Halo, Mass Effect 1. Chapter 1

Decided to make a story based off of the timeline I posted seemed like a good idea considering that most fics go to one extreme or the other whether its humanity curb stomping the council, making humanity spineless, or just all out council bashing Constructive criticism welcomed, Flames posted by guests will be removed

March 18th 2583 (Arcturus Station: Conference room)

"Well what about Shepard he's a spacer lived aboard starships most of his life"

"Military service runs in the family both his parents were in the Navy"

"He proved himself during the blitz held off enemy troops on the ground long enough for reinforcements to arrive"

"Well he is a Spartan"

""Humanity needs a hero and Shepard's the best we got"

"Ill make the call"

"In 2523 Humanity found it was not alone in the galaxy after contact with the Turians nearly resulted in all out war, In 2525 a war started by the Covenant drove Humanity to the razor edge of extinction since the end of the war 30 years ago they have been in a massive period of reconstruction to reclaim all that they lost

""Slipspace drive is active acquiring coordinates" As that was said Commander Shepard made his way across the CIC towards the helm of the ship "All stations secure for transit" as Shepard approached he saw that next to the helmsman there was a Turian observing what he was doing " Drive is ready activiating in 3...2...1" and as he said that the ship entered the slipstream towards its destination

" Thrusters check, navigation check, internal emission sink and optical stealth drives engaged, all systems online, drift just under 1500k

" 1500 is good your Captain will be pleased" The turian said and then turned to leave

" I hate that guy"

" Nihlus gave you a compliment so you hate him"

"You remember to zip up your jumpsuit after using the bathroom that's good I just jumped us halfway across the galaxy so that's Incredible! Besides spectres are trouble don't like having them aboard call me paranoid"

" You're paranoid the council helped fund this project they have a right to send someone to keep an eye on their investment"

" Yeah that is the official story but only an idiot believes the official story"

At this point Shepard decides to chime in " They don't send spectres on shakedown runs"

" So there's more going on than the captains letting on"

" Joker status report"

" Jump completed sir everything looks good" Joker told the captain

" Good find a comm buoy and link us into the network I want mission reports relayed back to Highcomm before we reach Eden Prime"" Aye aye sir, better brace yourself Nihlus is headed your way"

" He's already hear Lieutenant, tell Commander Shepard to meet me in the comm room"

" You get that sir?"

" Great you piss off the captain and now im going to pay for it" Shepard then turned and walked away

" Don't blame me captain always sounds angry"

" Only when he's talking to you Joker"

Shepard started walking towards the comm room and overheard Corporal Jenkins talking with Doctor Chakwas Jenkins then asked the commander about the mission "What do you think commander we won't be staying on Eden Prime to long hoping to see some real action" Chakwas gave him a look " I sincerely hope your kidding corporal your 'real action' usually involves me patching people up in the infirmary"

"You need to calm down corporal keep a good soldier keeps his head cool in a fight"

"Sorry commander but the waiting's killing me I've never been on a mission like this before not with a spectre aboard"

"Just treat this like any other assignment and you'll do fine"

"Easy for you to say you proved yourself during the blitz everyone knows what you can do, this is my big chance I need to show the brass what I can do"

Deciding to take his exit the commander went on "The Captains waiting for me"

Shepard entered the comm room and saw Nihlus looking at several pictures, probably Eden Prime he turned around seeing the Spartan "Commander Shepard I was hoping you would get here first, gives us a chance to talk"

"Where's captain Anderson"

"He'll be here, but im interested in this world were going to Eden Prime what do you know about it"

"Not much but it was one of the few outer colonies spared from the Covenant war"

"Yes still sometimes hard to believe that war actually happened sometimes, but im getting off topic Eden prime is proof that you're kind can can not only colonize worlds but defend them as well, but how safe is it really

"There a point to this" Shepard asked getting frustrated, Nihlus then replied "Humans are still newcomers relatively speaking, is the UNSC really ready for this?" Nihlus asked as Captain Anderson entered the room "I think its about time we told the commander whats really going on here"

"This mission is far more than a simple shakedown run" Shepard almost rolled his eyes "I already figured that out"

"About a week ago a research team on Eden prime unearthed some ruins but they also found something big a Prothean Beacon"

" Obviously this goes beyond human interests this discovery could affect every race in Citadel space" Nihlus quickly pointed out"

"Just tell me what I need to do"

"There's more Shepard Nihlus isn't just here for the beacon he's here to evaluate you" Shepard tuned his head towards Nihlus "evaluate me for what"

" The UNSC has been pushing for this for a while, we want a larger role in shaping interstellar policy, we want more say in council space, The spectres represent the Council's power and authority if they accept a human into their ranks it will show how far Humanity has come"

" I was impressed with your combat record but primarily with how you handled the blitz having someone like you in the spectres would be advantageous, that's why I put your name forward as a candidate"

" I assume this is good for us" Anderson nodded "Earth needs this Shepard were counting on you, Nihlus will be observing you for this mission and several others, we should be getting close to Eden-" Joker then cut in over the intercom " Captain we've got a problem"

"What's wrong Joker"

"Transmission from Eden Prime sir you better see this" A transmission then appeared showing a marine from the garrison "We are under attack taking heavy casualties, I repeat heavy casualties they came out of nowhere we need-" The marine was then shot and slumped backwards, just before the end of the transmission they saw a ship

"Everything cuts out after that no comm traffic at all there's nothing"

"Reverse and hold at 38.5" the video reversed and paused showing a huge ship, Nihlus twitched his mandibles and Shepard didn't know what to make of it "Status Report"

"17 minutes out captain no other UNSC ships in the area"

" Bring us in Joker fast and quiet this mission just got a lot more complicated" Nihlus turned back towards the screen "A small strike team can move quickly without drawing attention its our best chance to secure the beacon"

"Grab your gear and meet us in the cargo hold" Anderson turned to Shepard "Tell Alenko, Jenkins, and McCall to gear up commander your going In"

Shepard took one last look at the screen and thought that this was going to be a mess

Codex: Post war status of Humanity

In the 30 years since the end of the covenant war Humanity has made major progress in reconstruction but it will still take a century or more for complete recovery. In the immediate aftermath of the war the human population stood at just under 16 billion and 350 planets compared to the 40 billion people and 800 planets they had before since then current population stands at 22 billion and 375 planets (some reclaimed some new) The economy after the war was pretty much non existent but currently is one of the largest in the galaxy and has a double digit growth rate, Thanks to major investment from the council, Resource development, and massive exports to council space. While the Army and Marine corps managed to bounce back from their losses relatively quickly the Navy has taken longer and stands right now at 735 ships (just behind the Turians who have 850 ships) meaning defence of colonies at the moment revolves around local garrisons and Rapid reaction fleets but the sheer size and firepower of these ships makes attacking human colonies very risky for pirates or anyone looking for a fight, The UNSC has also incorporated shielding technology for everything from Infantry to starships and even if you get through that you still have to take down very tough armor. Politically humanity is considered one of the most powerful races today and their influence is growing rapidly throughout the galaxy

Codex: UNSC Normandy

"An experimental stealth frigate developed by the UNSC and Turian Hierarchy the Normandy combines the latest in human and turian technology, coming in at around 125 metres in length it is equipped with high end energy shields, its stealth system not only hides any energy readings and emissions but even if you look out a window they wouldn't be able to see it thanks to its optical camo system, it is equipped with the latest generation slipspace drive and comes equipped with 2 mini MAC's so it can hold its own in a fight

Well that's chapter one done let me know what you think, and if you have a problem with humanity not curb stomping everyone go read another fic I am trying to balance things out between Halo and ME so that one side is not more powerful than the other


	2. Chapter 2:Eden Prime

Chapter 2: Eden Prime

After gearing up the team made its way to the cargo hold Anderson approached them to give the rundown of what they were to do

"You're team's the muscle in this operation commander move in fast and head straight for the dig site" Alenko chimed in "What about survivors captain?" Anderson looked right at him and said "Helping survivors is a secondary objective the beacon is your top priority"

"Approaching drop point one"

"Nihlus you coming with us" Nihlus checked his gun and replied "I move faster on my own" and jumped out of the ship, Anderson continued "Nihlus will scout out ahead feed you status reports throughout the mission otherwise i want radio silence

"Approaching drop point two" The Normandy descended and the 4 man team got out

Once they made landfall the moved out and Nihlus radioed in "Got some burned out buildings here and a lot of bodies Im going to check it out meet you at the dig site" moving ahead a few feet the squad took cover overlooking a small open area Shepard ordered Jenkins to check it out but once he was out in the open two drones appeared and opened fire on him and Jenkins screamed in pain

"Open fire take those things down!"

They opened up on the flyers and took them down once they were down and rushed to jenkins and McCall checked for a pulse "Nothing he's dead damn things ripped right through his shields"

"Leave him we'll come back for his body but we still have a job to do" McCall and Alenko nodded and they continued on

Nihlus radioed in again "Change of plans Shepard theres a spaceport up ahead im going to see if anyones there"

After coming to another clearing they heard someone running and gunfire and saw a marine take cover behind some rocks as to drones approached her with weapons raised, They opened fire on them and took them out relativley quickly and regrouped on the survivor

"Gunnery Sergeant Ashley Williams of the 212th you the one in charge here sir"

"Give me a status report Williams"

"FUBAR sir, one minute we were patrolling the next these things dropped in and started shooting"

"Any idea what we're up against Williams"

"I think there geth"Alenko gave his thoughts on that "The geth haven't been outside the veil in 600 years what are they doing here"

"They might be here for the beacon the dig site is close I can take you there"

"Lead on Williams"

Moving through a small pass they approached the dig site once they got there though they didn't see the beacon

"This is the dig site the beacon was right here it must have been moved"

"By who our side or the geth" Williams shrugged "Hard to say but theres a research post up the hill they may have answers"

After getting up the hill they saw giant spikes descend and the victims on them got up "Oh god there still alive" they looked in horror at it "What did the geth do to them"

"Light em up!" They started shooting but one got close and let out a pulse of energy that drained their shields for a moment despite that they took the abominations down quick and after McCall almost shouted "What the hell were those things!"

"Don't know but we have to keep moving"

Down at the spaceport Nihlus turned a corner and was suprised at who he saw standing there "Saren!"

Saren turned to face the other turian "Nihlus"

"This isn't your mission Saren what are you doing here?" Saren approached and put a hand on Nihlus' shoulder "The council thought you could use some help on this one"

"I wasn't expecting to find the geth here the situations bad" Saren drew his pistol and took aim at Nihlus' head "Don't worry i've got things under control" Saren then pulled the trigger

Just up the hill Shepard and the others heard the gunshot and rushed down to the spaceport upon arriving they found Nihlus dead Williams turned and asked "A Turian what's he doing here"

"He's a spectre he was with us on the Normand-"

"Somethings moving over behind those crates" They took aim and a survivor came out "Wait don't shoot im Human!"

"What are you doing back there"

"My names Powell i work here and was hiding, I saw what happened to that Turian, he was shot by the other Turian here and knew him by name Saren i think he called him"

"Do you know where the beacon is"

"Its at the other terminal you can take the tram just down the ramp,I can't stay here I need to get away from all this"

Not wanting to wait around they headed for the tram taking out the geth along the way and headed for the other terminal

at the other Terminal Saren approached one of the geth "Set the charges, destroy the entire colony leave no evidence we were here" after that he approached the becon waited for a second and activated it

Arriving at the Terminal the team spotted the demo charges "Demolition charges the geth must have planted them!"

"We need to hurry and disarm them"

The team pressed on deactivating another charge and were pinned on one end of the terminal "McCall get ready to run once you got there attention we'll take them out" McCall groaned "Why am I always the bait" McCall ran out and once he had the geth's attention Shepard and the others popped up and took the geth out,

After deactivating the final charge McCall called out "Next time your being the bait!...sir"

Once they secured the beacon Williams and Alenko took a step forward "This is amazing actual working prothean technology unbelieveable" Alenko turned and walked towards Shepard and McCall, Williams took another step forward and the beacon activated dragging her towards it, Shepard charged forward and threw Willaims to the side but was caught in the beacons field and lifted him in the air burning images into his head once it finished it threw him back and exploded the others rushed forward to check him and called in an evac

On an Unknown ship an Asari Matriarch approached Saren with information on the colony "We identified the ship that touched down on Eden Prime, the Normandy a UNSC vessel it was under the command of Captain Anderson, they managed to save the colony"

"And the Beacon?"

"One of the humans may have used it" With that Saren flew into a rage smashing several objects before calming down he took a step back and said "This human must be eliminated" and he returned to his quarters

**Well thats Chapter two done let me know what you think**


	3. Chapter 3: Back to the Normandy

Chapter 3: Back to the Normandy

**For this chapter i will spend most of it fleshing out my OC McCall**

After the shuttle picked the team up and headed back to the Normandy Captain Anderson went to the cargo hold hoping to find out what happened with the beacon while Williams and Alenko moved Shepard to the Infirmiry McCall was left to inform the captain

"Sergeant what happened down there"

"Everything went to hell quick sir Jenkins and Nihlus are both KIA the beacon was destroyed after it did something with Shepard and the robots attacking the colony are geth"

Anderson rubbed his forehead knowing this was going to be a nightmare informing highcom "god dammit, was there anything else you were able to find out"

"A Turian named Saren was involved he's the one who killed Nihlus and is working with the geth" Anderson sighed "Alright I've got to call highcom go get some sleep Sergeant dismissed"

After putting his gear away McCall went back to crew quarters for some sleep after hitting the bed he passed out almost immediatley and throughout the night he was haunted by the screams of his comrades as they were killed and dragged underground by thresher maws, he was woken up by the ships AI Achilles "Are you all right Gunnery Sergeant" he turned to face the AI pedastel in the room sweat dripping down his face "Yeah im fine" even 3 years later Akuze continues to haunt his dreams

"There is a call for you coming from your wife Diane would you like to take it" McCall groaned things were not so great at home right now and whenever he was home him and Diane fought alot whether it was over his job or their 8 year old daughter Rebecca "Yeah ill take it at my terminal"

Moving over to his terminal he accepted the call to be greeted by his wife who looked angry as usual "Well don't you just look like a ray of sunshine" He was not in the mood to fight or do anything right now

"I just saw the news about the attack i take it you won't be home for a while" McCall sighed and replied "gold star for you"

"Enough of the sarcasam Matt Im tired of having to wait on you and so is Rebecca" he was getting annoyed by this "Well im sorry I just saw a colony burning, people turned into abominations, and saw one of my men die so stow the damn attitude cause im not doing this right now"

"I don't care about that you keep saying you'll be home and spend time with us but you just blow us off and next thing i know your off fighting Thresher maws" Diane was really starting to set him off with that

"You know what go to hell last I checked Rebecca couldn't stand being around you cause you keep ignoring her and just dumping her at my parents house, its a wonder i didn't just divorce you after cathcing you sleeping with that guy"

"You don't get to turn this-" McCall just lost it then "Shut it im tired of hearing the same crap from you over and over, You'll be hearing from my lawyer soon enough Im done" and with that he disconnected the call, When they first got married 9 years ago when he was 24 things were going good but about a year and a half ago Diane starting berating him for the smallest things and didn't even try to spend time with Rebecca but this was the final straw he was tired of it and would be asking his lawyer for a divorce he wasn't going to keep doing this with her it was always the same old fight

"Trouble in paradise" McCall turned and saw Williams standing there "Are you're parents ONI spooks or did they not teach you its rude to eavesdrop on peoples conversations"

"Sorry didn't mean to just caught the end there and you losing it"

"There something you want"

"Just wanted to let you know Shepards awake and that were getting close to the Citadel, the Captain wants you on the station since you were part of the ground team" Standing up McCall stretched "All right ill get ready"

Up on the bridge everyone caught a glimpse of the station and the fleet defending it and saw the ships that made up the Citadel Defence Fleet with the Destiny Ascension as the flagship Joker got on the radio "Citadel Control this is UNSC Normandy requesting permission to dock"

"Standby for clearance Normandy...Clearance granted transferring you to a UNSC operater"

"Normandy the is UNSC control you are cleared for dock 422"

After docking the team made their way to the Human embassy they met with Ambassador Udina who just finished talking with the council "Captain Anderson I see you brought half your crew with you"

"Just the ground team from Eden Prime,I take it you got the council to agree to an investigation"

"Yes but they are not happy with their top agent being accused of something like this on top of the fact that Nihlus was killed and the beacon was destroyed"

Shepard decided to give his thoughts "Saren is a threat to every colony we have if the council won't stop him i will"

"Settle down commander you've already done more than enough to jeopardize your candidacy for the spectres, Captain come with me there are a few things we need to finalize before the hearing"

Williams took a few steps and said "And thats why i hate politicians"

Codex: AI's

When Humanity made first contact with the council its use of AI's was the biggest issue and the council tried to order their deactivation but relented, During the Covenant war they proved invaluable to the war effort and in recent years there has been increasing debate among the citadel council on whether or not they should lift the AI ban the storngest supporters of repealing the law are the Salarian Union and the Unified Earth Government

Codex: Human Foriegn Relations

When Humanity made first contact with the Citadel council in 2523 relations were chilly at best but have improved over the years, Relations with the Turians at present are good due to the fact they were allies in the Covenant war but a large number of turians still resent humanity's rapid rise on the Galactic scene, Relations with the Asari are complicated due to more conservative elements of the Asari government routinley criticizing the UEG on various issues mainly on AI use, Relations with the Salarians are very good due to cooperation between the two in areas of trade and Research agreements, relations with the Sanghelli and Jiralhanae are cold at best due to lingering animosity over the Covenant war and there is little interaction with them

Codex: Akuze

Akuze was a Human colony originally colonized in 2570 and one of the few colonies in range of a mass relay at the time originally meant to serve as a hub to increase trade between the UEG and Council when the colony fell out of contact in 2580 the UNSC sent 50 marines to Akuze to investigate while things seemed to be going smoothly at first but when nightfall hit the Thresher maws came out and started attacking the marines the 49 marines died on Akuze that night the sole survivor was then Staff Sergeant Matthew McCall who managed to radio for evac the planet has since been quarantined by the UNSC


	4. Chapter 4: The Citadel

Chapter 4: The Citadel

After the meeting at the embassy finished the team took a few minutes to look around the presidium, they saw a couple monuments such as the relay monument and the Krogan statue in the middle of the lake but the one that really caught their attention was the Covenant war memorial which was recently finished it was a large stone statue of the various races involved in the war Humans, Turians, Asari, Salarians, even some of the minor races like the elcor, and the inscription read 'Dedicated to the billions who gave their lives for the future of the galaxy and who never got to enjoy what they fought for'

Shepard stared at the statue for a minute and said "Hard to believe just 30 years ago we were almost extinct" Williams turned towards Shepard and spoke up "Well not really were still gonna be rebuilding for a long time"

After looking at the statue for another minute they continued on to the Citadel tower entering the elevator and after a few minutes Alenko groaned "Why do these elevators have to be so slow" McCall turned and said "What the hell did you expect were going up what must be a couple hundred floors at minimum"

Once they got off the elevator they went up a set of stairs and saw two Turians arguing "Sarens hiding something give me more time stall them" The other Turian who looked to be in charge said "Stall the council? Don't be ridiculous your investigation is over Garrus"

The turian called Garrus turned towards Shepard and his group "Commander Shepard, Garrus Vakarian I was the officer in charge of the investigation into Saren"

"Did you manage to find anything out" Garrus crossed his arms "Sarens a spectre if he even breathes on something its classified but I know he's hiding something"

"I think the councils ready for us Commander" The group then walked on and Garrus wished them luck, They then approached Anderson "The hearings already started, come on"

In the council chamber "The Geth attack is a matter of some concern but there is nothing to indicate Saren was involved in any way" Councilor Tevos said, in the upper left of the room was a holographic projection of Saren "I resent these acusations Nihlus was a fellow spectre and a friend" Anderson was already getting angry "That just let you catch him off guard"

"Captain Anderson it seems your always at the head of something when humanity accuses me of something, and this must be your protege Commander Shepard the one who let the beacon get destroyed"

"The mission to Eden Prime was top secret the only way you could know about the beacon is if you were there"

"With Nihlus gone his files passed on to me I read them and was unimpressed, but what can you expect from a Human" While this attitude was hardly new in citadel space it wasn't a very popular one as Humanity won a lot of respect from the Turians during the covenant war when the two were allies

"Saren despises humanity thats why he attacked Eden Prime" Saren got even more condescending "Your species needs to learn its place Shepard your not ready to join the council your not even ready to join the spectres"

The Turian councilor then spoke up "That is enough Saren this is not a meeting over Shepards candidicy or even humanity joining the council so mind yourself"

Councilor Tevos then said "While there was an eyewitness the testimony of one traumatized docworker is not compelling evidence so it is the conclusion of the council that there is insufficent evidence linking Saren to the attack on Eden Prime, Ambassador your petition to have Saren removed from the Spectres is denied, This meeting of the council is adjourned" With that Shepard, Anderson and the others left the chamber.

"It was a mistake bringing you into that hearing Captain you and Saren have far too much history"

"So what's our next move then we can't take him down not without the council approving it" Shepard may not have been very political but he knew that much at least Udina contiuned "I have a contact in C-Sec Harkin you could try talking to him"

"Forget it Harkin's probably getting drunk at Chora's den"

"Then what do you suggest captain" Anderson then went on "Talk to barla von he's a financial advisor on the persidium, But you might want to still talk to Harkin anyway he may have something useful you never know"

"Got it captain" With that the team decided to go talk to Harkin first to see what he knew

After reaching the wards the team was ambushed by two Turian gunmen "Thats him get him" but they didn't even get a shot off as shepard dropped both of them in a couple of shots Kaiden took a look at them "Those were Saren's men" They then entered the club and after looking for a few minutes they found Harkin but saw two Krogan arguing

"Back off Wrex Fist told us to take you down if you showed up" Wrex just stood there "What are you waiting for Im standing right here, This is Fist's only chance if he's smart he'll take it"

"He's not coming out Wrex end of story" Wrex took a step forward" This story is just begining, out of my way human's i have no quarrel with you"

"UNSC huh, I could have been a Marine you know instead I Joined the goddamn Citadel Security biggest mistake of my life" McCall nearly laughed at that "Yeah i'd give you all of five minutes before you would quit" Harkin shot him a glare "Whatever, anyway what do you need to talk to me for"

"I was told you might have something about Saren" Harkin snorted "Yeah maybe but did the Captain let you in on his secret" Shepard didn't have time for this "What secret"

"Didn't ya know Captain Anderson was being considered for spectre status but he blew it"

"Your full of it, Just tell me what i want to know" Harkin sighed "Fine, Garrus Vakarian the officer heading the investigation said he had a new lead and was going to a med clinic on the wards" With that Shepard and the others left and Williams asked "Why didn't captain Anderson tell us he was being considered for spectre status" Alenko gave his thoughts "Maybe its not true Harkins an ass he would make up anything" but McCall though otherwise "I don't think he was lying about that and i've got a pretty good bullshit detector"

They arrived on the ward level where the med clinic was located and entered only to find a hostage situation Garrus was hiding behind a wall and a doctor was shouting "I didn't tell anyone I swear"

"That was smart doc next time Garrus comes around you stay-" the gunmen then grabbed the doctor as a human shield seeing the Spartan enter and was about to say something but Garrus shot the gunman and the other two were dropped by Alenko and Williams

"Perfect timing Shepard gave me a clear shot at that bastard"

"Glad I could help" Garrus turned towards the doctor "Doctor Michel are you hurt?"

"No im fine thank you just a little shaken up"

"What did those men want from you?"

"They work for Fist, they came in and started interrogating my about a Quarian I treated from a day ago asking if I told anyone about her"

"Did the Quarian say something about having evidence on Saren?"

"Yes she said she had something linking him to the Geth attack on Eden Prime and that she asked Fist to set up a trade directly with the Shadow broker" Garrus then pointed out "Fist screwed the Shadow Broker over and the Broker never does thing directly it's always through one of his agents"

"Fist betrayed the broker? Thats insane even for him"

"Well we need to get to that Quarian before its to late" But Garrus had something to ask Shepard "This is your show Shepard but I want to be there when you go after Saren" Shepard thought for a moment before agreeing to his request "Welcome aboard Garrus"

"Before we go there a Krogan was arrested for making threats against Fist he's down at the station now be he could be useful" But Shepard though otherwise as they needed to find the Quarian fast "I would agree but we don't have the time right now we need to get to Fist fast"

With that they made for Chora's den which was undoubtedly going to be a tough fight

Codex: Covenant War

The Covenant war was the first Galactic war to occur in over a thousand years and began in 2525 when first contact between humanity and the covenant resulted in shots being fired almost immediatley with the Covenant being the Instigators, While the Council initially delcared neutrality events like the attack on Arcadia began turning public opinion in favor of intervention on the side of the UNSC and the council finally declared war in 2532 after the covenant attacked a council fleet, For most of the war Humanity was on the defensive gradually being pushed back and after the fall of Reach defeat seemed certain but shortly after that in the fall of 2552 fractures in the Covenant leadership resulted in the Covenant civil war which turned things in the Allies favor but not before the prophet of Truth and the Covenant loyalists launched an all out attack on Earth however Truth was killed during the East Africa campaign which left the fractured covenant leaderless, An official end of hostilites was declared on March 3rd 2553, the war lasted 28 years but saw 23 billion humans killed meaning human casualties alone made the war deadlier than the Rachni wars and Krogan rebellions combined the council lost over 2.5 billion casualties and the Covenant were estimated to have suffered at least 8 billion casualties.

Codex: Council Slipspace drives

The council first learned of Slipspace during the First contact war but didn't even learn the theory behind it for several years, in 2537 with the Covenant war getting worse for humanity they needed to free up ships for fighting so they gave the council several slipspace drives to manufacture for their own ships, Since the end of the war however while the council races still use it for colonization the UEG has not shared its more advanced slipspace drives due to paranoia meaning while the council has an alternate means of FTL travel it is much slower than humanity's slipsace drives and as such relay travel continues to be the preferred method of travel for the various council races


	5. Chapter 5: Evidence and Into The Galaxy

Chapter 5: Evidence and into the galaxy

After arriving at chora's den they saw it was closed but after hacking the door and getting it open they were greeted by a shotgun wielding bartender who garrus dropped before he even had time to blink shepard then started giving orders "Get to cover McCall, Vakarian and Williams you go right me and Alenko will go left"

without saying a word the team moved to their positions and started shooting the mercenaries that Fist had, on the right McCall and the others unloaded their mags into a Krogan who wouldn't stay down until McCall got his Magnum and put a round in the krogans eye on the left Shepard did most of the work with Alenko lifting and flushing the mercs out of cover with his biotics once they were done they regrouped on the back door and opened it to be greeted by two grunts who cowered in fear "Don't shoot us!" Shepard rolled and his eyes "Boo" with that the grunts ran for it and he heard Vakarian sigh "why the covenant had them in their army i will never understand"

After pushing through the door into Fist's office Vakarian used his omni tool to take out the turrets while Shepard slammed fist against the floor "Don't shoot i surrender" Shepard drew his magnum "Wheres the Quarian" Fist raised his hand "She's not here said she would only meet with the shadow broker directly"

"Impossible the broker only works through his agents" Shepard aimed his magnum at Fist's kneecaps "Maybe this will get you talking" Fist almost panicked "Wait i don't know who shes meeting with but i know where its at, here in the wards a backalley behind the market"Shepard pointed his gun at Fist's head "Too many people died here you don't get to walk away" and pulled the trigger, Vakarian then shouted " That Quarians dead if we don't go now!"

Rushing out of the den the 5 of them ran for the alley and got there just in time it seemed the deal went south with the Quarian taking out two of the mercs with an explosive while the other two were dropped by Shepard after they were down they approached the Quarian "Fist set me up I knew i couldn't trust him"

"Don't wory about Fist he won't be troubling anyone anymore" the Quarian nodded her head "If you don't mind me asking who are you"

"Commander Shepard UNSC, Spartan branch i'm looking for evidence that Saren is a traitor"

"Then I have a way to pay you back but we shouldn't stay here" Shepard nodded "Come with us to the ambassadors office, lets go"

Back at the Human embassy Udina shook his head "Your not making my life easy Shepard firefights in the wards an all out assault on chora's den do you know how many-, whos this a Quarian what is she doing here" Shepard had a smile on his face "Making your day ambassador she has evidence that proves Saren is a traitor"

"Really, well id love to hear it miss?" Udina said as he gestured towards the Quarian "My name is Tali,Tali Zorah nar Rayya, During my travels i began hearing about reports of Geth activity they usually fry their memory cores upon destruction but if your fast enough you can get some data" She tapped a couple buttons on her omni tool playing an audio clip "Eden Prime was a major victory the beacon has brought us one step closer to finding the conduit"

Anderson couldn't believe their luck "Thats Sarens voice this proves he was in the attack" But Tali had more "Wait there's more Saren wasn't working alone" She played more audio "And one step closer to the return of the Reapers" Udina didn't know what to make of the rest of it but shepard asked about the Reapers "Are they some new species"

"The Reapers were apparently a race of advanced AI's that wiped out the protheans and the geth see them as gods"

Shepard suddenly knew what the vision he had was about "The Vision on Eden Prime, it makes sense now the machines I saw were the reapers"

But Udina was just focused on Saren right now "Regardless we need to show this to the council i'll set up a session Shepard get to the tower" Tali spoke up "Commander, if its not too much trouble I'd like to come with you, you saw me in the alley I can handle myself and im good with engines" Shepard thought a moment but accepted "Thanks you won't regret this" Leaving the embassy the group made their way to the elevator but stopped when they saw McCall silently cursing

"Commander you may have to go on ahead without me just got a message saying my soon to be ex wife is raising hell at C-Sec" Shepard let him go knowing that he needed to sort this out

Arriving at the council chambers Anderson greeted them "Come on Udina is presenting the Quarians evidence to the council" After the audio was replayed Udina pointed "You wanted proof there it is"

"This evidence is irrefuteable ambassador saren will be stripped of his status and all efforts will be made to track him down" Tevos joined in "I recognize the other voice talking with saren, Matriarch Benezia"

"She must be working with the geth to" Tevos continued "Matriarchs are powerful biotics, she will make a powerful ally for saren" But Valern was curious about one thing in the recording "Im more curious about the reapers what do you know about them"

"Only what was extracted from the geths memory core, the reapers were an advanced race of machines that wiped out the protheans than they vanished" Shepard joined in "The geth believe the reapers are gods and saren is the prophet for their return" But Sparatus just shook his head "Listen to what you are saying, where did the reapers go why did they vanish how come we found no trace of them"

"I tried to warn you about saren and you refused to face the truth don't make the same mistake"

"Saren is a rouge agent on the run he no longer has the resources he had before" But Udina wasn't satisifed "That is not good enough we know he's in the traverse send your fleet in!"

"A fleet can not track down one man" Udina calmed a little "A citadel fleet could secure the region keep the geth from hitting more of our colonies"

Tevos had another solution "There is another way one that doesn't require fleets or armies" she looked over to the other councilors who silently agreed with her "Commander Shepard step forward" Shepard then went to the front and the council went on "It is the decision of the council that you are to be granted the resources and privliges of the special tactics and reconnisince branch of the citadel"

"Spectres are not trained but chosen individuals forged in the fire of battle those whose actions elevate them above the rank and file"

"Spectres are an ideal, a symbol, the embodiment of courage, self reliance, the are the right hand of the council, instruments of our will"

"Spectres bear a great burden they are protectors of galactic peace, both our first and last line of defence, the safety of the galaxy is theirs to uphold"

"You are the first human spectre commander this is a great accomplishment for you and your species" Shepard nodded and asked "Whats my first mission" Valern than took over "We are sending you into the traverse after saren he is a fugitive so you are authorized to use any means to take him down"

Anderson than shook Shepards hand "Congratulations commander" Udina than started talking about what he needed for his mission and left with Anderson to set it up, Vakarian commented "Not even a thank you from the ambassador" They left for the C-sec acadamey to get gear and head for the ship"

A few minutes earlier

McCall was not looking forward to this Diane had apparently been screaming at the top of her lungs demanding to know where i was, after changing into my BDU i went to meet here when she saw me she looked furious as usual

"What the hell is so damn important that you need to come to the citadel to see me" she scowled "Well i just heard from your lawyer that you are going to be starting this divorce process soon enough,I don't give a damn about any demons or personal problems your facing right now, so if you think im going to lie down and take this-"

"enough, just shut it ive got people who are willing to testify on my behalf if you try and start a pissing match in the custody battle for Rebecca, ive got my Sister, my mom and my old man who's a General in the marines willing to go on the record and even your parents will do that for me because you have screwed them over so many times, so if you came here just to try and piss me off it worked now get the fuck out of here!"

Diane was left speechless but still had the scowl on her face and McCall went on "We done" she didn't answer and McCall just turned and left she then shouted "This isn't over you smug son of a bitch!" he just flipped her off and went on

Near the elevator to the Normandy Shepard was stopped by a Krogan "You, Spartan, you the one they call Shepard" Shepard turned to face him "Depends on whos asking" The Krogan got off the wall "The names wrex and the shadow broker paid me a lot of money to kill fist" He then shoved shepard slightly "But i didn't finish this job shepard you did so the payments your's" Shepard raised an eyebrow "Your going to pay me for getting rid of Fist" Wrex backed up a little "I don't take credit for someone elses work, money's in your account, and there's something i want to ask you, I want in on whats going on with you and saren"

"Why would a Krogan like you want in on this" Wrex narrowed his eyes a little "There's a storm coming and you and saren are right in the middle of it"

"We'll take you with us Wrex" Wrex smiled "smart move Shepard" They all got in the elevator and Shepard had to ask McCall what happened

"What happened with your wife" He let out a long sigh "I don't want to talk about it, right now im just seeing red"

After getting off the elevator most of the squad boarded the ship while Shepard went to talk with Anderson and Udina "I've got big news for you Shepard Captain Anderson is stepping down as commanding officer of the Normandy the ship is yours" Anderson crossoed his arms "She's quick and quiet and you know the crew perfect ship for a spectre" Shepard knew that it was politics that took him down and Anderson knew that Shepard caught on but they just continued with the conversation "Are there any leads on Saren"

"There were reports of Geth activity on Feros, and possibly Noveria, and there is a lead on Benezia she has a daughter working in the Artemus Tau we will let you know of any others" Shepard nodded and before boarding Udina had one last thing to say "Shepard one more thing your actions reflect us as a whole so try to avoid causing too much collateral damage it will hurt our standing here" Shepard knew Udina was just covering his ass but he also had a point "Ill try not to make your job any harder than it has to be" with that he boarded the ship saying goodbye to Captain Anderson

In the helm of the Normandy Shepard approached Joker "Heard what happened to captain Anderson survives a hundred battles and gets taken down by backroom politics, Just watch your back commander, things go bad on this mission you're next on their chopping block"

"Sarens out there somewhere and we're going to find him" Joker went on "Everyone on this ship is behind you, commander one hundred percent, Intercoms open if you have anything to say to the crew"

Shepard leaned down over the intercom "This is commander Shepard speaking, We have our orders, I won't lie to you crew this mission isn't going to be easy, Humanity needs to do this not just for our own sake but for the sake of every living being in the galaxy, Our enemy know we are coming when we go into the traverse sarens followers will be waiting for us but we'll be ready for them too, Saren will be stopped and I promise you all we will stop him"

"Well said commander Captain would be proud" Shepard turned around "The captain gave up everything so I could have this chance we can't fail"

"Yes Sir!"

Shepard went over to the Galaxy map "Achilles set course for Therum" Achilles then materialized "Yes sir we should be arriving there in about 8 hours, powering up Slipspace drive" Shepard took the elevator down to the Cargo bay after exiting he saw Garrus over next to the Mako, Williams was over next to the equipment lockers, Wrex was on the opposite side of the lockers and he then saw McCall at the rear of the mako helping Garrus with upkeep he went over to speak to Garrus

"Commander, I just wanted to thank you for bringing me along" Shepard nodded "No problem, right now im getting to know the crew so what can you tell me about yourself"

"There really isn't much to tell grew up on Palaven, served 8 years in the Army, then i joined C-Sec, my dad's more interesting he served in the covenant war"

"Where did he serve" Garrus went on "He went into the Army back in guess it would have been 2542 for you he was in the 27th Infantry served on a couple different planets but Reach and Earth stand out for him he never really went into specifics said what he saw was sheer hell and made the Krogan look like saints, after that he joined C-Sec and I guess thats what made me Join, What about you Commander"

"Signed up back in '72 joined the Marines at first but got selected by a recruiter for the Spartan branch in '77 been there ever since but I can't really talk about my missions since there classified"

Garrus turned towards McCall "What about you McCall" McCall then came into view "signed up not long after high school when i was 18 been in for 15 years had a few interesting assignments" Shepard then asked "Weren't you the sole survivor of Akuze"

McCall sighed "Yeah but that is something i refuse to talk about all im going to say is I got lucky the others didn't" Shepard then let them get back to work and went over to see Wrex "Nice ship you got here Shepard I know there are pirates from the Terminus that would kill to get there hands on a ship like this"

"Whats your story Wrex" Wrex went on "There's no story, go ask the Quarian if you want stories"

"You Krogan live over a thousand years there must be something"

"Well there was this time the Turians tried to wipe out my race that was fun" Wrex was slightly annoyed "You know the Covenant tried to do the same to Humanity"

"Yeah but there's a difference your kind may have faced extinction but you fought it off by the skin of your teeth, The Turians infected us with a virus"

"What kind of virus"

"it affects birth rates it makes it so that only a few in a thousand children survive birth, I don't expect you to understand but don't compare humanity's fate with the Krogan" Shepard wanted to know more " I was just making conversation, wasn't trying to upset you"

"You're ignorance doesn't upset me shepard, as for the Krogan i gave up on them long ago, The genophage may have infected us but ts not whats killing us"

"Is your race dying" Wrex went on to explain "were sure not getting any stronger, were to spread out none of us are interested in staying in our own system"

"Lots of species thrive outside of their own system"

"But they go to colonize, Were not settlers were warriors, We want to fight so we leave, hire ourselves out and most of us never go back"

"What can you tell me about the Genophage"

"Ask the salarians if you want to know they came up with it, all i know it makes breeding nearly impossible thousands die in stillbirth most don't even get that far, every krogan is infected everyone and no ones rushing to find a cure" Shepard inquired "why don't the krogan try to find a cure" Wrex scoffed "When was the last time you saw a Krogan scientist, if you ask a Krogan would he rather find a cure for the genophage or fighting he'll choose fighting everytime,its just who we are Shepard I can't change that" Shepard then took his leave and went to engineering to speak to Tali

"Your ships amazing Shepard i've never seen an engine this size fit into such a small ship, Im starting to understand why you Humans are so succesful I had no idea UNSC ships were so advanced"

"The normandy's a prototype cutting edge technology" Tali went on "A month ago I was patching a makeshift fuel line on a converted tug ship in the flotilla, now im on one of the most advanced vessels in the galaxy, i have to thank you again for bringing me along, travelling on a vessel like this is a dream come true"

"I had no idea you found ship technology so interesting"

"It comes with being a Quarian the migrant fleet is key to the survival of the Quarians, Ships are our most valuble resource,but we don't have anything like this, we make do with cast offs and second hand equipment, and some of our larger ships date back to our flight from the geth"Shepard raised an eyebrow "That was over 600 years ago, your using ships that old?"

"They are constantly be refitted, upgraded and worked on but they won't last forever eventually we need to find a long term solution we can't be nomads forever, I even heard that the admirals have considered approaching the UEG for help but with the reconstruction it was swept aside"

"Why come to us for help"

"Because your not actually an associate of the Citadel and aren't bound by there laws and with how advanced you are we had hoped that you might be able to do something but again reconstruction has taken large priority for your kind"

Shepard said goodbye and tried talking to Williams and Alenko but they were busy so he went back to his quarters for some rest before reaching Therum

Back in the Cargo hold McCall was approached by Wrex "So your McCall huh? you know i heard about you"

"What did you hear?" Wrex took another step "That you were the only one to survive Akuze, you managed to survive against a dozen or more Thresher maws" McCall turned to face Wrex "Its not something I talk about because i can still hear the screams of those men when I go to sleep and its on my mind constantly" Wrex nodded "You know when i first heard about that i thought you were a Spartan not some grunt" McCall laughed "you have no idea how many times i've heard that, i was actually approached by a recuriter from the spartans because of it but I decided not to would have brought up too many ghosts" Garrus approached us "Hey williams and Alenko wanted to know if you two wanted to play poker they finished their work"

"Yeah ill go,Wrex?"

"Sure"

In port observation 1 hour later

"How is it your so good at this McCall?" McCall then gathered up his winnings "Well I've been playing since I was 10 so whats your guy's story"

Alenko spoke up "Not much of one grew up on earth got exposed to some eezo and now im a biotic"

"Weren't you at BAaT?"

"Yeah but thats something for another time"

"What about you williams?" Williams turned towards McCall "Joined up when i finished high school same as you been mostly doing assignments at colonial garrisons" McCall gave her the usual blank stare "Well with your scores i figured you would be serving on Reach or in the ODST's not in some backwater garrison detail"

"A-Anyway thats all there is to me really" Achilles then appeared on the Pedastel near us "Hate to interrupt your winning streak Gunnery Sergeant but we will be arriving at Therum in 1 hour Commander Shepard want's you all geared up and ready in 40" With that they all got ready for the drop

Well thats my longest chapter yet decided to have the team interact with each other a little since they didn't really do that outside of missions let me know what you think


	6. Chapter 6: Therum

Chapter 6: Therum

In the cargo hold Shepard, McCall, Vakarian and Williams all geared up and got into the Mako the ship was now low enough for the drop, Once the Mako exited Shepard hit the boosters and slowed the descent landing relativley smoothly they then set off for the dig site that was uncovered just a few months ago

"Commander Im getting some strange readings, really strange like off the damn charts looks like its coming from a factor a couple klicks north"

Aside from a few stray geth there wasn't really anything that happened until they hit a small outpost and saw the front gate had turrets on it "This routes a no go they have height and cover!"

Heading into the small detour they spotted on the side they got into the base and Shepard used the main gun to clear the courtyard relativley quickly they got out of the mako to lower the gate and continue on before they came across an area that the Mako couldn't pass "Alright were dismounting and continuing on foot" McCall dryly remarked "My eyeballs just dried out"

moving through the pass they quickly came under fire from the geth Shepard set up his sniper taking out the Geth snipers while the others advanced clearing out the remaining geth

As they neared the digsite entrance things became uneasy and then a Geth Armature suddenly dropped in "Really wish we had the Mako right now" they all scrambled for cover taking out the geth that were jumping all over the place before focusing fire on the aramture

Once the armature was down they moved to the entrance and descended into the ruins moving slowly cautious of any ambushes they came upon an elevator however after getting on it it broke and they had to jump down when they found the Asari they were looking for

"Can you hear me out there Im trapped i need help" But Shepard hushed her "Quit shouting this place is crawling with geth" She calmed down "Sorry Im Liara T'soni I need your help this device im trapped in is a Prothean barrier curtain the controls for it are behind me but the tunnel getting here is blocked off"

"Hang tight we'll find a way"They made their way to the ground floor and shepard inspected the mining laser after bypassing it he managed to get through the rock blocking his way and entered the elevator, they then approached the controls deactivating the trap

Liara thanked the team for her rescue and activated the elevator in the central mine shaft "Do you have any idea why Saren would want me?"

"Sarens looking for the conduit miss prothean expert" she seemed to know something about that "the conduit but-" when suddenly the mine shakes "The mining laser must of triggered a seismic event we need to get out of here and fast" Shepard then got on the comm "Joker get the Normandy airborne and lock in on my signal on the double mister!"

"Gonna be close skipper"

When they reached the top a krogan and four geth approached "Surrender or don't that would be more fun"

"We don't have time to deal with this idiot charge!"

the fight didn't last long the geth were relativley easy to take out but the Krogan as usual refused to stay down so once he was dead everyone made a mad dash for the surface barely making it before the entrance collapsed

In the Normandy briefing room

"Too close commander 5 more seconds we would have been swimming in molten sulfur, The Normandy isn't equipped to handle those temperatures they tend to fry our sensors and melt our hulls"

"We almost died down there and your pilot is making jokes?" No one but Liara seemed to mind "Its a coping mechanism"

"I see it must be a human thing" getting back to the point "How long have you been studying the protheans?"

"There is so much we don't know about them Ive spent the past 50 years studying them but there is very little to go on in particular ive been studying their disappearance which i believe is linked to a cycle of destruction"

"Ive got my own theory on how they dissapeared"

"Forgive me commander but this is hardly your area of expertise"

"They were wiped out by a race of sentient machines called the reapers" Liara seemed confused "The Reapers? there isn't much left of the protheans let alone those who came before how did you learn of these reapers"

"A damaged beacon on Eden Prime burned a vision into my brain but I also know the conduit is the key to there return and saren is looking for it" Liara stood up "Commander with your permission I would like to try and join our minds see if their is anything I can glean from your vision"Shepard took a step forward "Alright its worth a shot"

"Relax commander embrace eternity" After seeing the images again they were no clearer and Liara didn't seem to have any new info so after that Liara was sent to the Infirmary and the crew was dismissed "Mission reports filed want me to patch you through to the council"

"Patch em through Joker" The three holograms of the councilors then appeared "Commander we understand that Liara T'Soni is aboard the Normandy and that the mission was a success" Sparatus turned toward Shepard "Apart from the destruction of a major prothean ruin was that really necesarry shepard?"

"The geth were all over those ruins we were lucky to get out alive" Valern then spoke up "regardless we trust you are taking the proper security procedures?"

"Liara's on our side the Geth were trying to kill her" Tevos shook her head "Benezia would never allow saren to kill her daughter

"Maybe she doesn't know"

"Or maybe we don't know her we never suspected she would become a traitor" The debriefing then ended and shepard left the comm room

Down in the Cargo hold

Shepard got off the elevator and saw everyone in their usual place so he approached McCall first "Sergeant"

"Commander, what can i do for you?" McCall was cleaning his weapon

"Just wanted to get to know you is all" McCall looked up with a blank look on his face and shrugged "What do you want to know "Where are you from"

"Grew up on Terra Nova its the second largest colony we have right now, Mom's in the Navy serving on the Kilimanjaro, my old man is a Marine Corps General, and my sister is a fighter pilot stationed on the Infinity"

"Your sisters serving on the Infinity?"

"Yeah she couldn't believe it when she got the assignment she though she was dreaming for a second" Shepard recalled he also had a wife "What about your wife?"

"Soon to be ex wife have an 8 year old daughter with her, it wasn't always bad with her but a year and a half ago something happened now she shows no interest in raising Rebecca or even trying in this marriage" Shepard decided to make his exit then moving on to talk to Williams

"Commander can I ask you something?"

"I try to keep an open door policy"

"Its about Vakarian and Wrex im not judging your decision to bring them along but should they have full access to the ship and area's like engines, sensors, weapons"

"You don't trust them because their not human?"

"Its not that its just we-humanity has always stood on our own"

"These seem like deeply held beliefs Williams"

"As noble as the council races seem when their backs are against the wall they will abandon us"

"You've got a pessimistic view of the galaxy Williams"

"A pessimist is what an optimist calls a realist"

While he didn't agree with Williams view he understood where they came from after all when 2 of your races first contact scenarios result in war views like this are common "All right i can understand where these views come from but this is a multilateral mission your going to have to work with aliens like it or not"

"Yes sir"

He then decided to ask wrex about whether or not he saw action against the covenant "Yeah I fought in the covenant war saw Reach fall managed to survive all that"

"How do you think it compares to the Krogan rebellions"

"Well we didn't start a war over religion but that doesn't make it any better alot of what i saw well you were just lucky to make it to the next hour intact"

"Have you ever thought of trying to help the Korgan"

"I did once but im no Chieftain Lydus I tried to get us to move on forget the past try to get us focused on breeding for one generation but alot of chiefs from the rebellions were still around and so were there idea's one of them called me to a meeting in the hollows where no violence was allowed the hollows were considered a sacred place but when my talk with the chief got nowhere he gave a signal and like the dead rising, krogan popped out of the graves I got away but not before i sank my blade in his neck and the chief in question was my father"

" I have nothing to go back to but i did make a promise to retrieve my family armor"

"Who has the armor now?"

"A Turian named Tonn Actus here are the coordinates do with it what you will"

At the galaxy map in the CIC Shepard recieved a transmission from Admiral Hackett

"Shepard I've recieved some troubling information and need your help, Someone is killing former UNSC scientists there have been four murders in the past month"

"Former Scientists? sounds like someone has something they would rather keep buried"

"Thats not all I did some digging and found a link between the scientists and Gunnery Sergeant McCall, All four scientists worked on a classified project on Akuze 3 years ago"

"Akuze?, McCall was the only survivor of the incident there are you saying our scientists are involved?"

"While the incident was classified as a natural hazard the project dates line up with the incident, There was a fifth scientist on the project a Doctor Wade im transmitting the coordinates fifth fleet out"

Shepard called McCall up to his quarters to tell him about what he had learned

McCall looked pissed to say the least "So our own scientists may have been involved in the incident?!"

"That may be"McCall rubbed his eyes "Commander when we find Doctor Wade im going to be getting answers from him one way or another I don't care how I get them I just need to know how and why this happened"

"Okay we'll get the answers you need for now go get some rest"

"Yes Sir"

Codex: Chieftain Lydus

The current leader of the Jiralhanae Tribal Confederation Lydus began his life serving the Covenant however when it collapsed and with his race threatening to tear itself apart Lydus reached out to the Sanghelli for aid and to end the fighting to focus of rebuilding, an agreement between the two was reached in 2560 where the Jiralhanae recieved aid from various governments and Lydus was able to stableize the homeworld though he has kept the Jiralhanae largley out of Galactic affairs he has managed to bring long term stability to a race that nearly tore itself apart.


	7. Chapter 7: Ghosts and new developments

Chapter 7: Ghosts of the Past

After arriving in the Newton system the Normandy approached Ontaram Shepard, McCall, Vakarian and Williams dropped onto the planet in the Mako and once they hit the surface they made for a compund that was picked up on radar once they arrived at the base they encountered a couple of mercenaries but the mako's main gun took care of them quickly.

Once they entered the base the team moved cautiously and in the center of the compound they encountered more mercenaries and after a protracted gunfight managed to eliminate them, moving into another area of the base they entered a room spotting Doctor Wade but also saw a mercenary had pulled a gun on the Doctor

"Stay back i've got no grief with you all I want is this bastard" Wade was panicking "Please he's a madman, Mr Toombs your insane you need help!"

"Shut up you don't get to lie you don't- McCall my god McCall is that you?" McCall's jaw dropped recognizing the mercenary as one of his men that was on Akuze a man he though was dead "Toombs?! but I saw a thresher maw pull you under on Akuze!"

"They took me McCall the Scientist's" Wade was still panicking "You can't prove any of this, this man is delusional" Toombs turned back towards McCall "See they were running tests on the Thresher maws they let those things hit us just to watch and study, I woke up in a holding cell the scientists were delighted id survived now they had someone to run tests on" McCall didn't want to believe what he was hearing "Toombs I-I didn't see anybody, if id seen you i would have come back for you I swear"

"You can't believe Toombs! he doesn't have any proof I demand a fair trial" Toombs was losing it "He was there you bastard he knows the truth! There part of some orginization Cerberus that runs secret tests like this they treated me like a lab animal, This man deserves to die McCall for you for me for everyone else in the unit, are you with me?"

McCall was seriously tempted to let Toombs pull the trigger but the scientist could have dirt on Cerberus that the UNSC could use "Your better than this Toombs, your not like them"

"Don't tell me who I am you got away with a few scratches and a scary reputation as the grim reaper! The rest of the unit died and I was tortured for years McCall you can't judge me you don't have the right"

"Toombs if i could've helped on Akuze I would have all i can do is help now, let me" Toombs thought for a moment but lowered his gun "Okay Im no murderer, They couldn't make me one, just as long as he stands trial, maybe the screaming will stop now, I don't know" McCall went over to Toombs "Those bastards can't hurt you anymore Corporal"

Shepard got on the radio "Joker tell the fifth fleet we need a ship for pickup" "Aye aye commander

Shepard and the others escorted Toombs outside leaving McCall with Wade, McCall gave wade a nasty uppercut before grabbing him and pushing him towards the door "If you think that was me being merciful think again, cause i wanted to blow your damn brains out!" After the transport picked up Wade and Toombs the team returned to the Normandy, McCall was in the quarters looking at an old photo of his unit before Akuze when Shepard entered "Just finished talking with Hackett, Wades being interrogated and will be court martialed and Toombs will be recieving long term psychological help" But McCall didn't answer "You okay Sergeant?"

"I honestly don't know what to think right now, part of me wishes i had let toombs pull the trigger but that wouldn't have brought back the other 48 men who died that night, 3 years later im still having nightmares, I nearly got pulled under but I got lucky"

Shepard also recalled toombs mentioning McCall had a grim reaper reputation "Why are you called the Grim reaper" It wasn't something McCall liked to think about "Because after Akuze people started thinking whatever unit i ended up in would be wiped out with me being the only survivor, now if you don't mind Commander id like to be alone right now"

Shepard exited the crew quarters and returned to his room and a few hours later there was a transmission coming through for him he accpeted the call, it was from Hackett "Commander I know i just debriefed you but a situation has developed on Reach, theres a training ground run by a Dumb AI where we test out new weapons its recently gone rogue"

"Any casualties"

"4 wounded and at least 1 confirmed dead we need you to go there and deactivate the program running the base, and there's one other thing the Normandy needs to be inspected at Reach as well, see how the systems are working and add a few new upgrades, thats all Hackett out"

"Achilles, set course for Reach"

"Yes commander we will arrive there in about 12 hours, Oh there is also a poker game in the lounge if your interested Williams seems to be having particularly bad luck today"

"No thanks Achilles I need to get some sleep let me know if anything comes up though"

"Yes Sir ill make sure no one tries to scratch the paint"

After getting a few hours rest it was time to get breakfast and the team was lining up for whatever the chef was trying to poison them with today, Alenko was staring hard at his food "Is this supposed to be food or mud" Garrus spoke up getting his dextro ration "Didn't you know Alenko no matter the race the cooks are always trying to kill you"

"I think ill stick with crazy robots trying to do that"

Once they had their food the team sat down at the table and started eating their 'food' if it could even be called that Williams decided to speak up

"That was pretty messed up on Ontarom with the scientist" Alenko agreed "Yeah no kidding I knew Akuze was a nightmare but I didn't know about McCalls grim reaper reputation"

"That makes you just about the only one L.T" Everyone turned and saw McCall with a plate of food as he was sitting down and everyone went silent quick

"How are you able to eat that McCall" McCall finished chewing and spoke "My mom was a worse cook than most of the guys who work in the mess guess thats what happens when your mother is a Weapons technician, so we ended up eating out a lot"

While they were talking about that Tali had a few questions about the AI's the UNSC used "There are times I don't understand why your people use AI's they cost my people a homeworld"

Achilles appeared "Well Tali humanity has been using AI's for about 400 years now without a single incident, we're used on starships, space stations and even used to help run and coordinate an entire city's infrastucture"

"But why is it whenever anyone else tries to work with AI's it backfires"

"I don't know maybe because we're understimated, people get paranoid about us adapting to new problems but aren't most organics like that maybe the UNSC sees us as an artificial version of themselves and know that most people can adapt to a situtation so I don't think they see AI's as very different in any regard aside from us being holograms and smarter than most people, but other than that i can't really give you a definitive answer"

Tali nodded while that wasn't the answer she had hoped for she knew that achilles made a few good points

Williams then turned on the vidscreen and what the news was reporting now shocked her "Guy's take a look at this"

"-And thats all for the developments on Saren, Now onto other news that has a lot of people in shock and many protesting, President Hood of the UEG announced today that for the past 8 months he has been negotiating with the Sanghelli Imperium and Jiralhanae Tribal Confederation to form an alliance between Humanity and the former covenant races the, 'Orion Alliance' as its being called would see the three powers enter a military alliance that many considered not that long ago to be impossible and many who still remember the covenant war began protesting within an hour of the announcement, It has also been rumored that the Unifed State of Balaho representing the Unggoy is also taking part in the negotiations, more on this as it develops"

Everyone at the table couldn't believe it in just 30 years humanity had gone from basically telling the 2 former covenant races to go to hell to now possibly entering an alliance with them

Garrus was the first to speak up "Well this is going to be a shitstorm in UNSC and council space" Williams agreed "Yeah"

And in the back Shepard was also surprised he did not expect to hear that and neither did a lot of the people present in the mess and Garrus had a point it would be a nightmare explaining this not just to the public but also to the council.

Codex: Reach

Once humanity's fortress amongst the stars Reach was the military capital of the UNSC however during the Covenant war the planet was glassed in the summer of 2552 after the war terraforming began in 2553 with recolonization beginning in 2556 in the 27 years since then Reach once again boasts a large population of around 180 million with 45 million of those people living in the rebuilt city of New Alexandria, and today Reach is once again humanity's fortress in the galaxy and the shipyards in orbit churn out ships at an impressive rate thanks to recent advances and its predicted that by 2586 these shipyards will have added around 75-83 ships to the UNSC Navy


	8. Chapter 8: Cerberus and Politics

Chapter 8: Cerberus and Politics

The team assembeled in the briefing room for the assignment they had at reach once Shepard was done explaining what they were to do Tali had something to say about the rouge intelligence

"I knew this would happen sooner or later eventually AI's go rogue and attack their creators seems your not so different after all" Tali said somewhat arrogantly and shepard decided to put her in her place "Tali this was a VI running the facility not a full blown AI and besides someone hacked the programming and disengaged all safety protocols, and if im not mistaken there have been plenty of incidents with VI's in council space" Tali shut up after that

the team was split into three groups each would after arriving at the base go into the 3 area's housing the VI and disable the mainframes running it and once they were done with the op the team would get 4 days shore leave in New Alexandria while the Normandy was undergoing its checks and upgrades

After docking at one of the many orbital shipyards everyone got onto a shuttle and headed for Reach where they got onto a couple of warthogs and headed out into the rural areas of the Viery territory where the base in question was located, Once arriving they found the outside of the base effectivley abandoned with no hacked drone weapons platforms coming out to shoot them in fact the few they did find were remotley disabled once Alenko examined them

"Sir these drones definitley fired on the troops here but it looks like however disengaged the safety protocols deactivated the drones, VI's been shut off as well" That was unnerving to Shepard something was off about this whole thing but he couldn't figure out what until he remembered this base was used to test prototype weapons and had Garrus call up the inventory

"Looks like whoever broke in may have been interested in the new weapons lets see a couple new ship weapons, Small arms and- Woah"

"What did you find garrus" Garrus was still wide eyed but answered "Looks like this base was testing out a prototype Laser assault rifle" that caught everyones attention humanity was one of the few races that had directed energy weapons, the council was barley able to develop ship based versions but humanity had ones like the Spartan laser that could be handled by infantry, actual laser small arms would give the UNSC a major advantage over many races in council space and against the former covenant if necessary

Williams still had a question "So why turn the drones against the soldiers here if they could just hack in"

"Looks like the schematics for the weapon aren't on any computers so whoever got in needed to scan the actual design specs or take one of the weapons"

Shepard wasn't interested in speculating on why right now though "Alright lets head over to where these weapons are being tested and stored see if anythings missing"

Once they entered the testing area they took inventory nothing was missing not even the schematics but Shepard knew they were definitley scanned by whoever did this he went back outside to contact achilles "Achilles get me a direct line to Admiral Hackett and highcomm on the double priorty 1 alert!" Achilles quickly patched shepard through and Hackett answered "Shepard whats going on"

"Sir the base you sent us to is deserted the rogue VI was deactivated along with the drones that attacked our guys this was planned to have the base evacuated to gain access to the prototypes and scan the designs for the Laser small arms that were being developed"

"Dammit, we just finished interrogating Doctor Wade, Turns out someone in ONI whom Wade told us about leaked the info about the prototypes to the same orginization Toombs mentioned"

"Cerberus?, have we found out anything new about them"

"Its a pro Human orginization founded by rogue ONI agents and with someone called the Illusive man leading it, After Osmin was arrested the UEG placed massive oversight on ONI and convicted a lot of agents for war crimes this made a lot of agents unhappy and the went rogue but beyond that not much, Anyway I need to contact ONI let them now we have cerberus agents infliltrating our Intellegence agencies get your team to New Alexandria we need them to sign the standard Non Disclosure agreements"

"Yes Sir, Shepard out" While Shepard was eomwhat relieved to hear that the Batarians or pirates didn't get the info the fact that Cerberus came up again was disturbing to say the least it seems they may be sharpining their claws, but Shepard now had to get to New Alexandria and sign whatever NDA's his team needed to

On the Citadel

Terrence Hood was currently President of the UEG and was on the citadel to talk to the council about his recent announcement of a possible alliance with the Sanghelli and Jiralhane which had many in UNSC space protesting and the council may think humanity is trying to form a power bloc to challenge the council but he was here to alleviate those worries, Hood was currently making his way to the council chambers to discuss the issue and when he got there the most displeased of the council seemed to be Tevos who asked the first question

"President Hood, will you please explain why the UEG is currently trying to form a new power bloc against us" Hood sighed there were times he couldn't stand dealing with the Asari he found they had a tendency to act pompous and superior to everyone else they came across, he then answered

"Councilors we are not forming a new power bloc to challenge you this alliance is in response to many security problems we have been facing over the past decade for humanity that would be incidents like the attacks on Mindoir, the blitz and many other raids that have been taking place recently by pirates, slavers and mercenaries so we need help to better defend our borders"

Valern spoke next "What about the Shangelli and Jiralhane"

"The Sanghelli have been hit by similar raids in the past few years particullary in the systems they colonized that have mass relays in them and they want help in patrolling them, and as for the Jiralhanae they barley have enough ships to guard their homeworld"

Sparatus then had a question "What about the Unggoy we have heard they may be taking part in these negotiations"

"The Unggoy are more recent they joined the negotiations a month ago, but they aren't the best fighters so in exchange for logistical support we would patrol their trade routes and help with the defence of their homeworld if necessary"

Tevos still wasn't happy about this "Regardless you should have told us about this" The other councilors and Hood were not happy with that statement she just made Hood was starting to get annoyed by this "Councilor Tevos as your collegues seem to understand this but you don't let me explain the UEG is not an associate race of the Citadel therefore we do not need to inform the council of any decisions we make regarding the defence of our worlds or matters of domestic policy which you seem all to happy to intrude on at times, now if that is all I need to get back to earth and continue the negotiations" Hood then turned and left Tevos was pretty much fuming, Sparatus and Valern could understand Hoods frustration with Tevos considering she also seemed to like meddling in the affairs of the Turians and Salarians a bit to much and her calling this meeting without consulting them annoyed both of them, Sparatus was talking to Valern after the meeting

"You know if she keeps doing this the humans may just cut off relations with us because of incidents like these"

Valern offered a more reasonable assesment "Unlikley the humans have good relations with us but I can see your point on the Asari many of the Asari leadership are afraid of losing influence to the Humans"

"Well were going to have to reign her in to keep incidents like this from repeating"

Valern nodded and the two left the council chambers to continue with their business

Back on Reach, New Alexandria

After the team signed the NDA's they finally got a few days leave in the city and Shepard decided to ask what everyone was going to do with their time off

Garrus spoke up first "There are a few sights I want to check out around the city and maybe go into the countryside where a few major battles happened"

Williams then took her turn "Got a few old friends im going to see and check up on a couple relatives here"

Tali was next "Might go to a few places see what there is around here check out some old ships in one of the museums"

McCall was after that "Well my sister got a few day's leave here Infinity just arrived for a refit so ill catch up with her and see if my old man's availible to talk to as well"

Liara was going to see a few of the museums and monuments in the city and Wrex just said whatever he finds interesting

With that everyone went off to do there thing, While Shepard was still deciding on what to do with his leave.

_Well thats chapter 8 next chapter will be about each team members leave on Reach, and I am working on trying to make these chapters longer and more fleshed out but this is my first fic so bear with me_


	9. Chapter 9: Leave

Chapter 9: Leave

Shepard was currently in the center of New Alexandria he was deciding what to do with his shore leave so he decided to walk around for a bit and see if anything would catch his attention, After the incident with the testing base he also found out the Laser small arms there were slated to enter service by the end of the year with along ship based versions to replace the point defences on most ships but he put the incident aside for now as he saw a sports arena was hosting a couple events one was an MMA match and the other was a battle simulation so with nothing better to do he went to check them out

Outside of New Alexandria ,Viery Plains, Szurdok Ridge

Garrus was out in the Viery plains to check out where his father had served during the covenant war, his father was at the Battle of Szurdok ridge charging in with the UNSC alongside Turian forces joining them, Garrus saw alot of wreckage from vehicles were still on the open plain where the initial charge took place, there were M808 Scorpions, warthogs some burnt out Falcon transports and a few Turian vehicles as well he then saw a building that was actually a small Museum which was all about the fighting here he checked it out inside was detailed exhibits about the units involved such as the 7th helljumper divsion and even the 42nd Turian blackwatch division, and there were even video displays from helmet cam footage that was recovered after leaving the exhibit he decided to head back to the city and relax for a bit while reflecting on what it must have been like charging headlong into Covenant fire like his old man did and what it must have felt like to survive what was alomst assuredly a suicide run in retrospect.

Aviation Museum, New Alexandria

Tali was in the UNSC Aviation and starship museum in the city she was looking at some of the holographic and scale models on display, most of them were of older ships that had been taken out of service or were in the Fleet Auxiliary and as such many details about them were no longer classified she was looking at a smaller scale recreation of the UNSC pillar of autumn when one of the staff came up to her "hard to believe an old Halcyon like this was able to take on so many ships by itself" Tali turned to face the staffer "Well your ships can take on the council no problem"

"Yeah but during the war our ships were lucky to do scratch damage against shielded Covenant ships and alot of the time we had to nuke them just to fry the shields" Tali nodded she remembered that during the war the migrant fleet had to keep on constant alert as any covenant ship that showed up would be able to annihilate the fleet so they were constantly dreading encountering even a covenant corvette, The staffer continued

"If your interested we just opened an exhibit on some of the newer ships in service we even have a small scale Infinity class ship on display but bear in mind alot of details about that ship is classified so you won't get many details on it here" The staffer then left and Tali went over to see the exhibit he mentioned she was still amazed that the UNSC was able to build such a large ship

Central New Alexandria

McCall was looking forward to seeing his sister as he hadn't seen her is almost 8 months so he was pleased to hear that the Infinity was at Reach and was granting its crew leave for the next few days, McCall was making his way to the resteraunt where they were meeting up, their old man was busy and couldn't make it so it was just going to be the two of them, he entered the restaurant and saw her sitting in a booth near the center

"Jennfier it's been too damn long" he walked over and gave her a hug before she replied "you too jackass"

"How are things on the Infinity"

"There going pretty well, my CO has us running constant sorties to keep our readiness up so its not dull but I still get lost on that ship sometimes, How's the Normandy working out for you"

"Things have been running relativley smoothly but I can't really say what our assignment is, Anything new with mom"

"She's still on the Kilimanjaro but once this whole thing with the geth is over she said she's retiring, Oh and dad's been made a Lt General and given command of the 2nd Marine division but like mom he said he'll be retiring in a few years, I also heard about what's been going on with Diane can't really say im surprised not with everthing thats been happening the last 18 months, hows Rebecca doing"

"She's good staying with our Uncle right now while this is getting sorted, Im trying to get full custody because of the shit Diane's been doing just dumping her with whatever relative she can"

Their conversation carried on like that for a while until they decided to head out

Just outside New Alexandria

Garrus was almost back in the city when he ran into Wrex who was in one of one of the War cemetary's at a particular gravestone, once Wrex left he went over to see the grave he was looking at it read

First Lieutenant Alex Hargreave

11th Helljumper divsion

July 8th 2520- August 26th 2552

Died helping evacuate citizens during the attack on New Alexandria

Garrus figured that Wrex fought alongside this guy during the Fall of Reach, He already knew that Wrex was a mercenary that fought in the Covenant war but didn't know much beyond that, So he decided to try and find out what he could about this Marine and what made Wrex visit his grave like he did

3 Days later

Shore leave was now over and everyone had to report to the shuttle to return to the Normandy once everyone was present they got back aboard the Normandy and Shepard made his way to the helm

"Joker get the ship ready were leaving once the final checks are done and have Achilles set course for Feros once he's back up and running"

"You got it Commander"

Codex: Infinity Class Warship

Originally laucnhed in 2556 and coming in at 5.6 km Infinity class ships are the most powerful ships in the UNSC Navy and in the entirty of Council space and are even capable of outmatching the infamous Covenant supercarriers, armed with 2 Super MAC's at the front as well as numerous point defences and the latest in energy shielding the Infinity class are not only capable of launching hundreds of fighters but can launch Frigates from internal bays making these ships mobile fortresses since 2557 an additional 7 Infinity class ships were constructed and have entered service with an additional 2 to be added by 2586

_I would have spent more time doing this but I wanted to get back to the main story I will be covering the X57 bring down the sky mission after Im done with Feros_


	10. Chapter 10: Feros

Chapter 10: Feros

The Normandy exited Slipspace 6 hours later at Feros a recent colonial development by ExoGeni when the planet was discovered to have several Prothean artifacts, The Normandy descended and docked once the team exited the ship they were greeted by one of the colonists

"We saw your ship Fai Dan wants to meet you"

"Who's Fai Dan" The colonist went on while pointing "He's our leader take the stairs just over there towards the colony an-" He didn't finish his sentence as a geth rocket trooper fired killing the colonist Shepard and the others took cover while unleashing a lethal wall of lead towards the geth dropping the ones carrying the rockets before concentrating on the Geth juggernaut it took Wrex unloading half of the SAW into the juggernaut to just drain the shields once the shields were down then the squad unloaded their assault rifles into it finally dropping it

They then moved towards the stairs cautiously advancing but they spotted Geth that were jumping all over the walls so the squad had to resort to spray and pray to drop them once that was done they approached the main entrance to the colony Shepard ordered McCall to check it out only to nearly be hit by gunfire from one of the colonists before he shouted "Don't fucking shoot we're friendly!" Another of the colonists told everyone to hold fire and the team entered the colonists view and McCall turned towards Shepard and asked "Again why am I always the bait?" Shepard just shrugged and they went on to meet Fai Dan who was at the back of the colony

"You Fai Dan" he nodded "Commander Shepard, me and my team came in on the ship that just arrived can you tell us what exactly happened here"

"We're not entirley sure they just showed up out of nowhere it was peaceful one second the next those dammed synthetics are pouring out from their ship but they've mostly been concentrating on the ExoGeni headquarters"

"Why there?" Fai Dan shrugged "We don't know but they've left us alone for the-"

One of the people at the door just in front of them shouted "Geth watch out!" Shepard and the others sprang into motion moving towards the door laying down fire once the entrance was secure they advanced up a flight of stairs and past an elevator before more geth dropped in

They just unloaded on the Geth like they did at the dock and before long they were all down, once the fight was done Williams spoke up "Well commander looks like thats it check in with Fai Dan but i think were done here"

Back at the colony Shepard decided to check out the ExoGeni headquarters and asked Fai Dan for directions he found out he would have to take the elevator he passed and head to the garage to get transport which happened to be a Mako the colony had

Once they got out of the elevator and got to the garage they saw a couple of geth flyers firing on some colonists they quickly dropped the flyers and piled into the Mako once they exited the garage they saw a Geth ship fly past them towards the tower they needed to get to along the way they encounterd some Geth but quickly blew them apart with the main gun when Vakarian picked up some comm chater "Commander picking up some comms activity but its too broken up to make out anything"

As they got closer they picked up some more chatter "Could still-live its-four-"

Once they entered the tower it got a lot clearer "Wait got movement on the tracker its approaching fast, its right on top of us!" Shepard and the others got out and investigated a ramp that lead downwards they found a few people alive

"Thats close enough!"

"Relax Jeong they're obviously not geth, Sorry about that Spartan he gets scared easier then a grunt sometimes"

"You mind telling me who you are and what happened at this colony"

"Im Juliana Bayneham and were all employees of ExoGeni and as for what happened to sum it up quick: Geth showed up dropped in and started shooting, we lost contact with the colony and we heard they were all dead"

"Fai Dan and a few of them are still alive"

Juliana scowled at Jeong "You told me they were all dead" Jeong stuttered "I-I said they were probably all dead"

"Fai Dan said the geth were concentrated on your headquarters"

"Yeah they haven't really bothered coming down here since they first showed up, but if your going there can you're going there can you keep an eye out for my daughter I couldn't find her when we were evacuating"

"Ill keep my eyes open" Fai Dan then interrupted "Those headquarters are private property Spartan remove the geth and nothing else" Shepard found it odd that Jeong would get defensive like that what was at ExoGeni HQ that he didn't want us to find before leaving Dr Gavin Hossle asked him if he could retrieve some data for him he agreed and the team set off for exogeni HQ

After arriving at the top of the tower the teams way forward into the HQ was blocked by a kinetic barrier, while they would be able to take it down no problem with a Spartan laser they didn't have one with them and the Mako's gun wouldn't be powerful enough to break it but they found an alternate route a one way drop down

The team made the drop and came across two geth kneeling in front of a glowing orb Shepard got his DMR out and dropped both of them with 2 shots and the team examined the claw attatching the geth ship to the building when Williams spoke up "We don't have the teeth to tear this thing out from here Commander" Garrus offered his thoughts "Maybe there's a flaw in one of the claws that could let us dislodge it" With no better ideas Shepard and the others pressed on when they encountered a dead Varren and suddenly a shot went right past Shepards head "Dammit! Im so sorry i thought you were one of those geth or a Varren"

"Mind telling us who you are?"

"Lizbeth Bayneham I was one of the researchers here studying the Thorian"

"Whats a Thorian?"

"Its a plant that exogeni was studying we were gathering data on it when the geth hit"

Shepard needed to press on so he ended the conversation "Well we need to clear out the base so stay here"

"Here take my access card it should help you with some areas of the compund" Shepard took the access card and the team went on to the centre area of the ExoGeni HQ

Making there way through the compund the team started going up the many flights of stairs trying to find a weak point in the geth ship once they got close to the top they heard shouting "Stupid machine access encrypted files" the VI replied "Please contact your system supervisor"

"Dammit give me what I want or ill blast your virtual ass into actual dust" Shepard and the team approached slowly "Im sorry but if you could please move there is a queue gathering behind you" The Krogan turned saw Shepard and the others and drew his shotgun but Shepard put a round through his eye and the squad approached the terminal and used the access card, the VI answered "Welcome research assistant Elizabeth Bayneham how may I help you" Shepard ignored the comment and asked about the Thorian's location "The Thorian is located in the colony of Zhu's hope exogeni has been monitoring it for several weeks now and its effects on the colonists" Shepard was shocked about the fact that exogeni knew but knew he had to leave and deal with the geth ship and while he was still at a terminal he grabbed the info that Dr Hossle was looking for and moved out

They entered a large room which looked like it was the geth's command center, advancing slowly up the stairs the squad ducked down when they saw a juggernaut in the center of the room "McCall you and the others stay up here and rain fire on them ill take care of the Juggernaut" Shepard moved down the steps and charged the Juggernaut while the others fired on the smaller geth taking them out quickly, Shepard dodged a swing from the Juggernaut ducking down and planting a grenade on its back a couple seconds later it blew up with the geth down they regrouped on the console at the back of the room and determined that they could use it to dislodge the ship

After Shepard figured out what to do the shutter for the window activated slicing the geth claw in half dislodging the ship and sent in plummeting a few thousand stories Williams commented "Damn I would have liked to see the face on the Captain as the ship started falling" Suddenly everyone's comms starting working "Normandy to shore party, Normandy to shore party, is anyone there? please respond commander"

"Were here joker the geth ship is taken care of and were heading back to the colony what's your status"

"Were in lockdown commander the colonists have gone crazy and are banging on the ships hull"

"Stay calm joker they can't do any real damage" and ended the communication "Alright were leaving this hellhole lets get back to the colony"

Heading back to the previously blocked off entrance the squad was greeted by Lizbeth but Shepard wanted answers "You lied to us about the thorian we know exogeni was studying its effects on the colonists"

Lizbeth lowered her head "Im not proud of what we did but I couldn't do anything to stop it"

Joker came in over the comm "Normandy to shore party, were getting a lot of geth comm chatter and it looks like there heading your way"

"Thanks for the heads up joker, lets move"

"Im coming with you I can help, undo the mess I helped create" Everyone got into the Mako and went back towards Zhu's hope picking up communications from Juliana but she was cut off by Jeong

The others exited the Mako as well and walked down the ramp Juliana was restrained by a security guard and Jeong was waving a gun around when he spotted and ordered everyone to come out of hiding, They all got up walking towards Jeong and the guards lowered their weapons

"Shepard dammit, guess it was too much to hope the geth would kill you, I read some interesting facts about you in the database"

Shepard just glared at him "Enough of the bullshit Jeong your going to give us the answers we want now"

Juliana was confused by this "answers about what? communications are back up we can call for help"

"Do you want to tell her about the Thorian or should I?"

"Whats a Thorian?" Lizbeth answered "Its a telepathic lifeform exogeni was studying its effects on the colony and its located underneath Zhu's hope"

"you won't get away with this Jeong" Jeong shrugged it off "So what no one's going to miss a few colonists" Shepard had enough of this and just slugged Jeong knocking him out and the others had their weapons pointed at the guards if they tried anything Juliana dryly replied "Well thats one problem solved"

"Now if the colonists are under this things control how are we supposed to get to the thorian, their going to put up a fight" Lizbeth had an answer "We were working on an aerosol that could neutralize the spores it created if you put it in your grenades it could knock out the colonists"

"Alright hand it over to us and we'll do the rest you all stay here, Oh and give this to doctor hossle" He tossed a data crystal to Lizbeth who nodded they all departed for the colony

At the entrance to the colony they saw something just sitting outside they looked at it as it got up and charged towards them and put it down quickly and McCall spoke up "Well great that fucking thing can create zombies now it feels like were in a bad horror vid"

"Shoot anymore of those things we encounter but don't shoot the colonists thats what the grenades are for" He opened the garage door and twenty more of those creepers were just sitting there, the second he saw them everyone opened fire killing them as they slowly got up and once they were finished with them they saw a couple colonists next to the elevator and Williams tossed a grenade over towards them knocking them out

Everyone entered the elevator and reached the colony upon making it into the colony the kept tossing grenades because if they shot the creepers there was too much of a chance that the colonists would be caught in the crossfire, with most of the colonists now incapacitated they reached the crane controls and revealed the entrance to the Thorians location but Fai Dan suddenly appeared

"I tried to resist but it gets in your head you can't imagine the pain" He looked like he was acting against his will as he drew his pistol "It wants me to stop you but I won't" He pointed his gun at his head and shouted "I Won't!" as he pulled the trigger

Eveyone descended into the Thorians lair and when they reached the main area Williams spoke "Alright all we need to do is find this thing and put a...couple rounds... What IS that!?"

They saw a massive looking monstrosity in the middle of the room that was easily three stories high when an Asari appeared "Invaders, your every step is a transgression a thousand feelers appraise you as meat good only to dig or decompose, I speak for the old growth as I did for saren and It commands that you be in awe"

"Great another alien with a god complex, sorry we had a whole race of you and all it got them was extinction" Shepard drew his gun and fired at the Asari dropping her and everyone looked around for a weakness they could exploit finding one in its attachments to the walls and as they proceeded upwards they destroyed whatever connections it had gradually weakening it as they went when they severed the last one it finally fell

and at the wall just behind it an Asari appeared "I-Im free, I suppose I have you to thank for that"

"You worked for Saren didn't you"

"Yes and Im not proud of that but Saren came here for the cipher in order to better interpret his visions he got from the beacon"

"Whats the cipher?"

"The cipher is knowledge but in essence it helps you think like a prothean"

"If thats what Saren came for I need it to" the Asari agreed and Shepard 'embraced eternuty' once he recieved the cipher though he still needed to decide what to do about her though "If I let you go you're going to help the colonists?"

"Yes that is the least I can do after everything i've done"

"Commander you feeling alright you look a little pale?"

"What did you see?"

"I saw something it still didn't make any sense though...anyway lets get back to the colony"

They all left for the surface and when they returned Juliana gave them an update "Well you managed to save the colony thanks for that, also I contacted the UNSC and their sending 50 marines here to provide security so there taking over from exogeni"

"Glad to hear it, We've got to go now so best of luck to you"

Shepard and the others headed back to the Normandy and departed the colony and gathered in the briefing room where T'soni spoke first "Commander are you alright maybe you should go lie down for a bit" Williams shot her a glare "What did someone put you in charge when the commander wasn't looking"

"Take it easy Williams she's just trying to help"

"Sorry commander won't happen again"

"Were all tired right now so everyone relax for a bit, dismissed"

Down in the mess Williams, McCall, Vakarian, and Alenko were getting some 'food' to eat and Williams switched on the vidscreen to see if there were any updates on the geth or the recently proposed alliance and there was a report on an offensive that had taken place while the team was on Feros

"The UNSC has recently gone on the offensive in the Armstrong cluster after discovering several geth bases in the region the offensive was carried out several hours ago and the UNSC working alongside the Sanghelli Imperium and even some elements from the Jiralhanae Tribal Confederation managed to eliminate all the geth installations while suffering minimal casualties this event has caused popular support for the proposed Orion Alliance to pick up slightly in UNSC and Council space however the largest opposition to the alliance is coming from the Asari republics and councilor Tevos has gone on record saying she believes that the UEG is trying to form a power bloc against the citadel and when we asked president Hood what he had to say he said that these comments were deluded and out of touch this has put a strain on relations with the Asari, while the Turian and Salarian governments had no comment on the matter experts believe that both have been in Increasing opposition to decisions being made by the Asari in regards to their actions directed at the UEG more on this as it develops"

Williams switched off the screen and McCall just sighed "The Asari really need to get off that stupid high horse of theirs" Williams agreed "Yeah I get the feeling that Hood can't stand dealing with them right now" Liara had a different opinion "My government is just doing what it thinks is right" McCall just shook his head

"Okay if that means being overly paranoid about losing influence to us sure, The problem is your race likes to act like its above everyone to the point where they could violate council law and get in no trouble for it but when another race does it, its apparently the goddam end of everything" McCall didn't like dealing with Asari because whenever he interacted with them they criticized humanity for just about everything thats not to say they were all the same but alot of them since the end of the war have been increasingly paranoid about humanity's rise in the galaxy to the point where the Turians and Salarians were getting sick of it

After dropping on a frozen planet to help wrex deal with a personal matter regarding his family armor he ordered Joker to set a course for Terra Nova so the ship could get resupplied but recieved an emergency message from Admiral Hackett

"Shepard we know you're en route to Terra Nova we have an emergency developing and we need you're help, An asteroid was being diverted to Terra Nova for mining but something happened and now its on course to impact one of the major cities"

"Whats the potential damage"

"Were talking at least 100 million if it hits land and at least 3 times that if it hits water as well as massive ecological damage rendering the planet uninhabitable"

"What caused this"

"Were not sure but transmissions from the asteroid indicate it came under attack if someone did hijack it there planning to turn the colony into a mass grave, get to the asteroid and redirect it Shepard your our closest asset on this"

The team was in the briefing room and was told about the situation and McCall looked pale "Whats wrong sergeant?"

McCall looked at Shepard and said "My daughter is on Terra Nova right now with my Uncle"

Shepard looked at him and knew that if this asteroid struck it would crush him 'Don't worry McCall we'll fix this, everyone get to the cargo hold and gear up we've got a planet to save"

Codex: Terra Nova

Terra Nova was the first major colony established by Humanity after the invention of the Shaw Fujikawa Slipspace drive back in 2291 to alleviate massive overpopulation issues facing the UEG at the time and though it was originally established as an agricultaral world it has grown to be humanity's second largest colony at 485 million just behind mars at 522 million Terra Nova is a major industrial center now and many of the goods it produces are exported to council space


	11. Chapter 11: Bring Down The Sky

Chapter 11: Bring Down The Sky

The Normandy approached the asteroid as it slowly glided towars Terra Nova once they were close enough Achilles was able to find out how to fix the asteroids path "Commander it seems that this was sabotage im registering three fusion torches on that rock as disabled i've marked them on your map you also have around 98 minutes to reactivate the torches before the heading becomes irreversible so no pressure" The Normandy descended and the Mako dropped from the ship once it made landfall Shepard floored it towards the nearest Torch once it came into view the turrets around it opened fire on the Mako but Shepard took them out quick once they made it to the entrance they stormed in finding out who was behind the sabotage

Shepard glared "Batarians, should have known" The Batarians grabbed their guns and started shooting while having there varren charge the squad, Wrex fired a carnage shot at them dropping them quick and Shepard took out the varren before they all went for the torch controls "Achilles were at the first terminal providing access for you now"

"Torch reactivated commander and it bought you a little extra time as well" The radio picked up a signal coming in"

"Hello this is Kate Bowman I know you just reactivated the Torch if you can hear me you still need to reactivate 2 of them"

"We know were working on it can you tell us how this happened"

"Were not entirley sure it was quiet one minute and the next the batarians started attacking we don't know why they attacked either"

"Alright were heading to the next torches try to stay out of sight got it?"

"Got it"

The team made their way back to the entrance where an old man jumped and shot towards Shepard but his shields blocked the bullet "Dammit sorry! just didn't expect to see anyone friendly here"

"Who are you?"

"Simon Atwell I was the chief engineer on this rock until the Batarians showed up, Listen if you don't reactivate those fusion torches were going to hit the surface millions will die"

"We know and were working on it, did anyone else from the staff here escape like you"

"No they were taken hostage as far as i know"

"Well someone named Kate Bowman managed to keep hidden from the Batarians she just contacted us"

"Well at least she's still alive listen the batarians mined one of the entrances to the Fusion torches when you head there you're going to have to leave your tank behind or its goodbye for you"

"Thanks for the warning, squad lets move!"

everyone got back into the Mako Shepard floored it to the next torch and once again the squad met only light resistance as they made their way to the controls and again granted Achilles access to the terminal

They were again contacted by Kate Bowman "The Batarians are getting really angry about this they know you just reactivated the second fusion torch and-" kate was interrupted and the transmission was cut Vakarian spoke "looks like our friend was found out"

"We still need to get to the third torch and thats not going to be easy were on the clock so lets get going"

Arriving at the perimeter to the third torch they saw warning markers surrounding the complex the Batarians mined at least 100 meters of ground to keep anyone from reaching it Shepard and the team advanced slowly careful of the motion detectors on the mines and after what seemed like an eternity they made it to the entrance and deactivated the console that was controlling the mines and Williams brought the tank forward so they could make a quick getaway if they needed to

Finding the controls for the third torch they quickly reactivated it and Achilles came in over the comm "Good news commander the Asteroids path has been altered and will not impact the colony another 20 minutes and the course would have been irreversable"

With no leads on what to do next the squad moved to the exit to be greeted by a Batarian "Hold it right there this doesn't have to end in bloodshed"

"Don't come any closer we can do this the hard way or we can do this peacefully" McCall scoffed "Do you fucks even know the meaning of the word or is this some sick joke"

"Look Im just doing my job here, hijacking this rock wasn't my idea, signed on for a little profit a quick slave grab nothing more" McCall flipped out "So you come here for slaves and your boss decides just for the hell of it to drop an asteroid on the second largest human colony there is!?"

"Again not my idea"

"Well does your boss even realize that just attempting this could result in the UEG declaring war on your precious fucked up Hegemony of degenerates!"

"Don't you think I know that im just following orders if it were up to me we would have already left" Shepard jumped in

"Well its not too late you can still leave"

"I don't think so Balak would skin me alive and sell my hide, crazy bastard this whole things gone to hell and Im going to pay for it"

"You keep listening to this Balak and you will"

"Maybe, but Balak wants you dead and what Balak wants Balak gets"

"Spoken like a true lackey get me out of here and ill take care of Balak or take your chances with me"

"Huh an interesting proposal it certianly has benefits over the current situation" He turned to one of his men "Shut it down this is Balaks problem now, hope your as quick with your gun as you are your promises for both our sakes"

"Balak will get whats coming to him and so will you if I catch you in Human territory again got it?"

"Yeah i got it, Balaks holed up in the main facility you'll need this to get in, lets get out of here" Shepard was handed an access card and the Batarians left

Once they made it to the main facility the saw Batarian squads guarding bombs and quickly moved to eliminate them

Shepard, Wrex and Vakarian cleared the ground floor of Batarians and explosives while McCall and the others did the same up top and after a massive firefight and several tense moments of disarming explosives everything seemed like it was calming down but when Shepard was near the main staircase Balak the leader of the attack spoke from the top of the stairs "You humans, Your almost more trouble than your worth"

"Let the hostages go and maybe you'll live long enough to explain yourself to the council"

"I don't answer to the council! or to you! Im leaving this asteroid if you try to stop me the charges I set up in the holding cell with the hostages and your helper and her friends are all dead"

"I can't just let you go Balak not after what happened here"

"This is nothing you Humans have done far worse to the Batarians! We've been forced to live in exile, forced to survive on what we can scrounge up its been like that for decades"

"Why take it out on these people they didn't do anything to you or the Batarians"

"Didn't do anything aside from colonizing a world that could have been ours, aside from using resources that should have been ours, we were left to defend ourselves but the humans were stronger than us even after the covenant we knew that the council knew that but it didn't matter, It was you! you and your kind are the reason were in this position"

"How does killing innocent people make up for that?!"

"We had not other options sometimes you need to get someones attention before they'll listen"

"Is that what Elysium was?! a way to get our attention! well you got it and when we responded you ran like cowards! now you want to start it all over again but Ill stop you like I did last time"

"Enough! you couldn't possibly understand actually you don't want to understand and Im done wasting my breath, now if you want your friends to live you'll let me walk out of here"

"You can go but this isn't over Ill find you eventually"

"Maybe but that won't be today" Balak left and once he was clear of the building and Shepard made his way over to the holding cell Atwell showed up and was filled in on the situation and Shepard released the hostages

Kate went over to Shepard "I can't believe you let Balak go to save us, I half expected you to just let us die sacrifice the few for the many"

'Then I'd be no better than the Batarians besides Balak won't get away with this I know who he is now he can't run forever"

"Huh you sound like my brother he was always so stubborn but always doing the right thing"

"Your brother was the one Balak killed?"

"Yes Aaron he was the one who convinced me to sign up for this job, I don't mean to sound ungrateful but I should see to Aaron"

"I understand you've been through enough today, Ill get out of your way"

"Thank you, I don't even know your name"

"Commander Shepard"

"Thank you commander Shepard your not exactly what I expected but thank you"

With the disaster on Terra Nova averted the team made its way back to the Normandy and saw the news report come on

"Disaster was averted at Terra Nova today after Batarian terrorists hijacked an asteroid that was being transported to Terra Nova for mining, the leader of the attack Balak managed to escape but there is a standing arrest order for him now in place in UNSC and Council space and following this tensions between the UEG and Hegemony ratcheted up dramatically with more ships being positioned at the Batarian border"

Down in the cargo hold Shepard found out something intersting in Williams file about who her grandfather was

"Williams I've got something I need to ask you"

"What is it Skipper"

"You wouldn't happen to be related to General Henry Williams would you" Williams looked away and Shepard continued "The same General who was caught giving information to the New Colonial Alliance a terror group that used that info to attack numerous UNSC bases and patrols"

"Yeah I am but if you think I support what he did your dead wrong ive got no love for him when what he did was found out but that doesn't matter the Williams name has been blacklisted my dads career in the Navy stalled and he never made it past petty officer second class and I was lucky to make it to Gunnery Sergeant"

"So thats the reason for the crap assignments you've been getting they all think that if a Williams is placed in a position of authority or given access to classified materiel they will sell that info"

"Yeah well there isn't really anything that can be done about it" Shepard decided that was enough and left Williams alone and went back to his quarters

"Achilles set course for Noveria"

"Yes sir we will arrive at Noveria in 15 hours"

Garrus was on a terminal looking up the profile of Alex Hargreave the man whose grave Wrex visited during their leave on Reach and once he found the file he saw that for the most part it was the usual stuff personal info and all that but saw that he was attached to a company that had a Krogan mercenary accompanying it and the Krogan in question was Wrex who was placed under Hargreaves command Garrus figured that he better leave this alone as it probably wasn't a good idea to bring up old ghosts with Wrex and went back to working on the Mako until they reached Noveria

Codex: New Colonial Alliance

An Insurrectionist group formed shortly after the Covenant war the groups aims were largley similar to other rebel forces however this ultimatley boiled down to a few individuals wanting power and not caring about the causes they claimed to represent the NCA was responsible for disrupting peace talks between the Sanghelli and Jiralhanae by giving the location of the talks to the Storm Covenant and also attacked numerous UNSC installations and they even alomost detonated a nuke on Mars, The last operations of the NCA were finally rooted out in 2562 after UNSC General Henry Williams was caught giving the NCA info and ONI managed to trace his transmissions to the few bases the NCA had left finally eliminating the group and ending the Insurrection at long last


	12. Chapter 12: Frozen Hell and Conspiracies

Chapter 12: Noveria

The Normandy exited slipspace near Noveria a Council world that hosued several large corporations that came to Noveria to carry out research normally illegal in council space and even some Council associates had major stakes in Noveria, normally it would take Shepard a ridiculous amount of time to get through Noveria but ONI had a significant presence on the planet and could get him the info and resources he needed without having to deal with corporate executives

"Noveria control this is UNSC Normandy requesting clearance to dock" Shepard looked outisde a saw a frozen wasteland outside and the controller responded "Normandy we do not have you on our schedule, state your business"

"Citadel business we have a council spectre aboard"

"Normandy be advised if we can't confirm your identity your ship will be impounded"

"Yeah good luck with that" The ship docked and the team disembarked and was immediatley greeted by a blast of cold air and made their way inside to the reception area to meet their ONI contact "Commander Shepard Im Gianna Parasini and welcome to Noveria" While giving the standard greeting she was sending a message to Shepard's HUD telling him to meet her at the bar since security in most of the complex was tight the bar was loosley watched "If you need anything feel free to check out the stores" Shepard continued on to the bar where they met up

"Sorry about the runaround back at the entrance but the corporations and Governements that have stakes in this place wouldn't be happy if the found an ONI agent operating here"

"No problem Im used to it"

"Anyway down to business about 3 days ago Matriarch Benezia showed up with some Asari Commandos and a few crates but she didn't stay long she purchased a few supplies and headed for Peak 15 a research facility owned and operated by Binary Helix and Saren has a large share of the company here as well as over half the Armali Council so we've been investigating this place long before Saren went rogue problem is communications with the facility were cut shortly after Benezia left"

"Why does the Armali council have shares in this place anyway?"

"We don't know but the members in question are the same onces who have been hawkish towards us the few members of the Armali council that support close ties with us have asked that we find out just what the others want from this place and any dirt you find on them would certainly help us out"

"Anything else we should know before heading out?"

"No theres nothing but you'll need this pass for the garage to get transport so you can reach the complex now if you'll excuse me I need to get back to work"

Having everything they needed Shepard and the others went to the garage to get trasnport over to peak 15 but when they entered the garage they were ambushed by geth who had somehow managed to infiltrate Port Hanshan

Shepard ran over to the Scorpion that was parked in the garage and started firing on the Juggernauts that were approaching and Wrex worked on the jumpers

After a brief firefight Shepard decided not to stick around and everyone got into the Mako that was near the entrance and exited the complex

outside they found themselves in the middle of a bad blizzard which reduced visibility to pretty much nil and made navigating the rough terrain even harder than it already was, After what felt like hours of blind driving they finally arrived at the entrance to Peak 15 and entered the facility findinig it pretty much abandoned

"Hope no one believes in ghosts" approaching an elevator an automated voice message came online "Warning main reactor and Comm relay are offline manual restart required"

"Guess the stations VI was deactivated when communications were cut, just what could Saren be hiding in this place?" Garrus spoke up "Well whatever it is half the Armali council seems interested in it as well"

After taking the elevator up the entered what they guessed was a transit point between here and the main research facility and Shepard got to work reactivating the stations VI and had the team split up to get the repairs done faster

Shepard, Wrex and Garrus went to the reactor while the others handled the relay fighting whatever geth they encountered along the way and repaired the He-3 lines that were cut and bringing the reactor back to life

With the repairs done everyone regrouped "Comm relay is back online so we should be able to head over to the main facility now" But suddenly a large insect looking creature popped up from the vent nearby and everyone unloaded into it and Williams asked "What the hell was that thing?!"

Nobody knew what to think at that moment about the insect that had attackde them it wasn't any species they recognized but that didn't mean it was an entirley unknown species either not wanting to stick around anymore they proceded to the tram station but along they way the entered a room that had the skylights smashed and snow filling the room they walked throuugh it carefully expecting an ambush and before they knew it more of those creatures popped out of the vents and tried to swarm the squad "Holy hell this is getting ridiculous"

Proceeding into another area they found turrets facing into the main tram instead of out and Wrex saud "What idiot put the turrets facing the wrong way?"

Garrus answered"They want to keep their people in just as much as they want to keep others out"

Finally reaching the tram the headed out towards the main facility to find out just what was happening and what the hell the insects were when they exited they moved towards what they assumed was the main quarters of the facility and upon exiting the elevator they were greeted by friendly faces "Hold your fire there friendlies"

"Commander Shepard UNSC who are you?"

"Captain Ventralis head of security for this installation we didn't think anyone would show up least of all Marines"

"Im looking for Matriarch Benezia do you know where she is?"

"She's in the facility but thats all I really know she came in with her commandos but left for another part of the facility shortly after" Suddenly they heard something crawling in the vents and knew an attack was coming they all turned to face the vents next to the elevators and sure enough more of them appeared to be greeted by a lethal wall of lead and didn't get more than a few inches before they were all dead "Thanks for the help commander if you need anything check with Doctor Cohen down in the Infrimary we need to stay here and keep an eye out"

Everyone entered the main area of the quarters and saw people of various races sitting around anxious Shepard went down to the infirmary and found several paitents were being treated for exposure to a bioweapon that was being developed at the facility and agreed to help the doctor with an antitoxin in exchange for his access pass to the facility

At a nearby computer mainframe Tali and Garrus were trying to get access to some encrypted files hoping to find the dirt they needed on the Armali council and after several minutes they finally got through and what they found was very disturbing

What they found was various weapons development programs some conventional like new equipment to refit the Asari fleet but others were illegal such as WMD research by the scientists here to create a new version of the NOVA bomb that the Armali council would use and there was even research into bioweapons specifically meant to kill humans and with all this Tali and Garrus guessed that the Armali Council was planning an attack on the UEG with these weapons to first weaken them then have the Asari Fleet invade and if that was the case it would result in a war similar in scale to the covenant war and that was something the galaxy couldn't afford not with the threat of the Reapers they downloaded the data and went to rendezvous with Shepard to let him now what they found

After being granted access to a cordoned off area to develop an antitoxin Shepard got to work after mixing the formula however he was ambushed by the Asari scientist that was back in the lobby who was now with 2 geth "So the famous Commander Shepard walks into my trap I thought Spartans were supposed to be smart but I guess your just dumb killing machines after all"

"If you thought I didn't know someone would attempt this you've got another thing coming" at that moment McCall, Williams and Wrex all popped out of cover with their weapons aimed "Drop the guns and I may let you walk out of here" The Asari kept her smug smile "You humans need to be put in your place I'll kill yo-" She didn't finish her sentence as Shepard put a round through her chest killing her and the others opened fire on the geth before they could even raise their rifles and return fire, Shepard grabbed the antitoxin and returned to Doctor Cohen with it

Shepard met Tali and Garrus on the way and they informed him about what they found and he was shocked he figured the toxin the paitents in the med bay were exposed to was the same as the one described in the notes he went down to Cohen to get some answers "Doctor Cohen what do you know about this toxin"

"Not much it was being developed in another closed off area of the facility that I didn't have access to all I know is that they kept hitting walls in working on it the only one I know who had access was an Asari, I think she was out in the lobby" That would explain why the Asari ambushed Shepard it was to keep him from finishing the antitoxin, He figured Saren was helping the Armali council with their plans but didn't know to what extent, with nothing futher Shepard gave him the antitoxin and got the access card

On the way out they came across some data on the insects they had been fighting and to Wrex's suprise they were Rachni and no one knew how they were on Noveria or why but they had more pressing concerns at the moment

Once they left they now had a lock on where Benezia was and moved out, once they entered the lab she was in she started talking "You do not know the privelage of being a mother, the power of creation and what it gives you"

"Benezia, we know about the Armali council's plans why are you doing this?"

"I do not care about what the council plans I am only concerned with the return of the reapers the council is only concerned with its power and see's your race as a threat to that so they started these programs and in return for our help they provided us with resources to reach our goal"

"Then I guess there's no way for us to settle this peacefully"

"I suppose not, have you ever faced an Asari Commando unit before? few humans have" When Benezia finished she started using her biotics as her Commandos poured in and started shooting

As the fight continued for several minutes Benezia kept using her biotics but it was fast becoming clear that she was getting exhausted by it and after her last group of commados fell she was near collapse "This is not over Saren is unstoppable my mind is filled with his light everything is clear"

"The Rachni aren't cooperating why should I?"

Benezia turned towards Shepard and spoke "I will not betray him you will...You must listen Saren still whispers in my mind I can fight his compulsions briefly but the indoctrination is strong"

"Why are you able to break free of his control now?"

"I sealed a part of my mind away from the indoctrination saving it for a moment when I could help destroy him it will not last long"

"So you could turn on me again"

"Yes but we need to hurry I can already feel him trying to regain control, Saren sent me here to find the location of the Mu Relay and only the Rachni queen here knows where it is now, Take this data crystal it contains the information you need, now hurry you must leave befo-" Benezia once again lost control of herself and Shepard quickly fired at her, Benezia slumped down against the wall and said "No light they always said there would be...a" but she didn't finish her sentence as she died then and there

Everyone fanned out and searched for anything else that could be useful and Shepard was over at the containment tank with the Rachni queen when one of the corpses got up and started walking towards him, Shepard turned with his gun drawn but didn't fire and the corpse started talking "This one serves as our voice, we cannot sing not in these low spaces, your musics are colourless"

"Musics, what?"

"You're way of communicating is strange, flawed, it does not colour the air when we speak one moves all, we are the mother we sing for those left behind the children you thought silenced we are Rachni"

"How are you speaking through her?"

"Our kind sing through touches of thought, we pluck the strings and the other understands she is weak to urging she has colours we have no names for but she is ending her music is bittersweet it is beautiful, The children we birthed were stolen from us before they could learn to sing they are lost to silence, end their suffering they cannot be saved they will only cause harm as they are"

"If your sure they can't be saved"

"It is lamentable but neccesary"

"Before you deal with our children we stand before you, what will you sing will you release us are we to fade away once more"

Garrus spoke "The Rachni were a threat to the galaxy, those tanks are filled with acid if she gets out of hand they dissolve her"

Kaidan was next "Commander there are some old grudges in the galaxy that humans should stay out of if we kill her we kill the entire race and that's something we almost experienced ourselves just 30 years ago"

"You're companions hear the truth you have the power to free us or return our people to the silence of memory" Shepard thought for a moment about what to do yes the Rachni nearly ruined the galaxy but this queen seemed different from the ones he heard about from the history regarding the Rachni wars and he wasn't comfortable consigning an entire race to extinction not after the Covenant "I won't destroy your entire race, you'll go free"

Wrex spoke up "Are you stupid your people didn't fight these bastards so maybe you don't get it!"

"Are we any better if we kill them"

"Do what you want my people will clean up this mess later just like we did for the Salarians"

"You will give us the chance to compose anew? We will remember. We will sing of your forgiveness to our children" Shepard went over to the controls took one last look at the queen and hit the release button opening the cage the queen looked back at Shepard before leaving and Shepard thought it was saying thank you but wasn't sure entirley so he just assumed it did

With their business on Noveria done the squad headed back to Port Hanshan to meet up with agent parasini to give her the info they had found and were also meeting with one of the members of the Armali council who supported closer ties to the UEG and ending the standoff policies of the other Matriarchs

After they both reviewed the evidence they were in shock they had a feeling it would be bad but they didn't think it was this bad, Parasini knew that releasing all the information to the media as planned would result in a massive diplomatic crisis and the councilor they met with spoke

"I knew the other councilors were... less than cordial in their talks with your race but this is just... insane"

"What are you going to do with the info now that you have it"

"Well myself and the other members that support me will use this to deal with the councilors discretly and we will release some of the less damaging info to the media for use in the upcoming elections so don't expect these councilors to be in office much longer, Thank you commander you not only managed to improve diplomatic ties between our races but you may have prevented all out war I won't forget that now if you will excuse me I have some calls to make" The councilor departed and Parsini thanked Shepard "Thanks commander I can finally get out of this frozen hellhole next time I see you first rounds on me" Parasini left as well and Shepard decided to head back to the Normandy

Once everyone was in the briefing room Ashley spoke "whats our next move commander head for the Mu relay?"

"The Mu Relay could link to dozens of systems unless we know which one Saren is headed for were going to be wasting our time" Liara joined in "The Commander is right, we cannot rush off blind we still need to learn more about Saren"

"Were done here, dismissed" Everyone left and Shepard pondered the next move since they had followed all the leads they had but were no closer to finding Saren so he went back to his quarters to get some sleep when Joker called him on the Intercom "Commander we got a transmission coming in for you top level clearance"

"Ill take it in the comm room"

Shepard went into the comm room and answered the call and was greeted by the holographic representations of the council "Commander Shepard we have come across some information that may be useful to you in your fight against Saren"

"Ill take all the help I can get"

"We've recieved an urgent message from one of our infiltration teams in the Traverse that was gathering intel on Saren"

"What did they find?"

"Unfortunately the message we got fom them was little more than static but the message was sent on a channel reserved for mission critical communications meaning whatever they found was Important, The team is located on Virmire should you decide to investigate"

"I'll look into it thank you for the info councilors, Joker set course for Virmire" Shepard turned to leave but saw McCall there "Something I can do for you Sergeant?"

"No but I did have a bit of advice for you"

"On what?"

"Look, half the ship knows you've got an interest in Williams you'd have to be an idiot not to see it but all Im going to say is if you are having any doubts which I know you are just go for it being a Spartan isn't a lifetime commitment anymore so you've got nothing to lose by taking a shot at it"

Shepard knew McCall had a point as he was spending more time with Williams and was interested in her but he was having doubts as McCall said he wasn't sure where a relationship with her would go but he wouldn't know unless he tried so he took McCalls advice to heart and decided to see where things went from here "Thanks for the advice gunny"

"No problem Shepard, So whats next in this assignment?"

"Virmire, the council gave us a lead on Saren and were going to check it out so rest up I've got a feeling this is going to be a very hard fight"

"Yes sir"


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13: Virmire and a loss

The Normandy was less than 15 minutes from Virmire and everyone was gearing up and Shepard decided to only take a small team with him so they could move quicker upon learning that there was active triple A around the Salarian base camp

The cargo bay door opened and the Mako launched out towards the planet upon landing Shepard gave the orders "Stay out of range and continue evasive manouvers until those guns are down"

"I know the drill Commander meet you at the camp Joker out"

Shepard drove off in the mako to the AA tower encountering a large number of geth armatures along the way that were impeding his progress and he had to deal with every one he came across and while they proved to be annoying it did show that whatever Saren was doing on this planet was critical to his plans

Once he reached the AA tower he advanced quickly with Wrex and Garrus taking out the geth guarding the installation and deactivated the gun "Thanks commander Im on final approach to the Salarian camp now see you in a bit" leaving the tower and getting back in the mako Shepard continued on his way when Joker radioed in "Uh commander we've reached the camp but the Normandy's been grounded, the Salarian captain can explain once you get here, Joker out" Shepard didn't like the sound of that he was wondering why the ship had to be grounded

After another half hour of fighting and driving Shepard finally reached the camp and saw williams talking with the Salarian captian "So what do we do now?" The Captain replied "We stay put until we can come up with a plan" Shepard walked up "Are you in charge here? whats the situation?"

"Im Captain Kirahee third infiltration regiment STG, you've just landed in the middle of a hot zone commander every AA gun within 20 km is on alert"

"That's just great what now?"

"We stay put until the council sends the reinforcements I requested" Alenko spoke up "We are the reinforcements" Kirahee seemed shocked "What?! I asked the council to send a fleet and you are all they sent?"

"They couldn't understand your transmission so they sent me to investigate"

"That is a repitition of my task, Ive lost half my men investigating this place"

"What did you and you're men find here anyway?"

"We've learned that Saren is using this facility to breed an army of Krogan" Wrex than walked up "How is that possible?" Kirahee continued "Apparently Saren has found a cure for the genophage" That surprised everyone if Saren was able to cure the genophage the entire Krogan race would side with him as the genophage was eventually going to kill the krogan "The Geth are bad enough but a Krogan Army? Saren would be almost unstoppable"

"That is exactly why we need to destroy this facility before Saren can benefit from it" Wrex spoke up "Destroyed? I don't think so our people are dying this cure can save them"

"If that cure leaves this planet the Krogan will become unstoppable we can't make the same mistake again" Wrex got in Kirahee's face "We are not a mistake!" and walked off "Is he going to be a problem I already have enough angry Krogan to deal with" Shepard replied "He'll be fine I'll talk to him" Shepard turned to Williams and Alenko telling them to be ready if anything with Wrex went down

After talking with Williams Shepard went down to talk to Wrex who was firing off his shotgun into the water and when Shepard got close Wrex spoke up "This isn't right Shepard if there's a cure for the genophage we can't destory it"

"I Understand your upset but we both know Saren is the enemy here, he's the one you should be angry with" Wrex walked towards Shepard "Really? Saren created a cure for my people you want to destroy it, help me out here Shepard the line between friend and foe is getting a little blurry from where i stand"

"This isn't a cure its a weapon and If Saren is allowed to use it you won't be around to reap the benefits! none of us will" Wrex shrugged "Thats a chance we should be willing to take, this is the fate of my entire people we're talking about! I've been loyal to you so far and you did more for me than my family ever did but If i'm going to keep following you I need to know we're doing it for the right reasons" Wrex drew his gun as did Shepard and they stared each other down for a minute before Shepard spoke "Wrex these Krogan are not your people, they're slaves of Saren, Tools is that what you want for them" Shepard lowered his gun as he spoke and Wrex thought about what he said before replying "No, we were tools for the council once and to thank us for wiping out the Rachni they neutred us all, I doubt Saren will be as generous" Wrex lowered his gun and continued "Alright Shepard you made your point, I don't like this but I trust you enough to follow your lead, just one thing when we find Saren I want his head" Shepard nodded and went back over to Kirahee to finalize the plan of attack on Saren's lab

Before they departed for their objective Kirahee needed one of Shepards men to help coordinate communications the plan was that while the Salarians would essentialy launch a full on assault Shepard and a small 'shadow team' would sneak in behind the base and secure the bomb site for the improvised WMD Kirahee had fashioned from his ships reactor after discussing the plan Shepard sent Williams with Kirahee as Alenko was needed to help set up the bomb at the site

Arriving at the rear of the base Kirahee did a radio check "Comm check do you read me commander?"

"Loud and clear"

"Excellent, we will begin our assault, oh and commander if you see anyway to undermine the defences we would greatly appreciate it, Kirahee out"

With that Shepard and the others started moving and It wasn't long before they started running into geth and while advancing towards their entrance to the base Shepard and his team sabotaged several installations taking alot of pressure off Kirahee and making it harder for the geth to coordinate their defences

When they entered the base they came under fire from Salarians that had been indoctrinated several weeks earlier and also came across a lab filled with husks and Krogan being experimented on making this base seem like a endless shop of nightmares and after a while of fighting and finding their way through the base they came across an Asari researcher who was working with Saren and she shouted "Don't shoot im unarmed" Shepard approached her "And just who the hell are you?"

"Rana Thanoptis, Neural specialist I've been researching the effects of Indoctrination, you think it only affects Saren? everyone who gets close to that dammed ship of his is affected"

"Give me one damn reason why I shouldn't shoot you where you stand"

"Because I can give you access to Saren's private files in the room behind me" She went over and unlocked the door "See full access, now can I please leave"

"Im gonna blow this place to hell and then some so start running" She started panicking and bolted out the door and into the distance Garrus spoke up "admit it you enjoyed that" Shepard didn't reply and just went through the door into Sarens archive where he saw a prothean beacon

Deciding to chance it he approached the beacon and activated it and just like before images were burned into his mind showing the reapers killing the protheans en masse once the images subsided Shepard fell to his knees overwhelmed by what he just saw after getting himself together they all went back upstairs when a holographic image appeared in front of them and McCall said "What the fuck have we stepped into this time?"

The Hologram spoke "You are not Saren"Garrus spoke up again "That's no VI"

"Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh, you touch my mind fumbling in ignorance incapable of understanding. There is a realm of existance so far beyond your own that you cannot even imagine it I am beyond your comprehension, I am Soveriegn" It then dawned on Shepard "Soveriegn isn't just some Reaper ship its an actual Reaper"

"Reaper a label created by the Protheans to give voice to their destruction in the end what they chose to call us is irrelevant, we simply are" Garrus entered "The Protheans vanished 50 000 years ago you couldn't have been there its impossible"

"Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation an accident, your lives are measured in years and decades you wither and die, we are eternal the pinnacle of evolution and existance before us you are nothing your extinction is inevitable we are the end of everything"

"Whatever your plan is its going to fail, Ill make sure of that"

"Confidence born of Ignorance the cycle cannot be broken" Tali spoke "Cycle, What cycle?"

"The pattern has repeated itself more times than you can fathom organic civilizations rise, evolve, advance and at the apex of their glory they are extinguished, the protheans were not the first they did not create the citadel or the mass relays they merley found them the legacy of my kind"

"Why sould you construct the mass relays and leave them for others to find?"

"Your civilization is based on the technology of the mass relays, our technology by using it your civilization develops along the paths we desire"

"Hate to disapoint you but my race humanity doesn't use the mass relays or even element zero" The reaper didn't speak for several seconds before responding "Irrelevant you will still perish like all those who came before you, this exchange is over" Then an explosion rocked the complex and McCall spoke "I think that pause the reaper had was it shitting a brick at that discovery" Joker came in over the comm "Normandy to shore party we caught all that and that ship soveriegn pulled a move that would tear a council ship in half and there are more geth coming your way over"

"Thanks for the heads up joker, we're done here lets head to the bomb site"

Leaving the lab still trying to process what they just heard the squad moved on to the bomb site after arriving there they cleared out any geth that were guarding and called in the Normandy to bring down the nuke

Once they landed Alenko and a Marine brought the nuke over to the site and began setting it up and Alenko radioed "Bomb is in position we're all set here" When Williams interrupted "Commander do you read!?"

"The nuke is almost ready Sergeant get to the LZ"

"Negative commander we are under heavy fire up here at the AA tower and we are barely holding we need reinforcements ASAP"

"Go on Commander I need a few minutes to finish setting up the bomb" Not needing to hear anything else Shepard and the others bolted towards the tower however after exiting an elevator they saw a geth ship and Wrex spoke "Damn, geth ship heading for the bomb site" Williams radioed in "L.T you have geth inbound on your position"

"The ships already here and its bleeding geth all over the site!"

"Can you hold them off"

"Negative there's too many of them we can't hold them! Im activating the nuke" Shepard's eyes widened in suprise "What the hell are you doing Alenko!?"

"Making Sure this bomb goes off no matter what. Its done commander get Williams and get the hell out of here" But Williams disagreed "Belay that! we can handle ourselves go back and get Alenko!" McCall spoke up "Shepard its your call but either way someones getting left behind...Im sorry but there's nothing we can do about that" Shepard needed to make a decision and McCall was right either way someone wasn't leaving here and with that in mind he made his decision and knew he would hate himself for leaving someone behind

"Williams...Call joker and tell him to meet us at the AA tower" Williams acknowledged "Y-yes commander I-" Alenko interrupted "Its the right choice and you know it Ash"

"Im sorry Kaidan, I had to make a choice"

"I understand commander I don't regret a thing" Terminating the transmission Shepard let out a long sigh before he and the others continued toward the tower

After they arrived at the tower everyone opened up on the Geth as they came into view not letting up until every last one of them was reduced to scrap

Once they had cleared the area Saren had come in unleashing biotic blasts at the squad causing them to scramble for cover and Shepard fired a few shots towards Saren before ducking behind a wall and once Saren landed leaning out from cover shepard fired a few shots but they all failed to penetrate Sarens shields

"I applaud you Shepard my geth were utterly convinced the Salarians were the real threat, of course it was all for nothing I can't let you undo what I've accomplished here"

"Why are you doing this"

"You've seen the visions from the beacon Shepard the Reapers cannot be stopped, What i am trying to do is show them the value in letting us live is submission not preferable to extinction?"

"They said the covenant couldn't be stopped either but we managed to beat them and as for submitting there is no way in hell anyone would want to submit to the Reapers and be slaves. Im wondering why Soveriegn would need you though maybe he just wants a puppet that he can use to cover up the reapers existance someone he can indoctrinate and make into a mindless drone"

"I've... Studied the effects of indoctrination but I am not under his control he needs me"

"You're only saying that because you're afraid its already happened to you" With that Saren stopped talking and started shooting at Shepard

When Shepard returned fire though Saren unleashed a massive blast knocking Shepard off his feet Saren got off his hoverboard and approached Shepard trying to grab him by the neck but Shepard hit him in the gut knocking him back a bit before slamming his fist into the side of Sarens face, Shepard moved forward with his knife to finish Saren off but a few geth got behind him and opened fire and Shepard scrambled for cover and Saren got back on his board and left after eliminating the geth Shepard and Kirahee's teams boraded the Normandy and got off planet as fast as they could

Looking out one of the observation windows Shepard saw the nuke detonate and when it went off he wasn't sure what to think

After snapping back into reality the Squad was in the comm room for debriefing and Williams was the first to speak "I-I can't believe Kaidan didn't make it, How could we just leave him down there?"

"Alenko knew the risks going in he gave his life to save the rest of us"

"It Should have been me Commander you know that"

"Ash, how far are you willing to go to redeem your family's name are you hoping to be a martyr"

"Thats not fair"

"Ash what the public and the military did to your family for your grandfathers actions was unfair but I don't want to lose because of it" Liara spoke up "Commander you found a beacon similar to the one on Eden Prime I believe it filled in the missing pieces of your vision"

"You want to join our minds again, do it" Liara made the link and saw the images again once she was finished Shepard spoke "Did you see anything we can use?"

"There were places I recognized from my research an- Ilos! the conduits on Ilos"

"We need to get there" But tali spoke "Forget it the Mu Relays inside the terminus systems UNSC ships are not welcome there neither are spectres"

"The conduits on Ilos and Saren wants it so thats where were headed"

"Saren will have his entire fleet you need to talk to the council and get support or we won't even get close"

"Were done here,crew dismissed"

Joker came in over the intercom "Commander theres a comm buoy nearby I can link you in to the council so you can warn them about Soveriegn" Shepard thought about talking with the council but knew that even with all this evidence he knew they would continue to deny the reapers existance and it was extremely unlikley that they would send a fleet into the Terminus systems so he decided to do something else "Put me through to President Hood and Admiral Hackett"

"Patching you through now"

A second later holographic projections of Hood and Hackett apeared in front of him and Hackett spoke first "Shepard, We got the mission report and we're sorry to hear about Alenko but at least you managed to deny Saren an endless army of Krogan"

"Thank you sir but there's something else, We know the conduits on Ilos but you and I both know that the council won't send a fleet there so if Im going to get to the conduit I need support to take his fleet out thats in orbit" Hood pondered it for a moment and spoke "Commander there are no UNSC assets close enough to support you between tensions with the Batarians and the Geth we don't have the ships to spare for you" Shepard had a bad feeling but Hood continued "But there is a Sanghelli fleet in range headed by none other than R'tas Vadam I'll get in contact and tell him to hold position just outside of the system" Shepard sighed in relief

"I take it the Alliance negotiations went well" Hood nodded "negotiations finished two days ago, but in the mean time go to the citadel and try to convince the council otherwise Saren will just walk all over them when he attacks"

"Yes sir, end transmission"


	14. Chapter 14: Screw the risks

After setting course for the citadel Shepard returned to his quarters and was dead set on getting to Ilos with or without the councils permission once they docked he went to the council chambers and saw them already in session with Ambassador Udina who turned towards Shepard

"Shepard I relayed your evidence to the council but they are refusing to take any real action against Saren" Sparatus spoke "Patrols are stationed at every mass relay leading to Council space if Saren makes a move against us we will know about it so despite what you say we are taking action Shepard spoke "That's it? if Saren finds the conduit we're all screwed"

Tevos spoke next "We cannot risk a war with the Terminus systems, Your style served well in the Traverse but Ilos requires a deft touch"

"One ship going into the terminus won't start a war I can get to Ilos without causing a crisis"

Tevos continued "That won't be happening Commander we have locked down your ship and we are also ordering you to remain on the citadel for the time being" Udina lost it then "ARE YOU INSANE?! You can't do that!"

"We have every legal right to considering Shepard is a Spectre and we need to make sure he follows orders"

Udina turned to Shepard "Shepard head back to your ship for now, I'll talk to Anderson" Udina turned back to the council "This isn't finished councilors"

Shepard and the others returned to the Normandy and when they got back on board they learned that Udina was still fighting with the council over the Normandy being grounded but when they asked Achilles said he couldn't bypass the controls keeping the ship grounded apparently the council had massivley improved their AI countermeasures in the last 30 years, down near the mess Shepard was sitting on the floor next to his locker when Williams approached and sat next to him "Heard about what happened with the council guess even with everything we've shown them they'd rather be blind idiots than face reality"

"Yeah well that isn't going to help them when Saren and his ships arrive and smash the citadel to pieces"

Williams moved a little closer to Shepard "Listen,I figure if I don't say this now Im not going to get the chance so I just want you to know that I... Care for you" That suprised Shepard who was now facing her but before it could go any further Joker came in over the intercom as usual "Sorry to interupt Commander but I've got a message from Captain Anderson and Ambassador Udina"

"What is it Joker"

"Said you were to meet them in a club called Flux in the wards" Shepard got up and left the ship headed for the club hoping that they had a solution for him

Arriving at the club Shepard spotted them and sat at their table "Ambassador, Captain please tell me you have some good news" Udina shook his head "Yes and no the council will not lift its order and I checked because you're a spectre they have legal rights to ensure you follow their orders however there is something we can do" While Udina reached into his pocket Anderson spoke "We got in contact with an ONI agent here on the citadel he's agreed to help us in overiding the lockdown on your ship, once thats done you'll take this data crystal with a Council IFF on it and use it to make sure the defence fleet outside can't fire on you so once you leave gun it for Ilos"

"You both realize that the council will know your responisble and your asking me to leave the two of you holding the bag" Udina spoke up "Well none of that will matter if what you say about the conduit and the reapers is true if Saren succeeds were all doomed" Anderson entered "He's right don't worry about us just link up with R'tas and stop Saren now go"

"Thank you I won't forget this" Shepard got up and left heading for the ship once on board he waited in the cockpit with Joker for the lockdown to be lifted after what felt like an eternity the console finally read that the docking clamps had deactivated "Get us out of her Joker now!" Joker moved fast and before the Citadel fleet even realized it the Normandy had left the system and was heading to Rendezvous with the Sanghelli fleet holding position just outside the system where Ilos was, and after they were clear Shepard went to talk with the crew

Down in the cargo hold Shepard talked with McCall first "So I guess were heading for Ilos"

"Guess so Gunny, you regret anything"

"Shepard I could fill the whole damn extranet with my regrets Im just ready to end this and put a bullet through Sarens damn skull"

"If we succeed have you thought about what you'll do afterwards"

"Not really I think what will happen is Im going to spend a month in a courtroom dealing with a divorce and a custody battle for my daughter, so I'd rather fight geth than go through that" Shepard chuckled and Wrex approached "What about you Wrex you going to do anything if we win"

"Well after long consideration Im going to return to Tuchanka and work on rebuilding try and get my race to put the past where it belongs" Shepard nodded and Achilles appeared "Commander the council is on the line wanting to talk to you and maybe threaten to hang you" Shepard headed up to the comm room opened the line and Tevos was the first to speak "Commander turn your ship around at once" Shepard responded "Sorry can't hear you getting alot of bullshit on the line" Valern was next "Commander if you turn back we may overlook this 'minor' incident"

"Hmm let me think...Go to hell" Shepard terminated the communication and Joker spoke "You've been wanting to do that for a while haven't you"

"Your damn right"

An hour later Shepard was down in his quarters waiting to arrive when Williams entered the room "Skipper" Shepard got up "Don't you think were a little past titles" Williams approached "We had to do this Shepard you know that, there was no other way and you'll always be the skipper to me, Im not much of a word person Shepard other people say what I mean better than I do, We're pretty much mutineers flying a 'stolen' warship straight into enemy territory just call us humanity's best and brightest"

"You know there's a slim chance at best of us actually pulling this off"

"We'll get home again Shepard I believe you'll lead us through this" She paused and got a little closer before continuing "There are regs against this you know, you ready to deal with the consequences, Ive spent my whole life fighting to get what I want to get it done I had to burry alot of things, during that whole time not once did I feel that I was worth what I was fighting for, You make me feel good enough"

Shepard got closer "I can make you feel much more than that, come here"

"Bold words Shepard, I like bold" And Ash closed the remaining distance between them kissing him while Shepard guided her over to his bed

Codex: Sanghelli Imperium

The Imperium is the current government leading the Sanghelli and was established shortly after the conclusion of the covenant war, during its early years the Imperium under its current leader Arbiter Thel Vadam struggled to maintain order on Sanghelios due to their millenia long dependence on the covenant they found they lacked the Infrastructure to sustain themselves in areas such as food production, trade and technology since the prophets handled technological development the Sanghelli forsaked their own advancement, however after the death of Jul M'dama and collapse of the Storm Covenant in 2560 the Imperium was stablized and in recent years has been making major progress in getting over their stagnation in all major areas

The most important part of the Imperium is its Military the Sanghelli Army is responsible for ground operations and the Navy handles defence of the borders and has increased cooperation with the UEG and Jiralhanae and is able to maintain its ships now without having to rely on the Prophets as during their war with the Jiralhanae this was a major concern due to them being unable to repair and replace ships in their war of attrition

Despite its political isolation the Imperium is considered a major power due to its Strong military but has started opening up to the council and finally opened an embassy on the Citadel in 2581


	15. Chapter 15: Ilos

A couple more hours had passed when Normandy finally arrived at the edge of the systems where they were meeting up with the Sanghelli fleet headed by Fleetmaster R'tas Vadam "Commander the Fleetmaster is hailing us, patching him through now" Joker opened the line and R'tas spoke "Spartan we know why you're here and we have a plan ready, while we deal with the geth ships you concentrate on getting to the surface we will deploy Phantoms and drop pods to to eliminate any geth on the planet so all you have to do is get to Saren" Shepard replied "Understood Fleetmaster give em hell, Shepard out" Terminating the link the fleet entered the system at full speed towards Ilos at the head of the Sanghelli fleet was R'tas' flagship the Shadow of Intent and when they got into weapons range of the Geth fleet the flagship was the first to fire targeting a geth dreadnaught and destorying it, the Geth ships scrambled into defensive positions as the rest of the fleet brought its weapons to bear on the ships in orbit

On the bridge of the Normandy Shepard and Several others gathered around Joker and navigator Pressley who spoke first "Sir the Sanghelli ships have the Geth busy and are deploying ground forces we have our opening"

"Alright drop us in the Mako" Pressley spoke again "Negative commander you need at least a hundred feet of open terrain to do that the most I can find near Saren is twenty" Williams spoke "Then find another landing zone" Pressley shot back at her with "There is no other landing zone!"

Tali was next to speak "The descent angle's to steep" Liara was next "Its our only option"

Williams raised her voice "Its not an option its a suicide run we don't-" But Joker interrupted "I can do it"

"Joker?"

"I can do it Commander just let me do my job" not needing to hear anything else gave the order "Alright everyone gear up and head to the Mako, Joker drop us right on top of the bastard" getting their weapons and armor ready everyone piled into the Mako for a combat drop, Joker took the Ship into a dive towards Sarens position and all around the Normandy were phantoms and Sanghelli drop pods heading for the surface

Once they were close enough to the target the Normandy's cargo hold opened and the Mako rolled out of it, Saren saw the rapidly approaching Vessel and scrambled to get inside the complex and close the gate barely managing to do so as the Mako hit the Surface hard

after making sure he was intact Shepard and the others disembarked and looked at the door when Garrus spoke "We don't have the firepower to force this door open gonna have to find the controls" R'tas was patched into the comms and overheard the conversation "Spartan just work on getting through that door my men will handle the Geth"

"Copy that fleetmaster, Alright lets move" running as fast as they could the team bolted trying to find the controls for the door and all around them they saw the Geth and Sanghelli firing at each other but the geth were getting the worst of the fight as the Sanghelli pushed them back

Fighting through the Geth as fast as they could Shepard and the others soon entered an underground complex working there way through any synthetics they encountered heading up a level they found the controls for the sealed door and opened it but as they were leaving a hologram had appeared behind them and started talking "Trap-cannot be-opped-" and Garrus spoke "It looks like a VI but I can't understand what its saying" But Shepard did "It sounds like a warning but its to broken up to make any sense"

"Incredible the cipher must have given you an understanding of the Prothean language" But Williams redirected them "Im sure thats great but we still need to catch Saren" Shepard nodded and on the way out radioed R'tas "Fleetmaster we've opened the door and are in pursuit of Saren how are things in orbit" R'tas responded "The Geth fleet is eliminated and we are taking care of any stragglers now let me know if you catch Saren" He ended the Transmission just as the team approached the Mako and they decided to take it with them seeing the need for the firepower it had

Going full speed into the tunnel they weren't going to stop until they had Saren by his talons as they went through they saw pods sticking out of the walls and Williams spoke "What are all those containers" Garrus replied "They look like stasis pods maybe the Protheans tried to survive using these and wait until the Reapers left" they continued driving until a barrier activated in front of them and behind them "Its a trap! Saren must have known we were coming"

"I don't think this is Sarens doing" As Garrus finished speaking a door just to the right of them opened and seeing no other options entered it hoping to find a path towards the conduit

Approaching a small platform they saw a hologram and walked towards it when it spoke "You are not Prothean but I do not sense the taint of Indoctrination on you either this was one of several eventualities we considered" Shepard spoke "Are you a VI programed to overlook this facility?"

"Yes I am Vigil I was designed to maintain the Stasis pods you see outside however none of those pods are active anymore as over the centuries the power required to maintain them slowly depleted and eventually they all failed"

"Why did you bring us here?"

"Because you need to break a cycle that has persisted for untold millenia, When the Reapers first arrived they overwhelmed us at the Citadel and before we knew what was happening dozens of our worlds fell in the wake of their onslaught"

"You're saying the Citadel is a Mass relay the reapers used to cripple any government that establishes itself there, they could take out the council and the fleet in one crushing blow"

"That was our fate but It does not have to be yours I have a data file that can be used to prevent that from happening"

"Saren's already got a head start on us grab that data file and lets move"

"The one you call Saren has not yet reached the conduit there is still time" Shepard nodded and left once they were back in the Mako they floored it and Shepard radioed Joker and R'tas to let them know what was happening and R'tas was going to stay in system and make sure no one would try to follow Saren while Joker was to head back to UEG space and gather any forces he could to help the citadel

Ramming there way through whatever checkpoints they came across Shepard finally saw the conduit and stopped for a second seeing Geth Armatures below

"There it is the conduit its incredible!"

"No time to admire the view we have to get through the Armatures below and head through the conduit"

At the Citadel, a few moments earlier

It seemed like any other day at the citadel as the defence fleet stared into the void and it looked like it was going to be just that, when suddenly the Relay showed a massive power spike and while that was nothing unusual the level indicated a massive number of ships were coming through and when they saw it was a geth fleet with a massive dreadnaught at the center, the defence fleet scrambled to return fire but already had their backs up against a wall as the Geth dreadnaught just smashed its way through several Turian ships

On the Destiny Ascension the Captain wanted a status report "Main gun is offline and were getting hammered"

The captain gave the order "Abandon the Citadel evacuate the council!" the Helmsman got on the comm "Citadel control do you read, Citadel control are you there?" but there was no response and they saw the council's shuttle was already fast approaching the Ascension

Back on Ilos, Present time

Shepard floored the accelarator and went full speed down the hill towards the conduit trying to dodge fire from the Armatures as best he could but taking a few bad hits on the way, As the Mako approached the conduit everyone braced themselves for a rough ride once they got close enough the conduit activated and sent the Mako at full speed towards its destination


	16. Chapter 16: Final Showdown

Shepard didn't know how long his travel time from Ilos to the citadel was all he knows now is that the Mako exited its transit into the Persidium and crashed hard into a nearby wall flattening two geth that were unlucky enough to be in its way

Making sure he was in one piece and still alive Shepard crawled out of the Mako and saw the Persidium aflame and rubble covering the street as well as the corpses of the various bystanders that the Geth slaughtered he was snapped out of his trance as Geth troops opened fire on him while the others where still working on getting out of the wrecked Mako

As everyone opened fire Garrus dryly remarked to Shepard "I Know you're a Spartan and pretty much invincible Shepard but the rest of us aren't so try to keep that in mind when you're driving" Shepard fired a burst into a Sniper and replied "Will do Garrus now shut up and fire!"

Finally dropping the last of the Geth and husks the Team went for the elevator to try and reach the Tower as fast as possible to stop Saren and as they were going up they saw Soveriegn outside and the citadel arms closed that meant they had to triple time it to the tower as that meant they were only a short while from Soveriegns plan succeeding and civilization being wiped out

Before the elevator could go any farther however it stopped around halfway up "Saren's locked down the elevator, Suit up were going outside!" Shepard got his Magnum out and once everyone had their oxygen gear on he fired shattering the glass and stepped outside beginning their ascent to the council chambers as they made their way up they encountered alot of geth and krogan trying to stop them but they were quickly eliminated as everyone made their way up

After dealing with a Geth dropship that stalled them briefly the team continued on until they finally found a way to enter the tower, once they were inside they took off their oxygen gear and quickly scrambled up the steps to the main council chamber gunning down any geth they came across as they ran by

When they reached their destination they saw no one their but Shepard Knew Saren was close by and sure enough he popped up on his hoverboard and threw a grenade towards Shepard and the others who scrambled to get behind cover

After Shepard got behind a wall Saren spoke "I was afraid you wouldn't make it in time Shepard"

"In time for what?" Saren replied "The final confrontation I think we both expected it would end like this, You've lost you know that don't you? In a few minutes Soveriegn will have full control of the Citadels systems. The Relay will open and The Reapers will return"

"I've still got a few tricks up my sleeve"

"You survived our encounter on Virmire but I've changed since then Soveriegn has...Upgraded me"

"You're even more spineless than I thought you're so afraid of the reapers that you bent to their will you are a coward who is only concerned with his survival"

"Its a shame that the Covenant destroyed themselves before killing off your pathetic race but I can be merciful surrender and I can have Soveriegn spare you and the rest of your species"

"You honestly think you're in control? Soveriegn has you under his thumb you're just too stupid to realize it"

"You just don't know when to accept fate do you Shepard" But Shepard had enough of Sarens crap he popped out of cover with his Battle Rifle raised and shouted "This ends now you bastard!" Shepard fired a quick burst that hit Saren before he began moving around and the rest of the team opened fire

A protracted firefight ensued just as it seemed someone had a shot at Saren he darted out of the way and this pattern kept until he was back where he Started and Shepard as Shepard lined up his shot time seemed to slow to a crawl, he pulled the trigger and three rounds flew out towards their target Impacting Saren in the chest and everyone saw the blood start to pour from the wound, Saren took one last look at Shepard before tumbling over and shattering the glass beneath him when the others looked down they Saw a large piece of glass had impaled the rogue Spectre and he bled out from the wound before his head fell back and Saren seemed to die

Approaching the main console Shepard activated his Omni tool and uploaded the file he had gotten from Ilos "Vigil's data file worked! I've got control of all systems" Wrex spoke "Quick open the stations arms maybe the fleet can take down Soveriegn" Liara also spoke up "See if you can open a communications channel" Shepard did just that and quickly got a signal "-Is the Destiny Ascension main gun is offline Kinetic barriers down to 40% the concil is on board! Repeat the Council is on board!" Shepard picked up another signal and heard a familiar voice "Normandy to the Citadel, Normandy to the Citadel, Please tell me you're there Shepard"

"I'm here Joker"

"We caught that distress call Commander I'm sitting here in the Anduras sector with the Fifth fleet, We can save the Ascension just give us the word and we'll roll in" Wrex seemed to be against the Idea "You can't sacrifice human lives to save the council while you're fleet is busy saving them you may lose ships you need to take down Soveriegn" McCall spoke "Yeah and if you let them die it makes us seem oppurtunistic and makes convincing the Galaxy of the Reaper threat a hell of a lot harder!"

"Whats the order commander come in now to save the Ascension or hold back" Shepard thought for a moment and while Wrex had a point sacrificing the council now would make things harder down the road, believing that a short term sacrifice for a long term gain was the best course of action Shepard gave the order "Enter the system now Joker we need to save the Ascension no matter what the cost!"

Wrex spoke "You better hope the council appreciates this"

Near the Citadel relay

As quickly as Shepard gave the word the Fifth fleet entered the System and the ships making up the fleet were Strident class heavy frigates, Autumn and Paris class frigates and an Infinity class battlecruiser at the head of the fleet was the UNSC Reach and once all the ships entered the system Hackett gave his orders "All ships move in, Save the Destiny Ascension!"

On the Destiny Ascension the Radar officer called out to the Captain "Commander were picking up reinforcements" The captain called up the viewscreen "Its the UNSC thank the goddess!"

Once the ships were in range the unleashed hell on the geth fleet as MAC rounds tore through their ships after the last one attacking the Ascension was reduced to scrap metal Joker radioed the Ascension "Destiny Ascension you are all clear, repeat you are all clear" Joker checked his radar and noticed that they had only lost 2 ships saving the Ascension meaning their were still 58 ships to take on Soveriegn and clean out the rest of the Geth fleet and also saw the Citadel start moving and Hackett came in on the comm "The Citadel's opening! all available ships move in, Concentrate on Soveriegn!"

Back in the Citadel Tower

Shepard was looking at Sarens corpse and wanting to make sure he stayed down he looked over at Garrus and Tali "Make sure he's dead" the two of them Jumped down and Garrus drew his sidearm putting a round into Sarens skull seeing no movement Tali turned around looking up at Shepard and giving the Quarian equivilent of a thumbs up

But suddenly everything started shaking and the Platform Shepard was on collapsed sending him falling down into the garden below

Getting to his feet he saw Saren's body moving and as it got up it started to deform into something out of a horror film after it was done it stood there for a second before leaping onto the wall and saying "I am Soveriegn and this station is mine!" Shepard, Garrus and Tali all opened fire while the rest of the team on the floor above them did the same

It didn't seem to matter how much they tried or how many shots they fired as Sarens reanimated corpse was just moving too fast for anyone to do any significant damage until Shepard got a lucky shot in on one of his legs and it finally slowed him down to the point where they could actually hit their target instead of wasting all their ammo

Just outside the Tower

The Fleet had moved into position and was firing at Soveriegn but they were unable to deplet his shields as Soveriegns shields recharged faster than the UNSC's MAC guns could fire but they were doing some not insignificant damage to the Reaper, As the fleet continued to fire Soveriegn lifted one of his mechanical legs and fired his Weapon at one of the Paris Class frigates in front of him draining its shields after Several seconds of sustained fire before destroying the ship

One of the Commanders shouted over the comm "Sovereigns too strong! We have to pull back!"

"Negative this is our only chance take that monster down no matter what the cost"

Back Inside the Tower

Everyone continued to fire getting several good hits in on Saren as the damage to the corpse became more and more apparent as time went on when he finally latched to the wall just underneath the platform where Shepard was standing not too long ago everything seemed to slow down once again as Shepard switched his Battle Rifle to single shot, very calmly pulling the trigger and sending three well placed rounds into Sarens skull

That seemed to do it as Saren detatched from the wall and collapsed onto the rock just in front of him before the body desintigrated

Back outside the Tower

As soon as Saren was killed red lightning arked all over Sovereign and Joker checked his sensors "Its shields are down now's our chance!" Hackett jumped in immediatley "Hit that bastard with everything we've got!"

The fleet fully recharged their MAC's and let loose on the Reaper and as each shot made impact the damage to the Reaper became more apparent until it finally detatched from the tower

With the Reach in position above the Citadel and its Super MAC's fully charged it fired two rounds towards the Reaper tearing through it and utterly decimating it

Back inside the tower

As Soveriegn blew apart however a large piece of debris from the Reaper made its way towards the Tower Shepard had just gotten back up to the platform when he saw the debris rapidly approach and barely had time to shout to his team "GO!" and the impact was devastating as everything around Shepard and the others seemed to collapse

15 Minutes later

A C-Sec team made its way through the tower seeing the damage that was done however they doubted there were any survivors behind them was Captain Anderson who was sincerley hoping otherwise and as one of the Officers moved some of the wreckage Anderson ran over upon seeing Shepards team and he spoke "Take it easy, Its over you're safe now, Where's the Commander, Where's Shepard" But no one replied instead the simply looked over to the wreckage that now littered the tower and Anderson now with a look of despair on his face didn't want to believe it as he was helping Ashley up though as he looked back out towards the wreck he saw for a brief second some movement he walked slowly towards it and saw some more movement when finally standing on top of the wreckage was Shepard, Smiling and looking down at them before he slid down and approached them, Anderson was relieved and also had a smile on his face as he thought to himself 'Spartans never die'

17 Hours later, The Persidium next to the Covenant war Memorial

The next day repair and clean up operations began in earnest as people on the station wanted to forget what happened and get back to living their lives once everyone was looked over Shepard, Udina and Anderson were called to meet with the council

Approaching the council Tevos was the first to speak "Ambassador, Captain, Commander Shepard, we have gathered here today to recognize the enormous contributions of the UNSC in the war against Soveriegn and the Geth" Valern was next "Many humans lost their lives in the battle to save the Citadel, Brave and couragous soldiers who willingly gave their lives so that we the council, Might live"

Sparatus was next "There is no greater sacrifice and we share you're grief over the tragic loss of so many noble men and women" Tevos spoke again "The Council also owes you a great personal debt commander one we can never repay you've saved not just our lives but the lives of billions from Sovereign and the Reapers"

Valern picked up from there "Commander Shepard you're heroic and selfless actions serve as a symbol of everything Humanity and the UNSC stand for"

"And though we cannot bring back those valiant soldiers who gave their lives to save ours we can honor their memories through our actions"

"Humanity has shown through the Covenant war and its actions today You're determination and willingness to stand as a defender and protector of the galaxy you have proven time and again that you are worthy to join our ranks and with that we offer you full membership to the Citadel and a Seat on the citadel council" Shepard didn't let it show but he was extremley surprised by this move but it would give Humanity alot more influence in shaping interstellar policy and they wouldn't have to reduce their fleet size if anything they could easily double it without having to deal with accusations of trying to start a war

Udina spoke "Councilor on behalf of humanity we thank you for this prestigous honor and humbly accept" Valern spoke "We will need a list of potential candidates to fill humanity's seat on the council"

"Given all that has happened Im sure you're recomendation will carry a great deal of weight commander do you support any particular candidate?" Shepard pondered for a moment between Anderson and Udina on one hand Anderson would focus on the Reapers but he would hate the job and would probably be better off in the Navy while Udina was ambitious he had shown he was willing to cast aside ambition in order to do what was right and was convinced of the reaper threat "We need someone who's willing to put status aside and stand up for whats right someone like ambassador Udina" Anderson didn't say anything but Shepard heard a sigh of relief come from the captain and Tevos spoke "The Council would welcome him with open arms should he accept"

Udina nodded and spoke "Thank you councilor as humanity's representative Ill do everything in my power to help the council rebuild"

"Sovereigns defeat marks the beginning of a new era for both humanity and the council" Shepard looked to the side for a second before speaking "Sovereign was only a vanguard the Reaper fleet is still coming hundreds of ships maybe thousands and I'm going to find some way to stop them" Shepard turned and left and the council looked on as he walked away and Anderson spoke

"Shepard's right humanity is ready to do its part united with the rest of the council we have the strength to overcome any challenge, When the reapers come we must stand side by side we must fight against them as one and together we will drive them back into dark space"

_Story is almost over there will be one or two more chapters for an epilogue so stay tuned_


	17. Chapter 17: The End of the Beginning

2 weeks later

It had barely been 2 weeks since the battle of the citadel but Shepard had to say goodbye to some of the people he had worked very closely with over the past several weeks as Tali was returning to the migrant fleet but before she left Shepard 'acquired' some shield specifications for her to take back as a gift from her pilgramage. Wrex was going back to Tuchanka to try and start his race on the path of rebuilding and unifying and Shepard wished him the best of luck in his goals. Garrus had returned to the Citadel going back to work for C-Sec and try to eventually become a Spectre. McCall while not leaving the Normandy was given 3 months leave to deal with his divorce and the custody battle for his daughter. Ashley, and Liara were really the only ones from his team still on the Normandy but Joker and Karin Chakwas were also staying

Looking over some reports in his quarters Shepard found himself hating paperwork more than ever, he leaned back in his chair and looked down at the picture on his desk, the picture was of him and the others in the immediate aftermath of the battle for the citadel they were all covered in dirt and grime but they were all looking at the camera smiling in the bottom left there was a date and inscription that said '_June 15th 2583 pulling off the impossible'_ Shepard smiled at the picture and while the road ahead was going to be difficult he knew that as long as he had people like those he had served with at his side anything was possible.

Epilogue

With the conclusion of the Battle of the Citadel and the destruction of Sovereign the UNSC delcared the brief but bloody Geth war to be over a week after the events that took place at the Citadel as there were no further reports of Geth activity in UNSC space

The announcement that humanity had been granted a seat on the council had many surprised and while there were those very opposed to it on the whole the decision was welcomed

As the UEG solidified its position in council space they began to open up to the galaxy more than they had in the past with human paranoia about aliens diminishing and the UEG slowly started to share some of their more advanced technology with the various council races but ensured they could keep an edge on them new trade agreements were signed resulting in a major economic boom the UNSC started exchange programs with the Turian and Salarian militaries and also started to perform joint deployments with them

However not all was well in the galaxy tensions between the UEG and Batarian Hegemony were at an all time high and there was concern about the Batarians launching an attack and then there was the Reaper threat while many waved it off as deluded there were those in the various governments of the galaxy who were concerned about it being true and wondered if they could be defeated

But if anyone could beat the Reapers it would be none other than Commander Shepard who had already beaten the odds and he was going to do whatever it took to make sure the galaxy was ready and able to take them on and drive them back into dark space


End file.

Halo, Mass Effect, Sci-Fi