it's good to see you again." A familiar sounding Turian asked as he held his hand out for Shepard to shake.

"Saren? You seem different." Shepard appeared to sink a few moments of thought into the question. "New Haircut?"

"Hilarious. When did you get here?" The Turian was breaking the situation down to brass tacks for the sake of convenience, if there was something convenient out there like say a already built base of operations that they could use to house their people and treat the wounded.

"Before that though we should probably finish the battle now." Shepard stated as she looked at the battlefield with the bodies of numerous Dragoons lying about.

"Finish the battle?" Saren didn't like the sound of that.

"Have you learned nothing from the Liches?" Shepard snapped in annoyance.

"Ah mot!" The Shoe dropped as Saren came to the realisation Shepard was leading him to. The Bodies on the ground made sick snapping noises as they rose from the dead. However, the fact that they were super soldiers be damned, these weren't normal mundane zombies. Mutations appeared across their bodies, forming Zro and gathering the material on their bodies, inflating muscles, hardening skin, releasing toxic gasses, increasing the number of their organs and limbs.

"I assume you have an explanation for this, and I will be hearing about it later but for now?" Saren blink clicked an icon in his helmet and turned on the built in voice amplifier in his suit. "We need to organise a retreat! Get the wounded off the battlefield! Don't bother with spike throwers and melee! Grenades, Exotics, Pyro Ammo and Biotics! Turn them to ash or slow them down and then turn them to ash!"

"Well I don't have any of those, So I'm going to escort the wounded back to one of our bases of operations now." Shepard turned around and used her oversized improvised weapon as a directors baton to direct the group to where she needed them to go.

In the mean time the Four Gods looked down on the scene from above, nodding their heads in approval. After all their flock needs a good Shepard to guide them.

Review Section:

RonaldM40196867: One day, I could be optimistic but honestly? I don't really think the end of the universe will be a problem for anything you or I could consider to be human.

Monster King: That's what you keep telling me.

N1cok: They literally just said they're not allowed to sell Union tech to non-Union members, what they sold them are the key materials needed to get there and explaining what they want in return.