Audax Novus

Chapter Twenty-Two:: Breakthrough ::

EDS (Earth Dating system) – October 02, 2185
Location: Occupied Harsa
Stellar Orbit: Harsa system

The Normandy vibrated, but not in its familiar manner. A large part of what had made the stealth frigate hum in the particular way that it had was its hull and armour composition.

But now, the molecular weight of the outer hull was several times heavier than what had previously wrapped the craft, and the vibration was substantially less noticeable, and in that familiarity being removed, somehow more noticeable.

Shepard stood in an at ease position behind Jokers' chair with his hands clasped on the small of his back. He was in his full N7 kit, just in case. The other soldiers behind him, three of them Alliance, the other two being Garrus and Samara, were likewise in their full kit, with only Samara subjecting herself to wearing elements of material from Praetoria.

In Samara's case, wanting to maintain the lithe standards of her previous approach, she had custom fabricated plates of titanium armour made to wrap her chest, abdominals, shoulders, and thighs in overlapping darkened chrome lines.

Both her and Garrus had the buttstocks of modified BR55N's sticking up over their shoulders, further showing their appreciation of the gear made available through their new affiliation.

Shepard couldn't entirely suppress the wave of unease he felt about so much of their ways being so quickly modified. But he ignored what he couldn't suppress with the rationale that converting to more effective weapons and armour only made sense.

The thought carried his eyes briefly down to his hip, where one of the Praetorian M6H pistols was magnetised with several pouches filled with magazines ready further around his hips.

"Prepare to drop out.... Iiiiiiiiin, uhg, soon?" Jeff called, shifting from a curious tone to a perturbed one as he studied his flight controls.

"Steady as she goes, Flight Lieutenant," Anderson admonished politely.

Shepard suppressed the urge to support his pilot the way that Anderson had. Instead, he took the opportunity to learn more from Anderson's tact.

Anderson never seemed as concerned about having casual friendships with his crew, but he clearly cared for them by the way that he responded to them.

It was a command tactic that Shepard knew he needed to pick up on, with his previous methodology being all about befriending his crew. While he knew that he had his crew's loyalty, he could also see that the approach had eroded certain levels of his command presence.

The flashing whites, blues, purples and greens suddenly ceased coming through the forward viewscreen, and the glass was immediately populated with sensor data and holographically overlayed details.

"Stealth suite active," EDI announced calmly.

Shepard almost wished he were outside in vacuum to witness the Normandy's new stealth system used for the first time.

As it were, he had to imagine the tiles that covered his -Anderson's- ship shifting their colour and mass through a mixture of holographic and element zero technology, some of it inspired by Cerberus, yet again.

The shift would make the Normandy look nearly absolute black in the void, and the change in mass from the plates would reflect any passive scanners and most active ones that weren't directly painted on them or didn't rely on gravimetric readings.

"Break it down for me, Flight Lieutenant," Anderson grunted.

"Aye, Captain." Jeff agreed. He peered at the viewscreen closely for another moment, then pulled the Normandy gently to port. With a nodded gesture at a barely visible cloud of matter distantly sparkling. The holographic display circled it while low powered mass scanners provided numbers on the screen. "That's what's left of the Relay."

Shepard released a breath that he hadn't realised he'd been holding.

Their mission here was to determine if the Praetorians' plan had been successful, and if so, to what extent. He didn't need Joker or EDI to tell him that the success hadn't been as stellar as the destruction of the Alpha Relay, having already seen the holographic markers for Harsa's furthest outer planets.

But to see that at the very least, the Reapers had been denied their most convenient travel route was a win in and of itself.

It meant that the current evacuation of lesser populated planets currently taking place had more time than they'd feared they'd have and that the worlds that were being banked on being the most fought over had that extra time to reinforce and recruit.

"The density of particulates and their spread indicates that the Relay was detonated at the time indicated by the Rubicon's sensors. Given the readable amount of material in the cloud, I would speculate three Reapers were caught in the explosion." EDI explained coolly from the console.

Jeff's lips thrummed with the expulsion of air, and Anderson grumbled under his breath. Of course, they had been hoping for more. The plans best results would have meant the utter destruction of the system and all of the Reapers held within. Three from over a million was hardly the result that they had wanted.

"Better than none," Shepard found himself speaking up. The image of Sovereign still came to his mind's eye readily.

The living craft had torn through all its enemies as though they were nothing, so the idea of three near-identical craft being reduced to atomised particles was still a significant victory.

"True, true," Anderson agreed with a sagely nod. The dark-skinned man leaned forward to examine data visible only to him and Jeff. After several minutes, he leaned back, "Alright, Flight Lieutenant, bring us around and take us as close as you can to Khar'Shan. We need intel on how the Reapers go about their invasions and harvests, then we're to find probable routes for the Reapers that have left the system."

"Aye, Captain," Jeff groused while doing as ordered.

The view shifted again, and subtle inertia pulled at them while the Normandy accelerated to the fraction of C that their stealth system would still work at. Shepard and his entourage of soldiers remained silent for the next hour as they moved deeper and deeper into the system.

They grew increasingly tense as low powered sensor systems picked up Reapers in the outer planets and on asteroids. EDI speculated that the enemy was more than likely mining and harvesting raw materials to begin to replenish the forces that they had lost on Khar'Shan.

The thought made their minor and early victories feel hollow and unsatisfactory. Despite the hundreds of thousands of kilometres that separated them from the Reapers, the atmosphere in the cockpit grew more and more uneasy.

Jeff slowly pulled them back to fast cruise speed as Khar'Shan grew from a bright dot out of the blackness into a world with vast stretches of smoke rising from the surface in a multitude of locations.

"Passives only."

"Duh," Joker grunted instinctively and then winced with a glance at Anderson. "I mean, yes, Sir!" He corrected.

Anderson just raised a brow at Joker, and the snarky pilot smiled awkwardly while interacting with his console again.

While the pilot worked, Shepard and his team looked at the holographic data that EDI was feeding across the screen above the pilot's head.

There were still hundreds of Reapers in orbit and seemingly just as many on the ground. Detritus from orbital battle had been raked from space and collected into dense fields.

Reaper drone craft navigated the scrap, seemingly fishing out the highest quality alloys and likely any survivors who had managed to cling to life in sealed pods.

"No Batarian signals coming from the planet," EDI described. "Several large structures with energy readings that match the Reapers have been built in what was the most densely populated city. I would speculate that they are Reaper construction sites."

Shepard grimaced and looked over his shoulder. Garrus and Samara had equally displeased expressions, and the three Alliance men with buzzed heads wore calculating scowls.

Sudden thoughts crossed his mind, despite how he feared the ease with which they'd come to him. His jaw loosened to share his thoughts, but he held his tongue, blinked, and grounded himself.

The Normandy was Andersons' ship now, and it was up to Anderson to think of the best strategies. Shepard simply had to take a step back and allow Anderson to prove his experience.

"Keep scanning the planet, EDI, see if you can find a way to determine what direction the other Reapers went in... There were over a million Reapers in Harsa."

"Yes, Captain Anderson."

"Captain, Sir?" Shepard spoke up after a long minute of blinking at the viewscreen over Anderson's shoulder.

Anderson didn't shift when he answered, "Out with it, Shepard. I know you want to say something... We can all feel it."

Joker chuckled nervously while Garrus and the Alliance men all scoffed mirthless laughter.

Shepard nodded to himself and took a breath. "Why don't we use the Praetorian Shiva's? Put them on a ballistic trajectory, so they just look like scrap? We can stop those factories down there."

If the proximity of the Reapers had made the cockpit tense, Shepard's suggestion made the tension thick enough to cut. After a long moment, Anderson shifted in his chair to look over his shoulder as Shepard.

The once-Spectre clenched his jaw and met Anderson's uncomfortable glower with his own firm confidence. After a long moment, Shepard furrowed his brow, "Khar'shan is dust, Sir... The nukes were given to us for this kind of mission. Why don't we use them?"

Anderson's glower grew more profound, and Shepard suddenly realised that in this instant, or perhaps in the instant from having seen the destruction of the Collector base, that his disdain for nuclear weaponry had diminished by several orders of magnitude.

Andersons, however, had not. But before Anderson could answer, Garrus grumbled his support for Shepard. "It'd be the best solution. We can drop them, then head on out system to find the rest of the Reapers, then jump out with the intel."

"This strategy would be the most likely of any we could devise to succeed in harming the Reapers," Samara agreed casually as though she were discussing an everyday matter.

Anderson's glower softened into a frown of angry confusion until he shook his head and sighed. He shifted to look forward again. Beyond the Normandy, Khar'shan orbited slowly and showed off the fires turning the conquered planet into a nightmarish scene of red and black while the Reapers went about their grisly work.

The biomechanoids that listed lazily in orbit almost seemed to be enjoying the scene playing out by the occasional unnecessary wobble in their positions.

"EDI, prep four Shiva's, launch them on a ballistic trajectory at sites you deem worth targeting."

"Yes, Captain Anderson."

The cockpit turned back to absolute silence, besides the sounds of those present breathing carefully to cool their nerves and the dull vibration of the hull. After a minute, four lights blinked red on the screen, and four tiny projectiles gently yet swiftly sped away from them.

Shepard blinked in surprise. For some reason, he'd expected there to be some kind of thunk, vibration, or other clear indication of the nuclear weapons being deployed. Before he could even voice a thought, Jeff gently brought the Normandy about, and they floated away from Khar'shan.

"Picking up faint energy trails at these coordinates, Jeff."

A blue arrow cropped up on the side of the screen, and Jeff nudged the Normandy around until it resolved into a blue diamond located centrally in his screen. "What the hell?"

"What is it, Flight Lieutenant?" Anderson asked, suddenly in concern.

Shepard glanced around again with his brow furrowed, his mind doing his best with not being a navigator in trying to see if his thoughts were on the money. Garrus didn't share the expression, but Samara wore the heaviest brow that Shepard had ever seen on the composed Asari.

"There are no Relays in that direction. Why would they go that way?" Joker muttered.

"Speculate!" Anderson demanded, suddenly on the edge of his seat.

The tension came back full force, and Shepard squinted.

"They might be planning to get around our forces without using the Relays? Pull a surprise attack?" Garrus attempted.

"They are patient enough for that...." Samara agreed.

They became quiet as they considered that in shared unease for several long minutes while they coasted away from Khar'shan. "Atomic excitement detected," EDI stated.

"And looks like that shook the hornet's nest," Joker added tiredly. He caught the concerned look on Anderson's face before the Captain could speak and hurriedly added, "Nothing on sensors says they've detected us... They just look like they're in a state back there, that's all."

"Jeff is correct, Captain. Over one hundred of the Reapers in orbit appear to be descending, but I cannot report on whatever damage we may have achieved."

While EDI's calm tone described the prospect of Shepard's suggestion of vast destruction, the latter part of her sentence struck him. He puckered his lips at the uncomfortable thought, then cleared his throat to be heard. "There-"

He grimaced and frowned heavily. The very notion of what he wanted to say horrified him with the obvious. "-There are no Relays in that direction that we know about... How many inactive Relays are there in the galaxy?"

If the cockpit had been tense before, then now it was practically sloshing with discomfort.

"Spirits..." Garrus was the first to voice his fear of the idea. "What- What do we do?"

"If we follow after them to find the Relay, then we almost certainly won't find it until they've already used it, and then that will be too late." Samara mused.

"And we've got no goddam idea what other Relays it could connect to!" Jeff cried angrily.

"Jeff, spin up the Slipspace Drive. We've got to catch up to the Reapers ASAP!" Anderson ordered briskly. "Crew, return to your quarters, see to your affairs, it looks like this will be getting hot quicker than we thought."

EDS (Earth Dating system) – October 09, 2185
Location: Praetoria – Ares Base – Central parade ground
Stellar Orbit: Epsilon Eridani

"General, we're ready!"

Miranda pursed her full lips into a thin line and her brow furrowed heavily with her eyes squinted. The bright floodlights that added their power to that of Epsilon Eridani removed all shadow from her face and form as her head traversed to find the speaker.

"General?" The voice said again.

'Operative, XO, side-kick, Colonel, now bloody General....' Miranda's lips relaxed marginally, and she pulled them sideways into her cheek. John was several paces away, and unlike her, he had his helmet on.

But while her helmet was off, their Rangers tended to look to her for command because of how hotly she would occasionally react to them.

She found the speaker in moments, judging by voice and build behind the armour; he was a Batarian. That background twinge of unease about Xeno's being in her troupe stayed forgotten as she nodded slowly.

Several days earlier, with much discussion around their briefing table between herself, John, Admiral Hackett, Alec Ryder, Tutela Proelium, and Cathryn Hales, they had decided it was time to mature their ranks and military branches.

According to John, traditionally, Rangers would be Army. Considering the unique starting point of their military and the fact that the Rangers would be serving a mixture of roles which would typically be delineated between army and marines, it had been elected to make the Rangers into their own branch.

They were soldiers who would range across the galaxy and serve on foreign soil, in foreign space, and in exotic conditions.

So, it had been decided that on Praetoria, rather than Marines, they had Rangers. Army that served the specific role of planetary defence would follow in due course, but as it stood, their current footing was purely offensive in terms of the build-up of their forces.

But maturing their colony and their armed forces meant that they required yet another maturation process in their hierarchy. That had required Miranda to be given what was essentially self-promotion to Lieutenant General and with the alternative title of Deputy Commander of Praetoria.

In the same vein, John had become the Commander in Chief of Praetoria, officially relinquishing his old title, which had little bearing on his position.

The trade-off was phonetically helpful for how his rank had always been shortened into the Chief. The shortened rank urged people to look at him with almost tribal respect, and now his new position allowed the same.

Discussion at the time about what kind of government Praetoria would eventually have had been quelled when Miranda had started supposing what the elected leader of the planet would be titled.

Proelium had assumed Miranda's previous rank, Musa had assigned himself as what he called a logician minister, and Hales had declared herself Chief Scientist. The process of discussing their upgraded ranks had been free from contention.

As much as Miranda felt like it was gratuitous back-patting to promote themselves the way they had, she also knew it was necessary.

She went to pat her armour down out of habit, intent on checking that it was secured firmly to her body but instead met the far softer resistance of her upper breast tissue.

Her cheeks reddened half a shade in embarrassment, and she fought the urge to look around to confirm that no one had seen her awkward slip-up.

Only she was free from body armour, her state of dress intending to be symbolic. John and a platoon of Ranger's who had been with them on Eden Prime were in full kit with rifles locked and loaded and held in at ready positions pointed toward the chrome pod that she was facing.

Miranda felt naked. She had no problem with her body image and actually being nude, but she wasn't precisely an exhibitionist, not in the nudist sense. She shivered as the thought flushed through her mind like an unwanted reminder of how she had conducted herself only months earlier.

She was more than comfortable wearing her skin-tight carbon and titanium nano-weave suit in full view of anyone.

It wasn't the exposure of her physicality that made her feel nude. She currently wore only a pale muted green knee-length gown that flowed from her hips like petals uncurling and hugging her body. It ended halfway up her chest, leaving her entirely bare from there up, additional to the length of her leanly muscled arms being exposed.

Waking their guest had been discussed at great length, and eventually, Hales' had been heard in her point that Protheans more than likely interpreted green in the same way that Humans interpreted white.

She had gone on about details analysed in what could have only been a lifetime ago on Eden Prime, and the cultural information swept over Miranda's head.

They all agreed on something likely to be diplomatically shared universally that the first point of contact should be disarmed, and as physically disarming as possible.

Miranda wearing even her suit and looking like a warrior ready to fight had been cast off, and she was the clear choice for the first contact given that John in his armour was to serve first and foremost as a symbolic front.

So, a dress that included a natural plant-like theme in its hem had been chosen.

Miranda shivered again. Armour had become her home when she wasn't inside a secured building, let alone meeting a new species thought to be more warlike than any she had met yet, perhaps beside the man who held her interest and his divergent Human splinter species.

"Alright, don't look too excited." Miranda composed herself with a slight intake of breath through her nose. Her lips relaxed into a confident smile, and she assumed her alluring and confident persona once reserved for infiltration missions.

Her eyes sparkled in feigned assuredness, and with militarily themed strides that contested how she had presented herself, she marched across the three meters of tarmac to the Prothean stasis pod.

The winter chill in the air didn't bother her, with her heart racing in anticipation for whatever would be emerging.

John stayed two meters back from her with his hands connected firmly to a DMR. Her racing heart slowed; she knew that in less than a second, John would put the muzzle on target and end the mortality of whatever threatened her if it were so required.

The sound of Ares Base hummed in the background. The growing range of fabrication plants, the ones nearby and hundreds of meters distant, emitted a constant cacophony of rumbling, pounding, and hissed screeching of alloys being forged, all muffled through their heavy exterior walls.

Rangers chanted marching songs. Some of the voices were identifiably belonging to those in training. But many belonged to those whose initial training was complete, and they were on the pathway to speciality.

Machines revved and rumbled around the growing grid of roads in the area, some of them military, but most of them autonomous and on the task of moving goods and assisting the nearby dome-topped plantations and algae farms.

The most prominent sound was that of the nearby Pelican holding station twenty meters off the deck. Its troop bay open and two Rangers on their bellies stooped over sniper systems in the unfathomable event that John wouldn't be fast enough to stop whatever ill-will could possibly be executed.

Despite all of the sounds, distant and near, the ring made by their chosen platoon felt still and anxious. They were ready for the worst.

"Deja, we're set?" Miranda asked.

She hovered her hand over the stasis pod that gleamed the cold light of the blue-sky winter day back at her.

"Make contact with the pod, General, and we'll see."

Miranda declined her chin firmly, took a quick intact of breath, and then placed her hand onto the exposed control panel recessed into the man-sized device. Deja's fragment moved through Miranda's modified omni-tool chip and into the Prothean hardware, and Miranda took a long stride back.

The chill of the brisk daytime air swept around her legs in the dress, and Miranda fought the scowl that she instinctively desired to wear at the reminder once more of her level of personally perceived nudity and exposure.

If she were in a more private environment with one other person, then that particular sensation of exposure might entice her to a subtle lip bight of excitement. But, as it were, it only made her feel insecure.

A gentle hiss sounded, disrupting Miranda's thought, and her eyes sharpened. A seam appeared along the lateral edge of the stasis pod, and a heavier note of armour and weapon movement sounded as the Rangers' prepared for activity.

The top of the pod lifted upward, halted, then split in the middle and moved outward. Misty atmosphere rose from the exposed inners, and after a tense moment of silence, motley three-fingered hands grasped the sides of the pod.

A figure pulled itself up and out and straight over the edge of the pod where it landed on its hands and knees. Clicks and thuds of motion sounded with the exposing of the alien, and Miranda swung from her hips to show her palms held open and up in a stopping gesture at the Rangers as they all trained their sights on the newcomer.

She gave the expressionless helmets in the ring around her, John, and the freshly awakened Prothean a pensive glare that told them to take no specific action unless she or John ordered it. Miranda knew they understood the look, but none of them shifted their sights.

Again, the cold breeze brushed against her exposed skin and forced her heart rate higher. She took a slight step forward toward the alien and cleared her throat, "Ahem..."

It looked up at her, and she bit back a wince. It was the clear origin of the Collectors, and she felt a wave of conflict about their destruction in nuclear flame. Four eyes blinked as one, and its leathery skin wrinkled, exposing thin and long canines in an expression that Miranda interpreted as a snarl.

"I am Lieutenant General Miranda Lawson of the Praetorian armed forces. Welcome, Javik."

It narrowed all of its eyes at her dictation but showed no other signs of understanding of her words. Like her, it looked confused, and its eyes traversed her form several times over as though trying to decide why she was dressed how she was.

At that moment, if it indeed thought that, then Miranda would at least have one thing in common with it. Her lips flinched sideways in inner contention, and she tilted her head toward John. The Prothean followed the gesture with its eyes, and its snarl ebbed in a moment.

Its eyes blinked rapidly, and with an uncertain clumsiness, it pushed from the ground onto unsteady legs. It bared its teeth in a look between a snarl and horror, and a series of clicks, pops, and trills came from its maw in what was clearly its native speech.

Its tirade went for two minutes, and when it finished, silence settled again. The ornate red armour it wore marked it as a soldier and affirmed that the data about the individual being the military commander of the survivors was accurate.

Miranda's brow clenched, and her lips traversed from side to side on her face in unsatisfied thought. She kept her stance facing the Prothean but turned left from her hips to present her face and torso to John more openly. "What do we do-"

Her heart jumped into overdrive in a split second as her heightened senses combined the subtle sound of scuffing feet and the innate sixth sense that biologicals had for motion into the fact of the Prothean making a dive for her.

She spun to face the oncoming creature and lifted her left arm to present her forearm in front of her face as a shield against attack while her right fist closed just in front of her chin, ready to lash out.

But the Prothean was faster than its previous stumbling had prepared her for. Its' open left hand slipped through her defences and settled on the top of her chest. Its fingers curled around the lower slopes of her neck, but before it could have the hope of restricting her airway, Miranda was forcefully whisked behind a wall of armour.

John's right arm crossed between her and the Prothean, over the top of the alien's arm, and then pushed down and back against her chest to separate them. He wielded his DMR in just his left hand, and he drove the muzzle down into the top of the chest of the Protheans carapace and pushed down.

Miranda stumbled and rolled on the tarmac, her dress flipping, twisting, and flying around her hips with the motion. Any thoughts of how she might look with her black lycra cut-offs bunched up around her groin from the sudden movement were the last thing on her mind.

Her Rangers' were far too focused on their Commander in Chief forcing the potential enemy into the ground with the business end of a high calibre rifle to remotely place visual interest in her state of affairs.

She came back to her feet just as the first understandable syllables emerged from the Prothean. It gasped angrily and in surprise as it hit the tarmac hard and with a thunk, "Master Chief!"

John stopped dead, and he tilted his helmet slightly. Miranda knew that he was glancing at her, but with him wearing a helmet and her not, they couldn't confer, nor could they make eye contact.

"You are the weapon of the Apparition... I expected you..." The Prothean suddenly trailed off and quickly looked around, with its words now spoken in English with an accent steeped in tonality that sounded like it had stepped right out of South Africa.

Its' eyes flittered across the wall of black armour in a ring around them, and confusion washed across its features. Slowly it looked back at Miranda as she tugged her dress straight and turned to face the nearest Ranger with her hands lifted palms out.

The Ranger swiftly unslung their BR55N and tossed it to her, and Miranda collected it from the air with both hands and shouldered it before training it on the Prothean. The Ranger withdrew their sidearm without pause and resumed their previous target.

Miranda stepped to the left of John and pointed the muzzle directly at the top of the Protheans' cranium. No matter how fast the creature was and how liable she now thought it to surprise her, she was confident that it wasn't faster than the armour piercing round chambered in the weapon or her reaction time needed to pull the trigger.

If it moved aggressively, then fragments of its skull and brain would be freezing to the ice-dry tarmac in moments.

As though sensing that fact or just being smart enough to see the obvious, the Prothean carefully manoeuvred its hands up and splayed its fingers wide. It was not just in a compromising position, it was entirely compromised, and it knew it.

"I needed to make physical contact to learn your language...." It began, its tone becoming uncertain. "You're Human...." It looked at Miranda, then frowned up at the silent Spartan with his muzzle far closer to it than Miranda's. "Why has the Apparition.... Cortana's guardian... Chosen to help Humans, not the rightful masters of the galaxy?"

John's helmet tilted further toward Miranda, and she narrowed her eyes briefly at him. It was a question posed soundlessly, and she hoped he understood. After a pause, he showed that he did, and he took a step back to be side-by-side with her and awkwardly grabbed the chin of his helmet with his right hand and twisted and pulled it up and over his head.

The Prothean's eyes narrowed briefly. The mottled leathery skin over the bridge of his face ridged in contention, and finally, after twisting his lips and releasing a sigh, he nodded, "I did not expect you to go to the Humans before releasing me."

Miranda's brow coalesced over the top of her rifle. Sensing that the Prothean wasn't going to try his luck doing anything again, she lifted her neck to move her sight away from the rifle and shared a confounding look with John again. As far as she could tell, Javik, the Prothean, seemed entirely ignorant of John being Human too.

'If only his AI had listed a full evaluation of the Prothean's in her message or her data package...' Miranda thought cautiously.

"I'm Human. My duty was to Earth first," John explained, despite his actions since arriving not entirely fitting that picture.

If anything, in Miranda's mind, his actions had been more about finding his way back to specifically his Spartans before he'd discovered that he was truly stranded here.

Since then, in the quiet times of the night and their slow conversations, his musings had been about unravelling his ideologies toward where he belonged.

She felt no small amount of confusion in the discussions bringing her about to sharing a similar ideology toward protecting the ideologies of freedom of thought and action, rather than Humanity as a singular.

The discussions had naturally helmed her as the instigator and questioner nine out of ten times. She found that as many thoughts that she posed to him, she posed the same to herself and drove her introspection in new directions thanks to her further exposure to Xeno elements.

The Protean- Javik, if Cortana's naming of him had been accurate, clicked his tongue humourlessly. He sighed a sound-alike to a grumble and scowled deeply again while taking another slight turn to look at the Rangers around him and the cold brisk sky above.

"....You're- You are not on Eden Prime," Miranda offered slowly. "This is Praetoria... You wouldn't know it," She continued as she gained confidence and resolution. "We've brought you out of stasis to ask about your experience fighting the Reapers, we-"

"-They're here!" Javik growled loudly with a quick step toward her.

John likewise took a small step toward Javik, and the Prothean set its weight back and froze on the spot. He glowered at both of them for a long moment before snarling through his words, "You waited to awake me until the Reapers arrived? You are fools! There will be nothing that you can do."

"On the contrary," Miranda scoffed in false humour. She smirked at the Spartan before giving the Prothean a raised brow, "We are sure that we can beat them. It's just the cost that we're trying to balance out more neatly. We thought that with your experience, you might be able to help with that."

The Prothean's head traversed between them several times in quick succession with his eyes narrowed antagonistically and his jaw clenched. Once more, he looked beyond them and scanned the soldiers that were silently keeping watch over them.

Then he finally looked up to the dropship hovering above before he started to cock his head to take in the sounds of their military industry.

Miranda and John waited for the newcomer to take it all in for several minutes. Finally, with a resigned scowl, Javik grunted something under his breath and nodded, "Did you save any of my warriors?"

The two Praetorians glanced between one another, and John resolved to reply simply. "No, we recovered you and two-hundred other individuals whose pods identify them as scientific personnel."

Javik's eyes widened, and his face hardened, but before he let out what looked to be a building declaration of anger, he clenched his jaw and fists and internalised it. Long minutes stretched in silence again before the Prothean unclenched his fasts and sighed, "Then there is at least hope that my people have a future."

Miranda pressed her lips together in a thoughtful pout briefly. The pods all had the occupant's identity listed by rank, name, and field of expertise, but nowhere was gender mentioned, according to Deja at least.

But the Protheans assuredness made Miranda think that the Protheans likely had little gender divide in their fields of capability and service and that there was probably a likelihood to his words being correct.

She wriggled her pout from her lips and resumed a neutral expression, only now lowering her borrowed rifle further. "They do- Now.... Will you help us?"

Javik nodded once, "Your enemy is my enemy, my empire is gone, and yours is here...." He looked at John for a long moment with analytical eyes searching the Human's clenched jaw expression, "Your AI... She tried to help us fight and win, and we didn't listen enough..."

He nodded slowly with what Miranda thought to be an edge of anger on his expression. Sadness dappled it, and regret spoke through his tone, "I will listen this time. You are the leader here," He looked around the platoon again, finally landing on Miranda with a more curious expression.

Miranda was sure that Javik was trying to uncover how she could wield some kind of authority position. He'd made it clear that he thought in rigid lines of hierarchy, and Miranda's current dress at an attempt at a peaceful front was decidedly out of place, especially next to the armoured Spartan who had essentially been prophesied to the Protheans.

"This cycle looks better prepared than mine... The Apparitions' guardian is here..." He concluded sourly, finally looking back to John. "I will fight with you. I will ensure that my scientists work with yours if that is all I have to command."

John looked blankly at Javik in thought, and after a moment of matching the expression, Miranda took two shuffling sidesteps to pull herself into John's shadow. She kept her rifle pointed loosely at Javik and tilted her chin slightly toward John with her eyes doing most of the movement toward him.

His brow furrowed, and he quickly looked down at her to acknowledge her before looking back at Javik.

"We'll need to keep a detail on him... We still have Deja on the Geth, afterall..."

John nodded once with a declination of his chin, relieving Miranda that they were thinking in the same vein. "A full debriefing, first? Any ideas on who we'll put on his detail?"

He started to heft his helmet toward his head, then paused and pursed his lips. Miranda knew that he was challenging his intrinsic desire to communicate through his helmet link with the more charismatically noted variation of how she preferred to communicate with them verbally without commlink unless they were too distant to speak with in that manner.

He took a breath and looked around the circle of Rangers as though he could identify precisely which was which and who was who.

Miranda knew that he couldn't and that he was showing the face of leadership by looking at them all rather than just order the selected ones forward.

"Sargent Vael and Private Spi'tasa, front and centre!"

John's bark was followed by almost immediate sound and motion. Armour rustled, and boots clicked on the frozen tarmac as two Rangers emerged from the ranks on nearly opposite sides of the trio in the middle of the formation.

Miranda spared each a quick glance as they assembled behind John before he finally tore his eyes off Javik to face them.

Miranda copied his posture and position and searched for the two amongst her memories. She tried her best to stay up to date with all of them, but a thousand from First Battalion was a constant test of her people management skill, and there was no hope of spreading that further.

More often than not, she just tried to keep on top of the Lieutenants and Sargents and only learned the specifics or brushed up on the memory of the Corporals and Privates when they were directly under her.

Vael came to her mind first, and she placed him as one of their two local Quarians who had undergone the genome resequencing treatment also trialled on Tali.

He was a strict soldier and was more likely to hold his tongue than speak, with his speciality being in the field of a combat technician. Spi'tasa evaded her memory, though, and Miranda quickly judged that John's choice was for the fact that she was an Asari and that he was combining technical ability with biotic to cover more bases in watching Javik.

"Until I say otherwise, you're to keep an eye on the Prothean at all times. I also give you authority to use Deja to assist in your task, clear?"

The slightly taller of the two nodded, "Sapphire, Sir."

Miranda's lips curved at the cultural difference in the Quarians similar expression to a Human one, with Sapphire being one of the most common kinds of crystal on Rannoch and the phrases relating to that being passed down through the generations.

John turned back to Javik with his eyes narrowed and his brow clenched. Miranda pursed her lips in a thin pout as she likewise thought about what to ask next.

"Do you have biotic abilities?"

Javik nodded the affirmative, and Miranda stored the interest that it gave her that his species likewise used the same head gestures as every other species thus far encountered.

"What is your combat speciality?"

"Close quarters engagements."

"Will you submit your armour while on our planet?"

Javik paused this time, and his face went through a wave of different emotions before he finally nodded.

"Good," John acknowledged and waved his two elected soldiers forward with his lifted right palm. "Escort him with us. We'll take him to one of the mess halls for observation and debriefing about his combat experience with the Reapers."

Vael and Spi'tasa moved left and right of John and Miranda and flanked Javik, staying several meters from him on either side. Vael tilted his head to their right when Javik looked at him cautiously, and the Prothean got the drift and turned in that direction.

John nodded several times in quick succession to affirm the positive action, pulled his helmet back over his head, and stepped out ahead of Miranda in the gestured direction.

The Rangers fell away from his chosen path, and the two chosen ones marched after him, with Javik moving with more caution and dubiousness between them.

"Will we wake the rest of them?" Miranda called before John could fall from earshot. She shivered now that the excitement was over, and the cold air was once more breaking through the hardly warming dress she wore.

"When you're back in your kit," John called back over his shoulder before leaving the circle of Rangers.

Miranda wrapped both her arms around her chest and alternated in rubbing her bare biceps and outer arms. She smirked a bashful smile and nodded to herself. While he'd been portioning all of his verbal focus on Javik, he'd also been watching her state of chill increase and making silent note of it.

'Am I to be flattered, or just find that typical? Hmmm,' She made her smirk into an ironically grouchy smile and increased the pace of rubbing her arms.

Now that the excitement of the new contact was departing and her heart rate was slowing, she was more and more regretting the agreement to dress in this manner, especially with the display of it having no apparent effect on Javik.

"Rangers!" She called, mustering herself above the chill.

The platoon straightened with a stomp of boots.

"Assist the research division with arranging the rest of the Prothean pods in the wargames suite. We'll thaw them out there."

"Yes, Sir!" A single voice called loudly, and in quick order, the forty-eight soldiers assembled into a marching line and made off toward the research complex north of them. Miranda watched them go for a moment and gritted her teeth against the cold.

The moment of silence in her personal bubble made her retake stock of her circumstances, and her ironic smile turned back into a thoughtful pout.

Her interest in John made its way around her mind again. She struggled to put her finger on the precise why. Until recent months, it had been so easy to use her rationality to objectify and categorise every single social interaction that she had, and keep it all cold, practical, and mechanical.

But his presence in her life had exposed her deepest insecurities about her own sense of perfection and control. She knew that it had introduced an unexpected kind of relief into her heart that she wasn't the peak of what she had thought of as Human-perfect, or at least, not as near to it as she once thought.

Seeking to be that perfection with the suppression of her natural instincts and desires had cost her the freedom to relent.

Now, though, knowing so firmly that she wasn't that. Knowing that the original goal of perfect was untenable and ultimately unimportant.

Knowing in the grand scheme of what she could really become to other people, above and beyond what she could become to her own sense of control; she found her less rationalised instincts emerging and flourishing under the supervision of her guarded expressions.

John fought for those he loved, even if he didn't word it that way. He also fought for his duty, but the way that he had described his Spartans and Cortana made it clear to Miranda that his comrades were what was truly at the heart of his ethics.

And without them, he had needed knew ones, and Cortana had given him that directive in the temple of Athame back on Thessia.

He was stalwart against whatever threat presented itself, even more so than her, and in a much more reserved way he was far more hopeful than she was. It shone to Miranda, and she found herself drawn to his silent, secure, and absolute sense of forward motion.

She couldn't tell which had come first. Had it been the intrigue and developing interest in his subtly displayed ethics and character? Or the more intrinsically instinctive attraction that seemed to mingle the logical with the rest of what made her experience more human than her logic could reasonably determine.

Miranda bit her lower lip bashfully, shivered again, and then hugged her body more tightly and performing an about-face that sent the hem of her dress twirling, making her shiver again. She struck her legs out to get back to her new quarters, a habitation module stacked atop John's.

"Stupid thing..." She griped, releasing one hand from her arm to pat down her dress and hurry onward in the most covered state that she could.

She let her thoughts of exactly what had triggered her interest in John wane. Miranda knew that the next time she spoke with her twin that Oriana wouldn't give her the chance to ignore the topic.

October 11

Sun light bathed John's forehead in heat, casting his eyes in shadow and making his mouth a firm line.

He lifted his chin to look toward it and raised his right hand to shade his eyes, and his lips downturned with a nod.

He was impressed by the quality of the build, not that he'd expected anything less from Praetoria's scientists, engineers, and Deja with her robotic control and digital inclusion of Cortana's eclectically acquired knowledge.

He pressed his lips into a subtly bemused smile and nodded to himself. His eyes panned back to ground level and he looked around. The likeness of Horizon surrounded him, not that he had any personal familiarity with the planet or its colony. Of course, it wasn't a real sun, just a part of the simulation of the Wargames suite.

But according to inputted data, it was a like for like match of one of the colonial farming towns.

Stacked habitation, processing, and science modules formed courtyards and pathways, and grassy knolls overlooked fields of wheat-like crops.

John knew that those fields were only partially 'real,' and that they met the edge of the simulation at some point, and that the photosynthetic walls extended the mirage with clever holographic projections.

He rolled his shoulders and nodded and found himself feeling oddly free. Far more so than he had expected at the acquiescence to the request of his squad leaders. Being free of his Mjolnir had his skin feeling somehow cold and yet not, but with the way that the armour took its own weight and then some, he didn't feel lighter, only different.

A part of him longed to feel the embrace of his suit again, even though he'd only been removed from it for several hours. It seemed almost like a part of him, but he wanted to fight that urge.

If he survived what was to come with the war with the Reapers, if he got older, and if Praetoria survived to achieve growth, then there would be good odds that he wouldn't be on the frontlines at some point.

That meant that he wouldn't need the Mjolnir, and it would almost be a waste to wear it. The long term recognition of changing circumstances combined with John's instinctive desire to challenge himself and win made him push through the silent longing to return to his suit.

Instead, he wore what his Rangers wore, currently minus the helmet. He turned to regard the two hundred troops crowded into a semi-ordered pack between where he was inspecting the open expanse of the suite and the large bay doors that broke the illusion and went into the outer external shell of the construction.

Javik was watching from back in the loading area with his two guards present. His face was drawn in contention at something that John wasn't aware of.

They all had their helmets tucked under their arms like he did, exposing their myriad faces. Some were excited, some were resolute, some were anxious, but they all had steel in their eyes. John scanned them longer still before nodding.

Their D20 Herons would carry two hundred Rangers at a time, so their training simulations would start at the same scale. As for their enemies...

"Deja, project enemy combatants Alpha through Delta."

The air next to John fizzed as projectors worked, and the next moment four figures emerged from nothingness. John took a step back and to the side, so he was more between his Rangers and the simulated enemy. He looked back at his Rangers again to read them.

The expressions were now a mix between concerned, contrite, and a strange mix of eagerness, with many looking back at him with nods of approval. The squads chosen drew from all of the battalions who had finished training with at least one individual from First Battalion inserted into each to give them the benefit of the currently most trained and experienced members of Praetoria's armed forces.

John pursed his lips in time with another nod of approval and then looked back at the simulated enemies.

"Enemy form Alpha," John pointed with his fingers held side-by-side stiffly and his hand positioned vertically at the smallest of the enemy. It was a slice of horror, even for him. "This is a Flood infection form. They are vulnerable to all forms of attack, but they are fast, and contact with one in this simulation means death. They will hide, utilise ambush tactics, and surprise you. You WILL cover one another at all times."

The Rangers' heads all bobbed in understanding. Even the Krogan, who were increasingly enjoying their role in the militarised to-be republic, kept in line with the behavioural status quo.

John's lips twitched at the thought; he'd need to have another meeting with Urdnot Groden in short order to get his rundown of how the Krogan were going and what else might need to be done to ensure smooth integration and operation.

"Deja, simulation Alpha-1."

A simulation of a UNSC Marine, wearing a chest piece like Miranda's, but in olive green, formed in front of the infection form. The Marine brought his rifle to bear on the enemy and fired, but the form slipped, rolled, and squirmed fluidly from left to right before bounding up and wrapping the Marines neck with its tentacles.

The Marine fell and convulsed. Within seconds his extremities morphed and swelled as the infection burrowed into his chest through his neck. The simulation paused at the grim recreation of what had happened to hundreds of Marines in New Mombasa.

His Rangers wouldn't be fighting Flood, but John had no accurate scans or readings on Reaper combat forms, and their battle style seemed eerily similar to the Flood. He hoped that the Reapers combat forms were not as brutal or effective as the Flood as well, but training against a greater enemy only prepared his troops all the more.

The simulated death vanished, and John pointed his open palm at the next variation.

"Human-infected combatant," He explained loudly. They will use whatever weapons available to them, and they are much, much stronger than a normal Human. They are not armoured, but their body is resistant to more damage than a living body is, aim for the legs to immobilise them or the mid-chest to kill them. They jump in flanking attacks and close to melee range whenever they get the chance."

He pointed to the next form, a much more prominent figure with a saurian head lolling down its side. "Sangheili combat form, these were usually present with the Human forms. They are equipped with energy shielding-" He paused and looked across his soldiers seriously. "Not kinetic barriers- Energy shielding, like mine," He reiterated.

Many of the faces flinched in a mix of understanding and curiosity. John nodded at the mixed reactions, glad that there were no outbursts and that his soldiers under his and Miranda's training, with ample help, of course, were maturing into consummate professionals.

"Kinetic barriers block only high-velocity attacks, E.M. shields block any form of attack and are more damage resistant than barriers." He lifted the MA5D he wore on his back and fired from the hip at the enemy.

BRAK-BRAK-BRAK-BRAK

His gun declared its fury, and many of the Rangers flinched away as his shots ricocheted off the shimmering field that lit up around the alien form. In an actual combat situation, John would never have fired at a shielded enemy in such proximity to his soldiers in such a fashion unless there was no better option.

But, as it were, with his rounds being simulated, the enemy being simulated, and the results of the ricochet being simulated, he felt no concern for the example that imposed the seriousness of electromagnetic shielding in his Rangers minds.

"They can only take so much energy before going offline, when they do. This form is vulnerable in the same way as the Human form, but is typically faster and stronger. Their larger biomass also gives them a marked increase in strategic decision making, and they will engage at greater ranges."

All of the Rangers' faces had turned stoney and serious, with their former excitement ebbing with the display and the dawning realisation that their Commander in Chief had fought these enemies in real life.

He narrowed his eyes while inspecting them and nodded once more at the display of the Rangers expressions going from each simulated enemy to the next.

"Lastly, we're using the scans and data we have on the Collector Drones that we encountered on their station. Like how they engaged in that situation, they will use long-range assault tactics and aerial flanking manoeuvres. Some will have biotic barriers, and some won't, and they will be equipped with a mix of their particle beam rifles and rapid-fire. Being a traditional life-form..." John narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips.

The Collectors weren't quite traditional.... Not with being genetically manipulated from having been Protheans into the pure combat insectoids that they now were. But their biological function and reliance on a working heart and brain made them fit the bill.

"They are susceptible to injury and damage to the heart and brain. But they remain more capable with a serious injury to their appendages than other forms of organic life. Their barriers are no weaker on their heads than on their chest, so focus fire on centre mass if you don't have time to be selective."

John rotated to fully face the Rangers. With the brief introduction to their foes over, they all tore their eyes off the projected enemy and looked at him. He was their warrior-leader and would command from the front whenever he could, which meant he had to train with them whenever he could.

When he'd declared as much to the Lieutenants of First Battalion, they had cautiously asked that he do so without his power armour. Their logic revolved around them simply not being able to keep up with him in the suit and that his example while in the suit was completely unattainable for them.

He'd listened, brow clenched in thought, and nodded at the end as they'd expressed their beliefs with pragmatic caution and respect. Their logic was sound, and he was externally happy to comply with the request.

Internally, he still pushed back the desire for his second skin, as well as wondered how they would react to his still naturally elevated capabilities.

"Simulation One will involve invading this town and clearing out the hostiles, and attempting to protect any civilians you encounter. Civilians who are taken by Flood forms become Flood forms, understood?"

"Sir!" They chanted. Their voices mixed in a high and low pitch rumble, from Salarian to Krogan and male to female.

"You are already assigned to your fireteams, squads, and platoons. Refer to your leaders for movements and strategies. If you see a gap in the enemy's defence, movements, or some other weakness, and your leader does not, then you bring that to their attention. I will be acting as Platoon Commander for Third Platoon. We'll be entering the simulation from the field, Platoon One will enter from this point, and Platoons Two and Four will enter from further north around the field toward the river. The simulation is over when we have neutralised all of the enemy presence and secured the town. Before simulation two commences, and we have to defend the town from invasion. Losses taken in simulation one will carry over into simulation two- So cover each other, remember your squad training."

Nods passed around as all the faces glanced from one to another quickly to affirm their actions. John allowed a slight smirk and narrowed his eyes.

"Assuming I survive simulation one, I will demote myself to an acting private-" He paused with the low nervous chuckle that passed through the group. "-To see how our commanders go without guidance."

The chuckles turned more into awkward grumbles, and John kept his subtle smirk present as he nodded. "Deja, guide them to their starting points."

Holographic arrows assembled themselves in mid-air, pointing in the directions that John had described, coloured red, blue, green, and white for the four different platoons. "Platoon One, remain at your present location. Platoon Two, follow the red arrows. Platoon Three, follow the blue arrows. Platoon Four, follow the white arrows."

The assembly broke apart into double file rows, and the Rangers went about following Deja's announced dictation. John watched them move for a moment before grunting a sound of affirmation to himself and pulling his ODST helmet over his head.

He blinked rapidly as he analysed the unfamiliar but very similar display. The lack of shield display made him pause for a moment, but he conquered the tactical changes to his considerations in short order and, with thought and blink, switched on the VISR mode.

His platoon lit with blue outlines, and each of the other platoons lit with green, all with the individual names and ranks suspended faintly enough to not be a distraction right above their heads. "Third Platoon, fall out!"

He marched his soldiers through the field of chest-high wheat, the simulation fooling his senses almost entirely beyond the knowledge that it was a simulation. He pivoted to look over his shoulder twice and made tactical note of the fact that his was the only head that easily cleared the top of the crop.

They marched for another few minutes before the trail of holographic arrows stopped on a floating diamond. True to their training, they grouped in their fire teams and squads, and most of them took a knee. Their assembly crushed the crop around them and made a clear patch, illuminating them more fully with the false-sun no longer contesting the crop to light them.

John lowered into a crouch and looked up at the township that was to be their target. He knew no more about it than his Rangers. Beyond knowing they would be facing a substantial enemy force and what kind of prefabricated structures there would be.

The entire point of the simulation was to put them through engagements with minimal intel to prepare them for potentially liquid situations in live combat, and him having a heads up to guide them only threatened to remove their own problem-solving capabilities.

They waited another ten minutes before the sky flickered due to the entrance bay doors closing and momentarily upsetting the illusion.

"Commence simulation in 5- 4- 3- 2- 1- COMMENCE." Deja's dulcet tone heightened into a baritone declaration.

As though the suite had been noisy before, it now became deathly silent. John didn't know if it genuinely was any more silent than it had been, but the light breeze that made the wheat sway only seemed to add to the sense of silence.

Howls emerged from the near distance that he was all too familiar with and he glanced over his platoon again.

"Staggered skirmish line, right and left flanks move up ahead of the middle of the formation. Slow."

The squads moved. With steps more fluid and purposeful than the ones they'd taken here, they broke down into single-file lines and wove through the wheat. John moved down the middle with one fireteam immediately at his six while two others flanked him in spread out lines betwixt the brown wheat.

They moved slowly and carefully for ten long minutes. A single member from each squad would stop periodically to scan the hillside adorned with habitation modules above them before announcing no contacts and continuing on just as cautiously.

When the left and right edges of their formation finally stopped two rows back from the edge of the field where the hillside ascended at a thirty-degree angle, John took a knee. "Report."

A confident, feminine tone answered swiftly, and John's eyes shot to the ID on his HUD. "No contacts, several lines of shrubs on the hill," Forti described.

John pursed his lips and nodded. He had no idea what the Flood and Collector positions would be inside the township. Deja's vague description of the simulation told him that simulated civilians would hold up inside buildings.

A distant and all too human cry sounded as though triggered by his thoughts, and John knew that it wouldn't be any of his Rangers'.

"Right flank squad, move up the hill and take cover in the shrubs. Left flank squad, go to the top of the hill and get us eyes. Squads to their rear, take up their positions." John ordered and watched on his motion tracker as the green dots of his platoon followed his directive.

His thought connected him to the broader Company channel, "This is Third Platoon at the base of the southern hill, our sit-rep is clear. How copy?"

"First Platoon, eyes on a swarm of infection forms inside the towns first courtyard. We're flanking the road into town." A Batarian answered.

"Second Platoon, taking positions on the water towers to the east for overwatch."

John looked to his right and found the towers just poking out above the wheat and set slightly higher than the hillside that two of his squads were climbing. Keening his senses onto it, he spied several humanoid shapes scaling the sides of the five towers.

"Just saw two human non-coms get switched by the infection forms," The Human lieutenant heading up Second Platoon announced.

"Swarm of the two combat forms visible in the township from the north-east road, Chief. Orders?" The Fourth Platoon commander answered.

John's lips pinched in contention for a plan for only a moment. They had minimal intel on the enemy, drastically needed more, and could potentially destabilise them before trying to breach the town.

"First Platoon, engage the infection forms. When you're set up, Platoon Two, after First Platoon engages, take out any you can from your position, which will draw them past us. Fourth Platoon, once they start moving, you push in and set up a defensive line on that road."

Blinks of acknowledgement answered on John's HUD, and then the familiar staccato of the MA5D broke the deathly silence. Howls answered nearly instantly, and the gunfire intensified as what sounded like all of First Platoon opened up.

"Movement! Movement! Movement!" Forti declared from atop the hill with her squad of ten spread out underneath the nearest habitation module overlooking the crops.

"Beta Squad, got eyes?" John grunted.

"Affirmative."

"Open up," John ordered.

Heavy thuds of selective fire commenced from closer as the squad taking cover in the shrubs halfway up the hill commenced their part of the plan. Seconds later, more distant shots joined the fray as the two or three squads of Second Platoon atop the water towers added their fire to the mix across the township.

New howls sounded from closer, and John straightened marginally to get a clearer view above the wheat. The rest of his squads still in the crops remained statue still around him.

Lurching sickening motion came tumbling around the corner of the habitation module that Forti and her team were posted beneath, and they stampeded toward the shrubs that were struggling to hide Beta Squad.

"Delta, Echo, execute."

The two squads closest to the edge of the field fired from crouching positions up the hill, and bullets shredded the first wave of lurching Human shapes, sending limbs and ragged flesh flying.

A second wave crested the hilltop, this time making their way directly down the hill to the fields. Unlike the first, this wave moved with more ferocity and in greater numbers as they practically spilled down the hillside. "Beta, go quiet. Alpha, wait until they're all at the bottom. Delta and Echo, fire and pull back if they reach the bottom."

Blinks answered him in his HUD again, and more and more flailing yellowed limbs joined the charge down the hill. Screams rose into the air, and a sudden surge of infection forms flowed out through one of the open windows of the module above them and rolled down the hill.

"Open fire."

John followed his own directive, and all of his squad around him stood and fired onto the hillside, now alive with frantic movement. Larger forms joined the flood of activity at the top of the hill, and bullets pitched off their shields, and the next instant, splashes of blue plasma sizzled through the air toward Delta and Echo.

"Delta, Echo, pull back, stay low."

The fire at the edge of the field reduced as the two squads posted there began to pull back, and John swung his MA5D onto his back to replace it with the DMR in his grip. He sighted on the centre of mass of the bulbous chest of the Sangheili form.

Five quick shots caused the shields to glimmer, fizz and burst with a spiderweb of energy, and the sixth shot tore a hole cleanly through its chest, and it toppled to the ground amidst its bestial comrades.

The first wave of charging Human-forms hit the base of the hill with such desperation and speed that the front two lines of them all toppled under the weight of those behind.

John checked his motion tracker and saw that ahead of him and his squad were clear sightlines on the enemy, with Delta and Echo pulling back quickly while firing through the wheat and shredding it in the process.

"Frags, one each, fire straight through the grass after." John dictated on the squad only channel and followed his own advice. He pulled one of the three frags he carried off the back of his hip, primed it, waited a moment, and then tossed it in an overhead throw at the surging tide of Flood.

While his comrades did the same, he switched to the platoon channel. "Fourth Platoon, what's your situation?"

John didn't need to ask for that of First and Second yet, with the volume of each platoon fire easily discernable and explosive thuds joining the fray between the near-distant BRAK-BAK-BARK and THUD-THUD-THUD.

His squads' grenades went off with a shower of dirt and metal fragments and sent limbs and torso's of shredded Flood spinning through the air.

In the same instant, the voice commanding Fourth Platoon answered. "No resistance; they've all moved in your direction. We're moving to evac all the civvies in this section to a more defensible module."

The skin over John's nose ridged in a wince of indecision for a moment. The pressure of the Flood pushing down the hill was suddenly a lot heavier than he had expected it to be with four different attack points on the township, and suddenly he was viewing civilian losses as less severe than losses of his forces.

He clenched his jaw before answering, "Stay on it." He switched channels again while still firing through the wheat singlehanded, while the other retrieved a second frag and lobbed it underhanded through the now utterly destroyed field at the looming rabid horde clawing over their fallen brethren.

Their numbers made their losses seem forgettable, and no amount of John's own personal speed or strength was going to help his Rangers without more firepower. "Second Platoon, what's your sightline like on us?"

"One tower has a clear line of sight. The other four are blocked by the hillside. If you pull northeast, we'll have a clearer line."

That was answer enough for John, and taking a risk and knowing how Flood liked to focus on the closest threat, he took a step forward while ordering, "Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, move northeast through the field and take up positions on the deck. Alpha and Beta, stay quiet until we've got more distance. I'll draw them off your retreat."

Suddenly John's joke about not surviving the first round seemed more possible, and he snorted an ironic laugh to himself while swapping out the magazine of his DMR and tearing the shields off three more Sangheili forms halfway down the hill.

The kinetic force of the shots and shock of their shields vanishing caused the creatures to trip and roll, tripping their Human counterparts in the process and causing a small pile-up of flailing limbs.

He switched his rifle back for the MA5D and took off at a run straight toward the closing line of combat forms. They cried blood-curdling screams of desperate rage at him as he entered the small no-mans-land that his platoon had formed in minutes.

The sight of him charging them seemed to egg the forms into a greater rage, and they all focused their attention to him in a charge that had them shoving against one another.

John arrested his momentum in a skid and sprung to his left, moving due west and in the opposite direction that he'd just ordered his squad to retreat in.

The flood struggled to move with the same deft control that he did, and he spun on the spot while firing, sending half a magazine directly into the face of the closest form and turning it into a murky green-yellow pulp.

He faced forward again while swiping his last grenade off his belt, and rather than toss it, he simply dropped it mid-stride and continued.

The thud sounded seconds later, and matter spattered into the back of his temporary ODST kit. "Alpha, Beta, open up for one mag, then go silent again."

His orders were heeded, and more shots filled the air. The screaming changed pitch to what John could only imagine was confusion as the rear flank of his pursuers were raked with bullets.

"Charlie, Delta, Foxtrot; open up if you're in position."

The fire from the hill ceased, and bullets zipped through the field again, creating a new no-mans-land. With the flow of fresh forms over the hill ceased, the small horde of shapes getting out-manoeuvred in the field was all that was left.

As the Flood pitched after the squads who'd retreated, they entered the sightlines of the squads' further north-west on the water towers, and bullets rained down upon them and tore the shields off the Sangheili forms in short order before the combined fire finished reducing the rest into grotesque piles of once-flesh.

Silence claimed the immediate vicinity, and John took the opportunity to release a breath of tension. He hadn't expected the simulation to begin with such intensity, 'I'll have to thank Deja for the reminder...' He thought.

He glanced to his internal clock and grunted mildly at the countdown showing that it had only been five minutes since the beginning of the simulation. Like all battles he'd ever been in, seconds could feel like minutes or even hours.

"Check your ammo, move up the hill and take positions around the modules."

The squads moved like extensions of him. Their pace was that of typical organics, but the only thing that John could think of making them better was if in some distant future they could undergo augmentation, should they volunteer.

"First Platoon, need assistance?" He looked in the direction that he could still hear gunshots coming from.

"Affirmative. We've got the big ones and the Collectors. They're using the infection forms as distractions to set up overlapping fire."

The Spartan nodded while rushing up the hill with his soldiers on his flank. He checked his motion tracker for more enemies as he reached the top, and Forti and her squad crawled out from beneath the module that had hidden them and housed the initial forms to descend the hill.

"Copy, we'll be there in five mikes."

'Going to be a tougher sim than I expected...' He mused while taking stock of the empty courtyard that they were looking into.

EDS (Earth Dating system) – October 16, 2185
Location: Ceres – Sol-Link Company headquarters
Stellar Orbit: Sol

"This is excellent- Really- Innovative- Exciting- The future- I- It's everything I dreamed it could be..." Aether craggy lips split into a broad smile, and he shook his head in an erratic show of enthusiasm. "My company will be at Praetoria's disposal, Researcher."

Flo's brows clenched in momentary amusement as they climbed her pale-blue forehead. She lifted one brow higher and lowered the other slightly, crossed her arms over her overalls and cocked a hip while glancing at her companion, Captain Debogande commanding the Hyperion.

Aether's grin slipped, and he forced himself to appear more controlled while patting down his pale grey suit. "Sol-Link has been surviving Alliance strangulation- You see-"

Aether explained quickly, his jaw moving as fast as ever when he was more in his comfort zone. He nodded and shot Debogande a knowing look as though he were catching a thought before it could process.

"Yes- Yes, I know, Admiral Xu has helped keep my research under wraps... Hackett has had something to do with that too... But it was never going to develop how I dreamed- Although...."

"Although?" Flo queried in interest. She looked at Debogande again to find him halfway between bemused and confused. He was a British man in his mid-forties with a closely cropped mop of curly dark hair, a narrow jaw, and a nose that looked to have been broken several times with excellent, but not perfect, repair work done to keep the fine bridge straight.

Aether nodded and smirked coyly as though Flo and Debogande were keeping up with whatever line of thought was occupying his mind. "In all seriousness... It didn't take much for the Alliance to break down." He gave them both a knowing look. "Xu was quick to get out as soon as she had her logistical lines sorted out. I am willing to bet if I had successfully finished this research without the threat of the Reapers or otherwise, she'd have taken it and made a splinter group."

Debogande snorted a derisive laugh and smirked, "You're probably right... The Alliance has a nice frontage-"

"-Had," Aether interrupted.

Debogande tilted his head in acquiescence and smirked, "Had," He agreed. "They had a nice frontage.... But old politics have been waiting to boil out for a long time. The media tries to convince everyone that old issues are in the past, but they're not-"

"-Which was why you were going to Andromeda," Aether interrupted again with a knowing smile.

Debogande repeated the routine, "True. We were looking for a new beginning... Looks like we found it, though."

Aether nodded and pivoted slightly away from the duo to his left, toward the broad glass tubed exterior that they were within. Beyond, only just visible amidst the darkness of space from refracted light was the Hyperion. Flo and Debogande turned with him and regarded the same sight with more pensive expressions.

They had only just boarded Ceres station, being in the docking tube as they were where Aether had come to meet them personally. The other scientists of their mission were still within the Pelican, double-checking that all of the hardware of manufactured Slipspace filament crystals were secure and in good order before rolling them out.

They remained in silence for another minute until Aether shook his head in an expression of humility and disbelief. He affirmed his body language with his rapid voice, "To see it... Your ship emerging from-" He halted, narrowed his eyes, and nodded quickly, as though confirming that he agreed with the Praetorian and thusly UNSC title. "-From Slipspace. It's the next breakthrough in space travel-" His eyes darted to Flo's, and he looked suddenly eager. "I have read that Omega is no longer present in its previous location, and it isn't to be found."

Flo smiled innocently and blinked. It wasn't a secret that Praetorians, for the most part, were emigrated Omega denizens who had volunteered to serve in the new framework of Praetoria. But it wasn't advertised either.

"So, you moved Omega in Slipspace?" He smirked and narrowed his eyes in good humour. His smirk broadened back into a craggy smile a beat later, and he nodded, "And now Omegatarians are Praetorians, is that it?"

Flo's smile remained innocent as she shrugged, and Debogande snorted another laugh. "Absolutely bloody crazy, right? Who'd believe that story?"

"No one..." Aether smiled back. "Everyone in the galaxy was measuring everything by revenue and government bonds, and thinking whoever had more economic growth would have a more powerful military apparatus.... But Omega had the resources, it just needed the planet to live on and some kind of economic structure to support its citizens as they worked- Looks like someone gave them that."

"Looks like," Debogande agreed. "Looks like there's a chance that this research station might be interested in something similar."

Aether's brows climbed his forehead while his mouth grew into a humoured smile. "You mean joining an organisation-"

"-Military structure," Flo interrupted with a testing expression on her pursed lips.

Aether nodded as though that was what he'd meant, "-A new military with innovation as its only goal in what might be the only confirmed safe location in the galaxy."

"What about your deal with the ex-Alliance fleets?" Flo asked, crossing her arms more tightly.

Aether waved his right hand dismissively, "I'll still do that... But you," He tilted his brow at Debogande. "While we're working here, I've got a list of the family of all of my employees; they're on Earth and Luna. I want you to go get them and move them to Praetoria while we work."

"Hnn," The captain of the Hyperion grunted. "Alright, seems like a fair enough deal... I'll need to have them vetted-"

Aether swung his hand again, "-Of course. They're all safe... But of course." His lips curled, and his eyes sparkled, "So, I suppose we should get started. Researcher," He identified Flo again with his quietly excited grin. "You might be surprised by how advanced our research is."

"I might be," Flo agreed, with her eyes softening and her mouth going back to an innocent smile. In truth, the fact that Sol-Link had been studying Slipspace at all was a revolutionary surprise. No one beyond them, apparently, had even dreamt of the technology until the arrival of the Master Chief.

"This way," Aether continued finally.

He turned away from the glass wall and tore his eyes from the Hyperion several dozen kilometres distant. They navigated orderly broad passages with dozens of laboratories branching off them until arriving in the central particle accelerator lab.

This room appeared to be the crux of the entire station hexagonal in shape with a twenty diameter circle of chrome tubing mounted just off the floor in the centre.

Several grated stairs climbed over the ring and into further sets of apparatus in the middle. A dozen white overall-wearing men and women ran various tests with directed energy beams into glass-like materials.

Aether read Flo's curious eyes quietly while they traversed the room. When she finally looked to his cybernetic white eyes with evident respect, he smirked without a trace of humility.

"Looks like you're definitely on the right track, Mr. Musk."

He tilted his head again and flourished an open palm as an exaggerated gesture of thanks.

"Now, let's get you fully up to speed."

EDS (Earth Dating system) – October 22, 2185
Location: Aite
Stellar Orbit: Typhon

"They would leave it in ruins!" Jack snarled through his aggravated vibrating tone of ire. He'd repeated similar declarations of rage since the remnants of his fast attack fleet had returned to Aite.

First, the Master Chief and his traitorous friends had made a foolhardy invasion down to the surface, only to manage to escape and, in the process, destroy one of the largest production plants on the planet. In so doing, they'd ravaged his most potentially dangerous fleet.

Secondly, the Turians arrived and shredded the remaining ships in the system with creatively staggered light speed engagements and disengagement. Their victory was followed by decisive orbital kinetic strikes. Unlike how Shepard had appeared to be hesitant about such a tactic, the Turians' were not.

If Cerberus had any surviving remnants on the planet, they were almost certainly not worth going back for.

His fists clenched in the darkness of his command chamber. The glowing ashes on his cigarette were crushed in the gesture, and Jack flicked out his wrists angrily to cast the destroyed carcinogenic to the floor. A sound between a cry, a grunt, and a groan rumbled out of him as he fought to control the anger that was more and more often trying to come forth.

There was a point amidst Miranda's betrayal where he'd actually been hopeful that she was betraying him for the right reasons.

The Master Chief was Human, after all. But that had only taken another month to be proven contrarily regarding the direction of her newfound position.

"Praetoria," He breathed the name like poison. "Guardians of what?" He snorted derisively around his words. His lip curled after a second of pause. It would appear that so far, they were stepping up to the plate to become effective guardians, true to the name they'd chosen for themselves.

It might not be a Roman emperor, like the literal role that the original bearers of the title had guarded, but they were guarding what they set out to protect- at least, so far, they were.

Jack shook his head fervently, clearing the anger and the focus on the negatives. Not all was bad. The ships that had survived with their mass negating camouflage proved effective at ambushing and capturing privateering ships crossing between Human systems.

What was lost on Eden Prime was in the process of rebuilding already. And the Ascendancy- Oh, the Ascendancy.

Jack spun his chair to face the darkness of space rather than the screen filled rear wall of his chamber. With the current orbital alignment of the system, the structure wasn't clearly visible, but the construction lights that still dotted it every few hundred metres gave a clear indication of its shape and size.

The Ascendancy was nearly complete, thanks to David Archer and his little Geth slaves. What came next would be entirely destroying the autonomous function of the Geth to make them nothing more than puppets that didn't even require David to command- the boy was far too fragile and unstable to be relied upon in what was surely going to be a more gruelling future.

"With this, the Human race will become the dominant species in the galaxy."

No one was present to hear his utterance, flagrantly dressed in quiet greed, as it was. The untampered with Humans who remained within Cerberus were carefully guarded and carefully fed his perspective of galactic affairs. All of them, Jack was sure, would still think him the man they had become employed by years prior.

They would still think that they were serving Humanity's best interest and that using the Reapers to do so was in their own best interest.

The hits that they had collectively taken so far, while unexpected, were sure to be short-lived. With the entire population of Aite converted into soldiers, even the non-Human ones, Jack still felt quietly confident that his goals were still achievable.

If he took one small step at a time, steps perhaps a touch more careful than his goal of taking a planet like Eden Prime without orbital defences and fleets to defend his work. Aite was his, its denizens were his weapons of war on the ground, and the Geth that had turned there were now his construction workers.

A new fleet would follow soon enough. Lessons from the first had been learnt. Craft that were larger, more powerful, and more capable. What he needed most were creative thinkers to lead his fleets strategically.... He clicked his tongue and then gritted his teeth at the thought that came back around, as it did all too often.

With all of the politicking going on in the galaxy and the dissolution of the former Council, there had to be growing Human dislike for alien affairs. "But how to reach them? Where to find them?"

Jack twined his fingers and leaned back on his chair to look up into the obsidian ceiling. The resources, the individuals, that he needed were sure to be on the more populous planets in the galaxy, places where they would have surely had higher education and even possibly previous service in the Alliance.

He nodded to himself, sighed tiredly, and leaned forward, and his holographic screens lit at his motion. He mightn't have military commanders, not yet. But he did still have dozens of covert operatives who were unchanged and still on his side.

EDS (Earth Dating system) – October 22, 2185
Location: - Haleguese deep orbit
Stellar Orbit: - Pranas ~ Salarian DMZ

"Detachment procedures complete. We. Are. Clear."

Iso declined his chin in a sharp nod, his slightly elongated helmet relaying the action with less clarity. "Good," He chirped at Pendulum, his comrade at the controls of the stealth plated Pelican. Next, he looked slightly to his right where an Alliance soldier in light armour had his arms crossed rigidly over his chest.

"Relax, we have trained for this," Iso added.

Of course, that wasn't entirely true. They had trained for ground engagements and ship to ship boarding actions. The ground engagement scenarios often included low profile insertions and the attempt to remain undetected, but they had never literally trained for spy operations.

But they had trained, and in a manner were still training, to be the most professional soldiers in the galaxy. So, Iso would conduct himself and his team in that fashion. He and his team, Katakat, formed the first Salarian only team out of Praetoria.

Iso still felt odd not looking between a mix of races, so accustomed had he become to the interspersal of differing species.

Unlike on Praetoria, how they addressed one another by family names or ranks, on this mission, they had all chosen call signs and dropped their ranks, besides the fact that he was the assigned team leader.

It was an effort to potentially reduce emotional weight on what could eventuate into a long-term mission.

"Hmmph," The Alliance spy grunted and overlapped his arms more tightly.

Iso hmmm'd in return and looked forward again. Their view was empty of anything noteworthy. The distant star that had once been the daily reminder of his affiliation was the current target to guide them deeper into the Salarian home system.

They had come here attached to the underbelly of a blocky Volus freighter, the Grugomush. They had tapped into the communication channels the Volus used while making their trades to tell their Salarian customers about the galactic defence pact.

The Salarians had made their trades, ignored everything about the defence pact, and told the Volus to go back about their business. Iso knew that talk; it meant: get out now.

On the rectangular scanner mounted on the console, Iso watched the blip representing the Volus freighter come into contactable range with the local Relay and then vanish. Other blips were present on display too, and Iso wasn't willing to bet that they represented all the Salarian ships in the region.

He knew his brethren – at least, to an extent. They usually kept their cards close to their chests and only made open plays if they were sure, or at least highly confident, in their ability to win. In this case, withdrawing from galactic affairs was just as much a play as being an open aggressor.

'The Union MUST have something that they're hiding... That they're working on... They wouldn't think they could survive on their own, otherwise.'

Iso stored the conspiratorial thought for group discussion and narrowed his amphibious eyes in a brief moment of concentration. His onboard computer systems responded to the neurons bridging his neural lace, and readings filled his HUD. Sharp spikes jumped up and down in lines next to the names of his team, indicating the normal and healthy heartbeats of Salarians.

Pendulum, their designated pilot, but not their only flight-capable team member, had a resting heart rate slightly higher than the rest of the team. Iso couldn't blame him for being the one literally responsible for how they would try to slip around Salarian patrols and get them deep enough into the system to try to witness whatever was at play.

In the back of his mind, Iso knew that it was really the engineers on Praetoria who had designed the additional stealth plates for the Pelican that made the craft into an aggressive assortment of venta-black angles who were responsible for whether they would be detected or not.

But whoever was at the helm would likely not agree with that assessment. Not while they were at the helm, at least.

Klen, Vector, Sly, Striker, S.R, Cronos, Valkyrie, and Hermes; the rest of the team who Iso could see through a small window in his HUD sitting on one side of the troop bay, all had typical resting heart rates.

They were the meat for the mission – the organic elements that would hopefully not be required. Deja could have performed this mission with a drone if they only thought it would be a flyby.

But for discussions that Iso had been present for, but not directly participating in, he knew that neither Lieutenant General Lawson nor the Commander in Chief thought it would be that simple.

Their job was to be the deadly team who would board any ship or station they needed to attain the intel they sought. Of course, the General had been explicit, repetitively so, that they WERE NOT to engage in combat unless they had either no other option or if it was expressly clear that it would be the only way to attain the intelligence they were here for.

Iso nodded to himself and pressed a thin smile. Who'd have thought that a middle-aged Salarian would find himself so thoroughly respecting a Human General who was formerly belonging to a radical terrorist organisation? His lips quirked into suppression of an ironic smile.

Not him... But the reality was that he loved Praetoria and his commanders. He was confident that his commanders loved him too, in their way. Why else would the General be so repetitively explicit about not risking their lives unless they absolutely had to?

Why else would the Chief spend so much personal time with them leading up to their departure from Praetoria? If anything, Iso was sure that he and Team Katakat had experienced more personal one on one time with the Chief than any other member of the Praetorian armed forces.

They had trained from dawn to dusk for six days – the Chief had tried to drive home every lesson in the short time he had to sharpen them.

Iso loved Praetoria. He loved it so much that in his current assignment, he was happier to think of himself by his callsign that very directly affiliated him with Praetoria than by his first or family name, which could more easily be tied to anything else.

He and his team had all been former Omega residents, or Omegavites, as they had jokingly come to know themselves as on Praetoria.

After the revolution was kicked off by the Chief, things had been looking up. But life on Omega was still destined to be hard, and they had all been sure that the revolutionary spirit would dwindle and that when resources became scarce again, that crime would remerge with a new kind of desperation.

Before any of that could happen, the Chief returned. Praetoria was born as Caucasus, and he had been amongst the first to volunteer to serve. He had likewise been amongst the first to volunteer on the ground to be in the initial work crews on the construction of the farming plots before there had been the drones available to run it.

Now, Omega was more a construction station than anything. It still had a large portion of its population present. If the word that Iso heard was anything to go by, the population was all bouncing on their toes for the opportunity to serve on Praetoria and become a more important part of their growing civilisation.

The nationalistic zeal toward Praetoria on Omega had the average citizen working harder on any job opportunity to earn distinction to be in the next wave of recruits. Resource shipments now flowed daily to Omega, and as far as Iso knew, no one wanted for anything on the station that had been his home for several years.

Nutri-printers had become commonplace on Omega. For the most part, they were fuelled by the algae farms more so than the higher quality produce farm plots. But no one saw the Nutri-printed food as being on the lower end of options; eighty per cent of the Rangers' diets were distilled from the printers.

Iso had zero qualms leading an incursion into the solar system that he was born in, and he was just as confident that none of his team did either.

Across from his team was the team of Alliance spies. They were all in light, non-distinct grey and black armour. They were the only element of their op that Iso didn't trust, even if he had read their dossiers and performance history that showed no marks of failure or error.

He'd keep an eye on them to make sure it all went smoothly, and he'd get whatever knowledge there was to get and bring it back to his people.

EDS (Earth Dating system) – October 24, 2185
Location: Serrice - Thessia
Stellar Orbit: Parnitha

"Jesus..."

Lenka winced. Hissing the name of what was still one of the most prominent religious idols on Earth made her feel uneasy. Given her current circumstances, it was a little bit too ironic for her to say it flippantly as many did.

She was not religious, but she was mildly spiritual. As a result of her time as an Alliance spy, she would try to balance out her mindset about going into high-risk situations and betraying those who thought her their ally. And now, she was going to do the same again, but on a level far deeper than she had previously thought possible.

She expelled air through her nose in a sardonic laugh, "Or did you mean, Athame..." She breathed to herself. Rather than smile at her own attempted joke, she scowled with her lips pouted and the corners of them downturned.

She was now closer to what she always had secretly wanted to be than ever, but in the spiritual sense, further than she ever imagined.

The only part of her that felt physically different was her head. More precisely, her scalp. But that representation made her feel spiritually and emotively different on a whole different plane.

The hood of the long flowing hessian gown that she wore pushed against genetically proliferated follicles now present and made her carefully reach up to ensure the covering was going to stay in place in the breeze that was picking up.

The streets around Lenka were a hodgepodge of events. Many buildings were in ruins. Even the ones made of various alloys had been turned into fragmented and twisted monuments of civil unrest.

She'd passed hundreds of Asari who were going about their lives as best they could in the balmy summertime weather, as close to normal as they could. Lenka had deduced that most of the hundreds of millions of Asari left on Thessia were afraid and unsure and were trying their best to pretend that their lives were as they had always been.

Their imagined authorities were gone, though. Replaced, now, by a myriad of self-organised judicial enforcers. Lenka had already seen five separate firefights break out in Serrice in the six days she'd been here, attempting to find the most ideal place to identify herself.

The firefights appeared to be between groups who genuinely wanted to keep Asari society operating as it had and others who were capitalising on the power vacuum and trying to form their own small nations for their own gains.

As hedging bets over who would prevail, the non-combatant majority did their best to ignore them and not comment on them, fearing that the more tyrannical groups would win.

When Lenka had first escaped from Thessia, she'd feared that Aria would do what she had done on Omega. That the feared pirate queen would work her way through other criminal leaders one by one until only she was left.

But Lenka was learning that the competition of opportunistic Asari was far too stiff for Aria to deal with on her own. If the whisperings that Lenka had heard had any merit, Aria was in the hills beyond Serrice with her personal gang having formed a kind of commune.

Lenka imagined that was likely to happen and that Aria would be in that safe zone attempting to plan how to take all the power there was to take on Thessia.

The thought made her scowl turn into an ironic smirk. 'Too bad for Aria that we've already thought of a better way of taking over the Asari...'

Her smirk morphed partially back to a scowl as the thought played out. It had been her idea after analysing the surface level of the Praetorian technology. She had deduced that surgical alteration would be possible to make her look like the legendary depictions of Athame.

It had turned out that genetic changes were just as easy after the only surgery needed was the removal of her crest. Now, beneath her gown, bioluminescent nerves relayed neurological energy in gently glancing lines up and down her body.

Legends of Athame had always described her as having a bob of hair, and that light would travel her body. For Lenka to discover that to be the quite literal truth had been as much a surprise as the man in front of her, who she couldn't help but draw comparisons to from Athamien art of the Guardian.

The reality was so much more simple and easier to digest, and the irony was that she was using that reality to reinforce the mythos of her ancient predecessors.

Lenka continued to carefully navigate the cautious and yet busy streets of Serrice in the gentle daytime sun. Groups of people moved into shops and marketplaces.

They tried to sup in outdoor cafes with willful ignorance to the commonly passing group of irregulars armed with whatever weapons they'd managed to scavenge during the previous fighting.

The day ebbed and began to grow dim when Lenka finally arrived in the open archway leading to the second oldest temple in Serrice, and indeed on Thessia.

The archway spanned the three-metre wide road that led directly through and beyond the pink marble walls that protected the temple from the city.

Within, Lenka could see gardens of arranged grape vine growths teased into architectural shapes. There were curling pathways of cobbled stones weaving through various neatly kept grassy areas where the genus of soft pink-hued grasses competed ever so gently with green-blue grass.

Several Asari in white gowns were visible amongst the gardens, and unlike the ones beyond their temple walls, they looked free from fear and concern. A priestess on the same path Lenka stood, noticed her and turned in her direction with a gentle smile.

It was the same smile that Lenka had been practising. Her repetiteur of emotional expressions was just as vast as any regular person. Still, this particular application was due to be for the long haul, unlike her usual manipulations.

Speaking with Miranda Lawson about this mission, especially side by side with John, the Commander in Chief of Praetoria, and in this circumstance, the Master of Chiefs had stirred unexpected thoughts within Lenka.

She had suspected that she would naturally dislike, maybe even hate, Miranda Lawson. Lenka was, or at least had been, first and foremost, a loyal Systems Alliance spy. And she had known all about Miranda Lawson.

The woman was thought of as an extremist and a Human purist. The purist part had struck a nerve with Lenka, since she was decidedly not pure Human and longed to be precisely that. But Cerberus had become an avowed enemy of the Alliance, and Miranda Lawson was a known operative.

Whoever Lenka had expected to meet was not who had been presented to her. Miranda was... An example.

Lenka had wondered if the reports on Miranda's character had ever been accurate, and if they had, then she had changed so much that it made Lenka admire her.

She was intense in her cold analysis, but she cared in a way that seemed contradictory to how she coldly analysed events and facts. She slipped into an emotive expression so naturally that Lenka had trouble trying to weave the concept of whether or not Miranda had ever truly been as callous in hers' and Cerberus's missions as reports had said.

What Lenka was sure of was the Miranda Lawson had discovered something that gave her a different purpose, even if she couldn't quite quantify it. That purpose, and the example of the Spartan from a different universe, had lit a fire to commit herself to a hard path for the betterment of her people.

The concepts rolled around Lenka's mind, as they had ever since she'd had her first conversations with Miranda and John.

Who did she serve now?

She had said her allegiance was to Admiral Hackett still, personally so. And Hackett was technically now a part of the Praetorian military. Hackett had likewise assigned her to serve Miranda and John because he was aware that they could potentially utilise her more effectively.

In her until recently previous life, Lenka had always vied to somehow become Human; she was a child of Humanity more than Asari.

Now, though, she found her sense of cultural loyalty conflicted by the swift growth of a planet and civilization whose defining cultural features were true equality between species and classes.

Service meant citizenship, simple as that.

While on Praetoria during her gene therapy, Lenka had seen both Miranda, John, and even their commissioned officers go and stamp out any tiny display of racial defamation.

On Praetoria, she could be Lenka Pan, a Human and an Asari.

The thought almost elicited a scoff of amusement. Now, she wasn't on Praetoria, and she was soon – hopefully – to be the goddess of all of the Asari.

If that plan played out, she might never be on Praetoria or in the Alliance again, which meant her loyalties were now only to the common goal and possibly one day to the truth.

Her scoff stopped before it reached her lips, the only part of her face that wasn't shaded by her hood.

Lenka closed her eyes, breathed deeply in through her nose, and thought of how she'd watched Miranda move from talking about civilian evacuation strategies with their troops to looking at John in some kind of concern and then teasing a smile as she asked if he'd eaten anything other than supplementary ration bars for the day.

With what was likely less ease than how Miranda achieved it, Lenka grasped at care and interest for what her role here was to be, and she relaxed her face into a calm and gentle smile after quietly expelling the air between her slightly parted unglossed lips.

The Asari in the white gown almost seemed to flow down the path until she stopped hardly a meter away. Lenka averted her attention from thinking that she would need to learn to walk so gracefully and instead decided that purposeful strides would serve her better in the role of a God made flesh.

"Welcome, traveller. We can offer you food, water, and the works of Athame," The priestess smiled and turned to gesture at the other priestesses working in the gardens. She turned back, her eyes sparkling, but her lips twitching, "But, unfortunately, all of our accommodations have been given to refugees. Would you like to join us for supper, at least? Our cooks will have started to prepare it by now."

Lenka, 'No.... Athame,' She thought to herself. For her to succeed here, she needed to embody her mission. She needed to be a version of herself that was a mix of the legend of Athame, her sense of service, and the artificial individual that the Chief had shown her to be called Cortana.

She lifted both of her arms forward, palms raised. The action revealed her pale-blue-skinned palms and the beginnings of the bioluminescence that strobed from her wrists upward. The natural paleness of her skin in comparison to other Asari only helped to lend to the image of her being different.

The Priestesses eyes travelled to Lenka's hands, and in moments her expression shifted into a look of wonder as her eyes widened. Lenka watched the Priestesses eyes track the lines of light disappear into her sleeves, and then the Priestess glanced up into her shaded hood.

The Priestess looked back at the revealed palms and wrist, then back to the hood, then back, and then she fell to her knees.

It was the perfect reaction, as far as Lenka could tell, and it offered her the ability to respond with perfection in kind. In nearly the same instant as the Priestess's knees touching the hewn stone road, one of her own knees touched down too as she stepped forward in a lunge.

She reached forward and firmly, yet gently, closed her grip around the wrist of the woman on the ground who was about to lean further forward to press her forehead down.

"My children don't need to bow to their mother."

Her voice was carefully laced with love and concern. She had used the tone hundreds of times before on missions, but she had never sunken her soul so deeply into the character that she needed to play.

"My children, my beautiful Asari, only need to be kind, honest, and compassionate."

The priestess stared at Lenka's hand, her wrist exposed, gripping her own, and took in a quick sharp intake of breath. Her crest rippled in hardly contained energy and excitement, and with deliberate carefulness, she looked up.

From the angle that the priestess looked from and the angle that Lenka was leaning into, the priestess was full witness to Lenka's slightly paler than usual features and the stray and unusual dark blue hair that framed her face beneath the hood.

"It's true..." The priestess breathed between parted lips. "The great mother did have hair, like the Humans..." Her voice quivered, and gentle tears spilt from her eyes. "Did you create the Humans too, Great Mother?"

Lenka's thoughts raced through microseconds of analysis. She nearly instantly decided that the affirmative was the best answer, "I did. They are meant to be a part of us. We are meant to be a part of them. Some of them know me by a different name."

The priestess scrunched up her lips, and her irises shot up, the typical expression of searching ones' memory for answers. Her brow wrinkled as whatever she was searching for failed to come. Instead, with careful reverence, she stood and looked at Lenka's hand on her wrist again.

Once more, she clenched her eyes briefly and took a shaky breath. "Come, Great Mother, you will want to speak with our head priestess."

Before the priestess could turn away, Lenka smiled gently and made eye contact. The action immediately riveted the Asari as bioluminescence occasionally danced in Lenka's irises. "I want to speak with all of you; there is much to be done; I believe my Guardian has come looking for me at last."

The priestess took another shaky breath and then nodded fervently. "The Master of Chiefs! He- He- He came from your great temple! Something happened... The non-believers made him leave, we think. We need to-"

"-Shhhh," Lenka cooed calmly and smiled. "All Asari are believers. They just need reminding. We mustn't turn on one another. Our wisdom starts with ignorance. We merely need to look."

Another shaky breath came from the priestess, and in the dwindling afternoon light, her deep blue skin flushed a shade of purple at the distillation of wisdom. Had the priestess known that it was a proverb taken from Humanity, Lenka was sure it might not have the same effect.

But regardless of where she knew its origins to be from, it was a concept that engulfed all organic life.

The priestess licked her lips and smiled around rolling her lips in and out in an expression between disbelief and excitement. As she finally turned to face deeper into the slice of natural refuge that had survived in the heart of Serrice for the past thirty-thousand years, she quickly looked around the gardens at the other priestesses who had stopped what they were doing to watch their exchange.

Lenka turned her hooded head slowly across the priestesses to gauge their expressions of confusion. From their perspective, the sight of one of their own going down on her knees to greet a stranger must have been highly peculiar. She maintained her calm smile, lifted her hands, and lowered her hood to her shoulders.

The confused faces remained confused for only moments before their knowledge of their religious idol took hold, and their eyes widened in awe.

Cries of, "Great Mother, you've returned!" And, "Holy Athame, we've been waiting for you!" sounded as the priestesses hurried as neatly around the gardens as they could.

"Please, young one, lead me to your head priestess. I will feel liberated to speak with her and learn how we can once more reach the hearts of all Asari."

That was all the goading that the first priestess needed. With a total lack of grace that she had initially used to move toward Lenka, she moved swiftly forward along the road to where the marble and wooden buildings formed a perimeter to the inner village.

The other priestess's formed a line behind Lenka as they walked with a mixture of heavy excited breathing and whispered prayers. Lenka suddenly thought that perhaps her duplicity in this role could very well serve to uplift the Asari into a more hopeful state of mind if even half of them had an emotional reaction to what they thought of as Athame like the priestesses were.

EDS (Earth Dating system) – October 24, 2185
Location: Ares Valley - Praetoria
Stellar Orbit: Epsilon Eridani

The northern higher elevation air of Praetoria was brisk again, but unlike the previous weeks, there was no snow falling. The sky was clear and blue, which only served to make the frozen environment feel colder in its reflective brightness.

John set his weight forward on his front foot as he took purchase in the compacted snow uphill. The frozen water crunched under his weight as it compacted down and formed temporary stability. He pivoted partly from his waist and shoulders and looked back down the mountainside to find his travel companion.

The motion felt entirely different from usual, not being confined to his armour, wearing standard field gear with a jacket.

Miranda was only a few meters behind him. As usual, she was dressed in one of her nano-weave carbon and titanium silicone steel-blue suits with a white and grey fur-lined jacket hanging off her shoulders with the front unzipped with a BR55N slung over her back with a buckled strap.

Unlike the first time that she had performed this trek with him, she kept up without hesitation or difficulty.

Beyond her and back down the valley, Ares Command Base was in full view. It had almost been a year since John had first arrived here, and it had changed dramatically in that time. His lips bunched up tightly as his eyes narrowed.

Had there been a USNC ship in orbit outfitted with deployable firebases, then his rate of progress on Praetoria would look like a parody in comparison. But given his circumstances and his politicking Omega into serving as his pool of volunteers, early workforce, and initial infrastructure, he was pleased with the results thus far.

Luck had once more been working in his favour. His arrival in the transit zone of Omega was unlucky in the context of how he had come to be there but lucky in the context of the opportunities and events that had unfolded since then.

The base now stretched almost all the way across the valley and was separated into a different zone for each new battalion that started training. Each section was a several hundred meter square with an array of buildings along three sides, which served to house and educate the Rangers in training.

In the middle of each section was a behemothic building that housed alloy forges and fabrication plants. The fabrication plants churned out new materials and components at the creative and intellectual behest of Cathryn Hales and managed algorithmically by Deja.

Eight sections made up the Ranger quarter of Ares Base. Less than two kilometres south were nondescript long warehouse-like buildings erected over the farming plots, as the plots had evolved from their initial soil modifying phase to climate-controlled growing systems, with one of them modified to the point of housing only algae and fungal growth.

North by a couple of kilometres from the Rangers sections were the research complexes which looked like a hodgepodge of single-story to three-story structures linked by passageways.

Like all of the other buildings that hadn't come down as the first wave, they were printed in place, giving everything the same nondescript utilitarian and practical design. The current snow-laden environment made them look like unnatural grey rock outcroppings.

John lowered his gaze rather than analyse further north to see the towering dome of the wargames suite or the airstrip that sat next to it. Miranda had already stopped and was controlling her breathing through flared nostrils.

When their eyes met, the corners of her lips quirked upward slightly, and her eyebrows rose several millimetres. Her instinctive reaction to them meeting eyes naturally inspired a similar response in John.

"How're you going?" John asked nonchalantly with a half-smile and a slight crinkling of his eyes.

The natural smile that Miranda wore turned coy, and one brow rose while the other dropped. "Piece of piss," She answered while leaning heavily into her accent, prodding fun at the fact that she was handling the trek like it was a standard stroll and the cheek in the question the begin with.

John hadn't asked it because he thought Miranda mightn't be handling it. He asked just because he wanted to ask her something.

'What's the next stage of being a Spartan?' John mused internally to himself. He struggled once more to quite answer or acknowledge the fact that through a range of minor similarities and sheer presence, he was finding himself wanting Miranda's company just as much as he'd ever wanted the company of any member of Blue Team.

But it was different. John knew how it was different. He just couldn't quite put words or normal social responses to it, alien as they were to him. But that was a large part of what today was about.

There was nothing that neither he nor Miranda could do on the base today that would prove to be important. The Rangers' all had their training rosters and schedules.

The research teams were hard at work in integrating more element zero-based tech into UNSC designs. And the Rangers' who were posted to comms duties hadn't yet made any errors that proved they needed a hawk watching over them, not counting Miles Musa, who watched over them regularly.

John had decided that it was time to spend more time with the single factor that continued to prod him into personal development, change, and deeper introspection.

In the same manner that he would any new device, tool, or weapon that needed to be understood and embraced. Especially with the pace of change in the galaxy speeding up by the day, he needed to address the thoughts and feelings that the instigator inspired in an environment undiluted by distraction.

"How are you handling it, hm?"

John snorted a laugh at Miranda's rebuttal. He shrugged and smirked, "We could be moving faster."

Miranda tilted her head in a gesture uphill toward the ravine between two peaks that they were headed for, "Then get the bloody hell outta' my way; you're slowing ME down."

John showed teeth in a small smile and breathed a half-laugh. He hadn't told Miranda why he wanted to go on this trek. But, like so often, was sure that she knew exactly why, or at least close to exactly. She paid more attention to him, and put more thought into him than even he thought he did to himself.

John parted his lips to speak, attempting to embrace the teasing and taunting way they were engaging, which usually revolved around performance and competition, and then evolved into some kind of sexual innuendo that could be subtle enough to slide of an innocent joke.

Deciding to continue that particular status quo, John made a sweeping motion with his right hand, his gesture starting downhill and ending uphill as though to move Miranda by him. "Feel free; I won't mind."

Miranda's top lip curled, and her eyes narrowed in a competitive smile, "I'd rather... You just move faster." She paused with the clear intent to build suspense, "I like my view, thanks."

Having the flirtation that was masquerading as a joke turned back on John made him falter for a moment. For him to push that in her direction came with tiny incremental progress in showing his developing level of instinctive and emotive interest had taken several months.

For it to be swung back in the other direction reminded him that even whilst taunted jokingly, Miranda saw him in an at least similar light.

He tried to regain the momentum of the taunt, and he turned uphill again and started lifting leg over leg, but not before taking his right palm off the grip of his own BR55N that, like Miranda's, hung from a buckled sling and slapped it against the top of his glute.

A whistle came from behind him a moment after the slap, followed by a short chortle of laughter. John scoffed a laugh as well while he fell back into his stride in weaving around hidden rocks in the snow and heading further uphill.

He and Miranda were both tense and serious people in their standard environments. They both sought to achieve their goals at almost any cost – his had previously been at a whatever the cost mantra.

But paired with one another, even in their everyday environments, seemed to have gifted both of them with a kind of common ground that allowed them to confide more in the other than they would other people.

And when removed from the environments that switched them to all business mode, that ground they could share became the place for them to explore the ideas of slowly revealing more of their suppressed and unlearned expressions.

'What would Halsey think of seeing that conversation?' John smiled a pessimistic expression that was closer to a grimace.

'What would Fred, Kelly, and Linda have thought?' His partial grimace turned more into a contemplative frown.

They had always been slightly more outwardly social than him, Fred more than any of them yet again. It wasn't that he couldn't be social like that. Diplomacy had always been an interest to him. It was that he took his position of command seriously to the point of limiting his social response.

'Fred might have been happy to see me talking that way...,' "Huh," John sounded in a blank resolution to the thought.

The environment morphed around them as they trudged higher on the mountain through the snow through ever-thinning outcroppings of trees bare of leaves.

Occasionally John would choose a route that required clambering over boulders twice his size, and he'd find a firm purchase and reach back to help haul Miranda up the icy surface.

He found a peculiar sense of enjoyment every time he'd grasp her outstretched hand and heft her up with no difficulty.

They moved through the ravine that divided the two peaks that looked down on Ares Base, with the rock formations above and around them making the path almost snow-free. They made it through in ten minutes before beginning their descent down the other side.

Occasionally Miranda would taunt him with a jab about the trek not being challenging enough as a gateway to entering into a short conversation.

As they moved down the mountainside, they spoke about what foods John had tried and enjoyed beyond rations. What drinks he had tried and liked of the alcoholic nature, as Miranda professed to prefer gin and cabernet sauvignon when she felt relaxed enough to partake in what she revealed to be a deeply luxurious treat.

Their conversations rolled briefly around what else would happen on Praetoria- not relating to the war. What kind of cities would grow, how would they organise a government when they reached that point, and what kind of specialised exports might there be to explore to help assert Praetoria as a galactic contender on the export market.

The looming threat of the war and the likelihood of the topic becoming a reality in the near future didn't enter the conversation. John knew it was just a hypothetical thought game to distract them from such thoughts and shed light on his own ideas and interests.

As they reached the tree line in the valley that had been the alternate home to the wilderness training preserve, the snow thinned from the cover that the bare-branched canopy partially provided.

Movement flashed between the grey trunks in the near distance. Both Spartan and Praetorian General had their rifles raised with nearly instant manoeuvring of the buckled straps that kept their weapons fixed to their upper bodies.

In an instant, the duo switched into their professional mode, and Miranda shifted quickly from her spot several meters behind John. She sidled up to him and turned her back to his, and looked in the opposite direction.

Sweeps had been performed from the air and orbit after the discovery and dispatching of Kai Leng, and they were confident that no other Cerberus elements were on the planet.

But the local pack predators were still a potential threat, with several squads of Rangers' having come under attack when out mapping the terrain and observing the wildlife for the purpose of land surveying.

"What do you have?"

John hunched over the stock of his rifle and slowly scanned from left to right and back again. His lips twitched, and he thought of the wildlife he knew would have been in these valleys from his youth. "Hard to say... Could have been a Moa, or could have been Fȕvadȧsz."

"I thought that the Moa hibernated during winter?"

"They do, but some come out earlier before spring," John explained with a thoughtful tenor. He grunted in annoyance after a beat, "But Fȕvadȧsz stay out all year 'round. If there are Moa, that might mean them as well. Keep your eyes up."

"Understood," Miranda answered.

John started forward again, but he moved more slowly and in a gait closer to a crouch. Miranda kept up with him with a similar pace so she could occasionally swivel her sights behind them as they'd trained to do when working in two-person units.

Their movement was a world away from their first deployment together on Eden Prime in the mission, which set off where they were now.

Where Miranda had struggled to keep up once, now she moved fluidly and with explicit knowledge in how to fit in with John's own motions.

Their guard remained up for another kilometre as they crossed halfway through the valley and covered each other while navigating a line of boulders over a wide and shallow stream. When they reached the downhill side of the other valley in an exposed area, John finally lowered his rifle.

Miranda matched the posture slowly and turned casually on the spot, making a trampled patch of snow to look back the way they had come now that they were once more elevated enough to look over the canopy of trees.

Whatever creature had caused them to raise their guard had moved on and ignored them. Besides the creaking of the trees in the cold air and the occasional whumping sound of snow falling in sheets from branches to the forest floor, the valley was ghostly quiet within its own locality.

Unlike the last time the pair had come here, Ares Base was audible, even over the mountains. Contrails from six broadswords far overhead announced aerial training in progress.

Four recently completed D-20 Heron heavy-lift dropships came rocketing down from the upper atmosphere until they became obscured by the mountains and vanished into the confines of Ares Valley.

At least a third of their ready to deploy forces were in the process of practising landing procedures that John had taken out of the textbook procedures of the UNSC.

With the training having run for the past week and with him directing and watching over it, he felt confident that the Lieutenants running it would be fulfilling their roles diligently without him by this point.

Placing faith in them to do their jobs well was a large part of them maturing into their roles and finding more respect in him and Miranda for the given faith.

Miranda remained quiet while John surveyed the valley. Her hair hung loose down her back with some cascading over her shoulders, unlike how she usually wore it tied back while on base or on mission.

It flowed in the soft breeze that had enough dampness in it to serve as validation that spring was indeed sprung in its earliest stages.

She shifted the strap for her BR55N so that it hung off her back again, rather than dangling down her abdomen, and she tucked her gloved hands under her armpits to retain warmth while pouting her lips slightly rightward in thought and likewise looking across the creaking valley.

John watched her out of his peripheral vision and skewed his lips sideways in his own thought. She was attractive – it was an almost alien idea.

He had once looked at Kelly as attractive, but that had gone through years of suppression. A part of their Spartan training had included psychological sessions to evaluate their mental stability.

In so doing, with retrospect to inform his knowledge, John knew that their questions were to help them balance their emotional stability and be introspective whenever given a chance.

'Psychological med-kits,' John thought with a twitch of his lips. Like being given field kits to either keep any attained injuries or damage to their armour in order.

They had been given psychological guidance on how to intellectualise their emotions and instinctive desires down to function or not questions, to be able to shed what wasn't needed for the orders to be executed and retain only what would get the job done.

But since leaving Reach that first time, John had been exposed to thousands of Marines and Naval personnel. None of them had ever been close friends. Still, the themes he'd watch across almost every interaction formed new chains of introspection with distant questions about where he fitted in that realm of the baseline Human desire to have some kind of loved one to live for and die for if necessary.

Throughout his years fighting the Covenant, he'd used his psychological patchwork approach. He'd told himself that was his Spartans, and that was enough.

As though fighting that suppression he'd laid down, the instinctive interest in Kelly had cropped up, and apparently, hers in him had too. Both of them pushed that down to turn that desire for companionship into the communal concept that revolved around the Spartan group.

But since discovering that he couldn't get back to his Spartans and that Miranda was interested in staying with him on what had turned from being his journey to their shared journey, the question had come forth again.

And unlike how Kelly had likewise been ready to withdraw her innate desire to live out the mission, Miranda was not, and John knew that before the fact would or could become apparent.

She wasn't a Spartan.

He was the lone Spartan-II here, and as in all facets of his life, there were changes that had to be made to fulfil the mission. But this mission was a larger one than he'd ever had, and it was the mission of total self-determination.

'I am attracted to her,' John thought, making it more personal from simply acknowledging that she was. 'She's proud, strong, and brave,' He added mentally, not wanting to simplify the thought to just the physical.

A tiny smile quirked the corner of his lips upward, and his eyes softened into a look of partial confusion, 'So, what do you do about that, Spartan?'

He didn't have an answer to that question for himself. He knew what Marines would do about that – He had seen Marines, and Civilians for that matter, fulfil their emotive and physical desires on the topic of physical or emotional attachment.

A gentle gust of frigid damp air made him blink, and Miranda made a "Brrrr," sound with her lips thrumming to expel air. An admonishing smile crossed her face at her reaction to the chill that had hit them, and John matched her smile with less certainty as he swung his left leg around to face her.

Her smile remained, but her left brow arched in a question.

"One way or another, the war is about to start. They either come through another Relay or just cross through interstellar space... We're going to fight them planet by planet..." He halted. His smile slipped, as did Miranda's. "We are ready... Our Ranger's are ready, and we'll keep expanding our capacity."

He paused again, and his brow flinched while trying to find the right way to get to where he wanted to get to. John pressed his lips into a thin line in passing annoyance for his inability to approach the matter in a fashion that he was sure Miranda would have found more natural or normal.

"If I have a weapon, I can use it, fix it, upgrade it, tell you all about it...." He pulled his lips into his right cheek in another flinch at the analogy but pushed onwards. "I- I don't know how to start telling you about how I feel-"

Miranda's brows both rose at once, and half a second later, her eyes widened slightly. John halted at her immediate reaction, and that gave her room for her previous smile to return. "-How you feel?"

John turned his face down and looked toward the ground. This wasn't his forte. Spending months silently acknowledging his inner Human nature had been testing enough through all of the tiny incremental changes in how he expressed himself to Miranda and the handful of others who he would speak with.

"Do you know who I am?" Miranda asked in a tone that said she was going to answer her own question.

John looked up again and met her eyes. Her smile was teasingly smug, and her eyes were as interested as ever.

"I'm Miranda Lawson, damned near perfect Human," Her smile morphed between a smirk and back, "-Note, the damned near..."

John snorted derisively and nodded.

"But, I have a good idea how you feel. You do realise that I pay attention to you, right?"

John's small smile was halting, and he lifted his left shoulder in a partial shrug.

Miranda took a single step forward with a long enough stride so that only a foot separated them. She maintained their eye contact and let her face relax into her well-practised naturally pleased expression. "Can I tell you how I feel?"

John blinked at the unexpected turning of the narrative, and Miranda took that as a yes.

"I still think about my old life sometimes. But what you wanted to build here, and what you wanted to do, allowed me to look at myself differently. Hell, what you are made me look at myself differently..." She smirked in that playful way that she seemed to only do to him.

"At first, I felt angry and conflicted that I'd had it all wrong, and sometimes I wanted to blame you. But then I wanted to blame my father and the Illusive Man. But then, I knew I could only blame myself, drop it, and move forward. You showed me that I could still be more, and that made me feel excited, hopeful, and honestly, I only got more curious about you."

Flinches of confusion and interest flickered around John's eyes while he had hers.

"Human's can be so simple..." She huffed a quick laugh. "At first, I thought I might only be interested in you because I thought you were impressive-" She blushed and shrugged, "-And perfect.... But, you're a good man. You always want to protect your own, and you're good at it! Bloody good at it! So then, you know, I thought more about it, then I thought less about it, then I just felt about it- Sometimes- Not always..." She breathed another half-laugh through her nose and pulled another half-smile.

"Knowledge, ideals, instincts all combine and whatever the key of it all is doesn't matter anymore, and you just feel what you feel, and I didn't want to turn it down- Not with what's about to happen. So, John, Spartan 117," Miranda's tenor travelled confidently, but with a certain flux that showed her level of emotive expression coming through how she was trying to intellectualise her reasoning.

She lifted her right palm, held it open between them, and looked down to her palm from John's face. He followed her gaze and realised in a snap what she was asking. He jostled his BR55N like she had so that it hung behind him and then grasped her right hand with his left.

Her handspan wasn't large enough to quiet grasp his palm, but her fingertips curled around the side of his hand. The contact put John in immediate mind of when she'd placed her hand onto his chest.

Unlike that time when confronting how that had felt had seemed too far away to look at, now he let the idea of following her lead further into a relationship proliferate through his mind.

Acting on what he had seen Marines and Civilians do, John reached forward with deliberate slowness and placed his right hand on the top of Miranda's waist. After a second of it being there, Miranda's lips quirked into a teasing smile.

She grasped at his wrist with her left hand, made him withdraw, then pulled his hand forward again. This time she moved his hand under her unzipped jacket so that his palm was resting on the same spot but directly over the contour of her suited waist.

"That's better," She said.

Lost ideas of what to do next whizzed through John's mind, and he bit his lower lip lightly in indecision. Miranda continued to read him, and she released her palm from his and stepped completely into his guard to wrapped her hands around his body and place them on his lower back while pressing her face into his mid-chest.

John's hands naturally followed the contours of Miranda's body, with one resting on the small of her back and the other on the top of her hip in the impromptu embrace.

Rather than the thoughts of what to do next, John focused only on what her body felt like pressed against his and how the sensation further woke that long-suppressed desire to do much more than just embrace.

She wasn't squeezing him, but her arms were wrapped firmly around him. Miranda's suit, while thicker than the shirt he wore under his jacket, did nothing to hide the shape or texture of her flesh where her firm abdominals were pressed into his, where her breasts touched the top of his own abdominals, or where her face and the heat from her breath was resting on his chest.

"Thank you for these opportunities," She sighed, then pulled away slightly to look up into his face. "Thank you for my sister, for me, for what might happen... For-"

"-No. Thank you," John cut in, smiling tightly. "For showing me that I'm not a machine, for showing me I can still do more."

Miranda bit the corner of her bottom lip, and her ice-blue eyes moved back and forward between his lips and bright blue irises. When John didn't entirely translate to what she was saying without words, she laughed lightly and unwrapped her arms from his body to grasp at the top of his jacket.

"You're too bloody tall!" She chided around her laugh while pulling his upper body down.

John acquiesced to the movement, and he matched her motions as their faces drew close. He took a brief moment to analyse the soft paleness of her skin, the gentle pink of her lips, and the tiny quiver that they held before he likewise closed his eyes and met her guidance with gently pressing his lips to hers.

She asked for more through motion instantly, and her lips parted to capture his top lip more fully. Instincts that had been asleep in John for all of his life until that moment responded, and he manoeuvred his mouth to then captured her top lip.

He felt her mouth smile against his, and the feeling which was running away from his regular concepts of control, he smiled as well before grazing her bottom lip with his teeth in what was aimed to be a deeper kiss. Miranda complied, then advanced, and her tongue softly travelled his lip.

He answered, and in moments their embrace deepened with their tongues testing and tasting the others'.

John was lost in the new physical sensations he was experiencing, and the analytical part of him that was still active tried to draw comparisons to the flavour of his partner's mouth to any of the new and interesting foods he'd tried in the past several months.

No comparison fell into place, and he classified it simply as the taste of Miranda, additional to her sensation. After what felt like one of the longest physical and peaceful interactions in his life finally stopped, Miranda pulled back and pulled her lower lip beneath her top teeth in a smile.

Her lips were reddened to match the pink flush across her cheeks, and John still couldn't contain his innate desire to analyse while looking into her dilated eyes.

He felt her pulse racing in the contact of her palms that had moved from his jacket to his chest. In the next instant, he realised that his own pulse had jumped at their engagement.

Miranda licked her lips, bit her lower lip again, and then parted them, "Haha, I- Ah- That's one step...." She said.

Her voice was still confident, but it wasn't laced with the more commanding element that she usually kept present. John classified it after a moment of a more open expression of jubilance that was removed from her innate desire to contest or control a situation.

Before she could say anything else, he leaned forward and re-commenced their kiss. Miranda almost hummed into his mouth, and again he felt her smile into their kiss.

The second didn't last as long as the first, but John applied the responses that he'd learned from the first. Miranda's hand sought his to reposition one just below her breast on her flank and the other on the back of her hip over her glute.

They parted again, and Miranda's lips were rosier than after the first, "Pheew," She breathed and laughed. "I didn't expect this today."

John's expression softened, and he smiled more naturally than he had in years, which was still tight compared to Miranda's, but broad in comparison to the standard he set for himself. "Neither did I."

Her smile turned coy, and she bit her lip again, "It is very welcome, though.... John."

The way that she breathed his name made him falter. His vision withdrew into the near distance before refocusing back into her own pupils. There was the same care in her usage of his name as to how his Spartans said it, as to how Cortana and Halsey had said it... But there was more.

"I aim to please, Miranda," He answered, invoking the same tone and realising that it was desire that controlled the other half of the tenor used in his name, as he'd used in hers.

"Mmhmm," She arched a brow and gained a glint in her eye. "I bet..."

John took her meaning a moment after and gave a short laugh and a slightly less sure smile. As he came into himself more and recognised the suppressed elements of himself, he looked back and saw other events in a different light.

He realised the reaction that Miranda had had to him when he'd first required her to assist in removing his suit, and the ongoing responses to the same request were her own suppression of desire at exposure to the body of someone that they found attractive.

And while she had seen him in that light, he was only in the early stages of quantifying her own physique as something that stirred a deeper feeling in him.

John looked unashamedly down her body. His eyes moved over her cleavage exposed through the open top of her suit, down her abdomen, and over the sweeping curves of her hips and thighs before moving back to her eyes.

The look of certainty, confidence, and control had returned to her face from his inspection, but she didn't leverage it. She licked her lips, pressed a tight smile and then released a long breath. "Mmmhmm," She expressed without opening her mouth and nodding.

"Mmhmm," She repeated and then smirked, followed by pulling herself back into his body for another embrace.

Unlike the first, she didn't wrap her arms around him. Instead, she pressed her palms into the underside of his ribcage and swept her fingers across the muscles beneath. "I better enjoy this now," She laughed into his shirt.

Johns' hands performed a similar sensory inspection as Miranda's on her sides, but he only cocked his head in question. His silence prompted her on.

"When we get back, we'll be the General and the Commander in Chief again..."

"Oh," John agreed and nodded.

Her observation was correct; they would resume their roles, responsibilities, and status as idyllic leaders when they returned to Ares Base. Being overtly interested in one another didn't stack up in either of their views on professionalism.

He thought on it for a moment while taking advantage of his height to look across the frigid valley again. He had prompted them to come here to find time and space to talk and allow thoughts to macerate and come to terms with everything that had happened and was happening.

Part of him had wanted to progress what was forming between him and Miranda, but he hadn't expected his sense of desire to come through how it currently was and set a new tone for what he wanted from and with her going forward, even if he couldn't put his finger entirely onto that.

"We'll make it work," He supplied with certainty. It was their only choice if they did want to make it work, and he intended to see it through to wherever it took him.

His future was a lot less assured than it had once been, and taking opportunities from the Human experience meant more now than ever.

EDS (Earth Dating system) – October 24, 2185
Location: - Interstellar Space
Stellar Orbit: - Stellar approach: G-Class star V-O321G

The days were monotonous. The stress was ever-present. A background chill in the back of every crewmembers mind made everyone tense, testy, and easily aggravated.

Above all else, Shepard wished he could have come to certain realisations before now and ultimately dropped what had been an ever-present niggle in the back of his mind and heart about Tali committing to the destruction of the Geth.

Because of that niggle, she wasn't here on the Normandy. She was still on Praetoria. In fact, ever since they'd – or he'd – made efforts to mend their relationship from his initial reactions, there had been a divide.

It was likely what accounted for half, or more, of Tali's reasoning to stay on the new military world to be a part of their engineering team.

The silver lining, Shepard had no doubt that the skills and knowledge that she would almost certainly acquire would be put to get use either on the Normandy at some point back on Rannoch.

The more immediate negative, and a selfish one at that, was that he had no one to truly release his tension to while they pursued the Reaper fleet through interstellar space.

Garrus, Jacob, and Samara all served as good conversation balance to release tension. But even that was starting to grow tiresome. Garrus had a more challenging way of thinking than Shepard, which under normal circumstances, Shepard appreciated. But under their current ones, it was growing grating.

Jacob was very clearly becoming good at being a people manager aboard the ship. He would try to mediate Shepard into relaxing more in his presence, or at least in Chakwas's presence.

But that felt unnerving in comparison to the amount he'd learnt to relax in Tali's presence, and doing so with someone else felt like some kind of betrayal.

But he knew that wasn't true and that the tension that he and the entire crew shared was at fault.

And Samara would ask him questions about almost everything that he stated. Shepard had generally considered himself an introspective person his entire life, but at this point, he didn't want to question why he responded emotionally the way he did. He just wanted to solution to it.

He clenched his jaw and hunched his weight forward on his elbows over one of the panels that skirted the galaxy map in the CIC. It was where he spent most of his time during the day; watching their trajectory and reading everything that they could about the gargantuan Reaper fleet that they were following.

The CIC had, and much of the ship for that matter, had the light settings dimmed to reduce the strain on the crews' eyes and help make them all feel more subdued.

Joker and EDI had closed them in on the Reaper fleet within three days of departing Harsa, and it turned out that the bio-mechanoids were in no rush to get where they were going.

So they stayed at a distance that EDI assured them was safe and outside of the Reapers detection range given their velocity, and they followed, and had been following for seventeen days.

The first thing they had done was to map out the Reapers most likely destination based on their heading, which still hadn't changed, and then speculate about their strategy and response.

The first theory aired had been from EDI when she suggested that the Reapers could be headed for an inactive and unmapped Relay in an uncharted star system a long way out of the way. That theory couldn't be discounted, so they were forced to follow if she were right to try to extrapolate their possible ingress point if they did activate a new Relay.

Then they would either use their Slipspace drive to slip by them and feed the intel to their allies or try to trigger another Relay detonation to cause another bottleneck.

The second popular theory that Samara had put forward, with the benefit of her years giving her a sense of patience that the other members of the crew weren't quite up to sharing; the Reapers could very well be headed all the way to the Exodus Cluster and were content with taking over a year to get there.

As though timed precisely with his thoughts, even though it was a thought that occurred at least twenty times a day, EDI's voice spoke smoothly over the ships intercom system. "Light delay readings show the forward element of the Reaper fleet crossing the outer orbital planes of the solar system belonging to G-Class star V-O321G."

Shepard jerked upright, as did Anderson, who had been leaning in a similar posture atop the dais that overlooked the same galaxy map with their course and that of the Reapers plotted with multiple diverging lines out ahead of their enemy to show possible other routes.

They locked eyes, both shared an expression of firm and resolute readiness, and then in the same instant, they both frowned as the reality of EDI's report occurred to them.

"EDI, ETA to the outer limited of the system at current velocity?" Anderson asked with a husky and tired tenor to his voice.

Knowing that they were following a fleet of over a million Reapers had been weighing heavily on everyone's minds in the past seventeen days, Anderson included.

"Forty-five hours, sixteen minutes, and twelve seconds, Captain Anderson."

A collective sigh passed through everyone in the CIC, and Shepard fought the urge to slump his weight forward again.

Unlike Shepard, Anderson nodded and assumed a thoughtful expression. With his eyes narrowed and his jaw grinding, Anderson remained silent for several long minutes, with his head bobbing subtly in thought and his lips bunching and moving his features in time with each bob.

Shepard knew the look; it meant that Anderson was weighing up the risks to his crew of whatever was on his mind, not if whatever was on his mind could or would work.

"EDI, have Jeff come to a full stop. When we're far enough away to fire up the Slipspace drive without being noticed, I want you to take us to a point on the far side of that star where we can remain out of the detection range of the Reapers but where we can survey from."

"Of course, Captain," EDI answered.

Shepard nodded at the instruction as he heard it. He breathed in through his nose and then expelled it through pursed lips. Their near-month of tension looked like it was nearing its end, and they were swapping it for a new kind of apprehension.

Lights flashed on consoles and displays throughout the CIC as operations were relayed by EDI to the crew. They all saw to double and triple-checking power outputs and drive function before plunging back into Slipspace at long last.

Shepard swung his hands behind his back, clasped his wrist over the small of his back and marched around the galaxy map to stand by what had been his private console for almost a year.

Kelly Chambers looked over at him and forced a tight smile, with her eyes further betraying how forced her expression was. Shepard returned the smile without any alacrity and then looked back toward Anderson.

"Crew, prepare for Slipspace transition."

Boredom and tension would be moving the crew in the lower decks with near immediacy, of that, Shepard was sure.

They waited in partial silence for another hour, and Anderson resumed his posture of leaning onto the railing of the dais on his forearms. Shepard practised the parade discipline learned on Praetoria and stood as though a statue.

His mind was blank all the while. Shepard had run circles in his head around every issue, confronted each that persisted, even when the answer placed the blame squarely on his shoulders.

If there was one development from the days of tension on the Normandy running silent like a submarine of old in what could very well be enemy waters, it was that Shepard, and likely most of the crew, had gone through a form of psychological journey in picking themselves apart in the miserable silence that had proliferated throughout the ship.

The misery of fear-induced discomfort made them all ask questions of themselves. The hopelessness that stemmed from the vast enemy that they followed instigated all of them, or at least, Shepard knew himself, and suspected everyone else, provided them with ample reason to be more honest with themselves than any of them usually would be.

It had all served to cement his knowledge that his demotion had not just been what he had deserved but also what he needed.

He had spent his non-sleeping off-duty hours thinking laterally about Tali, the Quarians, and the Geth. He had come to the realisation that if an AI race had been birthed on Earth and done what the Geth had, that he would do what Tali had with even less hesitation and with no apology.

From his perspective, the Geth were still victims, but that didn't absolve them from what they had perpetrated against the Quarians, nor did it declare them no longer responsible for the strategic and tactical decisions they had made against the Quarians during their morning war.

Nor did it mend the wounds that the Geth could have instigated the mending of in their position of power over the Quarians for all the years since.

And from that point of view, his discomfort toward Tali's choice had vanished, and he was still able to bear his sense of conscience toward sympathising with the Geth.

His ideas and ideals about how the galaxy should be run were on pause. Despite its flaws, he thought the Alliance parliamentary system was the most democratic and idyllic in the galaxy.

While he'd initially been concerned about the military junta that his once second had helped form, he'd now totally eased his concern about it with the simple acknowledgement that it was required as an absolute, in the face of an enemy even more absolute.

Shepard had long since stopped trying to think of Miranda Lawson as his XO to reign in. The thought had tempted him all the way up until this mission. Still, the long days of nothing and serving as second on the Normandy rammed home the structure of the military that he was in, where now the illustrious Miss Lawson was nearly at the top of the totem pole, and he was at least halfway down it.

'The Illustrious Lawson... Huh, has a certain ironic ring to it...' Shepard dour demeanour shifted into brief humour at the concept and twist of phonetics.

The silence of the CIC was broken by EDI's calm voice again, "Brace for Slipspace transition."

Bracing wasn't required, but everyone grabbed hold of something regardless.

"ETA to drop out point, seven minutes."

Everyone in the CIC slowly released whatever they'd grasped and took the time to sit back. While in Slipspace, all external sensors were dead, and only the internal life support, power management, and Slipspace drive systems needed to be observed.

They dropped out of the higher dimensions on time with EDI's announcement, and Anderson ordered the deployment of spy drones at Lagrange points around the star that obscured them from the Reapers entering the system.

The Normandy's electronic eyes and passive sensors watched and waited as the Reapers that entered the system picked up their pace and beelined toward an asteroid belt that made up more than half of the matter in the system.

While they observed the progress of the Reapers, they also analysed the system. They found a planet located ideally in the habitable zone occupied by what appeared to be an early stone-age species.

Shepard made special note of it, thinking that others in the CIC likely would be too, but his to pass along the Liara for future studies if they ever made it beyond the war.

The ramifications of the unfolding evidence toward a dormant Relay in the system were that the Reapers either catalogued most primordial worlds in the galaxy to identify where life would evolve into sapience, or they played a role in kicking it off.

Either conclusion was chilling in that the purpose was to harvest the organic being when they reached a certain critical mass.

Hours more passed before their digital eyes in the hottest part of the solar system detected a power spike and confirmed the running theory.

"We need to know where that goes." Anderson declared, his voice lacking any comfort and his eyes hard.

His mouth and nose twitched. He gritted his teeth and shook his head, then clenched his fists. "EDI, Joker, can you jump us to detection range of that Relay, then use it before any of the Reapers can?"

"Sir, what are the Reapers doing?" Shepard called from where he'd been standing with a periodic shuffling of weight from one foot to the other.

Anderson glanced back at him from the dais, nodded and repeated Shepard's question.

"Looks like they're lining up in formation near the Relay, Captain..." Joker muttered pessimistically. "I'd guess that they're waiting until most of their squidy-pals are ready to go."

"How long would that be?" Anderson quipped.

"Another thirty hours, Captain," EDI answered. "And thus far, our navigation in Slipspace has been highly accurate. We have an eighty-per cent chance of navigating into the detection range of the Relay successfully from our present location."

Shepard expelled air through his nose in a derisive sound, and Anderson grumbled under his breath ahead of him. The older man shook his head slowly before answering, "That's better than fifty per cent... Heat it up, Joker."

"Aye, aye."

Anderson turned statue still again with his fists clenched by his side. Shepard watched with a similar expression of hard determination while the crew around them saw to their various tasks in the reduced lighting that they'd come to prefer in the CIC.

"I want every single form of transmission that we can make ready to go. We need all weapons loaded. And we need copies of everything we've recorded loaded into our Kodiak's to deploy in case we don't make it through."

After a short pause, Shepard realised that Anderson was talking to him. He straightened and stomped his right boot down with a click of his sole on the grating, "Yes, Sir!"

The next moment, Shepard lifted his omni-tool and started relaying the orders to the platoon in the hanger to be ready to jump ship with the data that EDI would be transferring to them.

"We're- Uh, yeah... Suppose we're ready," Joker announced several minutes later.

Anderson glanced back at Shepard, and the once-Spectre declined his chin in a firm nod with his jaw set. Anderson drew in a deep breath through his node and nodded in affirmation twice. "Hit it, Joker!"

Anxiety rolled through the CIC, and all eyes turned to where the galaxy map had been replaced with a system map. The location of the Normandy as close to the star as was safe pulsed several times, then the image resolved into a strobing Relay with a growing grid of dark cephalopod shapes at mid-engagement range.

"Contact with the Relay!" Joker cried in a distressed voice. "Pumping all power into the engines!"

Shepard's knuckles turned white as he watched their progress with bated breath. The holographic display showed the Relay to scale against the Normandy and the distant Reapers. The Normandy sped closer and closer, tiny as she was compared to the mass effect engine, and Reapers started to turn their attention their way.

Shepard felt as though he were about to cut clean through his palms with his fingernails as his fists tightened apprehensively. The only sounds in the CIC were hagged breathes and dings, bings, chimes and beeps associated with their systems, and then the holographic display vanished.

Intakes of breath and rustles of movement followed moments later as everyone prepared for the worst.

"We have traversed the Relay to the Petra Nebula. Sending intelligence through comms buoys now." EDI announced calmly, as though the entire ship's crew wasn't on the edge of their seats for the worst-case scenario.

"Joker, take us to Sol, then jump us back to Praetoria. Send duplicates of our data through every comms buoy we go past! Laser our intel to Grissom and Elysium and tell them all to get the hell out, NOW!"

Silence answered Anderson as the galaxy map returned to the hologram, but now with a new Relay link added in from where they had just jumped. Anderson looked around the CIC with a slow nod and release of breath to show his attempt to calm his nerves.

His action caused everyone to likewise release a slow breath, and that in itself steeled their nerves. The crew swung back into their tasks, and the map showed the Normandy coming back to face the Relay to jump to Exodus before any of the Reapers could catch up to tail them to their destination.

Shepard's fists uncurled, and he closed his eyes while releasing his breath in the same manner that Anderson had through pouted lips, as though to blow the tension out and away.

Whatever he'd thought of fighting the Batarians all those years ago, of fighting the Geth on Rannoch more recently, or of the attempted invasion of Eden Prime – This... This was going to be something else entirely.

EDS (Earth Dating system) – October 29, 2185
Location: Vetus System – Petra Nebula
Stellar Orbit: Vetus

This was it. This was what it had all been growing toward. This was the beginning of the next chapter for the galaxy, in a way that the other encounters up until now hadn't been. This was the true commencement of the Reaper war.

"Taskforce Sabre, report your status."

Taskforce sabre, like its namesake, was deployed to cut deep and quick. It comprised all of the upgraded ships from Hackett's fleet that had become the first official fleet of Praetoria, Natalie Xu's contingent of heavy cruisers loaded exclusively with Praetorian missiles, and several hundred hauliers minus their original crew.

The Rubicon was also present with a single Garuda-class deployment transport. She wasn't considered a part of the task force, given that she would be governed by the strategic command of General Lawson and used in a different stratagem to make room to land troops onto Elysium rather than specifically to fight the Reapers in space.

In Stephen Hackett's red-lit CIC, the arrayed communications specialists checked off the responses from all crewed ships that had just emerged from Slipspace with them.

Xu's heavy cruisers had been towed through due to them lacking the means to enter and navigate the Slipstream independently.

He watched over them with half of his attention. In contrast, the other half remained glued to his personal omni-tool screen being fed sensor data from his ships, the Rubicon, and any local data streams that Deja was clearly hacking into and forwarding information from.

As expected, Grissom Academy was an expanding field of debris several million kilometres away. It was reportedly the first target hit by the Reapers when they'd entered the system five days earlier.

The Normandy had arrived, spent several minutes coming about, and then had left the system to divulge their findings. Evacuations had started immediately in Elysium and on Grissom.

For those stationed on and learning on Grissom, as a military station, it kept an adequate number of craft docked to evac at all times, and all souls had been accounted for.

Elysium had no such luck. Civilians wealthy enough to own their own craft fled within an hour of the Normandy's message. Many of those who had fled had been caught on approach to the local Relay by the first wave of Reapers coming through.

Orbital satellites were the coalition forces first relevant intelligence sources after the assembly of the fleet. What they had relayed had done nothing to make them think the fight ahead would be easy.

The Chief and Lawson had watched the data feeds with him, and they had forwarded the same feeds to all of their allies. Thousands of the Reapers, from the builds they were more familiar with to smaller and more bulbous forms of which they weren't familiar, came streaming through the Relay, only to turn and jump to other connected systems.

When the dispersal of the forward elements had finally ended, what could only have been the rear guard of the extra-galactic invasion force remained in Vetus. They plunged into the system and destroyed Grissom and then went rocketing toward Elysium.

Several dozen Reapers remained in the system that they knew of.

"All ships report in- they're ready to engage, Admiral!"

"Good," Hackett grunted. He clasped his chin and probed the inside of his cheek with his tongue in thought. "Populate our tactical maps, line us up with the closest Reapers."

Beyond the curving viewscreen, no Reapers were visible. Elysium was only visible as a distant speck of light where Vetus's rays bounced off its atmosphere. But on the curving holographic screens that wrapped the front half of the CIC, shapes sprung to life and placed red markers where each of the known Reapers was around Elysium.

"Fire the first salvo from the Cruisers and let them coast on ballistic trajectories ahead of us."

Points of light sped into and away from the viewscreen as the cruisers fired and the missiles simple onboard computers responded to the digital instructions to cease their fuel usage.

"Bring the hauliers in front of us. All ships form up in five staggered lines."

On the tactical map hovering ahead of Anderson in the CIC, ships moved to his bidding. The three hundred blips representing the initial fired Archers stayed in motion toward the Reapers while his ships kept pace with them.

The hundreds of uncrewed hauliers driven by simple VI's pulled ahead and formed a metal wall in space, while what was once Fifth fleet broke into five lines with intentionally random spacing.

A part of their discussed strategy against the Reapers was to randomise as many force movements as possible. All of their intel so far showed that the Reapers were a highly methodical species and likely adhered to as many patterns as possible.

Hackett's heart beat heavily in his ears, and his breaths came in rapid pulls and pushes through his flared nostrils.

Fear and excitement gripped his heart in equal measures, and he silently thanked whatever in him hadn't numbed him to either. Quiet voices floated around the CIC as crew seated near or next to one another exchanged information or details relevant to their tasks.

Many muttered sounds that Hackett thought could only be affirmations passed around, and he started to nod, "Crew-" He halted, and many of them turned in their chairs to look at him. With a flick of fingers on his omni-tool, he connected his link to the task force ships.

"We might all look to heroes, we look to symbols, to those who tower above us..."

Hackett smirked knowingly, and several scoffs passed around the CIC as they all clearly grasped the very real way that the Master Chief, and to a lesser extent, Miranda Lawson, managed to gain the focus in the visual spectrum.

"But it is you, all of you! From the lowest to the highest rank, you're the heroes! Don't forget, but don't be foolish. We might not be the Systems Alliance anymore, but we're still Earths spear, and I know that you'll serve her well!"

Excitement overtook the dwindling sense of fear in Hackett's chest, and a confident smirk pulled his features.

One of his crew at a forward tactical station pumped a fist in the air and yelled throatily, "FOR EARTH!"

"FOR EARTH!" The rest of the CIC added hardly a second later, then they all took it up as a chant. "FOR EARTH! FOR EARTH! FOR EARTH!"

Hackett lifted a fist to the timed chant of his crew, and after a beat, he opened his palm and made a shushing gesture. The crew immediately quelled their vocal excitement, but their faces remained enraptured.

"We're going to fight with everything we've got, we won't give any quarter, and we won't leave here without saving some civilians."

Excitement turned hard on faces as they all heard Hackett's use of the word "some" rather than the Alliance attitude of all.

Before that line of thought could turn the tide of the atmosphere, Hackett controlled the tactical screen via his omni-tool and focused on nine Reapers coming for them in a straight line, still several million kilometres away.

"This will be a knife fight, once the first missiles strike, we're pushing in the hauliers as shields, our cruisers fitted with onagers will move in, fighters will deploy with laser munitions, and our dreadnoughts will jump a thousand klicks on the z-axis to use the larger MACs we're strapped with. Lines three and four will jump several thousand klicks on the x-axis and unload their payloads of nukes on the next force of Reapers, and we'll work the rest out from there."

The crew stiffened in their chairs and faced forward again. They turned professional now that their fears had been eased and their spirit roused. Hackett briefly wondered what the crew on the bridge of the Rubicon would be like in this circumstance.

Unlike in an Alliance CIC placed forward in the ship but still nestled safely deep behind armour, the Rubicon's bridge was near the middle of the ship, but right at the very top with a form of transparent steel acting as her direct viewscreen to space.

He'd grown accustomed to seeing the Rangers and the other Praetorian servicemembers as staunchly professional. They remained absolutely quiet, externally at least, in facing hardship.

But he'd also seen the development of a warrior culture taking root, and it had only seemed to begin to proliferate through their ranks the more Miranda Lawson stood up for them and the more John, the towering icon, walked and trained with them without his armour.

Fear softly flowed back into Hackett, and he grimaced a half-smile at its return. On the viewscreen, the Reapers closed quickly as they accelerated at a pace tenfold what they'd used in Harsa.

The numbers on the display that showed their distance moved too fast to read as the distance that separated them moved into nothing, and then Hackett's breath caught in his throat as three of the Reapers vanished.

"Light speed manoeuvre!" A crewman yelled throatily.

"BRACE!" Another yelled.

"All dreadnoughts, reorientate on the breach! Everyone else; stay on your trajectories." Hackett clenched up while yelling. His fingers worked on his omni-tool to commit a section of the screens to show where the three Reapers had broken through at the unexpected jump.

Six red crosses showed the destruction of cruisers which the Reapers had seemingly targeted with the jump that brought them into a five-kilometre range.

Hackett worked for another moment, and that section of the screen became a visual sourced from the closest ship to the engagement just as the Reapers all unleashed another wave of their superheated metal beam weapons.

"No..." Hackett muttered between clenched teeth. His ships were turning too slowly to stop the Reapers in their surprise attack- By the time they turned and fired, another dozen cruisers would be burning in space. By the time-

"SLIPSPACE EVENT!" Someone in the CIC called.

The now-familiar pool of light opened directly in front of one of the Reapers, and the Rubicon emerged fluidly. A flash of light signified her main gun firing point-blank into the Reaper directly ahead of the dangerous looking warship, and the Reapers' centre of mass was instantly vaporised.

The intelligent display showed points on the Rubicon's hull as red as the deck mounted cannons and onagers fired, and a second Reaper was sent spinning with its beams firing wildly. The third one flipped and rolled in space, avoiding the fire directed at it, and splashed its attack across the prow of the Rubicon.

"We've got this one!" Miranda's voice echoed over the fleetwide channel. "Proceed on mission."

Hackett grimaced and flexed his fingers at the aggressive display of space combat, unlike anything he'd ever imagined. The Rubicon's engines flared with extra power.

Using the specialised Mass Effect jacket built into her engines, she orientated onto the Reaper as though magnetised to it and rocketed directly into it while firing all of her forward-mounted deck guns.

"Holy shit...." Someone in Hackett's CIC muttered as the Reaper lost chunks of its carapace in the second before the Rubicon smashed into it and finished reducing its structural integrity.

The Reaper fractured down the middle at the impact, and another pool of light took the Rubicon back to where she'd been keeping overwatch and escorting the troop transport ship.

"Holy shit is right..." Hackett agreed silently to himself. He shook his head after a moment and expelled a quick breath, "Close quarters fitted ships designated Beta, Delta, Golf, continue on course, but reorientate on close covering support for your attack lines."

The visual display on the screen remained active but switched to a different ship that had a view of the approaching line of Reapers over the shield wall of Hauliers.

"Activate all Archers."

The missiles that had been running silent ahead of their positions lit up and focused onto the enemy. Seconds later, the telltale red energy beams advertised the Reapers attempt to take out the missile barrage. Sparks of light showed each impact in the visual spectrum.

"Make a hole in the wall, onagers fire on any solution you get."

"Sir! Twenty-four more just jumped through the Relay. They're going- Light speed jump!"

Hackett's mind worked overtime as he managed the battle map of the system. The Reapers they had been lining up to deal with were on the galactic north, with the Relay being on the east. They were approaching Elysium from the galactic south from the perspective of how Humanity orientated the galaxy map.

"Distance!" He demanded.

"Five hundred klicks and closing."

"Shit!" Hackett hissed. He gritted his teeth, clenched his hands, and stood in a jerky and harsh movement. "All dreadnoughts, engage the new targets. First wave follows us. We're jumping into their flanks!"

None of them paused at the tactic that would usually be seen as insane to his crews' credit. But they had just seen it been used to significant effect by the Rubicon with Slipspace technology, so why couldn't it work with Element Zero?

Hackett hadn't expected this battle to be easy. In fact, they had projected losing half of their fleet at the introduction to unknown assets, but he still hadn't quite prepared himself for it to go this hot this quick.

"Missile boats," Hackett called for the cruisers that had been Xu's. "Pull back and fired at will at any Reaper targets. DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT get into close quarters."

"Ready to jump, Sir!"

"Do it!"

The screen flickered in the millisecond that it required to update its feed from the rapid transit, and his tactical officers were the first to be keyed into the action. "FIRING! FIRING! FIRING!"

They'd jumped to being a hundred kilometres aft of the surprise Reaper attack perfectly in time with the other four Dreadnoughts of the fleet, and they were the first to fire. The others followed suit in milliseconds, and seconds later, four of the Reapers were reduced to detritus and were sent tumbling with geysers of flame spewing from them.

The rest came about in a snap, and unlike their previous tactics, they all took to awkward spinning trajectories.

"Everything we've got!" Hackett ground harshly. "Missiles!" He added unnecessarily as his tactical crew immediately jumped to the weaponry that could track their enemy. "Nav, match the Reapers spin, make us hard to hit!"

"It'll stress the inertial systems, Sir?"

"I suggest everyone strap in." Hackett accepted while seating himself and pulling his emergency harness down.

The Reapers had just proved them wrong. Where they thought the Reapers could likely be exceedingly slow to learn, they were merely unwilling to change their strategies, not incapable of doing so quickly.

"Fire two Shiva's, right now," Hackett ordered gruffly as their spin started and his stomach climbed into his throat. "Middle of their formation. Proximity detonation!"

"Aye, Sir!" An officer at tactical cried through the same gut-wrenching sensation that everyone was experiencing.

Hackett barred his teeth against the strain and fought to keep his attention focused on the battlespace shown on the screen. The Reapers were still moving in a grouping toward them, despite their erratic motions, and they weren't treating the nuclear weapons any differently from the other Archer missiles streaking into their midst.

In another life, mere months earlier, Hackett would have seen the use of thermo-nuclear munitions to be a flagrant violation of species rights.

But now, it was a tool that needed to be used, and he was more than willing to do so. This wasn't an enemy that was going to demilitarise in the face of mutual destruction, so pulling out the worst of what you could do right away was, in Hackett's mind, the best way to strike hard and fast and secure early victories.

EDS (Earth Dating system) – October 29, 2185
Location: Praetoria - Ares Base – Central labs
Stellar Orbit: Epsilon Eridani

"I spy with my little eye. . . A secret."

There were other researchers and lab technicians in the central lab with her. It was still the heavily modified heart of the original Kowloon freighter that had set down on what had come to be known as Praetoria. They all ignored Cathryn Hales, as was their protocol.

The ones in training and education from the Andromeda Initiative and the budding Omega educational system were there to listen and learn and ask questions whenever that wasn't going to be disruptive. The questions were for the other researchers, not for Cathryn.

At least, not unless she was specifically making a point of teaching them. Cathryn's unbridled curious intellect had been well and truly noted by the others as being the core feature of their scientific institution, for which Cathryn was thankful.

She'd always excelled in her studies and work, but touching on the technology revealed from the amorous Spartan had awoken her to further possibilities.

Possibilities never thought about until the advent of this new age, but now that she was in it, Cathryn felt like her mind was expanding and growing every day.

Each new idea was worth chasing, and not trying to innovate daily seemed like a waste of a day.

But much of her innovation still hinged off what she interpreted out of the UNSC data files and how she could merge that technology with omni or element zero technology.

Or even how she could potentially find ways of combining it with technology learnt by the UNSC from the Covenant or Forerunners, which was still in the early stages of understanding.

But it was something else that had caught her attention. It was intrinsic to their leader and something that she had found amazing not to be listed within the files.

But she was sure that it was here, hidden between lines of data in codes and sequences.

Cathryn was certain that the technology, the processes, and the methods, to make a person more, to make a person into an icon had to be present.

That, it was here, and that it was placed in such a fashion to ensure that only the most endeavouring mind could find it and apply it correctly.

"I spy..." Cathryn breathed. She was hunched over her terminal on her white cushioned stool, her feet tapping the railing of it, and her lips traversing her lower face in ecstatic thought. "I spy the Spartan program... There you are..." She smirked and typed in a line of code on her console into a duplicate of the information taken from the original data crystal.

A bar initialised on her screen and loaded to full in moments, and a new menu item formed at the bottom of the list of navigational topics to access various elements of UNSC tech.

Cathryn's eyes gleamed as she read it, "Spartan program."

She clicked into it, and her mouth joined her eyes in expressing her excitement. "Human augmentation systems, project Mjolnir... This will be interesting."