October 23, 2686, AUT.

Shan-Xi Colony, Edge of Alliance-controlled space.

Around the time of the SCDF's engagement with Ninth Fleet's vanguard.

"Alert! This is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill! All non-combatant population, report to their sector's Vault immediately with a maximum of one personal baggage item each. All enlisted combat capable residents, report to the nearest Vault or the nearest public building operated by Militia Personnel within thirty minutes to receive armament and orders."

"[This message will now repeat.]"

"Alert! This is -"

It took a long moment for the ED-Es' blaring announcement to carry over the racket of the ATAJ's parade grounds and really register. The rhythmic attack of boots on the beaten training field, recommissioned to private self-celebration for the Great War 609th Anniversary, faltered, stumbled, and then stopped, as over six hundred students, from twelve year old newbies near the end of their first year cycle, to the seventeen year old cadets a month away from graduation, found themselves frozen in surprise.

Or at least, most of them were. Cadet Andrej Shepard's first instinct, the one thing the Advanced Training Academy for Juveniles' hadn't beaten or trained out of him, was to scour the profusion of heads for his twin sister.

He didn't find her. Instead, he felt her familiar presence touch his mind touch and her hand brush his elbow just as the drill instructors started to bark and spit foam, effectively silencing the looping message.

'I'm here.'

He found her hand and squeezed it briefly, before his body responded to ingrained reflexes triggered by a superior's orders.

"Split up!" Chief Instructor Master Chief Petty Officer Ellison barked in his gravelly voice, green hands slashing at the air like oxygen had personally offended him, "Cadets, follow Sergeant Van Doorm to the armory! Everyone else, you're Sergeant Pascalis' shadows to Vault 03! On the double, you pissing maggots! The xenos won't wait for you to grab a toothbrush and groom your pretty faces!"

Stuffy parade uniforms weren't really meant for sprinting, but under Van Doorm's eager tongue lashing and inventive encouragement, the cadets made do. Andrej never allowed Jana outside of his field of vision for more than a few moments, his grandfather's words hammering at his ears like a bad case of insistent hangover.

Through bad and worse, Shepards always watch out for each other.

Grandpa Benedict all but tattooed those words on Jana's and his foreheads since their parents died in the Wars, long before either of them was selected for the ATAJ.

The sixty or so cadets cleared the inner parade grounds and spread orderly over the armory in less than one-hundred-and-fifty-seconds, shedding their mass-produced uniforms in favor of proper undersuits and armor. It was eerie for Andrej to find himself barely sweating as he stuffed the leather-reinforced official dress into his locker, a sentiment he found mirrored on Jana's and many other faces as the cadets armed and armored up.

It was one thing to study and even hear first-hand accounts of how FEV-derived combat-mods made this huge difference for the ground-pounders in the Wars. It was a whole other to feel his body change and adapt after the last batch of standard injections.

Andrej felt stronger than ever before and ready to bitchslap any zetan abomination all the way back to the glassed plains of Caleston where the butt-heads ought to have died for good. From what the instructors barked of xenos and enemy ships, however, it seemed the zetans hadn't kicked the bucket for good, despite what the Grand Admiral's public declaration seven years back.

He couldn't say he was entirely displeased at the prospect of meeting the nemesis of humanity in the field.

An eager grin slowly spread on his face like a rictus as he secured the straps of his militia-rated combat armor around his torso and limbs, then he started stuffing his chest rig and pouches with extra fusion batteries, grenades, medi-gel packets. The full helmet went to a hook on his hip. The saturnite machete, one of the few Alliance standard issues to carry over to the colonial militias he technically was still a part of, went strapped to the small of his back by the magnetic strip attached to the thermo-insulant sheath.

Finally, he went to grab the standard-issue laser rifle and plasma defender combo, only to find a hand clamping down on his. Jana's eyes sparked with silent, burning concern under her helmet. Andrej realized the grin had yet to leave his face.

'Hey, snap out of it, 'kay? I'm counting on you.'

For her sake, he schooled his expression and shoved the mix of trepidation, gut-clenching fear, and teeth-grinding lust for payback to the back of his mind. Grandpa Benedict's words echoed in his mind like a mantra.

If you let anger control you, it'll make you feel bold and invincible, like the world ought to break its rules for you. That's a surefire way to a stupid and useless death, son. By all means, use it and feed it, but don't let it use you. You kids only have each other.

Andrej nodded at his sister and secured the rifle's sling around his shoulder, looking away from her to eye the stacks of naïve ED-E units lining one wall of the armory. Samantha was slaving three to her Pip-Boy. Overachieving, much?

He patted her shoulder, projecting back the first line from an old story their mother used to read to them.

'Never forsake me, and I'll never forsake you.'

"It's all good," he reassured his sister vocally. "Thanks."

Her answer came a split-moment later, familiar and soothing like a worn glove. 'I'll never forsake you as long as I live.'

"Now that's goddamn jolly, Shepard!" Sergeant Van Doorm barked mockingly. "Thank you very much for the update! What else, a cup of tea? Move it and gear up, you half-Slavic shithead!"

Twenty minutes and a thorough bout of public embarrassment later, the cadets were arranged at attention by training teams. Dozens of ED-E units, from recon models to spotters to heavy combat, hovered silently above or around their masters.

Andrej, as leader of Team 9, stood one step ahead of the rest of his diminished squad of four, a single ED-E unit at his shoulder. Gorobitz, the team's sniper and missing member, was still hospitalized after a drunken bout with a resident super mutant during the last weekend of leave. The empty spot where the man would usually stand, between Samantha and Arnon at the back, annoyed Andrej more than he cared to admit to anyone.

Of all the times to be short one man, a xenos invasion scraped the bottom of the hole and started digging. Fucking moron.

Van Doorm studied the two lines of cadets and offered a begrudging nod. Then Chief Instructor Elison marched in, prompting all cadets without exclusion to snap at attention at the ancient super mutant.

"As you were," he offered, the bark such an intrinsic part of his tone, the cadets snapped to rest as well. "I'll be brief with you, cadets. Unknown xenos are about to invade our home! These are no zetans, thank the Founders for that, and the navy boys gave them one hell of a nosebleed before they went Poseidon, but they don't fuck about either! I'm told they've got some very niffy Prothean toys," the Staff Sergeant scoffed. Murmurs arose from the ranks, silenced by Van Doorm's withering glare in the background.

Andrej frowned, dodging the stab of disappointment in favor of a short-lived bout of confusion. A new kind of xenos? Really? History repeated itself, he thought bitterly. What the hell was it that gave xenos such raging hard-ons for trying and wipe out humanity? His grip stiffened around the stock of his laser rifle.

"Now, as always, it's up to us ground-pounders to get the job done. Today will be your trial by fire! Your blooding before my beloved Alliance welcomes you as the xenos-slayers that y'all are. We'll rendezvous at Vault 03 in fifteen and coordinate with the garrison there, so once the space fuckfaces realize that all the orbital shelling and Prothean knick-knacks in the world won't do them one ounce of good, we'll show 'em just how humanity does it and kick them off our rock! Y'all got the game plan?!"

Sixty voices shouted in unison. Even a few of the eyebots chirped and trilled along.

"Hooah!"

2727 GTS - 120 standard minutes after Ninth Fleet first jump into "Agaxia" System.

On board of the turian dreadnought HDV Pride of Macedyn.

General Desolas watched impassively as shuttles and frigates on salvage and recovery detail combed through the extensive debris field of turian and alien ships both. Reports scrolled on one of the holo-screen on his CIC. The updates came by the minute and were sorted by the ship's onboard VI for easier perusing.

It didn't look good.

The aliens' directed energy weapons were, simply put, more devastating than anything the Citadel had ever met so far. It was telling that the few escape pods recovered were empty, and the count of survivors trickled up slowly as drifting sailors and crewmembers were recovered from the broken hulls of those ships that still maintained some resemblance of integrity.

There had been no time to commence evac, or for the bridge officers to even realize it was needed.

Of two-thirds of the diplomatic vanguard under Admiral Ushela, only space dust remained.

The spinal gun of a cruiser equivalent had managed to pierce through the thick armor of the dreadnought Indomitable, delivering nearly as much energy on contact as a direct shot by a turian capital ship's main APP gun.

Their missiles, comparatively, made a dreadnought's direct hit look like a slap on the wrist. Half the vanguard had been just annihilated in a flash of nuclear-powered particles accelerated so beyond the capabilities of any known and theorized Mass Effect application, it wasn't even funny, unless one was prone to hysterical laughter.

No turian worth his chops was. Desolas certainly wasn't.

Such overwhelming power, not to mention the nature of the ships' shield systems, was a painfully humbling scenario for the General, a turian, to contemplate. Turian naval doctrine might be subpar when it came to cyber-warfare, sensor suites, and countermeasures, but they took pride and advantage in packing a punch far above any know tonnage equivalent, and in tanking hits better and longer than anything but Silaris armor.

The General could feel the undercurrent of uneasiness this awareness engendered pulsating under iron discipline even here, on his flagship.

And yet, the new and untapped tech base wasn't what had Desolas so beset by concern, he was actually struggling to maintain the composure proper of an officer.

No, a gun was no more a danger than the will moving the hand holding it, a turian basic field manual recited. These aliens had shown a disturbing lack of hesitation by blowing up their own ships, rather than allow prisoners and samples of their technology to be recovered.

The boarding teams Admiral Septimus Oraka sent to seize the alien flagship had spottily reported heavy resistance, both automated and not, before those two ships as well had gone up like small stars.

Only the krogans and the rachni, or the most driven fanatics and secessionists during the Unification Wars, had ever shown such a commitment and lack of self-conservation. Even the ships under the Dread Admiral of the Quarians, Momol'Xen, spirits spit on his name, hadn't, unless the suicidal ships were manned entirely by geth.

The prospect of a future client race and Council associate that put the words krogan and WMDs with energy weapons in the same sentence was enough to give even the battle-hardened general reason aplenty to pause, and not entirely negative ones.

As an immediate result, however, when the time had come to present their evidence to the Council, summoned on Spectre Vasir's authority, Desolas and the Admiral only had badly damaged scraps of hulls, sensor readings, and a collection of shaky helmet recordings from the boarding teams to present, together with their personal considerations.

As it turned out, the destructive potential and reckless attitude of this new race, or the fact that long-range scans had revealed another active Relay at the other end of the temporarily-named Agaxia System, wasn't even the biggest stain of vakar shit on the Ninth Fleet's collective face-plates.

Desolas accepted an incoming transmission, narrowing his focus on the holo-screen. Admiral Oraka's face was grave and composed, his Family's markings covering chipped and burned plates, each of them speaking of a life-or-death situation that brought the Admiral to climb near the top of the meritocracy and to a seat on the Primacy Circle.

"It's time, General Arterius. Bring the Pride's battlegroup and the troop transports in orbit around the alien colony. Frigate flotillas from the Third and Fourth battlegroups will render assistance with air operations. It's tantamount you pacify these aliens and fortify your position before the quarians show up."

Desolas' brow plates knitted imperceptibly. The High Primarch had attached the 397th Palaven and the 228th Taetrus Legions to the Ninth Fleet when the Shadow Broker's info packet revealed unquestionable signs of alien presence in the Agaxia System. A full company of the Blackwatch also bolstered the ranks, though their target, as well as the Spectres' and the STG's, was the Prothean Cache indicated by the mad Matriarch's writings. Furthermore, the few asari elements attached to the Ninth, like the Shifting Tides, also carried a liberal amount of huntresses and commandos, Spectre Vasir's own retinue among them.

It was an impressive amount of force, even by Desolas' standards of heavy border policy. Certainly enough to intimidate even the hardiest Facinus dissident or Terminus warlord. Desolas harbored little doubt that it'd be enough to overrun the alien's brand of defense and resistance. Colonies, whatever the race, often hosted only garrison forces and local militias, while a rapid response force was stationed in the nearby hub system.

It was a tried and true pattern because it worked: the leader who wanted to defend everything, defended nothing. Only the quarians, with their endless geth armies, defied this principle.

The potential cost of the offensive, however, weighed heavily on his thoughts and long-term planning.

Because as per his mercenary nature, the Broker's auction offer had been only a thinly masked probe of interest. In a matter of hours, several parties had bought and received the information for staggering amounts of credits, resources, and favors. Peer pressure and deeply-set paranoia stemming from the Morning War all the way back to the Krogan Rebellions only saw the prices skyrocket into the ludicrous.

The Ninth Council Defense Fleet was the first to reach and cross Relay 314. The Council's emergency meeting had confirmed that they wouldn't be the last.

"What of the rest of the Fleet?" Desolas queried. It wasn't a challenge to authority, barely a request for complete information from peer to peer as they prepared to fulfill their respective duties to the Hierarchy and the Council. In that order.

"The Third and the Fourth battlegroups will set up a kill zone around the unmapped Relay. They'll catch any alien reinforcement in a crossfire and quickly gut them, then bring any high-ranking prisoners to the diplomats on the Shifting Tides. I'll keep the rest of the Fleet on guard duty behind Relay 314, minus a few frigate elements for FTL recon at the edge of the system." The subharmonics in Oraka's flanged voice thrummed, radiating unshakeable and inspiring determination. "No matter what the quarians throw at us, we will push them back. If the Synod thinks they can subjugate a new member of the galactic community with their robotic armies, they are sorely mistaken. Secure the colony, General."

The unease permeating the Pride of Macedyn's command deck waned as the Admiral's words carried above the buzz of activity, tugging strings in the spirit of every turian hearing them, Desolas included.

Unlike the rest of the crew, however, Desolas read what went unsaid in the flinty eyes of the Admiral, silent words that echoed the High Primarch's private orders.

"Secure the colony for the Hierarchy."

The quarians weren't the only ones who were harboring possessive delusions towards the new race and their technology. Asari and salarian scheming and manipulation had the Hierarchy's economy in the gutter and the turian fleets tied up and bleeding hundreds of thousands of lives every year to defend their interests and colonies. Meanwhile, their contribution to the CDFs remained minimal, as per treaties signed in the aftermath of the Rebellions to exploit the Hierarchy's inflated ego at the time. As a result, most of their fleets were unburdened with the weight and responsibility of policing Council space and instead remained free to pursue and further the personal interests of the Union and the Republics.

The engineering of the volus' growing independence and the asari's disowning of the Cyone Militancy, the first concerted effort by elements of the asari matriarchy and military to take a proactive stance in dealing with the growing scum of the galaxy, was the last straw for High Primarch Fedorian and most of the high echelons of the Hierarchy.

If the asari and the salarians wanted the turians to keep playing meat shields for them, then the turians would secure the appropriate means to do so effectively.

Desolas cut the communication after a respectful nod. Minutes later, the Pride of Macedyn, accompanied by its escorts, the few asari warships of the Ninth and the transports carrying the Legions, jumped to FTL, stopping only some thirty thousand kilometers away from the colony's atmosphere, outside a thin belt of small asteroids and assorted debris orbiting the planet.

It wasn't long before the entire planet was blockaded. All satellites were shot down by frigates and gunships, cutting long-range communications across the planet. At the same time, planet-wide scans mapped the surface, tuned for military installations and urban centers both.

Much to Desolas' surprise in the regards of the garden world, only a single, sprawling urban cluster stood out, situated in the equatorial belt. Judging by the size of the defense fleet that slagged the Ninth Fleet's vanguard, Desolas' projections had been of a prosperous colony in spite of its frontier location, with several cities acting as the fulcrum of intensive agriculture, mining operations, and industrial production.

That wasn't the case. The countryside showed only cursory signs of development, nor were any outpost beyond some motley collections of prefabs identified. Then again, Desolas' projections had been based largely on a turian model. These aliens could do things differently. Probably did. The how, however, somewhat eluded him.

Things became odder when the scans reported the lack of any considerable industrial infrastructure anywhere, save for a few complexes at the edges of a city that could easily reach a million inhabitants, maybe more. That was an unmistakable sign of a prosperous colony if Desolas ever saw one, and a major cause of concern if the aliens' degree of militarism was even only a fraction of the Hierarchy.

And yet, the colony lacked the proper means for so many people to be largely autonomous, a core principle of any colonial policy across all races: no farming archologies, no significant production facilities.

No sign of the planetside means that would allow for a single settlement to grow to such a magnitude.

To further the cognitive dissociation, what the colony lacked in facilities, it did make up in defenses. Desolas actually blinked when high-atmosphere probes revealed two concentric, tall metallic walls encircling the core of the colony, centered around a number of towers surmounting the bureaucratic and military heart of the colony.

AA emplacements and cannons dotted the walls and the tallest buildings in large numbers as well. Their accuracy was proven when the unmanned probes were quickly silenced as they descended, their feed quickly turning to static.

A military outpost, perhaps? And yet, even if he accounted the likely differences in design and doctrine, no dockyards orbited the planet. A tiny headache formed behind Desolas' forehead plates as he tried and failed to fit the data with any colonial archetype he was familiar with.

"Sir, what are your orders?" his XO, Captain Victus, asked after the last elements of the battlegroup had taken up their positions.

Desolas rubbed his middle and distal talons together in thought, then snapped them.

"Orient the cruiser groups for light orbital bombardment. Keep the kinetic output within pre-Morning War regulations. I want precision strikes on isolated AA emplacements and defense systems, as well as targets of opportunity. The second cruiser group will also begin a sounding barrage to locate any subsurface structures. Unless these aliens are complete fools, they'll have underground shelters against orbital bombardment. Those will be a priority for the ground forces: based on their locations, we'll establish landing zones and FOBs. Now patch the Spectres and the STG on my screen."

"Right away, sir!" Victus relayed his orders with flanging barks. Streaks of ionized particles lit the atmosphere in the wake of the light orbital bombardment by the time the STG Captain, one Irril Valern, and Spectres Tela Vasir and Avitus Rix answered his call.

Desolas didn't give them the time of the day. Spectres might be above the law, and their role a necessity, but this was his military operation, and he wouldn't allow wildcards to jeopardize the lives of his men.

"My ships don't have the precise sensor suites of your corvettes and frigates," he told the salarian and asari matter-of-factly. No use in denying the truth and hamstringing himself when time was a predominant issue. "While we pacify the colony, keep to high atmo and pinpoint the Prothean ruins the Matriarch raved about." He didn't bother to hide his disdain for the writings on Matriarch Dilinaga: a mighty warrior among the asari she might have been, but that spirits-accursed woman's stigma had ruined any attempt of dragging her race out of their wasteful culture for centuries, and even now, after the Morning War, her student's commendable efforts were sidelined by her legacy. "The Blackwatch teams will deploy once you've confirmed the location, and so will the commandos. The 397th third brigade will remain on standby, should you require armor support."

He'd expected some sneering, uncouth remark from Vasir's foul mouth, yet the asari was the first to cut the communication with a somber nod. The STG Captain followed suit.

Avitus, a Digeris native by his yellow and brown facial markings, lingered. On the backdrop behind the Spectre, Desolas could see Blackwatch operatives running checks on their Raptor battlesuits and assorted equipment for a hot drop.

"With all due respect, General, the High Primarch detailed the Blackwatch to my command, not yours. They'll deploy when I say so, and that's it," Avitus declared, mandibles flaring. On the high collar of his hardsuit, the twin golden talons on black, the insignia of a Blackwatch Captain, shone proudly and very visible, just opposite of the wings of the Special Tactics and Reconnaissance office. "The 397th's assistance won't be necessary. We've got enough heavy hitters on our own. Legionary units will only slow us down."

The Blackwatch officer turned Spectre cut the comms after that. Desolas let out a whistling breath, then dismissed the turian from his thoughts. He focused instead on the reports of the orbital bombardment and the slowly forming projections of the colony's underground, captured through a mix of geomorphological analysis by the scientific officers, and the propagation of kinetic energy and sound from the sounding barrage of mixed impactors from frigates and cruisers.

On the holomap, the signatures belonging to the Blackwatch transports and a number of asari frigates detailed to the Ninth entered formation with the STG corvette and picked an approach vector for the colony.

Codex: The Morning War – The Batarian Campaigns.

Contrary to what the batarian claim to this day, the quarian push into the heart of the Hegemony wasn't an unwarranted act of aggression. In the years leading to 2548 GTS, STG survey teams monitoring the edges of the Perseus Veil after the Third Citadel Defense Fleet was withdrawn reported numerous forays into quarian territory by large slaver parties with ties to the Hegemony's Ministry of Enforcement.

Experts and historians, however, generally agree on the near-complete annihilation of Haestrom, the first quarian colony outside the Veil, to be the initial casus belli.

Under Fleet Admiral Momol'Xen's direction, the Second, Third, Fifth, and Sixth Quarian Fleets carved through the batarian frontier like vakar claws, occupying an impressive amount of planets and systems in a matter of months. The reasons to the swiftness of their conquest are to be found in the condition of the batarian fleets, stretched out all over the Terminus in raids to counter the Council's embargo and sanctions, and the unprecedented nature of the quarians' planetary sieges and occupations.

The very nature of the geth as a self-reproducing, yet thoroughly shackled Collective AI meant that, once the quarian seized even just a few of the industrial centers of a colony, their machine servants would quickly refit the infrastructure to produce more and more platforms to support the ground invasion. In fact, the quarians would turn the defenders' resources against them and drown any and all forms of resistance under tides of disposable infantry.

Once a planet was pacified, the geth occupying forces would only need a limited number of quarian overseers to operate fully. This efficiency resulted in the vast majority of the fleets being freed up from garrison duties in short order. At the same time, the occupied worlds would, in short order, be able to actively support the war effort.

By the time the Battle of Camala came around, the first conquered batarian colonies already had operative orbital docks and were able to fend off several counterattacks by the batarian navy.

The Council's slow reaction was in no in small measure due to certain influential parties within every race's government supporting the quarian offensive – or rather, the batarians' downfall - very vocally, and the spotty nature of the initial information. Matters weren't helped by the batarian ambassador, who fought vehemently against the Council's meddling in batarian affairs, repeatedly calling the potential intervention of Citadel Fleets a "trespass on batarian sovereign space" in many a public audience.

In early 2549, however, the outrage of the batarian ambassador was silenced by the Council's growing concern towards the quarian unchecked expansionism, and their means to achieve so, namely the geth. A frail consensus was reached between the turians and the salarians, with the asari as mediators, and the Council once more geared up for war even as diplomatic missions were sent to try and intercede.

As the Council's fleets began rallying around the turian colony of Invictus, however, hundreds of thousands and then millions of freed slaves started flooding through the Relays from batarian space. The Citadel war machine was quickly repurposed to helping the refugees, who in turn spread the word of their quarian liberators and the fate of warrior and high-caste batarians, forced to submit to the very same treatment reserved in batarian culture to slaves.

As discovered much later on, a not insignificant number of these former slaves became willing, grateful spies for the quarians. In the months and years to come, they proceeded to create networks that'd prove quite effective during the early phases of the Morning War, if only in seeding geth vanguards throughout Council space.

Whatever remaining sympathy the batarians may have enjoyed in Council Space dried up in a fortnight, while the public opinion's support for the quarians, especially across asari and turian colonies, surged to new records.

With their hands tied once more, soon word came to the Council that the Fist of Kar'Shan, the largest batarian fleet ever assembled, had been crushed in a terrible battle around the eezo-rich colony of Camala, with hundreds of destroyed ships on both sides and the planet surface wracked by unchecked kinetic bombardment.

The Battle of Camala, however, signed the temporary end of hostilities. With the Hegemon himself taken prisoner and Admiral Momol'Xen's remaining fleets not a Relay jump away from Kar'Shan itself, the Council intervened to mediate a ceasefire that would appease both the public opinion at home and the quarians.

To the warrior and high-caste batarians, the Peace of Camala was an affront direr than the crushing defeat of the Fist of Kar'Shan. The defeated Hegemon was removed by the Pillars' Priesthood and ritually sacrificed not two weeks after his return, as was his family and all blood kin. After that, none emerged to take the position. Soon, the batarians retreated from the galactic scene just as the quarians had nearly a century before, leaving the Council in the precarious situation of guaranteeing their independence should the Quarian Synod begin another campaign.

AN: My, my, almost 170 followers. Over 1100 views in a single day. The support and attention this fic is receiving is humbling. Thank you.

Now, all that I need to be a happy Author is some constructive feedback. Don't be shy or scarce with those reviews, alright? Until next time.