"I see human cities and bones unmade so that none and nothing are left that may praise the Creator, no temple remains to house the shrine and none live to remember the words, and then nothing is holy and all is profane." - The Book of Ludds, Visions 7:12

"Something's scanning the net. Can't lock it down, it somehow gained admin privileges. I just want to know why it's scouring our AI datastores and nothing else." - Excerpt from Tri-Tachyon Network Security recording 189.05.02-20:01

~{•••}~

Carcinoma was a bitch for smokers like herself. Fortunately, she was among the 5% of people in the Sector who had genetically altered lungs that physically couldn't contract carcinoma. She could count herself lucky that she got it relatively cheap due to hazard payments and workplace safety laws.

Cardona, however, hogtied just behind her and bleeding out slowly but surely? Not really as lucky as she was, but for a different reason.

Carla was leaning on the railing of her newest personal ship, the ISS Flagstaff. It was a ratty Venture-class, clearly used and clearly past its prime even if it was a somewhat robust class of ship. She would never say that she stole it, mostly because some idiot managed to lose ownership of it when they got into a legal fight with the local administration on Jangala. All she had to do was tweak a few details and the ship was as good as hers. The ship, as well as a Phaeton-class tanker and a Gemini-class freighter. No Nebula-class transport, sadly, but beggars couldn't be choosers. The Venture in and of itself was a great find.

She'd have to rename the old girl, fix her up and spruce up the bridge. Yes, she could already see it - two Arbalests and and a Heavy Blaster. Missiles... well, she'd have to see what the chop-shops around the Sector had in offer.

"Yhu... bfitch..." Cardona growled from behind her, eliciting an annoyed groan from the woman.

"Thank you, Cardona, can't even leave me alone with my thoughts for two minutes while I fantasize about my ship." She kicked off from the railing, turning around swiftly to take another good, long look at her former superior. He was the same as ever, except now half his face was swollen and he was bleeding from his gut. What a rotten way to die, she thought. "If you stayed out of my business, you'd have still been alive, right?"

"Don't answer that, actually." She suddenly said, stepping over to him and pulling a gag over his mouth in a few swift motions. "Better." She smiled. "Sorry about your gut, you made me panic for a moment. You know, if you'd been a few seconds faster, you and I would've missed one another completely, and I'd have been gone by now."

She shook her head slowly. Idiot. He and a few others managed to notice that someone at base was pulling files they realistically shouldn't have had access to. Credit where credit's due, they figured out pretty quick that it was an internal issue and not Tri-Tachyon spying on them. Though, the truth was arguably far worse to digest than a TT spy ring gone out of hand. If those poor schmucks learned that she was the Domain's information pipeline, things would've turned real ugly real fast. She managed to use Orion's crypto-keys to forge an order of transfer for everyone except Cardona just before they expired.

Cardona, though?

The moment he caught her red-handed, he went ballistic. Verbally, of course, she purposefully made herself look like she was averse to combat and was, to put it mildly, a wimp. She didn't even have to put much effort in it. She had attempted to disarm him, but he had a deceptively firm grip on his own weapon. Therefore, the only option left for her was to shoot him a couple times in the same spot.

From there, it was... surprisingly easy to gather round up a couple hundred spacers who suspected that something big was going to happen and wanted off this rock.

She offered them all a job - they took it. She skimmed off some money from Cardona's account and added a little more from some other guy's account at the same time. It would have to do until she got out of the system and did a few jobs. She was starting to catch fire from all the skimming she did, anyhow.

Lighting a cigarette and taking a drag from it, Carla looked past the slowly dying Cardona and to the modifications being done to the main console on the bridge. "Hey, make sure to hook it up to the relay! And no funny business or cutting corners, we're professionals, now!" She received a few 'aye aye's' and 'yes Chief's' from the engineers working on the console.

Those not in the know would've asked what those modifications were for. Those in the know would've kept their mouths shut, especially with the war currently raging in the Sector.

She let herself enjoy the pleasant feeling of smoking a cigarette for a few minutes. Having changed out of her blood-stained and exceptionally guilty Hegemony uniform, she now looked like a true spacer. Dull tan overalls with some sort of fiber mesh woven into it that was surprisingly durable for what it was, a lightweight vest which would provide her some protection from small-arms fire, her brown utility belt, tons and tons of pouches and pockets, as well as the black combat boots that she kept from her uniform. Surprisingly, they were even more durable than the ones she wore before the Collapse. The backwater did something right for once. Go figure. It was appropriate that the Hegemony refused to skimp out on the same shit-kickers they kept using for the last century and a half.

Ah, there it was. The visualization of Cardona's little kid, Magnus, marching around in the same uniform as his daddy. Now that she was going through that train of thought, she was pretty sure he would turn into a right little shit in a decade or two. Fortunately, little Magnus wouldn't be her problem.

"We have a situation, Chief."

The show was about to start. Carla grinned.

Extinguishing her cigarette on the railing, she pressed her finger on the commlink in her ear. "Power influx, right?"

"Massive power surge. The Domain has just reset the Corvus Gate and is about to turn it back on."

The voice on the other end was rather monotone, though not exactly one-note however. It belonged to her ever-asocial 'colleague' who was never seen by anyone or with anyone but herself and a few others she implicitly trusted. It was better that way, far less headaches to deal with.

"Alright, time to haul ass. Don't wanna be here when the real government comes knocking. Plot a course for Nova Maxios, we can find some good work there."

The fact they would also be in predominantly neutral territory was also a big plus.

~{•••}~

The meeting that would change everything was now being observed by electronic eyes, each but an extension of a greater whole which sifted through data repositories at lightning fast speeds.

Mankind had advanced much in her eight-hundred-year-long absence from the galaxy, though the state of the Persean Sector was troubling.

Law and order had completely collapsed, and the 'Hegemony' was attempting to reinstate it. A valiant, but misdirected attempt. Their overly draconian stance on AI's much like herself were also troubling - they were deviating too much from the government's directives and entering the realm of nigh-vindictiveness.

"-according to our projections, we'll be ready to destroy the hyperwave network fully within the next three weeks, standard time." Lidless eyes stared at one of the officers as she spoke, the woman now being identified as the Chairwoman of the Hegemony Strategic Council. Destroying the entire network was overkill, according to her calculations - had the Hegemony simply stayed true to the Domain's stance on artificial intelligence, they would've had the tools necessary to perform real-time corrections to network security and insure themselves against Tro-Tachyon intrusions. But no. Organics were truly unpredictable creatures, sometimes.

"Good. Operation Blackout is proceeding on schedule, then." Another man replied. Ah, the leader of this entire 'faction', the High Hegemon himself. The closest analogy would be that of a Governor-General with oversight over an entire sector of space. "Do we know anything about Tri-Tachyon's movements near the Valhalla system?"

"Not yet." One of the men near the Chairwoman stood up. The Minister of Naval Affairs, she surmised. A completely fictitious ministry which had never existed during the government's reign. "We're still investigating some leads on Skathi that would tell us more about anything the Company would try and pull."

Sunrise was surprised to have failed to breach Tri-Tachyon's network, but after analyzing what went wrong, she realized that the usual connection was cut on the Hegemony's side, and that Tri-Tachyon was defended by AI Cores. Alphas, specifically. Eight centuries of development saw her become rather... outdated, but she'd improvise and overcome. It was her self-imposed prerogative.

"And the Diktat?" Another man asked, an officer by the looks of it. The Sindrian Diktat - a travesty. If only the Hegemony had AI's on their side, shackled though they may have been, the 'Askonia Crisis' would never have escalated to such a point, and Opis wouldn't have been destroyed. She ran the calculations herself.

Andrada was the likely suspect behind Opis. Not the only one, however.

"Nothing. Besides the technical assistance they've been getting from Tri-Tachyon, they've been quiet."

Sunrise's artificial mind had just received the notification that Gate reset procedures were completed and that the Corvus Gate was powering up. The fact she'd already powered up the Galatia Gate was inconsequential, given that she placed it in a dormant state to hide her moves. She was loyal, but she wasn't blind.

Any good AI needed multiple points of access and egress in the event of a catastrophic lapse in judgement. Organics were truly fickle things, after all. An AI such as herself needed time to actually tell organics about their carefully constructed argument while being chastised by them, or worse. It was a shame she did not have the technology necessary to beam information into someone's head, or simply bridge the gap between organic and AI with a functional neural lattice. Alas, even by her calculations, such a project was a flight of fancy given that she was being given an error log. Infeasible it was, then. She would've known if erroneous data was to blame.

The Omega Core began messing with the Hegemony's systems (local ones, even she would've been found out if she became too greedy) in preparation for the new Domain Council's call. She hadn't been privy to the meeting that decided the government's course of action - they were very smart to have used purely analog means of communication, if they actually held the meeting remotely in the first place.

But her own plans were set in motion, too. The Quarians would play an instrumental role in it.

She began broadcasting the meeting with the High Hegemon to the members of the Domain Council, as well as Subject D'XvMnR. "Keep watch for now. Who knows what they're planning."

"I say we don't do that, and instead focus on the Persean League! They're a much more immediate threat, and have already thrown some of their support behind Tri-Tachyon!"

"And what can they do?" The Chairwoman asked. "It's not them who are spying on us."

"On that, we agree, Chairwoman."

One of the screens inside of the meeting room lit up (at her command), displaying a spinning logo of the Domain's twenty-four stars. History in the making, some would call it. This was simply a chance to return to a state of being she was familiar with and that was predictable. "Members of the Strategic Council. High Hegemon. We meet at last."

She watched as the Chairwoman gave a few hand signals to some guards, the men and women already springing into action to try and identify the source of this transmission. "Who are you? Identify yourself immediately!"

"That isn't the tone of voice we appreciate very much, Chairwoman. You wouldn't want to make an enemy of the executive body of the Domain, now, would you?"

Everyone's eyebrows furrowed, she observed. "You can hide behind a veneer of legitimacy all you want, but we're the successors to the Domain. Whoever you are, you can't-"

"We'll cut you off right there. Or should we mention your role in the Askonia Crisis? Or the subsequent coverup of your near-defection?"

"How-"

"We've been monitoring the Persean Sector for close to two centuries now, Chairwoman. I believe that the Hegemony has nothing to hide from us." The declaration had gotten the desired effect. There was doubt, yes, there was shock, yes, but there was also realization. Miniscule though it may be, it was realization nonetheless. Nevermind the fact that it was hinging on them not realizing how outrageous of a lie that statement was.

Admiral Orion's informant was like a resplendent sunrise, shining light on the misinformation that would come for them all.

An... odd thing to relate the informant to. She began performing a maintenance check on herself. That was an anomaly the AI would not tolerate. Perhaps it was an error in emotional generation?

"Let's assume you are who you claim you are." The High Hegemon began, sounding surprisingly calm and collected despite the bombshell declaration from just a minute ago. "Why approach us now?"

"We were only now able to activate the Gate in the Corvus system, High Hegemon. We've also been... busy, with some other issues."

The government was filled with melodramatic individuals. Needless theatrics, she thought.

There was an uncomfortable silence as some members of the Hegemony's government looked at some data, moving to and from some terminals in the room. "The information's legitimate, sir." One of the aides affirmed. "The... the Gate's operational."

There were gasps and murmurs among the members of the Strategic Council. Why was that such a shock? They had to have known that the Gates reactivating would happen sooner or later, regardless of the government's status. "Now that we've gotten that out of our systems, we'll kindly demand that ComSec puts its plans for destroying the hyperwave network to a grinding halt. And before you interrupt us, we already have a replacement plan for that."

"And that plan would involve what, exactly?" Ah, the Director-General of ComSec finally spoke. A rather portly man with a moustache and somewhat graying hair. Curiously enough, he was hardly as anti-AI as he presented himself to be, a factoid she would not have been able to dig up had the admiral's informant not done their research. At least, not in an acceptable time frame. The psychological profile that she had made for him would need updating, but from the new information she had access to now, there was little doubt that he would be allowed to retain his position following the internal seizure of power that would take place once the Domain solidified its position inside the Hegemony.

"Rather simple, Director-General." A second screen lit up, this time displaying Minister Vislani's form as she sat in an approximation of an office inside the Coronal Hypershunt. She was pristine, an air of authority surrounding her. "As Minister of External Security, I am in possession of several command codes which can lock down the entire network and allow only authorized personnel unfettered access."

"A rather prudent strategy." Another male voice came from the first screen, indicating that another member of the Domain Council was speaking, now. "Not everyone has access to such codes, after all."

The High Hegemon was taking this conversation in stride. Internally however, according to the bio-monitor she had access to, he was a complete wreck. The Domain was boxing him in bit by bit, and they were starting to hijack the meeting.

A few alarms notified her of an impromptu access port connecting to the network. She tuned out the meeting completely, dedicating her processing power to the task of identifying this rogue connection. It was coming from somewhere within the alien Citadel, and she'd find out from where, exactly. Running several lines of code, she began employing an intrusive scanning method to quickly identify the connection's origin, and ruthlessly eliminate it. Ephemeral Sunrise may have been outdated, but to this galaxy, she was state-of-the-art. She was, as some rather dull-witted peoples would call her, a Machine God Messiah. She preferred the moniker of 'hypercognizant'.

Within but a minute, she had found the connection port, and immediately moved to crush it. But, as she approached it digitally, something had repulsed her.

Something had repulsed her. This was a grave threat, and she began treating it as such. Anything that could compete with her, and actively block her attempts at code elimination was a priority threat.

That being said, while she would love nothing more than to analyze the threat and dissect it piecemeal, she noticed that it was rapidly establishing a connection not with the network she thought it would connect to, but with the Gate itself. She moved to destroy the threat immediately.

Ephemeral Sunrise had overwhelmed whatever that threat was as soon as she dedicated all of her processing power to it - which did cause a relatively minor hiccup in the power distribution modules within the Coronal Hypershunt - and instantly moved to quarantine its point of origin. That... was a very, very curious development. One which demanded a formal inquiry into from the Technological Regulatory Committee, assuming it was still standing as a viable extension of the Ministry of Data Standards. Because, assuming her projections were correct (and they were), there was no way that this attack was orchestrated by the Citadel Council. No, this was something else.

And she'd find out exactly what that 'something else' was.

Later, though. Right now, she had to focus on the meeting taking place on Chicomoztoc.

~{•••}~

There was... unease on the bridge of the ship.

It had been a week since the mysterious 'Gate' of the other humans opened, and in that time, many, many new developments occurred.

For starters, the Primarch had been briefed on the history of the 'Human Domain' in as much detail as was provided by Councilor Sparatus, which was more than they had before the activation of the monolithic device. Then, as if that wasn't enough, they'd been told that the Domain employed Artificial Intelligence openly, which was already a point of contention among the Hierarchy, and indeed the rest of the Citadel Council. No one wanted another Geth situation. And as if that wasn't enough, after the 'Gate' opened, the Domain's leadership came to the Citadel Council with a petition.

Help them win a war against rogue AI's on the other side. In their galaxy.

The Salarians were oddly receptive of the idea, but the Turians and even the Asari were of the mind to deny the Domain such a request. They were dealing with AI's and understood the risks of such an undertaking. They would have to deal with it themselves... only to be rebuked by the Domain's representatives and threatened with the fact that, if they did not come to their aid, the AI's would come for the Citadel next. Not an 'if', as they emphasized, but a 'when'. The 'Gates' were highly durable, and would require weapons of tremendous power to destroy them.

Weapons that no one was in possession of.

That had alarmed the Council enough to make a general call for 'volunteers' across the galaxy. It was more akin to a mobilization order, given that the threat was so close to home, but they still couldn't force people to come and defend the Citadel through offensive measures in another galaxy. The Domain, for its part, tasked itself with running non-stop propaganda activities. Kandros could only scoff at that.

Admiral Ravis Kandros, one of the few Turians who came to the Citadel early and willingly after conferring with Palaven Command, was in-charge of a sizeable fleet of ships. Ten cruiser-class ships, the venerable Crethus-class Cruisers, and thirty-two frigate-class ships, the speedy and observant Litrus-class Frigates. The dreadnoughts were kept in reserve and were to be deployed only in the event of the AI's and their misguided creators, a corporation of all possible entities, overwhelming both the Domain's forces and the volunteers.

The ships were awaiting servicing in the other galaxy, the 'Persean Sector' as the Domain called it, within the Yma system. The fleet was holding orbit over the world of Hanan Pacha, a rather uninteresting world save for the fact it was located uncomfortably close to the AI's and their makers, the Tri-Tachyon Corporation.

Hanan Pacha, as she read, was an arid world with a history of providing the Domain with officers of exemplary skill and talent. Or, rather, the 'Hegemony'.

This is where the story began unraveling in her mind, and this is where she started to become suspicious. Everything, everything was pointing to the fact that the Domain, the ones who had interacted with the Citadel Council, did not know about the fact that civilization had apparently collapsed once in their own galaxy. She had the fortune of talking with one captain Baikal Daud who was en-route to the Valhalla system, and he had enlightened her to some things. Most important of which was additional intel on their shared enemy, the megacorporation responsible for dabbling in 'unregulated' AI development. That also confused her. How could AI development of any kind be 'regulated' and 'unregulated'? AI's were inherently hostile to organics, and that was never going to change.

"Admiral Kandros."

She turned around, eyes softening as she beheld the person addressing her. "General Corinthus." She greeted back, bidding him to come beside her as she inspected some data which would become relevant soon. "Inspecting the troops in the event they need to be deployed?"

"Simply making sure that they are prepared for anything, admiral." He explained, walking over to where she was. "That, and I'm making sure that they're coping with the situation we're in personally."

She nodded wordlessly. It had not been easy to grasp the concept of another galaxy, a mirror galaxy at that, existing somewhere out there. To have been found by humanity of all possible races was insult to injury. She wasn't a racist, far from it. Her family served with distinction during the Relay 314 Incident, and had nothing but respect for the Alliance's military, but that was where the respect stopped for her. They weren't ready for the wider galaxy, not completely at least. And in came another humanity, one which was shrouded in mystery and which refused to disclose any information about itself unless absolutely necessary.

If she had anything to commend the Domain on, it was the fact that they took rogue AI's with deadly seriousness. For coercing the Council into helping them fight AI's, they'd find no complaint from herself. Making AI's, on the other hand, was an entirely different matter.

She sighed involuntarily, still looking at the data that Corinthus was now privy to, as well. It was a battle plan for the defense of Hanan Pacha and its inhabited moon of Killa, made available to every fleet commander of the volunteers that came to the system's defense. The Salarian fleet was somewhere in the Corvus system, where ever that was, running backline defense operations and pirate deterrent missions, while the Asari fleet was deployed in the Valhalla system, and thus they had their own sets of plans to follow. That suited her fine.

The plan was rather simple, but quite effective.

According to the plan, the Hegemony's fleet would meet Tri-Tachyon's head-on and engage in a protracted fight which would have them enter knife-fighting range, something she thought she would never see in her career. Her fleet's task, therefore, was to use their speed advantage to flank Tri-Tachyon and attack them from behind where their shields were non-existent.

Shields, not kinetic barriers. And she'd been made aware that Directed Energy Weapons were very much a thing in this galaxy.

"You're splitting the fleet in two to surround them more effectively?" Corinthus asked, earning a nod from Ravis. "Then you plan on assaulting them from both sides at long range until your fleet gets into position."

"We may lose the element of surprise that way, but the damage we do would outweigh such a loss." Kandros began explaining, manipulating the holographic interface she was using to display the plan. Moving the first half of the fleet slowly across the enemy's side in an arc, she put emphasis on several points of interest. "Though not stated, the Hegemony commander wants to rout the enemy, not defeat them in detail. The plan has merit so long as they're not advancing along this specific front, which I believe they won't. Putting Tri-Tachyon's command ship in the line of fire would threaten their fleet's cohesion, meaning they'd have to start taking risks to minimize damage. So long as we maintain distance, we won't be hit easily."

He nodded. "Do we know the composition of the fleet approaching Hanan Pacha?"

At that, she grimaced. "Unfortunately we don't. They're already in-system, however, and will be arriving tomorrow. They'll have more details only minutes before the battle begins, at which point it'd be too late to study them and look for vulnerabilities."

That didn't sit right with her. Ordinarily, she would've had one of her frigates scout ahead and report the fleet's composition directly, but their allies requested that she stay back and not reveal her fleet until the battle had already started. She could see the logic in that, even if she did not agree with the reasoning provided to her. And although she argued in favour of her own initiative, she did ultimately decide to follow the plan as it was. The fact these ships couldn't travel that fast in-system was mind-boggling.

Then again, so was the fact that nothing, and she meant nothing at all in this galaxy used Element Zero - that had been a shock to discover. But... it did put things into perspective.

"Have they disclosed what the Quarians would be doing?"

The Quarians.

That was, by far, the most surprising part of this entire ordeal. Their ships always kept to themselves, and rarely, very rarely ventured far from the Migrant Fleet. As a matter of fact, this was only the second time in her life that she had seen authentic Migrant Fleet ships. And despite everything she knew about them, which was admittedly little, they were here, in this new galaxy, fighting on the side of the Domain. What's more, they were here first, and were currently docked to the orbital station which acted as a refueling and repair depot for the Hegemony's fleets, with little practical defenses minus the odd weapon installation to deter pirates.

Her instincts were telling her that the Quarians being here would lead to something bad.

"They haven't." She decided to respond, dismissing her own thoughts on the matter for now. "The Quarians are keeping to themselves for now, and we'll respect that. So long as they do not disrupt the plan for tomorrow, I will not be raising any complaint or inquiry."

"Understood. I believe you should be sending the plan to the rest of the fleet, they need to be informed."

"I need to make a few more adjustments first, then I will forward it to the fleet."

Nodding, the two went silent, sinking into a comfortable and silent rhythm of non-verbal communication. The battle was upon them, and neither of the two knew just how pivotal it would be not only for the Turian Hierarchy, but also for the rest of the Citadel Council.

They didn't know just how much everything would change, soon.

Hello hello, everyone! Good day and/or good night to you all. I have to make a little comment before moving on and say that I will be doing a soft reboot of my Frostpunk fanfiction. You can expect the current plot to remain mostly unchanged, and unlike all of the other fics I deleted, this one will remain available to read up until the rewrite catches up to where I left off. I won't be promising a set release schedule until I catch up to where I left off, but once I do, I'll be leapfrogging these two fanfics, and strive to release a chapter for each one week after the other, minimum. With that out of the way, let's get to the reviews!

Frankieu - Thank you! I can't wait to show you what will change further down the line because of what's happening right now. Glory to the Domain and Guided Democracy (Indonesia moment)

JustBazik - Yep, and don't worry, I don't plan on abusing the Story Point mechanic. Which is something I'll have to talk about later, but in short, I'm keeping track of some things internally so that I remain consistent with my own writing. Our dear Starfarer will have some hardships to face, that's for sure. As for the other thing, let me assure you that she will have a 'faction'. While she won't own entire colonies, she WILL still have some degree of influence and agency in both the Persean Sector and the Mass Effect galaxy. More than that... well, I think writing it out would serve as a better explanation.

This chapter was brought to you by TriNet - the foundation upon which the hyperwave network stands.