Faith in Superior Firepower [Planetary Annihilation Multicross SI]

[Faith]

People at my work are complaining about how long we've been in 'double shift every shift' mode. I don't know if they realize that the reason we're doing that is because they haven't fucking done their jobs yet stop bitching at Tech please we just want to go home too ugghghghhghghghghghggh

*faints*



90 - Interlude: Slavers 2

The four Batarian guards crept along the shadowed battlements, the roaring battle in the centre of the compound more than sufficient in distracting the invading force.

Splitting his attention between their journey and the battle, Nup noted with displeasure that the damned Asari was still alive, running around waving that stun stick and jumping off walls like some kind of animated character.

Someone really needed to shoot her. It was all rather distracting.

Nup caught himself just in time to avoid walking right out of cover, instead slowly peering over the edge of the wall. The alleyway beyond the wall, an access route between two storehouses, was mercifully empty.

Nup gestured with one hand and rushed past the small break in the wall where the ladder was. His three teammates followed a half-step behind, their rifles raised and ready.

The next access point between the wall and the ground below was the staircase near the guard's quarters. The four Batarians made their way cautiously down the stairs, eyes and rifles scanning from left to right as they proceeded. The worst of the fighting remained in the courtyard, where the Judak Nurr's superior shields and armour allowed them to evenly trade fire with the defenders, who had both high ground and decent cover to exploit.

From what he could see from his perch, Nup assumed that it was only small splinter groups who had broken away from the main force before the fighting had really gotten stuck in who were currently romping around in the dormitories.

Then again, he thought, hefting his rifle, it never hurt to be careful.

The dormitory's airlock hissed and slid open, permitting the group access. They backed into the small room, still watching the path behind them, only turning around when that door shut and the interior airlock door began to open.

From this particular door, there were two routes - one to the right, towards the back of the building, where the medical facility was, and one directly forward, leading to the recreation room.

Yerri made a hand signal and headed right, Vashk following along. Nup and Pormlin shared a glance before taking the forward route. Pormlin muttered something under his breath, but without the microphone in Pormlin's helmet or the speakers in his, Nup found it impossible to hear as anything more that a formless whisper.

The two proceeded down the hallway and into the recreation room itself, quickly scanning the area. A large hole had been blown in the airlock's inner door - despite everything, the outer door was still fine, hence why the building still had breathable air, - and a carpet of rubble and debris stretched across the floor.

Pormlin crossed the room quickly to the far door, leading to the dormitory rooms themselves, and tapped his gauntlet against the pad. Nothing happened.

"Your suit's IFF is down. You'll have to key it in manually."

Pormlin turned back to Nup, making a three-fingered gesture. Nup rolled his eyes and stepped closer, raising his voice. "You'll have to enter the code manually."

Pormlin curled his fingers, tilted his head, and began tapping on the control pad again, quickly keying in the code. With a hiss, the door slid open.

On the other side of the door was an Asari - her waist and legs covered by the torn rags worn by most slaves, and the rest of her flesh exposed, revealing scars and bruises across her torso.

She reached out with one hand, and Nup was flung into a wall.

---

Lieutenant Norr ducked as an angry hiss and a brilliant ruby-red beam shone through the billowing clouds of smoke, piercing through one of the 9th Company's few remaining TN-Z61 transports with the same unerring accuracy that had struck down the rest of the armoured column.

The transport shuddered and dropped to the ground, the laser having carved cleanly through one of its two thruster banks, leaving it totally immobile.

A second laser struck from another direction just seconds later, punching a hole clean through the turret, the edges of the hole sizzling hot and glowing orange.

His Omni-Tool began beeping frantically, and Norr threw himself to the ground, taking cover behind one of the destroyed tanks before answering the call.

"Darish, status report, now!"

Norr recognised the voice of General Kappiru, the overall commander of Logasiri's defence forces, and he strove to keep the fear from his voice as he responded. "General, this is Lieutenant Norr, 9th Company. We're taking heavy fire. Enemy forces have air support and anti-tank weaponry, we need immediate assistance!"

"Lieutenant Norr? Where's Darish?"

Norr paused as one of the Company's heavy gunners opened up with a Kastor machine gun, the rattling roar of the weapon almost deafeningly loud. There was a booming sound, like the rumbling of distant thunder, and the gun fell silent.

"Captain Darish is down, sir! Passing through Nervakk Valley, we were suddenly hit from both sides. Heavy weapons units hidden in the highlands. Darish's tank was one of the first ones hit, haven't heard from him since."

Kappiru began swearing up a storm on the other end of the line. Norr wondered if he knew he was still on speaker. Finally, the swearing stopped. "Pillars, lend me strength… this is madness. We've no support to offer you - the enemy rule orbit and the Jalamup Airbase was taken out in a lightning raid - 4th Battalion is still trying to regain access. Your estimate on company strength?."

Norr poked his head out from behind the tank. The smoke was beginning to thin a little, but still all he could see was the burning wreckage of many a disabled vehicles, and a lot of Batarian soldiers lying on the ground spasming, electricity crackling over their armour. Another hiss sounded, followed shortly after by an explosion.

"Sir, I think we're all out of armour. Estimating casualties at around forty percent, and rapidly rising."

The amount of gunfire originating from the convoy had certainly lessened, although that could have just been because it was impossible to see shit through all the smoke, and the men were conserving ammo.

Norr found the alternative somewhat more likely.

Halfway across the planet, General Kappiru sighed. "Blasted shade… Lieutenant, order all men to lay down arms."

Norr paused. "S-sir? Say again?"

"Lay down arms, Lieutenant." Kappiru sighed again. "We've already lost this battle. We don't have to all die just to prove it."

---

Nup sat up with a groan, pain running down his back and through his arms. He was still in the recreation room, but the mechanical hiss of his rebreather told him the atmosphere was no longer stable.

When had that happened?

He pushed himself to his feet, looking around the empty room. It looked even more of a mess than it had before - the seats had been flung against one wall and smashed, and one desk had been flipped over onto its back, spilling data disks and plates full of Muvka Bites across the already wrecked floor.

Nup winced. Those snacks were expensive - some of the finest imports from the Viper Nebula. A single box of them cost a week's wages - and lasted about three days.

Nup shook his head, trying to restore his focus. Wait, where's Pormlin?

He looked towards the door that he remembered Pormlin attempting to open. Beyond the recreation room, all lights in the corridor had been destroyed, casting the entire place into darkness.

Gripping his rifle, Nup advanced slowly down the corridor, creeping closer to the corner. He peered cautiously around the edge of the wall. More darkness. More emptiness. Gulping, he advanced around the corner, again moving forward with his rifle raised.

The doors lining the walls of this corridor - entrances to the individual guard's rooms - were all locked and sealed, but the one at the end of the corridor had a green light, glowing steadily in the darkness. Unlocked.

Nup sped up, crossing the remaining distance as quickly as he could in his clunky armour - it was much harder to use without the powered exoskeleton, even if it was just a medium hardsuit. The door opened automatically as he neared it, and he was treated to a scene of chaos.

The half-naked Asari from before had apparently disarmed Pormlin, and was currently wailing on him with a piece of rebar, covered in blood both red and purple.

Pormlin backed away, scrambling to retrieve his rifle, but the enraged Asari had a definite advantage. Taking one hand from her impromptu weapon and flexing her bruised fingers, a field of dark energy enveloped his torso and he was flung across the room, slamming into the wall with a crack that left chunks of his armour embedded in the wall even as his body dropped to the ground.

Nup rushed forward, firing a short burst at the Asari's head, but a flicker of biotic energy swatted them from the air.

Without even turning to look at Nup, the Asari curled her fingers into a fist and focused her biotic energies, a large slab of debris from the now-collapsed room lifting unsteadily into the air. Pormlin, still trying to push himself up, could only watch as the rubble drifted across the room, settling above him.

He first looked at Nup, and then turned to the Asari, desperation in his eyes.

She didn't drop the rubble. Rather, she flexed her biotic powers and slammed it into the ground as hard as she could, crushing the lower half of Pormlin's spine in the process. Metal, cartilage and flesh were crushed and torn by jagged metal bars and ceramic polymer plates.

Pormlin screamed in agony. Blood began to seep through the rubble.

The slave lifted the rubble and brought it crashing back down onto Pormlin's head. The screaming stopped.

Finally, the Asari turned to Nup, and for the second time in as many minutes he was lifted from the ground and thrown heavily into a wall.

This time, he remained conscious as he bounced off the wall and sprawled across the ground, his rifle once more slipping from his grip.

As he rolled over to face his killer, he saw another figure - the Asari warrior from before, her green armour covered in dust and grime. She reached out a hand to the slave, speaking calmly in what Nup assumed was Thessian.

The slave struck the soldier with a dizzy jab to the head, and staggered backwards.

Apparently unfazed, the soldier reached out, some kind of green mist spraying from her fingertips and converging on the slave's wounds.

Bruises faded to nothingness, and torn flesh knitted itself back together. Blood, grime and dust vanished from the slave's skin, faded green-grey giving way to a slightly healthier teal.

Then, without looking, the soldier pointed her hand and the spray of mist towards Pormlin's crushed corpse, and it began disintegrating, fading away into dust and nothingness.

Nup attempted to stand, quickly aborting that course of action. His body ached in its entirety, and simply shuffling one leg across the ground sent pain through his spine so violently he reflexively shuddered in agony. The scent of blood filled his nostrils, even inside the confines of his rebreather.

All he could do was glare as the soldier stalked towards him, standing over him. She raised one hand, and green mist filled his vision.

 

[Faith]

91 - Summons

The battle for Logasiri, if you could call it that, didn't last very long.

The Hegemony forces on the planet, totally cut off from calling for help and blocked from escaping by way of a small fleet of cruisers in far orbit, were quick to lay down their weapons once they realized just how outmatched they were.

The end result was that almost eighty Batarian armoured vehicles had been gutted - an excellent field test for my latest weapon, if a little zealous on the Judak Nurr's part, - hundreds of Hegemony forces had been incapacitated and subsequently locked up, often in the same slave camps they'd been fighting to protect.

Without the whole 'slave labor until you drop dead' thing, of course.

That said…

Well, not every Batarian had made it out alive. For one thing, the Hegemony and the various private guards hadn't been fighting non-lethally, as the Judak Nurr had, and whilst the Faith Foundation overshield modules were more than enough to protect the resistance fighters from harm, more than a few of the slaves had been…slaughtered cut down murdered by you you you your fault

…caught in the crossfire.

And, to make things worse, some of the slaves had decided, upon being set free, to take matters into their own hands. Especially the Asari and the Krogan.

Dozens of prison guards had been killed during the break outs. Often very violently. Hope had apparently witnessed one guard crushed, repeatedly, by a chunk of ceiling thanks to a pissed-off Asari slave. On the one hand, they were definitely slavers and probably scumbags, but… I don't think they deserved death. Not all of them.

I tried not to think about it.

Luckily, in most cases the Judak Nurr were able to restrain the slaves before they could go on huge murderous rampages - with the exception of one Krogan, who killed almost thirty of the guards at his compound before crash tackling a shuttle attempting to escape.

The shuttle crashed in the bottom of a ravine, exploded, and was subsequently crushed by a landslide. By the time the Judak Nurr found the time to check it out, the Krogan was dead - almost six kilometres from the crash site, with both hands missing and chunks of Batarian flesh in between his teeth.

I tried very hard not to think too much about that, either.

The slaves that survived the experience - a mercifully huge amount, thanks to our jamming of the signals required to detonate their bomb collars, - were loaded up onto a number of Voyagers and sent to Miranda, getting them clear from the conflict zone.

Of course, that was only solving the most immediate of their problems. The slaves were… well, some of the more recently enslaved sentients were capable of moving of their own free will, but the rest were just so… broken. They stood silently and wordlessly at all times, as if worried they would be shot just for stepping out of line, but as soon as they were issued an order, they scrambled all over each other to complete it.

It made loading them onto the Voyagers easy, but at the same time it was sad to see so many hundreds of thousands of people acting like lifeless husks.

And to be honest, like almost everything else I'd done in the past few months, this was completely out of my area of expertise.

They… they clearly needed therapy, and probably a lot of it. But… I didn't have the slightest clue on how to help.

Perhaps something to ask Fusou about, in the future.

---

Hope and I sat idle on the bridge of the Jacob Keyes, merely watching through a myriad of monitors as the clean up on the planet below began. For the most part, it was simple busy-work. Not a great deal of collateral damage had been caused in the various slave compounds, which meant that after the few corpses and many many wrecked vehicles were moved out of the way, the place looked pretty much as it had before.

Minus, again, the massed slave labor force.

The city, if you could call it that, wasn't much harder to clean up either. A few flags got burned, some high up officials found themselves engaged in a very up-close inspection of the defence force's jail cells, and half a dozen members of the Judak Nurr's administration division, if you wanted to call it that, set themselves up as the temporary leaders.

Not that they were leading much - the city was essentially a star port, government offices, and a whole load of formerly-slave-labor cargo and shipping services. Mainly because everyone who could derive any value from this crappy rock had the wealth to set themselves up as the rulers of their own little compounds, and why would you live in a city when you can rule a chunk of planet larger than Tasmania?

Regardless, the Judak Nurr seemed to have that situation well in hand, and so we turned our attention elsewhere.

Amongst the files and documents Fusou had provided us was a legitimate record as a Human operated company registered in the Citadel. We'd been planning on making use of it sooner, but preparing the Judak Nurr for the war was somewhat more time-consuming than we'd expected it to be.

Now, though, the Judak Nurr were starting to hit their stride, so we could afford to take a bit of attention away from them.

And thus, the Faith Foundation officially entered the galactic market. Of course, there were two big problems with this - first, the weapons market was relatively stable at the moment and it would take a serious kick to open up enough room for us to become even remotely viable, and second, the market for non-lethal weapons, whilst vast, was nowhere near as big as the market for murder weapons.

The second was easily solved by copying, upgrading, and refining the designs sold by Batarian State Arms, or from our other jaunts around the multiverse, although we toned those designs down a tad, keeping all the handheld lasers (of which there were quite a few) away from the market. At least for now. If we opened with the big bulky cannon, then 'upgrading' to smaller, rifle-sized weapons would seem more legitimate.

Honestly, the first problem was much bigger. Inventing awesome weapons was all very well and good, but if no one ever bought them, it was a huge waste of time and… well, not really a waste of resources, given we were less than a third of the way through hollowing out the moons in our Hub World and still basically drowning in metal, but still.

As crude as it was to say, though, the Batarian Civil War made for good advertising. Several of the resistance fighters were in the habit of uploading combat footage onto the extranet, and already we had, through them, received several requests for our Overshield Packs and Tesla Weapons. Our new anti-tank weapon, I suspected, would also draw in the public eye, once those videos started to circulate.

Man portable laser weapons were… almost, if not entirely unheard of in the Mass Effect universe - between powering the laser and keeping the mechanism cool, it was just too damn hard to fit it into a portable package.

Of course, we cheated, but they didn't have to know that… and besides, thanks to Fusou the Humans in this chunk of the multiverse already had a reputation for advanced technology. A man portable laser cannon probably wouldn't be too much of a shock.

It would certainly revolutionize armoured combat, though. Suddenly tanks would be a hell of a lot less viable, if any infantry squad could carry around a weapon capable of blasting clean through them.

And then there were the other fun things I had to offer - energy crossbows, multi-launch rocket pods, rail guns, plasma rifles and beams… long story short, any militaries investing heavily in armoured assets were quickly going to regret it.

---

For several months, not a whole lot happened. The Hegemony had at some point been made aware of the capture of Logasiri, probably by the primitively-cloaked corvette that we'd let slip out of our orbital blockade early in the siege, but as of yet had apparently not bothered enough to reclaim the place, simply issuing a statement about terrorist activities leading to the temporary occupation of the planet before falling silent on the matter..

Lorek, the nearest garrison, had received reinforcements on a large scale, over a dozen cruisers and three larger ships - battlecruisers, if my memory of naval terminology was right, - but apart from that, nothing had happened.

Miranda's various residential buildings were starting to reach capacity, largely due to the huge influx of slaves, and whilst the less militant members of the Judak Nurr, - amongst whom there were several psychologists of various levels of training, - were trying to help them work through their issues…

It wasn't exactly a fast process. They had a lot of issues.

Whilst their pacifistic members were busy running planetary colonies and rehabilitating slaves, most of the militant group relocated to Michael Bay. Hope and I established a much larger barracks facility in the area, to facilitate long term habitation there, and that saved a couple of hundred rooms in New Bondi which were quickly filled.

The reason for bringing several Batarians a long way down the coast to our military testing lab was rather simple. Despite being a hyper advanced war machine… I didn't really know that much about guns. I mean, general ideas and concepts, sure. Inner workings, piece of cake. But the little details? That was a bit outside of my comfort zone.

And so we outsourced the problem to nine hundred and fifty ex-soldiers, mercenaries, and revolutionaries. It gave them something to do when they weren't flying around the Omega Nebula and causing trouble for the Hegemony by raiding their supply shipments and harassing their patrols.

It also gave us a lot of advertising footage. I mean, the shaky-cam footage of a dirty battlefield, clouded by dust and smoke, certainly made for more atmospheric displays of firepower, but if you couldn't really see the guns in question then it was a bit pointless.

And for the most part, the Judak Nurr fighters did have good ideas about little tweaks to make to the various designs we were throwing around - slightly altered grips and sights, better designed stocks, mounting points for attachments, and the like.

---

The sun had just set three hours prior over Michael Bay when we received an unexpected message over the Command Network, relayed through our Jartar base. A message, specifically, from Commander Fusou, inviting the two of us to visit her on her yacht to trade technologies - something we'd vaguely discussed in our first meeting and promptly forgotten about for two years, - and, to quote directly 'gossip'.

What, exactly, three hyper-advanced war machines were going to 'gossip' about, was left unclear.

Well, whatever it is Hope said cheerily, it would be a shame to turn her down. And it's not like we're doing much here right now anyway.

Admittedly, she was right. We were just kind of sitting around doing nothing.

I guess that settles it, then. Girl's night out!

 

[Faith]

92 - Reunion
Unlike the last time we'd met the perky Asian (?) commander, this time we were meeting not on the more neutral ground of the Citadel - although that had been an accident and the conversation quickly relocated, - but rather on one of her own vessels.

She called it her 'yacht' but as the Jacob Keyes drew closer - massively dwarfed by the other vessel, - I began to find that designation somewhat optimistic.

The Jacob Keyes docked with the ship in a large hangar near the aft, a single docking tube linking to one of the airlocks near the Jacob Keyes' bridge. Hope and I slipped into our NeoAvatars, dressed much the same as they always were.

A swirling vortex of blue awaited us at the end of the tunnel, obviously one of Fusou's much vaunted Slipspace portals. Shrugging at Hope, I stepped through, and she followed just a moment after.

We emerged into some kind of tropical forest, surrounded by tall, pink-leaved trees. A single pathway lay before us, a trail of dark paving stones. A quick scan of the immediate area gave no indications of Fusou's presence. Hope gave me a worried glance, which I quickly returned. A sudden sound draw both our attention, as a hauntingly beautiful piece of music began to echo through the trees.

Oh, thank god. For a moment I was worried it was going to be a horror game soundtrack.

Looking around again, I couldn't help but share Hope's sentiment. Despite the vibrant pink trees everywhere, the place looked like the perfect site for an ambush. Maybe that was just several months of guerilla warfare speaking, though.

Drops of rain began to fall from above - subtle encouragement for us to get moving, or just part of the atmosphere? I doubted I knew the Commander well enough to guess.

With nothing else to go on, and the Slipspace portal since closed behind us, we made our way down the only available path on a meandering stroll through the cherry grove.

Something something something, gotta catch 'em all.

Shut up, Hope.

The path eventually led to a crossroads on the shore of a lake, almost mirror smooth. To the left and right, the paths curved away, following the waterline, and before us, towards the source of the music, was an arching bridge of dark red wood, stretching out towards a distant island.

The choice seemed pretty obvious, and although the temptation to perform a minor act of trolling and go for a long walk around the lake was immense, reason won out. Hope and I crossed under the big gate that looked like a pi symbol and made our way over the arching bridge, coming down and passing another big red gate onto a largely flat grassy island. On the far edge of the small island, a small rise held the island's only tree, a huge pink cherry bloom thing that curved over the water and back onto the land, its huge canopy providing some shelter from the soft rain above.

The other place sheltered from the rain was a small gazebo, and the source of the beautiful melodies. Fusou sat on a small stool, a cello almost as tall as her resting against her lap. Her music tapered away, and she set down the cello's bow, and then the cello itself, on the table beside her.

"I'm glad you both came, Faith, Hope, and I hope you didn't mind my showing off a bit."

We shared a glance before shrugging as one. "No worries. Showing off is the best way of greeting people in such a way that you can demonstrate newly acquired skills or talents without having to shove it down another person's throat." I paused for a second, and beside me, Hope nodded her agreement. "Nice cello, by the way."

"Thank you, I haven't learned to make one myself yet but I did manage to find this one at an auction house in Germany," she replied, smiling warmly. "But showing off isn't why I invited either of you here. The first thing I wanted to do is congratulate you both on how well you're doing against the Hegemony."

Immediately, I felt a pang of regret.

"War is truly hell, but you both have done well to keep the bloodshed to a bare minimum, which is even more impressive given that most of those fighting are actual people. It speaks well of both you and your allies."

I looked away, eyes boring into the ground. "Yeah, well… we haven't really been doing much. Most of the work's been done by the Jaduk Nurr and… well, they're not perfect. Not a lot of people have died, but I reckon getting tazed and shitting uncontrollably into your hardsuit has to be pretty uncomfortable. And the people who have died…"

They didn't die. They were executed. Dragged into the street, stripped naked and stabbed through the eyes.

I couldn't bring myself to say it. Beside me, Hope seemed entirely elsewhere, totally lost in thought. It was easy enough to guess what she was thinking about.

Fusou sighed quietly, shook her head, stood up, stepped forward, and poked me in the forehead. "You're being stupid, Faith."

I blinked, caught out by the sudden outburst. "W-what do you mean?"

Fusou's face twisted into a sad smile, and she held my gaze for a long moment before turning away. She made a gesture with one hand and another hole in reality formed just outside the gazebo. "Come with me. I would like to show you both something."

Without waiting for my response, she turned and stepped through the portal, vanishing in a small flash of light. I nudged Hope, drawing her attention back to reality, and stepped through the portal, Hope just a half-second behind.

We emerged into a vast field of grass and wildflowers, a largely clear blue sky hanging above, a mere handful of clouds drifting lazily through the air. Just a few metres in front of us, a wall of black stone, seven feet high, stretched out into the distance, from horizon to horizon.

Taking a closer look at the wall, I realized that the etchings upon its surface were not drawings, as I had initially thought, but… names?

"F-Fusou," I said, voice catching. "What is this?"

Not turning to face me, Fusou stepped forward, placing a hand on the wall, one finger tracing an etched name.

"The Gravemind once called itself a 'Monument to all of your sins', when speaking to the Master Chief in the canon storyline. I never encountered the Gravemind personally, but I suspect it would have found great amusement in what I've done, for this wall is a monument to all of my sins."

No…

"Every single being that I believe myself to be personally culpable for killing has had their name engraved upon this wall. From the lowliest of the Unggoy to the High Prophets of Truth, Regret, and Mercy, to the UNSC sailors and marines who died due to my overconfidence. All one hundred and seven million, four hundred and twenty one thousand, and ninety-eight of them are listed here…" She trailed off.

One hundred and seven million? That's… that's insane. That's impossible. H-how could someone like her-

She suddenly turned, tears rolling down her cheeks. "We wield a tremendous amount of power, Faith, and with it we can do amazing things, and bring about changes never before imagined. But there will always be consequences to the changes we make, and sometimes we must chose the lesser of two evils. For the question you need to ask youself in many cases isn't 'who are you to take their lives', but 'who are you to let them live'? If evil is left unchecked, it will always continue, and sometimes the choices we're presented with in order to stop evil are no choices at all."

For the longest moment, I couldn't bring myself to speak. Eventually, I pushed aside the misery. "One hundred and seven million… how? How… how did they die? How do you… how do you live with yourself?"

Unwanted memories leapt to the forefront of my mind, and I couldn't help but blurt out, "I-I couldn't kill one man pointing a gun at my head…"

Eager to steer the conversation away from that particular topic, I - rather stupidly, in hindsight, - turned it back to Fusou. "So many dead… how?"

Fusou gave a bitter, ugly laugh.

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing, Faith. I arrived on the planet of Reach exactly 24 hours before the Covenant attacked. At that time, Reach had population of just over nine billion people Faith, and I decided it would be harder to live with myself, provided I even survived, if I had just stood by and watched them die then if I had fought and killed those who were attacking the UNSC. In the Siege of Reach I killed more than fifteen million sentient beings, and to my shame more than several thousand of them were the people I was trying protect who suffered because I thought I knew better.

"I killed another nine million in the next battle, where the UNSC and the beginnings of the Covenant Separatists ambushed a pair of fleets at a rally point. Then I killed another twenty-six million in the battle that took place an hour later when nearly the entire Covenant armada showed up, at which point I truly screwed the pooch. I underestimated the hatred and fear that the Prophets had and failed to stop them from escaping that ambush with the station of High Charity."

Fusou swallowed and shook her head.

"High Charity was never intended to be a combat platform, but it still carried enough plasma weaponry to scour a planet clean of life. So when that station appeared above the planet of Sanghelios and prepared to bombard the cities below, inevitably killing billions, I made a snap decision. I could not let such an event come to pass and so I jumped the only slipspace capable probe I had in-system to High Charity's reactor chamber where the drone impacted and exploded, setting off a chain reaction that destroyed the station."

She fell silent for a long moment, averting her eyes to the ground before continuing.

"My impromptu attack killed the Prophets and more or less ended the war, but the cost of killing the prophets and saving Sanghelios was that I took responsibility for murdering the fifty-four million civilians that lived aboard that station and had never had a chance to evacuate… After reporting what had happened to my allies, I retreated here, to the Onyx Dyson sphere and spent years under time acceleration, almost completely alone so that I could come to terms with what I had done, Faith. And that says nothing about the hundreds I assassinated or straight up murdered in the aftermath of the war just to keep the peace."

Fusou sighed again, much more heavily this time as she said, "I neither can, nor will, tell you how to live your life, Faith, and yours either, Hope. I can only tell you that if you wish to help others, there will inevitably be those who fight against you to harm whatever cause you believe in or the people you have chosen to help. So let me tell you this: 'The fool I kill today won't harm anyone tomorrow'."

"I guess…"

But as I thought on it, I realized something else. I gestured at the beautiful environments around us. "But… we're hanging around and playing God… who are we, to do that? To, to, to force what we want on everyone else? What if that's just it, Fusou?"

I choked back a sob. "What if we're the fools?"

Fusou's gave another sad smile as she reached out and gently cupped my chin and tilted my head up till our eyes met as she quietly said, "Then I guess we'll just have to play that part Faith."

She let go over my chin and stepped back as she again spoke, her voice still soft and gentle, that almost musical lilt somehow more pronounced for the quietness of her tone. "Faith...I've already said that I neither can nor will tell you how to live your life. All I can tell you is that we have power and it isn't that power that defines us, it's what we do with it. That may mean playing god from some perspectives, but if you can make life better for others, if you can help people find happiness, if you can find happiness yourself, isn't that reason enough to act?" asked Fusou, she didn't stop and give me a chance to answer though, instead the red-eyed commander continued on.

"I created Lily, a living, thinking being, and that was certainly playing god on my part, but I don't regret it. I regret that I made mistakes when I played god during her creation, but I don't regret playing god in the first place. For I love my daughter with all of my heart and if playing god was necessary to bring her into my life, then so be it." She stated softly, a hint of steel filling the last sentence as she stopped for a moment before giving a kind smile.

"Abraham Lincoln said 'Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power'. Going by that statement, I think that you've admirably demonstrated the integrity of your character Faith, just be careful and kind and I think you'll find little to worry about."

 

[Faith]

93 - Exchange

"Abraham Lincoln said 'Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power'. Going by that statement, I think that you've admirably demonstrated the integrity of your character, Faith, just be careful and kind and I think you'll find little to worry about."

I appreciated her trying. I really did. And I was sure Hope did, too.

That didn't make it feel any less than empty words of false encouragement.

It didn't make me feel any less of a monster, either.

I almost didn't notice a trio of chairs flickering into existence until Fusou slumped into one, rubbing her eyes and sighing lightly.

"I've justified my actions to you as best as I can, Faith, but I never answered just how it was I live with myself," she said softly, a hint of weariness in her voice. "The honest truth is that sometimes I don't, but when I do I go back and look at this list."

As soon as she finished speaking, a wide panel of hardlight snapped into existence before us, towering over the nearby wall almost thrice over. Like the wall, it took on the shape of smooth obsidian, engraved with thousands upon thousands of names.

"I know I've done horrible things and I've killed more than a hundred million beings, but this...this is a list of every single being that I know I am directly responsible for saving. I saved nine billion, one hundred and twenty million, ninety-five thousand, and three people from death at the hands of the Covenant when I killed fifteen million to protect Reach."

Still slumped in her chair, Fusou waved her left hand and another hardlight screen snapped into existence, millions more names appearing on it.

"When I destroyed High Charity I killed over fifty-four million people, most of them innocents, yes, but in doing so I managed to protect the seven billion, eight hundred and nine million, four hundred and twenty-two thousand, six hundred and seventy beings upon Sanghelios."

Both projections hung in the air for a little bit longer - names still scrawling across the surfaces- before finally vanishing.

"I can live with myself, Faith, because I know that even if I did the wrong thing, I did it for the right reasons. I try to be nice to people, and I try to be kind as well. But the fact is that deep down I know that when push comes to shove I'm not a good person and that I have done and will continue to do horrible things for the sake of helping and protecting others."

For a moment, she was silent, simply staring into my eyes. "The knowledge that I've often succeeded and that honesty about who I am is how I live with myself, Faith."

Beside and behind me, I heard Hope sniffing back tears.

I don't want to be here anymore, she complained mentally, still on the verge of crying even within her own head.

I couldn't help but agree. I hadn't intended to be talking about this - hadn't intended to even think about the things I'd seen.

So I forced those thoughts back, pushed them into a dark corner of my mind, and turned away from them.

"I… let's just… fuck, let's just move on. I don't want to talk about this anymore."

"I can certainly agree to that, Faith." Fusou's fingers twitched, and the three of us suddenly stood upon a beach, golden sand beneath our feet, waves lapping at the coast just metres away.

"I invited you both here so we could trade technology, so let's get to work on that," Fusou said, switching back to business mode. "When we're finished, I invite you to stay and enjoy yourselves for at least a little while."

She gestured to a small patio on the sand, where a single umbrella cast a nice patch of shade over a table and a handful of chairs. Making our way over, Fusou dropped into one of the seats without preamble, gesturing for us to do the same.

As we sat down, some kind of holographic barrier appeared across the table - more Forerunner hardlight, if I had to guess.

"The catalog you let me have a look through was quite nice, Faith, and I've made a few choices, so if you're ready, I'd like to hear what you were interested in."

I distinctly didn't remember giving Fusou all the details about the tech I'd stolen, let alone in the form of a catalogue, but Hope nudged me in the arm and waved it off with a subtle hand movement, so I assumed that was her doing.

Nevertheless, I did recall Fusou sending a clipped list of the things she had acquired from her Haloverse jaunt - totally lacking in Forerunner technologies, I couldn't help but notice, but otherwise quite heavy with both Covenant and UNSC technology.

Several of which… well, honestly, I didn't have much need for most of it, having my own alternatives, but that didn't mean I didn't want them, and I had a feeling that Hope felt the same way.

"Alright, well. Uh, let's see."

I started listing off technologies on my fingers, flicking through the list mentally as I did so.

"I already have really fast FTL, but Slipspace does some weird shit and there's probably enough differences between the two methods to make it worth having both."

"I'm fairly sure I can accommodate you there," Fusou said with a smile. "I've only just started upgrading the Systems Alliance to what the Covenant use, so as long as you're gradual with the introduction of its use, I can do that."

Honestly, I think I'd rather we stick with our Phase FTL, Hope said, face impassive. It… well, I don't know if it's faster but we know more about it. And slipspace has some weird interactions with the real world, Phase Space doesn't.

They each have their uses. Why not get access to both? Besides, if Fusou's selling slipspace to the locals, we can too, and then we still have the leg up on them thanks to our Phase drives.

Hm. Smart.

"More kinds of energy shields are always fun," I continued at the same time as I spoke to Hope, "and the ones from Halo are man-portable without needing bulky backpacks, so those would be nice to have."

"Yeah, I can definitely see your reasoning there, and that's something I'll trade. They'll mostly likely the proto-Forerunner shields that the UNSC had equipped the Infinity with, if that works."

Oh no, we're being given superior Forerunner shields instead of shitty reverse engineered Covenant derivatives. However will we cope?

"Plasma Torpedoes," Hope said aloud once she was done snarking. "All of our guided munitions are physical missile warheads, and they're a lot easier to intercept than plasma."

"Ah, that's an easy to agree to," Fusou said. "While the method is somewhat complex, once you take a look at the actual technology those torpedoes are actually sort of disappointing. I look forwards to seeing if you can do better than Cortana did with her improvements."

She seems far too willing to just fork this stuff over, dontcha think?

She's got Forerunner tech she's holding back from us. I guess she doesn't care about plasma torpedoes when she's got… well, I don't know for sure if she's stolen a Halo but I sure as hell would have.

I paused for a moment to think before settling on the next items.

"The Covenant also have anti-gravity tech, which no one else has had so far… well, the Bright Foundation did, but their methods don't scale up well. Also, energy blades. We're kind of lacking for melee options - which, I mean, isn't a huge problem most of the time, but I'd like to have some infantry-scale lethal melee and Omni-Weapons aren't exactly great."

For just the slightest moment, Fusou made a slightly sour face, as if deep in thought, and then she replied, "I can trade both of those, though I think I should at least tell you that once you figure out the plasma torpedoes you'll be able to make your own melee weapons."

Oh, right. They must use the same kind of technology to shape, guide and contain the plasma regardless of size. That speaks well, both for its modularity and scale. Guided sun-cannon, anyone?

We already have a black hole gun, Hope. The hell do we need a sun gun for?

Hot cold slash light dark dichotomy, duh.

"And… I know technically we already have the capacity to make AI, but I was hoping to get the UNSC's AI tech. I think they'd be easier to manage, unlike Progenitor AI they're not famous for turning against their creators, and I was already loathe to play around with the Progenitor AI template but after you… Well, it seems like an even worse idea, now."

Fusou leaned back in her chair, chewing her bottom lip. For a few seconds, she just sat, thinking, before she sighed heavily and slumped in her seat. "I...I guess I can trade the AI technology to both of you. Just...just don't fuck up like I did."

Hey let's not take the conversation back to the land of tears and sadness?

Good thinking.

"Oh," Hope supplied. "That Titanium-E stuff. I have some fun ideas for that."

Fusou sat up slightly straighter in her seat. "While I can trade that to you, I'd actually suggest you trade with the Systems Alliance for the tech behind Titanium-E for a couple of reasons."

Oh, god. Bureaucracy.

"For one, if I give it to you and the Alliance finds out, Hackett will get upset and that is just plain annoying to deal with. Seriously, he pulls this look that makes you feel you just disappointed your grandfather."

One, why do the Alliance care what Fusou does with her tech, and two, how does she know that?

Maybe it's not hers? Like, why would she make an Eezo infused titanium alloy, instead of using the good old bullshite unfairium alloys the Progenitor stuff is made of?

Bullshite unfairium. I like that.

"And second, such a trade could potentially let you get a foot in the door towards establishing friendly- or at least warmer relations between the Alliance and your future Batarian state. Does that sound reasonable enough for the both of you?"

Well, fair enough. The Judak Nurr will have enough problems on their plate after they take over the Hegemony without adding intergalactic affairs into the mix. I'm sure we can arrange some sort of agreement… It'd be nice to get the Batarians and the Humans to be allies. They're basically galactic neighbours, after all. And the Systems Alliance would probably appreciate not having to put up with slave raids and four-eyed supremacist bullshit.

Yeah, we'll just give the Systems Alliance some of our FTL sensors or something… no, wait. The SLOW fields. Useful, certainly, but without Progenitor level power generation they're not huge game changers. If nothing else, the way they simply remove kinetic energy from items in their range should keep their scientists quiet for a few months.

Their scientists work with a material that flagrantly violates the law of conservation of energy literally every day. They make toothbrushes out of the stuff. I don't think they'd be that miffed.

You raise an exceptional point, Faith.

"That sounds fair," I confirmed, barely a half-second having passed since Fusou spoke. "But it's not much of a trade if we just leech of your tech. Why don't we flip the script a little now? What can we do for you?"

Fusou gave a cheeky grin and began counting things off her own fingers, directly imitating what I'd just done.

"The Elysion FTL Gate, the Elysion Cores, your anti-bio beams -because I need something a bit less drastic than a Halo Pulse, Zoltan phase shields, the FTL phase drive, the phase teleporter, the singularity cannon tech, and the SAFE lasers."

Guess she did steal a Halo, then.

Mm. Two kinds of FTL, the teleporter, super shields, three weapons, and the Elysion Cores. We asked for one kind of FTL, energy shields, plasma weapons, anti gravity tech and AI… that doesn't seem particularly fair.

Especially when two of those weapons are the SAFEs and the Singularity Cannon. I mean, those are basically our most powerful weapons and she's got Halo arrays already, she doesn't exactly need more firepower.

Question is, can we really afford to turn her down?

Nothing we're trading is really vital - on either side, actually. Hm. If she's been giving Slipspace Drives to the Systems Alliance, she's probably given them AI to run them, too. The other stuff is minor, we could do without. If this does fail, we can take the technology from elsewhere.

And risk drawing the ire of both her and the Systems Alliance? Maybe as an absolute last resort.

Agreeing with Hope's assessment, I drummed my fingers against the tabletop for a moment, as though deep in thought, and finally replied. "I… I'm a bit leery of handing you the Singularity and SAFE weapons, to be honest. It feels like you're getting a lot more out of this trade than we are - especially since you're evidently holding your Forerunner tech in reserve. Everything else sounds fair, but..."

An irritated look briefly flickered across Fusou's face before it settled into a more neutral expression. "Faith, just come out and say what you're thinking. If I'm being unreasonable or if I have a technology that you're more interested in, then please just say so. I'll admit I didn't list everything I have on the document I sent you, mostly out of caution, but I'm at the very least willing to consider other options if you just ask about them."

Oh, I'm sorry, Hope snarked. I didn't realise we were allowed to order off the menu.

Mm. I'll admit to being interested in the possibilities opened by hard light… and it's not much of an offensive tech, except for the shitty hardlight guns they used in Halo 4. If we assume that she's just being smart and keeping the really powerful stuff like the Composer and Halos, then she'd probably be fine with that.

Is it worth our two best weapons, though?

No. But… if she throws in the Sentinel's weapons tech, I'd be willing to put one of the two up.

We already have the Fire Beam and the Anti-Bio Beam. What do we need Sentinel Lasers for?

I was thinking more the, uh, Enforcer's pulse cannons and stuff. Also, no matter how low-power, Forerunner weapons tech has to have some kind of advantage over the FTL stuff, right? The Forerunners built stars, the Federation struggled to mass produce dreadnoughts.

Fair. Actually, now that you mention it, just Sentinels in general. Energy shields, multiple weapon types, potent anti-gravity - to the point they can achieve orbit. Powerful, but still weak enough to be downed by Covenant guns and therefore not even remotely close to being a threat to her, right?

I suppose so. So hardlight and sentinels… I don't think it's worth both our best weapons, though.

"Alright, then," I said. "In that case, if you give us the technology to make hardlight bridges and whatnot, and anything you have on the Halo Sentinels - Majors, Enforcers, and all that, then we'll let you take one of the SAFE lasers or the Singularity cannon. I get that compared to the Halos they're probably not much more than novelty pop-guns, but they're our best weapons and we're not going to throw them at everyone who asks."

"Before I say yes or no, I need to ask what exactly you know about the capabilities of the sentinels as a whole, what you know hardlight is capable of, and just which versions of sentinels you want."

"Uh, okay. The Sentinels are some crappy attempt at containing the Flood using purposefully-pathetic equipment to prevent the risk of a Flood outbreak on a Halo getting some actually decent Forerunner weaponry."

Actually, I couldn't remember if that was canon or not. But it was the only reason that made sense in my head, given the scale the Forerunners worked at.

"Basic ones just fly and shoot things. Majors and Enforcers have shields, Enforcers also have giant crushy claws and pulse cannon things… basically reskinned Needlers without the homing, and some kind of mortar thing. And then there's those other ones from Wars, the ones that give shields and repair things. Constructors, I think? No, Protectors. Constructors are the other repair ones, the ones from the Ark."

I tapped my chin uncertainly. "Also, Monitors if you count them? I don't know of any others… maybe in the books? I'll admit, I'm not super huge on Halo lore."

There might have been. There was a shield world in one of the books, right? Onyx sentinels might be different to regular ones?

"As for hardlight, uh, bridges, shields, screens. Temporary repairs to ships whilst more permanent structures are constructed. Bullets, for some reason. Decorations, in one of the books… look, to be honest, like I said, I don't know Halo lore very well. If I'm asking too much, just say so."

"That's all you needed to say, Faith," Fusou said with a warm smile. "I'm more than willing to explain where needed, you only have to ask. Let's start with hardlight first. What makes it impressive is that you can use it for just about anything. I mostly use it for providing structural support during my mega engineering projects and for aesthetic purposes afterwards, for example:"

With another twitch of her fingers, she produced a foot tall hardlight model of some kind of starship or space station, conical in shape and formed almost entirely of intricately designed and ornate panels, glowing faintly blue. Concentric rings capped each 'end' of the structure, floating slightly distant from its surface as if suspended by some kind of energy field.

Which… probably wasn't too far off the mark, given that even the Bright Foundation had managed similar feats of engineering, if admittedly on a far smaller scale.

"This is a Cathedral-class Starbase, and is probably one of my favorite units. While everything of of actual structural importance is made of Progenitor alloy, pretty much all of the exterior petals are actually hardlight, which so long as I have power for it is almost as strong as the Progenitor alloy. Without the hardlight though, this is what you get."

In an instant, the ornate glowing exterior seemed to break apart and fade away, leaving behind blocks of matte black metal only vaguely resembling the shape the 'starbase' had held before.

"While I prefer the permanence of actually building my structures out of solid metal, it's also quite possible to build entire factories and the like from hardlight so long as you have the raw resources to supply it. That's how megastructures like the Ark and the Halos were built. A central design seed produces a hardlight framework through which materials are transported to actually build the vessels. And as I said, hardlight can simulate almost anything. Like this."

Fusou waved her hand across the table, and a small wind-up toy popped into existence. She tinkered with the hardlight construct for a moment before setting it down and releasing it, and it dashed forward, toppling off the side of the table.

"If you have enough power for it, you really wouldn't even have build anything but the emitters to create structures and units. It's a bit risky since if the power goes out all of the units disappear," she said with a shrug, "but you could do it in a pinch I suppose."

Okay. So apparently it's a little more versatile than I thought. Which… honestly it makes me want it more. I wonder if you can make the light green?

They use bluey purple for bridges, both blue and orange for the Knights depending on who's in command, and all sorts of colours on their terminals, so we should be good for green.

Yeah, fair enough. Suddenly I feel like a bit of a bitch for asking for that and Sentinel tech. Maybe she'd be willing to go one for one? We'll drop sentinels if she drops one of the super weapons?

The fuck am I supposed to know? Ask her, not me.

Maybe I wanted your opinion before butting in on the conversation that thus far you have dominated?

Maybe you're afraid of looking like a moron in front of your crush?

Maybe actually shut the fuck up right now?

Jeez, touchy.

Since Hope was evidently not going to be helpful, I took matters into my own hands. "Hm. It seems we underestimated the value of hardlight rather significantly, then. In that case, if you'd prefer, we're willing to drop our line of inquiry regarding Forerunner Sentinels and just take hardlight. Perhaps, had I a chance to play Halo 5 before..." I waved my hands nebulously, quickly shoving that particular thought aside. "Well, yeah. Halo lore. Not my strong suit."

Fusou seemed to be greatly amused by that statement as she smothered a giggle before replying. "It could be your strong suit and I'd still expect you to have trouble with it all. I had thought I knew the lore well before I got there, but dear lord was I out of my depth more times than I'm willing to admit." The amused smile remained on her face as she continued on.

"As for dropping the sentinels and just adding hardlight to the agreement, I would be alright with that. If you would really like to have sentinels though, I would be willing to assemble a limited amount of their technology. Nothing...awe inspiring, but something respectable at least." Fusou stated, her tone remaining pleasant.

Honestly… the Sentinels are basically a package of several technologies, most of which we have better versions of already. To be entirely honest, the only things I'd really like are their anti-grav systems, because they're faster, stronger and more consistent than the Britech ones. Weapons we can do without, shields we're already getting - two kinds, maybe, even, - and drone AI we can crib from the Federation. I think we can do without.

Eh. If she's offering, though…

Well, you're right. It would almost be rude to turn her down.

I don't think it really would. I mean, this entire meeting has had undertones of 'I'm holding stuff back in case I have to kill you later on down the line', and I doubt she'd begrudge us for recognising that. But yeah, since she's offering, may as well take it.

This time, it was Hope who spoke on our behalf. "Sentinels are a minor concern, but we'd be willing to take it if you're willing to offer. Besides that, I think the deal seems fair enough."

We're still giving more than we're getting, tech-for-tech.

We're getting Hardlight, AI, and better Plasma fields. She's getting different, and probably worse versions of FTL, teleporting, weapons, and shielding. I don't think it's such a huge concern. Besides, it's not like Forerunner tech will be forever lost to us. I mean, I don't know if she hops dimensions like we do, but if she does, it's more than likely she'd be able to return here at any time - as we would be. Arranging a meetup couldn't be that difficult?

And that's assuming we don't land in the Halo universe ourselves, at some point. I acquiesced. Which… well.

"Of course," I said to Fusou, picking up where Hope left off. "That means, provided you're still in agreement, that all you need to do now is make your choice. SAFE lasers, or Singularity cannons?"

"I'll take the Singularity cannons, I think," Fusou replied after a brief moment. "The SAFE lasers are interesting as all get out I'll admit, but I can do something similar enough with what I picked up at Onyx..."

Hm. Fair enough. Hope, you want to sort those files out or should I?

Already on it.

Fusou briefly seemed to lose focus for a moment before shaking her head and continuing. "As for Sentinel tech, the AI system used by the standard Aggressor and the Aggressor Majors will do along with their weapon systems and those of the Enforcer model. You're already getting a variety of other technologies out of me to handle the needs of what won't be in the package so you should be alright there."

Neat. Not that we needed them too much anyway, but still. Nice to have. They're more infantry scale than the ones the Federation used. Might find their way into Faith Foundation lineups.

Actually, we should probably start fielding more of our robot units, once the conflict starts stepping up. Should help cut down on casualties for the Judak Nurr.

"Now if we're finished with business then I invite you both to spend some time here to relax a bit before you leave."

I took a moment to look around, reminding myself that we were, in fact, still on a beach of golden sand, waves lapping at the shore just a handful of metres away.

"Yeah. Sounds fun."

 

[Faith]

94 - Beaches

Fusou smiled at us and stood gracefully, gesturing calmly towards a large bungalow concealed amongst the treeline opposite the water's edge.

"You're both welcome to stay as long as you like and make full use of the amenities here. Lily and I are staying a few dozen yards further up the beach in another bungalow. You should find everything you'd need for a beach trip already available inside. If you need something that isn't available, the fabricators should be able to handle it just fine," she told us. "Now if you don't mind me leaving, I'm going to go change and get a swim. The water isn't the same as I remember it being off of Hawaii but I'd like to think I got pretty close."

Ooh, Hawaii. The birthplace of surfing. Or one of them, anyway.

Her part said, Fusou turned and wandered off up the beach towards another bungalow. Leaving her to it, I made my own way to the bungalow she'd indicated to us, Hope following a few steps behind a moment later.

The interior of the bungalow was pretty standard, really. The entire front of the building was a living area, with a couple of couches, a table, a large TV screen, some bookshelves, and all the rest, whilst open archways in the back wall lead through to the kitchen and a short corridor with a number of other rooms branching off it - bathrooms and bedrooms, presumably.

Not that we had much need for either, the NeoAvatars being almost entirely robotic in nature, but the thought was appreciated.

Activating the Fabricator built into the Neo's arm, I quickly stripped away the clothes I was wearing with a swarm of nanites, replacing them just as quickly with a pair of green and grey board shorts and a matching bikini top.

Beside me, Hope had done much the same. We shared a glance for a moment before a slight issue became apparent.

"We should probably change things up a little," Hope pointed out. "So she can tell who's who."

I tapped a finger to my chin and shrugged. "Yeah, fair enough. Lemme do my hair up or something."

Whilst I fiddled with my hair, replacing the high bun with a long braid, Hope went poking about in the back rooms, and I swear I heard the sound of a heavy object bouncing around on a mattress for a few moments before Hope reappeared in the corridor. "Nice place. Comfy beds."

"And? We don't need sleep. Also, you could literally just tweak your sensors until you always feel comfy, so that's also kind of moot."

She shrugged. "Yeah, I guess. Anyway, done with your hair?"

Taking the end of my new braid in one hand and waving it idly, I stood from the couch and gestured to the door. "Please, after you."

Hope rolled her eyes and stepped outside, back onto the beach, and I followed, quietly closing the door behind me. For some reason, a beach chair that hadn't previously been there was positioned near the water's edge, a heap of white fabric atop it.

Fusou, wearing a two-piece blue bikini and not a whole lot else, emerged from beneath the waves, wiping water from her eyes with one hand, and, upon seeing us on the beach, gave a casual one-armed wave.

"Very pretty," Hope said, staring out into the distance.

"Yeah." Suddenly, a thought struck me. "Wait, the beach, or -"

Hope ignored me, running forward across the sand and splashing into the shallows. Sighing, I followed, feet sinking ever-so-slightly into the warm sand. I had to admit, the beach was very pretty. The sand underfoot was soft and the gentle waves that lapped at the shoreline were simply perfect. Perhaps a little too light for some proper surfing, but then that wasn't the only way to have fun at the beach.

Fusou laughed and dove backwards into the surf, slipping beneath the surface. Hope leapt forward and swam through the water after her as I entered the surf, water swirling around my ankles.

By the time I'd waded out far enough to catch up, Hope had resurfaced and Fusou was still underwater somewhere. Hope turned to me, her hair dripping wet, and gave a huge grin. "It's been ages since I've been to a beach like this!"

"You know, technically speaking, the only beach you've ever been to is New Bondi. Since every other beach you think you visited is actually just inherited from my memories, and not really something you did."

Hope raised a finger as if to make an argument but almost immediately thought better of it, Castle style. Instead, she reached down with cupped fingers and grabbed a handful of water, splashing it in my face.

And then, like a very skimpily dressed shark, Fusou's head and torso broke the waves behind hope, splashing her in the back.

Hope's eyes narrowed immediately and she spun around to face Fusou, throwing more water about with wild hand motions. "You what?"

"I what what?" Fusou replied in turn, her grin still on her face as she splashed Hope right back before disappearing under the waves again.

Hope sighed exasperatedly and waded over towards Fusou, reaching out to grab the fleeing Commander before she vanished from sight, leaving me just kind of standing around. Rolling my eyes, I slipped into the water and started kicking with my feet, creating a bit of distance from the pair.

Hope, meanwhile, had apparently caught up to Fusou, because she reached out with one arm, grabbed something below the water, and cried out jubilantly. "Gotcha!"

The surprised yelp that Fusou gave as she surfaced was certainly confirmation that something had happened, but the fact that she had both of her arms folded tightly over chest was indicative of just what had happened.

The dark haired commander's cheeks were a rather brilliant shade of crimson as she rounded on Hope, doing her best to keep herself decent in the meantime.

"I'd like my top back Hope," Fusou said, her voice almost an embarrassed squeak. She seemed preoccupied with her thoughts for a moment before a mischievous grin crossed her face as she continued, "...Unless that was what you were aiming for."

I very slowly introduced my palm to my face, trying not to look too hard at the blue fabric hanging from Hope's limp fingers. Hope looked down, and then back at Fusou, sounding immensely embarrassed as she said, "wait… that... wasn't your shoulder, was it?"

Fusou seemed to be very close to breaking into full on laughter as she took in Hope's rather lost expression. "You started at my shoulder, but you didn't quite…get a grip, until you managed to snag my top, Hope. Now again, may I have it back or are you going to keep it as a souvenir?" She asked.

Fusou carefully shifted her arms as she spoke before extending her right arms out, palm facing up while she used her left arm to continue covering herself. It was rather clear from the amusement practically sparkling in Fusou's red eyes that she was enjoying this immensely.

And I couldn't really blame her. Even from the side, the look on Hope's face was priceless. NeoAvatars couldn't quite pull off a blush, but the Bright Foundation's augmented eyes were absolutely flawless at portraying absolute mortification. I don't think her pupils could have expanded any further if she tried.

Hope stammered uselessly for a couple of seconds, eyes still darting between Fusou's torso and the blue and white fabric in her hand. "I… uh. Oops."

Right, yeah. Because that was totally an accident.

Oh my god please shut up.

Hope reached out, dropping the garment into Fusou's outstretched hand, and took a deep, calming breath - pointless as the action was, being a robot and all. "Well, if you don't mind, I'm going to go find a tall building to jump off now."

I stepped forward, grabbing Hope by the shoulder. No you're damn not. Say sorry.

Really, I wasn't sure how much it mattered - how much of Fusou's robot body was, uh… anatomically accurate. Nor did she seem particularly worried - she seemed more amused than anything. Still, if Hope wanted to get all flustered about it… "Hey, hey, hey. Shouldn't you at least be taking her to dinner first, before you start stripping her naked?"

In my defence, I didn't really expect my mind clone to actually punch me in the face.

So that's how I ended up floating on my back, staring up at the surprisingly authentic fake sky in a very dazed state whilst Fusou finally broke out into peals of laughter and Hope just kind of backed away slowly.

After a few moments of consideration, I could only raise an arm in surrender and admit, "Yeah… okay, yeah, I probably deserved that."

---

After continuing to splash about in the water for a while, - managing thankfully not to lose any more clothing along the way, - the three of us made our way out of the water and up onto the sand, lazing about on the beach.

Though it had been a quite entertaining experience, and while it was nice to get some contact with another human being, we couldn't stay forever.

"Hey, Fusou," I called, stepping over Hope's half-built sandcastle. "Whilst it's been fun, and all, I think it would probably be for the best if we headed off soon. Places to see, people to meet, governments to topple, yadda yadda."

Fusou looked up from where she had been sprawled out on the beach chair that had appeared earlier as she seemed to consider us before shrugging. "Alright, I'll open a portal back to the Keyes then. I do feel obliged to tell you though that it's only been two or three minutes since you arrived in real space," Fusou replied calmly. "You've been under time acceleration since the moment you stepped through that first portal, so there's no harm in relaxing a bit longer."

Fusou made a small gesture and opened another portal as she continued, "You're welcome to come back whenever though, heaven knows you'll likely need to decompress at some point." Her earnest tone faded to a more sombre note. "The last thing anyone needs to have happen is one of us going off the deep end. I've nearly gone that way, and I hope you'll take my advice and find time to enjoy yourselves, away from your war."

Behind me, I noted Hope slowly rising to her feet, kicking over her little mound of sand as she wandered over to join us. "Yeah. We're trying to take a back seat a bit, but… well, we'll see. Later, Fusou."

I stepped through the portal first, emerging just metres from the still-open airlock, and with an idle thought I set my avatar's internal fabricators to clean myself off and recreate my prior outfit as I stepped on board.

After all, I didn't want to tread sand all over the carpet.

It would probably be a beach to clean.

 

[Faith]

95 - Check-Up

Hope and I took somewhat of a circuitous route back to New Bondi - having spent, objectively speaking, all of five minutes in Fusou's company, we had quite a bit of time to spare before we really needed to head back.

We briefly debated swinging in to Illium or some other port and just wandering around but… well, frankly the idea of just killing time in some alien club didn't particularly appeal to either of us - not when we'd just wrapped up an hours long chill-out session, anyway.

Rather, we took advantage of the Jacob Keyes' status as a progenitor-grade warship, activating the Phase Cloak and taking a quick tour of Batarian space, starting with their three remaining border worlds before heading into the Kite's Nest itself.

Lorek, the last Hegemony planet in the Omega Nebula, had been heavily fortified by the Hegemony against further assault - twelve frigates, fifteen cruisers, and three battlecruisers drifted around in the immediate area of the planet, alongside a pair of orbital defense platforms - essentially huge mass drivers with command posts bolted on the side, not dissimilar to the UNSC's MAC stations.

The increased defenses in space hinted at a similarly reinforced ground garrison, but I didn't really consider that an issue. Thanks to our Shield Harnesses, Judak Nurr forces could individually go toe-to-toe with enemy squads and come out on top. Never mind that we would soon be receiving a handful of new technologies to make those shields even stronger.

And we didn't even have to bullshit about developing the technology over time ourselves, since we could legitimately say that we got it off Fusou - or rather, 'The Fleet', as the Citadel referred to her as.

Personally, I thought comparing her in tonnage to an entire fleet was a bit unfair - she was certainly… lucky, with her physical traits (as much as luck had to do with anything when it came to hyper advanced nano-scale fabrication) but she was hardly fat.

Of course, once I pointed this out to Hope she told me in no uncertain terms to shut up before storming off the Keyes' bridge to do her science somewhere else, stammering all the while.

After taking a moment to fly the ship through the Hegemony fleet, neon signs flashing on the outer hull, and not being detected, I deemed it safe enough to take a poke about on the tidally-locked planet below. Whilst the Jacob Keyes was comparatively large for a frigate, it was, like the UNSC ships I'd based it on, more than capable of cruising in atmosphere.

Which meant that Hope and I got an excellent view of Lorek's habitable zone, a fierce ocean dotted with large islands upon which the entire planet's civilisation was built. We went for a quick tour, circling the planet in a couple of hours and shamelessly spying on every military unit we could see, - so, all of them, - as we went.

A quick sensor sweep pointed out a couple of additional installations outside the habitable ring - military bases and prison compounds located just a short way into the 'night' side of the planet, where low temperatures and incredibly harsh winds made living… difficult.

For good reason, I supposed.

We made note of all the key locations and the current status of the planet's defences, and moved on, leaving Lorek and the Omega Nebula behind us. The Judak Nurr had been working on a plan to liberate Lorek since we'd taken Logasiri, so I sent the information their way and left it to them. They'd figure something out.

The next stop on our hit-list was the relatively close-by Eagle Nebula. This particular area of the lawless Terminus housed a single Hegemony world - Anhur, in the Amun system.

The most astounding thing about it was that it was a garden world. Just kind of… sitting here, in the Terminus. Alone.

Well, except for the Batarian fleet in orbit, I mean. Twelve frigates, five cruisers, and a battle cruiser. Obviously the Hegemony cared more about this place than they did about Logasiri. Then again, I could hardly blame them. It was a garden world, after all.

Judging by the state of constructions on the surface, it hadn't been under Hegemony control for very long - there was only a single city of note, and whilst there were a couple of high-rise buildings in various stages of construction near the spaceport, the rest of the colony just screamed flat-pack, prefabricated shelters.

Hm. Prefab Shelters. Star Wars Battlegrounds, right? Wonder if we'll ever get to visit?

Galactic Battlegrounds. Sucker's bet, Hope retorted, still sour over my earlier jabs at her crush. If we live long enough, we're gonna wind up there eventually, right?

The fact that the garden world was so lightly inhabited made our job significantly easier. The Keyes made a quick low pass, skimming the edge of the atmosphere whilst scanning everything in sight, and then turned away from the planet, the automated systems setting a course for our next destination whilst I poured over the sensor feed.

Or at least, I'd like to say that's what I did, but more realistically I looked at it, went 'huh, that's a lot of platinum and eezo', and then zoned out because do you have any idea how many utterly unnecessary details Progenitor-grade sensors pick up when they're set to precision scan?

All of them. It picks up all of them.

I really did not need to know that one particular Alagashi Desert Cat amongst the many millions on the planet had a slight fever, elevating their body temperature to slightly over forty one degrees celsius.

I most certainly didn't need to know the body temperatures of every fucking animal in a six kilometre range. Only the creatures of the ocean were spared, and that was because I was flying relatively high up and the Keyes didn't have any dedicated water-piercing sensors, not because of any conscious choice regarding the matter.

Anyway, once I'd sent the relevant information from that trip onto the Judak Nurr, I kicked a button on the ship's bridge console with one foot - an utterly pointless act, given the entirely decorative functions of… just about every button on the ship, - and activated the Phase FTL Drive.

Just a few seconds later the Keyes burst back into realspace, lingering for just a fraction of a second before the stealth drive reengaged, plunging us back into the aether beyond existence, if at a somewhat more controlled level.

Alright, Hope, you done moping yet? This is kind of important.

Despite an exasperated sigh and I was certain no small amount of eye rolling, Hope did eventually return to the bridge. She was tapping away at a datapad as she entered, no doubt compiling the files to sent to Fusou. Or flirting with her. Either or.

As soon as she noticed my gaze, she shot me a shallow smile, tapped the screen one final time, and, with a proud proclaimation of "done!", she frisbeed the datapad across the room, whereupon it slammed into a wall and dropped like a stone into the wastebin waiting below.

I shot my mind clone a questioning glare. "How much maths did you have to do to get that trick right first go?"

She turned to look back at me, as if debating whether or not she could get away with lying, and shrugged. "Too much. What's up?"

I turned away from her, instead gesturing towards the bridge's primary viewscreen, and the dusty red-brown planet visible beyond it.

"That, is Aratoht. Hegemony Shithole number whatever the fuck. If I'm remembering my codex right, this is the place the Alliance called 'mount Everest inside an oven', or something like that. It's hot, it's shitty, and it's absolutely damn loaded with metals. Seriously, the crust of this planet has more metal value than both the moons of the Hub in their entirety."

Hope nodded, obviously going over her own memories of the location.

"Ah. The Alpha Relay."

"Eeeeyup."

"Hm."

Aratoht had a lot of issues - most of the planet's inhabitants lived in a big dome cities, the only protection from the utterly unforgiving environment, with the few exceptions being skilled Batarian terraforming engineers working on seeding bacteria in the planet's few oceans to fix up the atmosphere. They'd made remarkable progress - the planet colonisation project had only been going for about eight months.

Most of those inhabitants in the cities were also slave miners, working in hot, hostile conditions to dig up heavy metals to be sold on by their Hegemony masters or used in local constructions.

All in all, pretty standard fare for a newly founded Hegemony world.

By far the biggest issue, though, was what lay in a distant orbit just beyond the planet - the Alpha Relay. By itself, it didn't appear to be particularly special, just a simple Secondary Relay like so many others. What made it special was that it was one of, if not the oldest Mass Relay.

It also had some kind of Dark Energy Supercharger that allowed its usual 500 lightyear range to expand massively, linking it to sixteen other critical Relay nexus points including the Citadel.

Or was it sixteen and the Citadel?

Eh. It didn't really matter. It was all going up in flames, if I had my way.

Because this particular relay was the closest relay to the Reaper's fleet, currently waiting in dark space somewhere… which, admittedly, greatly narrowed the search area for whereabouts the Reapers could possibly be. Not that I was particularly worried about splashing around in dark space hoping to stumble across the Reapers and catch them napping.

Basically, if the Reapers reached this Relay, they could activate it and use it to launch devastating attacks on crucial targets across the Relay network.

So I wanted to break it.

Of course, given the amount of Eezo and Dark Energy involved, breaking it would be… bad.

"Here's what I'm thinking," I said, more to myself than Hope. "We do the same thing Shep did in Arrival, and toss an asteroid into it. Prior to that, though, we're going to get those slaves off Aratoht. And the slave keepers, I guess. How, thought?"

Hope tapped a hand against her chin. "Well… given the Batarians willingly chose to colonise the place, I doubt we could scare them off now. I think our best bet would be to conquer the place and drag everyone, kicking and screaming if necessary, out of the system before we blow it up."

After a moment's consideration she added, "also, that would probably be the fastest way to get it done."

Well.

I couldn't disagree with that.

And it did have a much smaller military presence than both Lorek and Anhur.

"We get those tech plans from Fusou yet?"

"Yeah, actually. I was waiting for the package before I sent ours back, got it as I was walking back up here from the library. Why?"

"Well. There are some amongst the Judak Nurr who like complaining about the fact we send like, a dozen soldiers tops on all of these missions," I explained. "I figure we could show them why that is by demonstrating a tiny army of soldiers… leading a badass swarm of drones and robots, with hardlight shields and tesla guns and stuff." I shrugged. "We're playing up the 'small but rich megacorp' here. Let's go all out."

"Hm." A wicked grin spread across Hope's face. "Yeah, I can get behind that."

 

[Faith]

96 - Armada

Our little scouting mission complete, the two of us returned the Keyes to the Kerak system, bringing it to a stop in Miranda's orbit.

"Man," Hope muttered, shaking her head. "We really need to rename that star. 'Kerak' just isn't doing it for me."

I shrugged. "Yeah, I guess. Ah well."

---

Rather than teleport down to the surface - although it would have been shockingly easy, - the two of us simply inhabited two new NeoAvatars, already in the general vicinity of the Judak Nurr's planning centre.

They had, apparently, finished up their plans for the liberation of Lorek - the information we'd provided had been the final piece they needed, solid locations of the major Hegemony locales. Apparently, the few militant cells left on the planet had been building up their strength again, working carefully to avoid detection, and were ready to hit the streets and incite rebellion once the Judak Nurr arrived in force.

The Judak Nurr themselves had already made note of potential landing sites, sketched up lists of force dispositions and available resources, and established amongst their military members a new and rigourous training regime.

They'd also left a note on my desk, or rather, on one of the desks in the conference hall, asking very nicely if we could step up the production of our shield harnesses and Tesla weapons to meet their demand, with an addendum that Jarruk wished to speak with us in regards to 'his' new fleet.

As to the first… well, now we had Fusou's new tech to play with, the two of us decided to go all out and bring out some full suits of armour on the Judak Nurr's behalf, with multi-layer energy shields, lightweight jump jets - ones that, thanks to Covenant engineering, didn't even need Eezo cores to supplement them, - and internal rebreather systems. Not to mention the dynamic temperature control system, ultra-comfortable impact foam, and built-in VI to control the slew of extra features. It was everything a soldier could ever want.

I assume.

I don't know. I've never been much of a goddamn soldier.

Either way, it was certainly better than the Judak Nurr's current uniform, which appeared to be 'whatever vaguely protective clothes you can get your hands on, and a Faith Foundation shield harness for good measure'.

Hope excused herself to see to that little project, leaving me the task of seeking out the Judak Nurr's senior military advisor. It took less than a second for me to locate him through the sensor network I'd spread across the planet - he was at Michael Bay, enjoying a quick lunch with a group of soldiers who had, until recently, been responsible for testing out our new heavy weapons on the debris of tanks we'd taken from the Kurapp Valley factory.

The random jumble of geometric shapes that made up my 'main' avatar shimmered into being above the tabletop a few inches from Jarruk's plate. He flinched and drew his plate slightly closer towards him before relaxing.

"Greetings. You wished to speak with me?"

He nodded wordlessly, taking a moment to swallow his last bite of food. "Yes, actually. I've been meaning to ask about the shipyard capacity you possess. The ships we got from Logasiri… they're older models. Still capable in combat, but given your known capabilities…" he trailed off.

The geometric jumble bobbed. "Ah, I see. Well, whilst some of our equipment - our Phase Drives, and the Slipspace drives the Systems Alliance provided us, mainly - may prove difficult to incorporate into a ship… well, we should be able to manage additional shielding systems and advanced weaponry. And I suppose we could go over the interior as well, but that depends on how long you want the process to take."

Jarruk leaned back in his seat, all four eyes squinting. "You'd be willing to do that?"

"As it is, I have several orbital fabrication units just kind of hanging around, doing nothing. I may as well assign them to upgrade your ships for you. Replace your GARDIAN arrays with CLAWs, fine tuning the Mass Driver… given enough time, we could even completely retrofit life support and sanitation, make everything a bit more sustainable."

And by 'a bit', I of course mean 'infinitely'.

"Hm." Jarruk looked down at his plate, slowly scooping another spoonful of… something into his mouth. "Krilak and I were discussing recently the way we've been presenting ourselves. Up until now we've been acting like militants, where we want to give the impression that we're our own government, no different to the Hegemony in terms of status and authority. Going around in drab greys and blacks… fighting this guerilla war… it's not very good for public image."

"Ah. You want a nice, bright colour for your flags, so you look like a proper government, not a bunch of terrorists squatting in caves."

Jarruk mused over that for a few moments before tilting his head, conceding the point. "Yes, I suppose. Something like that. If, in the process of retrofitting the captured Hegemony ships, you could find the time to repaint them, it would be appreciated. At the rate we're working, we expect to be ready in about three weeks - is that sufficient time for your retrofits?"

I idly added 'paint' to the list of improvements to make to the Batarian ships. "Three weeks is time enough, thank you. Any particular colours, or shall I just throw down some white and green?"

Jarruk shook his head. "No, I had something else in mind."

---

Retrofitting the Judak Nurr's - or rather, the New Batarian Republic's, - fleet was a relatively simple task, all things considered. I swapped out the reactor and life support for my own equivalents, added a Fabricator to the sanitation systems, reinforced the frame and armour with a few Elysion and Federation alloys, generally spruced things up, and, finally, bolted a Phase FTL Drive into the engineering bay.

A few quick tests in the still unnervingly empty Dis system revealed one very useful feature of the Phase FTL Drives - being that it removed the ship using it from reality in such a way that got rid of pesky limitations like 'inertia' and 'the lightspeed barrier', the only factor that influenced a ship's speed was the ability to accelerate.

And since Mass Effect cores could make ships lighter by abusing dark energy, one could increase the effective power of their engines, by forcing them to push less weight. Which allowed one to accelerate faster.

Which meant one could accelerate to higher speeds faster. And at that point, the only concern was decelerating before you massively overshot the target. Usually, by doing a 180 spin.

Basically, my already ludicrous FTL speeds just got a fuckton faster. Hope suggested attempting to combine Eezo and Phase FTL with Slipspace to make some kind of hybrid hyperfast mode, but I vetoed that - just giving the NBR Phase Drives would give them a huge advantage. They didn't need the extra speed that may have resulted, and neither did we, at present.

Besides, it meant we'd have something to play around with next time the NBR had to take a break from besieging planets to rest, recover, and plan their next moves.

Also, it opened the way for the NBR to trade with the Systems Alliance for Slipspace tech, which, if they played their cards right, could go a long way to improving relations between the two factions.

The rivalry between Humans and Batarians that had been present in canon was basically non-existent here, so there wasn't much to make up for, but more friends could never really be a bad thing.

Once the ship's retrofits were complete, I had the fabricators go over the reinforced armour panels with the hyper-advanced Progenitor equivalent of paint. The once-green panels became a lightish grey, smaller sections painted either vibrant yellow or shining bronze. Apparently the colours were a reference to the common artistic portrayal of the Pillars of Strength, and had deep religious meaning, but I didn't really bother asking for an explanation.

Krillak and Jarruk were happy with it, and that was pretty much good enough for me.

---

A little under a month later, the New Batarian Republic was finally ready to move on Lorek. There were a number of reasons for the delay - the sudden changes to their equipment loadouts, being forced to familiarise themselves with the workings of military warships (helped along by a handful of our new Halsey-Pattern AI), and having to redraw plans to take said new equipment and fleets into account.

That was, admittedly, almost entirely our fault, but it didn't make time pass any faster.

Six Batarian frigates and three cruisers hung in orbit, preparing for their first tastes of combat with their new and drastically improved systems. Alongside them were six more cruisers - ours, this time, the Faith Foundation's First Fleet in its entirety. Each of the vessels contained its own detachment of ground forces, dropships, and armoured vehicles, but they formed only a small part of the invasion force itself.

Bringing up the rear was a flight of twelve Voyagers, carrying a force totalling thirteen thousand Batarian soldiers and almost twice that many Avatar droids. That was the bulk of the army.

As a rule of thumb, the high ground wins, and orbit is pretty much the highest ground there is. Ground forces were beyond useless if the enemy held orbit - but they were necessary for pacifying cities, routing defenders from fortifications without levelling nearby terrain, and, most importantly, for cleaning up the messes that occasionally resulted from fuck-huge orbital slugfests.

Luckily for me, Hope was the one responsible for dealing with that particular mess. I, on the other hand, had, by virtue of coin toss, assigned myself the task of liberating Aratoht, all on my own like a grown-up.

Well, more realistically, Hope and I had rationalized that eventually we'd run into a place where conquering a planet was necessary, and, well, better we had some experience.

And thus the Second Fleet, another five Rowans and a Juniper, had joined Hope's little armada in Miranda's orbit, their own course set for the not-too-distant Viper Nebula.

Well, Hope said with a sigh. Good luck, I guess. Try not to die.

I sent the impression of me rolling my eyes. I'm pretty sure the Batarians don't have anything even remotely dangerous to us. Let alone on Aratoht. At this point, I'm fairly certain they have absolutely no idea how much of an asset the Alpha Relay is.

Yeah, that's fair. Well, looks like the NBR are ready to roll out, so I guess I'm off. Catch you in a while!

Moving as one entity, Hope's fleet shot away from Miranda, engines flaring for the briefest of moments before they slipped into the space beyond reality. Moments later, the Batarian vessels followed, their own Phase Drives engaging and dragging them out of reality.

For a second, I simply stared at the space where the fleet had once lingered from the bridge of the Jackson Whalebrook.

And then, with a shrug, I turned to my dashboard and hit the big blue button.

 

[Faith]

97 - Skirmish

Aratoht was, simply put, a dusty red shithole. Heat and low air pressure forced the inhabitants to stay inside sealed biodomes, with the exception of a few skilled workers who operated out of mobile bases whilst they went around seeding the oceans with cyanobacteria.

The vast majority of the people on the planet were slaves, forced to dig away at the rich metal crust for resources the Hegemony could put to use in their industrial machine. The rest were wealthy slave owners, - who lived in penthouse apartments and partied away the nights with alcohol, expensive food, and Asari sex slaves, - and their immediate subordinates - shuttle pilots, security guards, and chefs.

Luckily for me, the legitimate military presence was rather low - only a single division planetside, who possessed, from what I could see, only a few dozen armoured vehicles, and a lackluster fleet of six frigates and three cruisers. I had to wonder if that was simply standard fare for the Hegemony's shitty planets they didn't care about or if there was something else going on.

They probably had decent reasons for it. Prior to Logasiri the NBR hadn't really struck any Hegemony world with an actual invasion force, and places like this crappy backwater were probably last on the list for reinforced garrisons. Not to mention how far it was from Logasiri and Lorek - even if it wasn't a strategically unimportant slave mining camp, it would probably still be low on the list just because of how far from the supposed 'front line' it was.

As much as you could define 'front lines' in a galaxy where travel routes were arbitrarily defined by Mass Relays and the Hegemony's territory was split up as it was in such an awkward and incohesive manner.

Or perhaps there was something going down inside the Kite's Nest that warranted the attention of a lot of their ships? Or maybe their military simply wasn't as big as it made out to be - given they had been described in canon as something of a paper tiger empire, that was possible.

Either way, the nine vessels that were hanging around Aratoht were holding in a similar pattern those above Logasiri had used - the cruisers hung close to the planet whilst the frigates, in two groups of three, performed somewhat longer-distance patrols.

I issued the Stealth Fabricator one last order before sending it to take shelter in a little cave it carved for itself amongst the mountains just north of Aratoht's one and only city.

My six vessels dropped out of Phase just four hundred kilometres from the first group of roaming frigates, and immediately dozens of Firefly Interceptor Drones disengaged from the cruisers, dashing towards the frigates at full throttle.

The Firefly drones were weak little things - very similar to the drones used in the FTLverse, with admittedly much greater technology under the hood. They were effectively unmanned fighters, designed to fulfill two roles - firstly, the decimation of enemy fighter craft with their lasers, which like GARDIAN arrays had none of the usual target-tracking issues against STL craft, and secondly, distracting the enemy's GARDIAN arrays, soaking up laser blasts with their 2-Layer Phase Shield.

It wouldn't protect them from sustained attack, but each drone requiring three shots in quick succession to destroy meant that the enemy could only target a third of the usual number of enemies before their weapons began overheating.

At which point I would break out the missiles.

The Hegemony frigates immediately took the bait, GARDIAN arrays swivelling to target the approaching drones as their engines flared, all three vessels immediately breaking away from combat to rally with their comrades. Although the drones were more than capable of taking the hits, I had each one activate its Phase Cloak if it came under fire, and the Batarian GARDIANS moved on, picking new targets as the frigates made their escape.

Thus conveniently confirming that the Batarians didn't have the sensor capacity to pick up my cloaking. I hadn't really expected them too, but, then again, better safe than sorry.

I could have done the same thing I'd done to the Logasiri fleet, and incapacitated them all with nanite bombs teleported halfway across the system, but this time, I wasn't going for subtlety. This attack, combined with the simultaneous raid of Lorek, was more about sending a message on the behalf of the NBR.

Which meant that flashy drone swarms and awesome-but-impractical EVA raids were the way to go. Given the intent was to embarrass the Hegemony either way, I figured I may as well do it in style.

I allowed the frigate group to distance themselves from my fleet, whilst I pointed my ships in the direction of Aratoht itself, engines on a low burn.

---

The frigate group I'd ambushed almost immediately jumped to FTL, reappearing on the far edge of the system. They then began to turn around, presumably so they could FTL closer to the planet and the rest of their allies.

Sneaky. But not sneaky enough.

The second group simply turned tail and fled - I was far enough away that they could escape without risking a counterattack.

My fleet made little effort to catch up with the retreating frigates, instead drifting slowly towards the planet itself, and I merely watched through the eyes of my avatar as the nine ships rallied around Aratoht, preparing to fight a battle they almost certainly knew they would lose.

Their cruisers were the first to open fire, a trio of golden streaks shooting across the void towards the FFV Sweet Autumn. The ship made no effort to dodge, and the mass accelerator rounds slammed violently into the ship's shimmering Phase Shield, whereupon they exploded harmlessly.

I chose not to return fire, even as the second and third volleys of mass accelerator rounds crossed the gap between us. The Sweet Autumn took the majority of the hits, but the frigates had instead begun to focus on her literal sister ship, FFV Skye Autumn, instead.

Both ships withered the assault without issue. Due to the rather binary nature of the Phase Shields, each shell knocked off only a single layer of protection, and the time between volleys was sufficient to regenerate at least one layer.

With a total of seventy four layers of shield on each ship, that meant a solid thirty six volleys would be required to down a single ship's shields.

Well, the Phase Shields. Then they had to get through the Kinetic Barriers and the Marauder Shields, neither of which were remotely as effective as the Phase Shields, and then the composite Elysion Alloy plating… they weren't destroying my fleet anytime soon.

I, on the other hand, had plenty enough firepower to plough through their weak Kinetic Barriers and shred apart their vessels, should I even desire to use kinetic weapons in the first place. The CLAWs would have been more than sufficient to shred them, after all.

But, alas, that wasn't part of the plan, so I ignored the hail of incoming cannon fire and continued drifting lazily towards the planet, thrusters still on minimum power.

The Fireflies, which had been slow-burning across the system using the cruisers as cover, now began to accelerate, crossing the six point five thousand kilometre gap as quickly as they were able, throwing themselves into barrel rolls, dives, and other random aerobatic maneuvers at high enough Gs to mulch humans.

As expected, the show was pointless, and every single one of the drones caught at least one laser burst from the Batarian point defense. Luckily, their shields protected them from significant damage, and none were destroyed, but a few marked themselves as requiring minor repair for thrusters and armour.

The moment the lasers hit, I once again had each and every targeted drone activate their Phase Cloak, and teleported a few piles of scrap metal into their place instead - from the Batarian's perspective, it would seem that each and every one of the targeted drones had been destroyed or mission killed instantly. The blue flash of the teleporter even worked to simulate the usually-orange explosions, almost.

Either way, it worked, because the Batarian's point defence network immediately settled back down, and my drone swarm advanced unopposed until they were less than a kilometre away from their targets.

Just as planned.

The drones continued their silent approach, like a school of piranhas closing in on their prey, and began circling the enemy vessels as I prepared the second stage of my not-so-diabolical plan.

As one, my entire fleet jumped to FTL, reappearing just a few hundred meters from the defending force.

And then my old Avatar Droids, new and improved with Covenant anti-grav and handheld plasma cutters, began swarming from the ship's airlocks, a handful of similarly equipped AeroAvatars following behind.

My abrupt arrival must have startled the Batarian forces - the even more abrupt decimation of their engines, their communications arrays, every single one of their GARDIAN arrays and a large majority of their mass driver cannons, even more so.

Especially at the hands of the drone swarm they'd just 'killed'.

By the time even a single Batarian ship had begun to react, pivoting on the spot and firing all available weapons into the protruding bridge of the FFV Charlotte Wray, it was far, far too late.

Avatar Droids carved through airlocks and obliterated windows, - the Geth had it right, they were structural weaknesses, - and within ten seconds each and every one of the defending vessels had been boarded.

The poor Batarians never stood a chance. The AeroAvatars began accessing internal computers and ship-wide networks, providing an avenue for my digital invasion, whilst the Avatar Droids made their way through the narrow corridors of the ships, subduing every crewman and marine they came across with tasers, stun staffs, and sleep darts.

Vented airlocks and forced hull breaches merely forced the droids to up the power of their flight packs slightly, and sealed blast doors were an issue only until a droid with a plasma cutter arrived and tore a hole in the reinforced plate.

Twenty five minutes after I'd arrived in system, I had assumed complete and total control over their fleet.

And so, as my new Batarian fleet, hastily upgraded with Phase FTL Drives, made its way back to Miranda for a full refit, I turned my attention planetside.

Luckily, Aratoht had only a single city, Ectah, nestled in a mountainous region near the sea, as well as two smaller outposts for the atmospheric engineers along the coast, and all three sites had already been visited by the Stealth Fabricator I'd sent ahead of my main force.

Because of that Fabricator, or more accurately the signal interceptors it had left in its wake, not one of the sites had received any messages from the Hegemony Fleet in the last half-hour. Which meant no one on the planet was currently aware of my presence.

There wasn't even the risk of some jerk with a telescope looking up and seeing me, since everyone lived in a nice, enclosed environment.

And that was going to absolutely suck for them.

Aided by the Jackson Whalebrook's enhanced sensors, a handful of stealth drones teleported inside the dome, granting me a near-perfect bird's eye view of the area.

Including a very sharp image of a guy throwing a party on the roof of his penthouse. Typical slaver, partying away his sorrows whilst hundreds of thousands of people slaved away in mines dozens of floors below.

Well. Can't have that.

 

[NonSequtur]

arguing over definitions Is quite possibly the least productive mode of arguing. Let's not.

 

[Faith]

Sorry for the delay. "Hey, Faith. Thanks for capping out your overtime two months running. You mind doing four consecutive night shifts?"

I swear to god if I wasn't broke I'd have killed everyone at my work by now.

---

98 - Planetside

Getting my infantry into the city was only slightly harder than getting the stealth drones in. The city's primary spaceport was located just outside the dome, and the two were linked by some kind of mag-train line, allowing easy travel between the city and the spaceport.

The spaceport was a surprisingly large building - it had looked somewhat smaller from above. Several hundred metres long, at least six stories high, potentially more depending on whether it extended underground, and wide enough to host four parallel mag-train lines.

The main boarding ramp seemed to extend from the third floor, although it was currently folded away against the building, and I assumed that was to assist in docking with larger vessels like frigates, which would not all be able to so easily land.

Unfortunately, the spaceport wasn't big enough to accommodate a cruiser - let alone six. It was probably built for frigates and small freighters, at max. Luckily, there were a number of doors on the 'ground' floor of the terminal as well, presumably for maintenance and safety reasons. They would serve a good enough entry point.

Whilst the five combat cruisers hung in orbit, the Jackson Whalebrook descended into the atmosphere, coming to a stop just a few hundred meters from the ground.

The hangar bay doors, located on the lower decks of the ship, swung open, and hundreds of Avatar Droids, along with two dozen AeroAvatars, began streaming out, dropping onto the tarmac - well, it wasn't actually tarmac, but you get the idea - in droves.

Obviously whoever ran the mag-train terminal were a lot more competent than I gave them credit for - before my forces had even mustered up into neat lines on the landing pad, the lights lining doors of the mag-train terminal, previously lit a vibrant orange, suddenly flickered red. Dozens of mag-train carts, many of which held members of staff and security, departed the station, almost certainly leaving the facility totally devoid of both hostages and mag-train cars.

Obviously, they hoped to buy some time by locking the doors and preventing me from using the mag-train line. I assumed they would then call for reinforcements to defend the far end of the terminal, should I try to march along the mag lines regardless.

Not that it would help them.

---​

Hundreds of white and neon-green robots marching along the rail lines probably made a really damn impressive site. They encountered no opposition along the rails, not even a hint of the Batarian defenders trying to delay their inexorable advance.

Then again, they were probably all busy setting up barricades and such at the far end. It made sense - it would bottleneck the entire invading force into the docking terminal, preventing me from ever deploying my full force at once whilst maximising the amount of firepower they could pour out onto me at any given time.

Not that that was much of a concern. With the shield and armour systems my Avatars were packing, they stood pretty much no chance of really stopping me.

As the first Avatars arrived at the far end of the tunnel, where the backlog of mag-train carts stretched out from the terminal, the rails began to shudder and hum.

And then, at an increasingly rapid pace, the mag-train carts began to slide back towards the starport, the same magnetic force propelling them along also serving to slightly push back my own robotic units.

What are you playing at?

Then the carts hit the front of my iron tide, and I suddenly realised their plan.

They were bowling.

Avatar Droids were tossed aside or pushed to the ground by the rapidly accelerating train cars, a rare few dragged down to the rails and violently dismembered. Even the reinforced Elysion Alloys forming their rigid skeletal frame wasn't enough to resist a train car rolling over the joint, even an unloaded one.

Unfortunately for them, every single one of my invading units possessed jetpacks. Barely a second after the first robots were tossed aside or torn apart, the rest of my force simply jetted up into the air, allowing the train cars to shoot beneath them without hassle. And then they just kept walking along the rails, jumping up onto the platforms and spreading out through the terminal with mechanical precision.

I couldn't see the faces on any of the defenders, but I could only imagine a mixture of horror and surprise, - horrorprise, if you will, - as my army of robots arrived almost entirely unimpeded.

That stunned disposition didn't last long - the defenders were quick to open fire, showering my forces in a rain of metal shards and high explosives. Two heavy machine guns wound up with a mechanical whirr, streams of high-velocity death spewing from the barrels.

Or at least, it would have been high-velocity death, if it had been firing at just about anything but me. As it was, the machine gun rounds, much like pretty much every other projectile they were putting down range, did nothing but fill my sensors with the sound of gunfire and explosions.

Honestly, it was kind of cute, in a pathetic, endearing way. Like watching a five year old trying to fight his parents.

They had no idea who they were dealing with.

Then again, I was actually pretty uninformed as to what I was dealing with, too, so perhaps that was hypocritical to say.

Luckily for me, whilst the majority of my forces were creating a huge ruckus, I had been able to sneakily teleport a few units into the city, bypassing their defences completely. One such unit was now clinging to the underside of the immense dome, overlooking a penthouse pool party. I figured if anyone in this city had access to important networks, it would be the owner of the single biggest, most expensive looking penthouse on the planet.

And even if it wasn't, I still wanted his penthouse.

Wait.

About to skydive onto a penthouse in the aims of taking it over and stealing the information within whilst snubbing the owners of said penthouse and the larger group they represent?

I need some tunes.

For a moment, the song threw me - being in English, and all. I don't know why I'd expected Kanye to suddenly start making songs in Western Continental Khar'shani, but apparently I was.

Note to self. Need to talk to Fusou more often. Otherwise I might start thinking in Batarian.

I quickly restarted the song, my idle musings having kind of ruined the feeling the first time round. That sorted, the AeroAvatar released their magnetic clamps and began to fall.

The partygoers had to have realized by this point that something was interrupting their party, what with the aircraft flying overhead and the warnings blaring over the PA system.

Hm. There's a thought. Another thing to add to my to-do list once I got access to their network proper.

Anyway, regardless of the obvious danger they were in, the partygoers seemed quite content to keep partying, perhaps overly confident in the security of the colony. Or their own trained guards, perhaps.

There were only six on the roof. I could take them.

I had, after all, been practicing.

As I neared the penthouse, close enough to hear clearly their own music, someone finally happened to look up. That or they had a sudden seizure that resulted in them flinging their head back and screaming.

A couple of seconds later, the first gunshots rang out, a pair of guards on the upper section of the roof deciding they didn't like my fanciful attempt at gatecrashing.

At the sound of gunfire, plates and glasses were dropped, slaves were pushed away, and the pool was vacated so fast I thought I might have been beaten to the punch by Jaws. The party broke up fairly quickly after that - people streamed inside, a panicky mass acting on impulse. Only the guards seemed unperturbed, firing up at the falling AeroAvatar with a kind of unflinching resolve that made me suspect that this wasn't their first bullet dance.

Slipping fully into the AeroAvatar, I fired my thrusters, hastening my descent and halting it, abruptly, by slamming into the roof with enough force to throw the two guards to the ground.

Then, just for kicks, I switched the music to speaker mode.

The two guards were quick to climb to their feet, but unfortunately for them, I was quicker. I dropped one with solid jab to the base of the neck, then turned and leapt across the roof to his teammate and dropped him with a swift right hook.

Okay, so maybe less practicing and more watching reruns of the WWE 2161 Championships, but I digress.

The four remaining guards were not on the roof roof, but rather the slightly lower section of roof where the pool was located - one at each corner of the area and presumably a handful more inside. Not an issue for now.

I reached down, retrieving from each hip a short-barreled Tesla Pistol. Spinning them idly in my hands, I leapt down from the upper roof straight into the pool, splashing water high into the air. Before the spray even fell to the whimsy of gravity I was firing, dropping the first two guards with a single well-placed shot each.

The second two, now behind me after my little diving session, were slightly harder to take down, mainly because they'd dived for cover as soon as they realized I had guns. I also quickly realized as I turned that they'd been joined by a few dozen more guards, taking up positions around ornamental support columns and upturned tables - not usually good cover in a firefight, I presumed, but against electricity-based weapons they were remarkably effective.

Unfortunately, they had failed to realize that they weren't the only ones who could call in reinforcements.

I ordered a couple more AeroAvatars to flank behind them, and moments later the skylight shattered as three more of my robot commandos entered the field.

In hindsight, I probably should have just gone through the skylight myself, instead of landing on the edge of the roof and going to CQC, I thought to myself. Ah well, live and learn.

"Sorry about my friends," I said in Khar'shani as I emerged from behind cover, yelling to be heard over both Kanye and the party music. "They were just dropping by."

If anything, the torrent of gunfire intensified as I dived behind a column.

"Was it the pun? I feel like it was the pun!"

---​

Thanks to the efforts of the flanking Avatars and more Progenitor hypertech than necessary, the penthouse was rather quickly secured. Most of the partygoers had either outright fled or retreated to panic rooms, which my Avatars were in the process of slowly cutting into.

Those few that had been caught in the firefight or otherwise incapacitated were healed of their injuries and detained in the Penthouse until I had a better place to put them.

Once my Avatars set about doing that, I focused my own attention on the actual reason I'd come here - information.

As I'd suspected, the owner of this penthouse was the single largest slave-owner on the planet by a huge majority, and also relatively high-up in the city's government, - or rather, the collection of high-caste slave owners that served the same function in Batarian society, - granting me incredible levels of access to almost every important record through his terminals.

He really should have used different terminals for his private and political business, though. It was almost too easy.

According to the records I was currently hacking into, Aratoht had a total military presence of approximately 16,000 personnel, ranging from infantry and tank crews - though there was only a handful of those - to field medics, logistics officers, and engineers.

I'd bought only a small fraction of that, myself - a little under two thousand Avatar Droids and two hundred Aero Avatars, most of whom were tied up at the terminal entrance, and the Firefly Drones carried by the Second Fleet. Technically, all of those ships could have carried Gageas, or even potentially larger craft, but given the environment, I thought that somewhat pointless.

The dome wouldn't exactly make for a lot of room for aerial superiority, and I doubted the Batarians would field much in the way of aircraft themselves - they had four Mantis Gunships and six Pellior Dropships, which were basically just sci-fi Hueys, complete with door guns and people sitting on the skids. Neither was a particularly big threat, nor were they particularly resilient to the G1 laser cannons the AeroAvatars were packing for heavy weapons.

All ten aircraft were currently in operation - the Pelliors were transporting sniper teams to rooftops and access walkways throughout the city, and the Mantises were holding position outside the terminal building, ready to provide cover if the defenders decided to retreat.

They'd been surprisingly stubborn about that, actually. Despite taking huge losses to Tesla Rifles and Stun Darts, and having killed literally just a handful of my units through coordinated fire, they refused to budge an inch.

Only the fact that I'd told the army to 'hold position' whilst I personally controlled the penthouse raid had really saved the Batarians from being totally overwhelmed. And now that that was done, well… I guess I didn't really need to hold back.

The terminal I'd connected to was also linked to the slave's bomb collars - or at least, a large portion of them, which meant suddenly sixty percent of the slaves could no longer easily be used as hostages.

I quickly disabled those collars, just in case anyone else had access to the detonator.

Finally, I brought up the city's planning map - helpfully annotated with all the city's important buildings and facilities, and set about preparing for stage two.

---​

Capturing the rest of the city was child's play, honestly. With the information from Prok Tian's penthouse computers, my drones were easily able to track and disable the small force of tanks and aircraft that the Hegemony defenders possessed, and their infantry were slowly worn down by marching mechanical hordes.

Once the military fell, it was a simple matter of jamming all signals in the city and sending my units to overrun the rest of the slave compounds, none of which were really designed to resist an actual army invading. That allowed me to free the city's slaves, and from then I simply had to divert them all to the mag-train terminal and load them up onto the fleet of Voyagers I'd called in from Miranda.

The rest of the population were quite happy to go along with it without protest, once they realized their army had been beaten senseless and the invading force not even hindered.

It took a while to totally clean up - almost a week to get everyone packed up and ready to leave. I could have forced them to go faster, but most of the lower-caste Batarians hadn't really done anything to deserve having all their stuff left behind to be destroyed in a cataclysmic explosion of doom, so I let that go.

It also gave me a chance to set up the second stage of my plan.

As the last of my vessels left the system, leaving an abandoned husk of a city behind, I assumed direct control over the one unit remaining in system - a single AeroAvatar, armed with what was essentially a super-sized variant of the greatest weapon to grace video games. A small indicator near the trigger blinked intermittently, demonstrating that one shot had already been fired.

Leveling the enormous weapon as the Mass Relay just a hundred or so metres away, I fired the second shot.

It was not a bullet that emerged from the barrel. Rather, it was a magnet.

Not a lame, 'real life science' magnet, either. It launched what was technically referred to as an electromagnetic anchor, linked to the paired unit I'd already fired by way of a directed magnetic attraction stream. This attraction stream, maintained by internal generators and nanotech-based computer, allowed the Magnet Gun's anchors to exert incredible attractive force on each other.

Like, say, powerful enough to drag asteroids around.

As it was currently doing at this very second. Turning my back to the Mass Relay, I sought out the chunk of dark rock hurtling towards me, identifiable only by the blinking yellow light upon its surface.

They say opposites attract - true enough.

And though this was technically a nice, friendly, north-pole-south-pole opposite attraction, the result, I expected, would have somewhat more in common with the other kind of opposite attraction.

The double plus ungood matter-antimatter opposite attraction.

As the meteor hurtled closer, still picking up speed, I dug a communicator from the Aero's pocket and opened up the texting app, running a few mental calculations as I tapped out a message to Fusou.

Hey Fusou

Got some fireworks set up. Might be to your taste?

Following that was the Alpha Relay's coordinates, a picture of the London Eye, and a time in GMT, several years from now.

The advantage to explosions propagating at the speed of light is that - well, they propagate at the speed of light. And space is pretty damn big. The flash from the Relay going off would be visible around the galaxy, given time - but even the relatively close Sol system wouldn't be seeing it for a couple of decades, yet. Plenty of time to book tickets and arrange some picnic snacks.

Her response was as punctual as I would have expected.

So I noticed, I've been watching since you arrived. Nice work by the way, clean and efficient.

Lily says your puns were terrible by the way.

I spent half a second wondering how much of that was sarcasm before setting the issue aside. After all, I had a rather large rock to dodge moving at a not-insignificant speed straight towards me.

Flipping the incoming asteroid the bird, I sent one final message - this time, to the Relay itself.

The AeroAvatar was engulfed in a flash of blue-white light.

And then, seconds later, so was the Relay.