Hi guys, long time no see.

Sorry for the full month being hiatus. I stumbled over another writing block - I had the general idea but failed to put them in precise words. Not to mention that I had an exam (or two?) at school... Yeah, Undergraduate Mechanical engineering course is quite a bitch... Do not enrol unless you are tough (or insane) enough - take that as personal experience.

At least, I had a spark last weekend, giving me the motivation I needed to finish off this chapter. So, here you go. A bit of fighting and clash. It is not on the messed up level of Call of Duty or Battlefield though - more like ARMA. Sure, I love the two franchises, but the way they paint warfare is... not precisely correct. And when I try to make things as realistic as possible, well, I cannot exactly use the games as a reference source.

I would start bringing in a lot of chaos from the next chapter though. Or at least, that is my plan. There will be about three or four more chapters focusing on the warfare on Shanxi.

Then, things go up by another level. Note, there is a few nukes and anti-orbital weapons in Shanxi at the moment, which means "another level" is forecasting some pretty fucked up shit.

Reviews' response:

Mly92Reader: Well, that is my plan originally. I drag in the cast from Harry Potter only as a feature of humour (and reference).

Olav152: Thank you for your review. You have said pretty much what my general idea is. Regarding your questions, the answers are as follow: The Migrant Fleet (at the very moment) for the most part is still following usual business, wandering around, and the ships visiting Shanxi have been evacuated deeper inside the Federation. The Council does not even know anything about this deployment, though the STG would know about it soon. Back home, the situation is... well, as good as it can get - surprisingly, nothing has come crashing down (yet).

heartfanglives: Thank you for your review. Though I'm afraid that the battle could not be done soon enough, as my fic (ie this story) focuses strongly on the First Contact War. Though I can promise that I will try to describe all angles concerned within the period.

OMAC001: Thank you for your review. The (blatant) appearance of Harry Potter is less trolling and more a failed attempt of an Easter Egg. Thanks for the praise on my explanation, glad that it is "mundane" enough to explain a military concept.

general-joseph-dickson: Thank you for your review. And if you think the human is being stubborn at the moment, you haven't seen anything yet.

Pteaset: Thank you for your review.

CReaprer210: Thank you for your review. And this is a new update for you. Hope you would enjoy it.

Chronus1326: Thank you for your review.

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy."

- John Adams (1735 - 1826), Founding Father of [former] United States of America

ISIO: Institute of Special and Intelligence Operations (catchphrase: "I see you")

IFV: Infantry fighting vehicle

DMR: Designated Marksmen Rifle

"The Breach of Shanxi" – Day 2

Location:
Unknown half-demolished apartment block
Ward 1, Residence District
Capital city Zhen Zhu (contested- destroyed)
Planet Shanxi
Zhusanjiao system (contested)

Time:
03:56 (Terran Standard time) – 05:56 (Local time)
23 February 2201

The Slytherin Platoon was scattering around a five-storey apartment block, the one with a restaurant on the ground floor and half of its structure missing. From the outside, the building looked like a deserted ruin, however, only the "ruin" part was half-corrected. It was far from being a "ruin" when its main primary structure was still intact, and with a dozen men crawling inside, it was hardly deserted at all. Lieutenant Malfoy spent the first thirty seconds wondering why and how such a building could stand, then decided against it. He had the experience dealing with the engineers before, and they were too prone for a bout of insanity.

Besides, it was not like knowing the answer would help him here. He just knew that the room was strong and hardened enough to stand against everything, short of a direct shot from a tank, a missile, or a full aerial and orbital attack. However, attacking the said room was actually harder than one may think, it was concealed very well while still providing a good view over the streets on two sides. The vantage position turned the room into a temporary command post for Slytherin Platoon…

And as luck would have it, it was also double used as a relay point for communication of Gryffindor Platoon. Those brash lions were pushing deep into enemy-held territory, and if the reports of his watch were correct, the only thing separated them from the Turian was a single layer of wall. At that position, using normal equipment and protocol to contact with Command was… risky at best and suicidal at worst. Therefore, they needed a middle point to re-direct their communication array, just in case it was intercepted in the first place.

The whole field was erringly silent, completely unlike a major war raging on. However, for the Lieutenant, he knew it was only a matter of time before the whole city was lit up again. At least there would be no weapon of mass destruction being deployed this time… Probably.

Still, the atmosphere here was what he was afraid the most: the silence before the storm. Everyone knew the rage was incoming, but none knew precisely where and when it would land, which put the soldiers in a mood of frustration. The snakes were trying their best to distract themselves from that negative emotion, with various degree of success.

Corporal Flint, the biggest man in the platoon, was humming a pop song, one with a so predictive and addictive tune that it was considered as "trash" the moment it came out. In the window above him, Private Greengrass, the only female of the unit, was twirling her lipstick between her fingers. The obvious questions of where that stick came from and why she carried it along to the battle were not asked by none.

And the leader, Lieutenant Malfoy himself, was smoking. Sure, smoking killed, but it was no immediately, and it helped the white-hair man to ease down his anxiety and stress. It was much more appreciated at the moment, compare to a future healthy lung.

Some of his direct subordinates, however, had other definitions on relaxing right before a major problem.

"El-Tee, there is one thing I had yet to understand."

It was Private Goyle, arguable not the smartest man in the platoon, but he was one of the best guardian in protecting the snipers' backs. In addition, he was the first one who opened up to Malfoy when he first received Slytherin Platoon. Therefore, he was kept in the command squad of the unit, despite the severe lack of skill in marksmanship.

With one eye peeking through the hole, Draco did not even turn back, but he still gave his subordinate a response:

"Shoot."

"Why were you named Draco Malfoy anyway? I mean… no one would name their son like that, no one sane, that is."

That attracted the attention of everyone. To be fair, it was a question that everyone worth their salt would love to ask. After all, no one, even Private Greengrass with her father as an ISIO operative, could find out the answer. Every single member of the command squad was hinging on every single word that would be coming out of his mouth.

However, the man in the question had other ideas, mainly because he knew the truth, and he was not drunk enough to speak it. Considering that the most "drunk" he had been was due to both Greengrass sisters tried to drag him into the bedroom and mistakenly got the Scarhead instead (long story)… Yeah, his men would have to try better to fish it out of him:

"Goyle, you had yet to top in the platoon's bucket. Ten credit, just ten. And you had been delaying it for a year now."

"But sir, I'm broke."

"Broke and you still have cred to buy that nurse some flowers?"

"I run out of money for betting business, sir."

"Goyle?"

"Sir?"

"Fuck you."

A few chuckles were heard, but that was the end of the story. The command squad knew better than to push their commander into revealing his secret. Besides, keeping the ordeal a mystery made the whole situation a bit funnier, and in the threatening situation like this, a bit of humour never hurted.

The light-heart moment ended quickly enough. The scouts and overwatchs instantly sent in a new report, the Turian was on the move. Heading to their position was quite a large formation, 100-plus, with three vehicles, suspecting of one tank and two IFVs. Draco grimaced while listening to the news. His Platoon had little problem dealing with the infantry, but the armoured made the whole situation much harder. Being geared toward stealth and infiltration, Slytherin Platoon only carried a miniscule amount of anti-tank weaponry, and those were not enough to dislodge this reconnaissance in force of the Turian.

However, he still had a few ways to negate the firepower advantage of the aliens. After all, they were stupid enough to bring tanks to an urban fight. Sure, they had just one tank and their IFV-lookalike would be able to discourage any attack from an elevated angle, but it did not meant that he could not try to do anything.

"Fang-1, this is Fang-Actual, ready to detonate the road, on my mark."

The idea was pretty simple: to burrow a bomb under the road so when a tank was passing over, it could be detonated. The width of the road only allowed a single Turian vehicle to pass through – albeit with moderate infantry flanking. With a dead tank blocking the head of the advance, the force behind it would be like fishes in a barrel, easy target pickings for his men.

Still, he was not arrogant enough not asking for anymore help. Friendly rival between him and Scarhead aside, the brash man was highly talent in anti-vehicle warfare, in fact, half of the plan devised by Draco was thanks to input from that man. As a measure of anti-vehicle warfare, he received two fireteams from the Lions, securing two ends of the zone. It was those soldiers who actually planned the explosives underground and inside the rubbles, not the Snakes. Sure, they knew how to plant demolition charges, but when it came to anti-tank duties, their proficiency fell behind their counterparts.

And now, when two highly efficient models of explosive were introduced together? The Turians were in for a nasty surprise. The reports were now coming in burst, instead of voices, it was text, brief texts lining together to form a code, known only by the Snakes. Sure, any decent intelligence units could crack the code in less than an hour, but to see the gibberish text and to understand its meaning in less than a second, only a soldier of Slytherin Platoon could do that.

The pair of IFVs had already splitted up, each was supported by a light platoon of infantry, about twenty each. Both columns advanced into two parallel streets while the tanks stayed behind with a moderate escort detachment. It was a smart thing for them to do so.

There were only two roads leading from Turian staging ground toward this area, or at least, two roads that wide enough for an armoured vehicle to travel through freely. It was a bit… strange to think about it, as if the planners originally thought of the situation where the city would be invaded. The number of roads where armoured could pass through freely was abnormally small, and the ones allowed that to happen had integrated hard points and defensive positions. Surely, humanity was not that paranoid… right?

Then, such was way above Draco's pay grade, his major concern at the moment was to sap down the strength of the Turian patrol. Trying to kill them all would be suicidal, they outnumbered his unit by a factor of three, and outgunned him by a factor of four – minimum. Having the help from anti-tank specialists or not, the Turian shields would be able to save their armoured units from crippling shots, buying them a few seconds to retaliate. The same thing could be said about their infantry, each shield was capable of withstanding a full 14.5mm cartridge.

With that in mind, he should just try to sap down the strength of the advance. The explosives put on the road would be able to mission-kill the two IFVs and some of its escort infantry. May be they would be back to full strength by the end of the day, but that would be approximately 10 hours in the future, and in an urban setting like this, ten hours meant a long time. Besides, if he repeat the same style of attack tomorrow, and the day after that, and day after that too, it would be more efficient in the wrong run. A series of small explosions was always better than a single major one.

New reports were streaming in, the two columns were now getting through the streets methodically. While their movements were fairly slow, their gun turrets kept swinging from one side to another, ready to respond to any attack from the buildings on two sides of the street. The infantry kept raising the guns up, aiming at half-closed, half-opened windows and doors. While the reports were short and unimaginative, Draco was still able to feel the urgency lingering under the texts. His men felt threatened by these aliens, either because these Turians werea actually "aliens", or because they were showing high level of cohesion and professionalism. It did not matter much, they were invading human's ground, and his job was to stop them – no matter the cost.

A new message was sent, the two IFVs had reached the mark on the road, and Draco sent the order. On two roads, two independent charges went up in two simultaneous roars, throwing the two armoured vehicles slight off the ground while pushing their screening infantry away. With each charge was rated at 20kg TNT equivalent, it was no surprise to see both of them being halted instantly. Their shields, no doubt, had taken a great hit. The two vehicles then crouched down with their groans drowned in the fiery screech of flame and the grumbling of debris in the air.

Dirt and rock were thrown up, blocking the vision of ground-side Turians. Their ears were also temporary deaf and their sense of balance was severely impaired. Before they had a chance to recover and retaliate, however, the humans had already opened fire. The anti-tank specialists of Gryffindor Platoon stood up from the top of a (former) four-storey building before let loose their rockets. On each road, a soldier opened fire with his disposable launcher, leading to two rockets screeching through the air and then slamming down on the immobilized Turian IFVs. The wooshing sound of the two rockets flared up in the air, piercing the dying rumble from the two hidden bombs. Both of those vehicles were turned into molten slags in a blink of an eye, after another pair of explosions.

The two soldiers did not even stay and watch their handy work. They simply used the most basic type of anti-tank rocket (one called RPG-18, whatever it meant) with visual sight at the distance of roughly 100m before running away. "Shoot and scoot" was how they called it, which fit right into the plan of Draco, the one calling for avoidance of direct hard combat.

The tank in the back would be a problem though, but his unit would be long gone by the time it reached the combat site. It had been staying there for fifteen minutes so far, so it would take at least five minutes to arrive here, and even then, it would be late to protect the infantry. His unit would be long gone by then, but before that… He needed to leave souvenirs behind.

A new set of orders was given, this time, the rifles barked up. Invisible paths of bullets accompanied the loud crack of the chemical – kinetic cartridges in the Terran arsenal. Draco had already ordered his men to remove their suppressors, there was no need to be "invisible" in this case. The muzzle breaks on their guns would be sufficient in covering their positions, the lack of visible bullet paths would confuse the Turians, and the order was clear: they were not to linger around. They had to empty their magazine within a minute, then retreated.

It sounded like cowardice, but Draco preferred to sapping their strength slowly over a period of time before launching a critical strike. They were still in top conditions here, well-fed, well-rest and well-armed. Fighting head-on at the moment was suicidal. Sure, he had the skills to win this skirmish, but he preferred to win this war and stay alive.

Even then, the sudden and brief attack was still able to score some damage. Thanks to the recon yesterday, the human now knew where to aim their guns, namely, at "flashy targets", who seemed to be specialists, NCOs, and more importantly, officers. His men did not bother to note down any new suits' variants or appearances, however, they just shot at any Turians not wearing grey armors. So far, more than ten targets had been reported with their shields depleted, and two of them were dead. In the same time, not even a single retaliate strike was given back.

The unit could press for more, but none of them was greedy. They withdrawn in neat order, with one section kept their sustain firing rate to cover for the other to retreat, then, each man in the last squad pull back while other squadmates kept firing. The whole attack took place within a minute, there was no casualty on the Terran's side, yet, they were able to inflict serious damage on the Turian, two IFVs mission-kill, suspected of kill-kill (or "they ain't fighting anymore"), fifteen-plus Turian infantry had their shields depleted, and at least two neutralized.

There was even a more impressive part, the tank was still staying at the back of the convoy. The attack was so fast, brief and sudden that it was not able to respond in time. And by the time it lurched forward, the whole Slytherin had been able to withdraw safely. The blue streaks of the ultra-hyper-sonic (was that even a grammatically correct word?) rounds just peppered harmlessly on the burnt buildings, dealing zero damage.

Draco was now on an escape route with his command squad. Using the "ventilation holes" on the wall, the one either deliberately made with liberal application of shotgun and sledgehammer, they were able to quickly move between different rooms and buildings. With the apartment block being built into a box, the internal movements of theirs could be safely concealed from the prying eyes of the Turians. In addition, the apartment also led down to the tunnel system, further covering their tracks. And last but not least, there was absolutely no air surveillance deployed by the Turians, not even a gunship or an UAV. They had to pay for that mistake dearly.

The ground trembled lightly, but it barely attracted any attention from the squad as they passed through the darkened hallway. The sound behind the prefabricated concrete wall was hardly important to them, especially when it was transmitted through a few walls already, or while they were going underground.

They moved to pre-set destinations, new sites of their ambushes and skirmishes. The group of Gryffindor soldiers would bid them farewell at the moment, returning back to their unit before finding any more armoured depots of the Turians before turning them into slags. Draco paused for a blink of an eye mid-stride before continuing. Surely, the Lions would be sensible and responsible enough to not use napalm within the urban environment.

Yeah, not his trouble then. As long as the Turians were dead, he would be even fine with the fucking Scarhead burning them down in flame while just wearing a boxer… Actually, that would be a terrible sight for nightmare. May be having his rival trapping the dino-birds in a series of explosion would be enough.

The trip underground was safe, quiet, even if nothing happened. While it sounded like a terrible and ironic fate for a war, every professional soldiers (read: everyone in the area) knew that it was actually the truth – for most of the time. A battle consisted of 80% boredom, 15% of "hurry up and wait", and only 5% of extreme fright. In addition, it was only very rare that a soldier could actually get a good visual on his target. More often than not, he or she was just shooting in the general direction of his team. The previous combat was the exception, rather than the norm, with a clear and well-arranged ambush site. But even then, without the assistance of the scopes (and the flashy armours of the aliens), his men would still have trouble seeing the Turians down there.

And besides, the range was around 200m, which was roughly ten times more than what an average FPS gamer was used to. It was one of the reason why the military never, ever, recruited gamers into their force.

Following the tunnel and taking a few turns, the command squad did not take too much time to reach their new sites, another apartment block. Though this one was more on the luxurious scale and it had a wider basement. Unlike the previous one, the apartment's core area had a conspicuously thick wall, it was actually a secret set of stairs, leading down to the tunnel and basement below. This feature of design was actually a part of compulsory part of off-Earth exploration, thanks human's paranoia for that.

Fucking Prothean and their mysterious data cache on Mars.

Sure, the industrialists and the bankers were complaining about the added costs (read: less money in the profit column), but in a strange twist of fate, the politicians were able to put down their feet and force those men to comply. After this war, no one would be able to shit-talk about this sense of paranoi anymore.

Draco glanced upwards, quickly noticing a few light rays were going in, lighting up part of the sealed component. Clearly, this building was busted, but its secret tunnel and hideout were still safe, probably. The light rays were coming in mostly from the third floor, so the second floor should be a nice place to stage up for the next attack.

However, that was when things started going wrong.

First, the door was stuck due to unknown reasons, and it took the combined strength of both Draco and Goyle to bust out the door. The first thing they heard was not the cracking sound of the door opening, but rather a yelp.

An inhuman yelp.

Draco quickly noticed he was not touching the ground, but rather something else. In front of him was not one, but three aliens. Three fucking Turians! Just like the briefing, their appearances were well-known to the young Lieutenant. Mandibles seemed to be made from bone-like materials, forming a crown over their heads. These ones must be males, because they were much longer than the overall shape of the heads. All of them were wearing grey armours, and only one of them had a silver bar running diagonal over the upper part of the suit.

They seemed to be surprised, none of them had even reached for their guns yet. Draco knew that he was spotting the same face expressions as them, the only reason they did not know that was because he was wearing an opaque helmet.

And because he was able to recover faster than them. He raised his bullpup rifle up and flipped off the safety switch purely by reflex, he stepped onward while peppering at the nearest Turian. He knew that the aliens had their own personal shielding, so his initial bullets would be ineffective. Yet, in the heat of the moment, he discarded that thinking and just focus on fighting. More explosions followed from behind him, alerting him that his squadmates had joined in the fight.

The information was pushed down in his brain, however, because instead of flashing brightly, the first Turian fell down with his body punctured multiple times, shooting out the blue alien blood. Strange, no shield… But Draco did not pay much attention to the question why, he just knew that the infantry-scale shields were temporarily off for these aliens, which made his job much easier.

All three Turian fell quickly enough and the knocked down Turian was shot in the back of the head by Greengrass, before they had any chance to fire back, though Draco was damned sure that their friends were now aware of his presence, which was sucked. Still, taking down four enemy combatants with zero casualty was quite a success already, especially after he had taken down two IFVs and injured a dozen or so of their soldiers.

Of course, lingering around and gloating would be hazardous to their health (and lives), which was pretty much enough to turn the "gain" into "loss". He should get the fuck out of there, as soon as possible.

"Bloody hell!"

Greengrass, the only female member of his squad (and his platoon) uttered a curse in the most British way possible, from the choices of the curse to the accent she used (whatever British meant). Draco would pick more… colorful languages to express his feeling, but then, she would scold him for using "foul language", and for a girl who was shorter than him by a full head, she really knew how to cow others.

"Ain't that some foul language Greengrass?"

"Not as foul as your wet dream mumbling Goyle."

The squad bantered in whisper while securing the room, shutting down all possible approaching avenues while putting overwatch on the windows. While no enemy had been spotted, it never hurt to be prepared.

Draco crouched down, hid behind stumbled chairs and tables in order to observe the guns of the Turians. They were interesting enough, quite user-friendly, despite being designed for "hands" with three claws rather than ones with five fingers. Thanks to the fact that the Turians had one claw on the opposite side with the other (just like humans' thumbs), he could hold the gun comfortably in his hand. The handle was also at a comfortable length, a bit longer than his DMR's, but it was still manageable.

However, the most interesting part was that there was no visible slot to insert the ammunition. At least, he knew the answer already. Instead of using catridges like humans, the Turians (and by extenstion, their friends and allies in the so-called Citadel Council) used grain-sized metal pellets as ammunition. The sand was extracted from a metal block, housed right above where Draco would put his other hand to balance the gun. A few simple clicks would be able to pry out the spent block housing and insert a new one, at least, that was the theory. He had yet to practice it and he did not enjoy blowing anything up by doing something wrong.

In addition, there was also another safety feature, an on-board computer, used to regulate the gun's operation, ranging from inserting new grains in the barrel to the cooling process. It was quite a pity that the computer was still "on", and Draco knew nothing about Turian language to turn it off… but then it was not exactly necessary. For the moment, he only needed the gun to be able to fire. But, shooting the gun within an enclosed room was a terrible idea… He should wait until the fight was at some open places then.

The second piece should be the shield generators… though where they were precisely on the dead Turian bodies would be another story. Finding them would only be a matter of time then, but, time was a luxury item that they did not have. His overwatch quickly noticed figures approaching from the outside, and there were voices downstairs. A second spent under consideration yielded the estimations of approximately two squads approaching, doubling their number.

While it had yet to reach the critical threshold of three to one level, it was simply stupid and suicidal to stay and fight. There was nothing to gain for fighting here. Sure, he could try to retrieve the Turian infantry-graded shield, but then, what good would come out of it? It would take too much time, critical time, and it was always better to steal some while under the cover of stealth, not when it had been blown away like this. Besides, he had been able to retrieve four rifle-like guns and two pistol-like sidearems. They would still be enough to show new insights on the Turian war machines. Hopefully, some guys in the staff would be able to guess something on the aliens by analyzing these guns.

But… before that…

"Goyle, Crabbe, plant explosives on the door and tunnel entrance. Bulstrode, Parkingson, cover them, kill any Turian going up. Greengrass, Zabini, Carrow, snipe the incoming birds from the outside. Stop them from getting close."

That was the plan. It was simple, easy, and it could be done by even a conscript hooked up on booze and sex.

The problem was that… this was a damned war. It went down wrong soon enough.

The Turians had been able to secure at least two machine guns emplacement outside, which quickly pinned down his snipers. The birds had already been able to zone down the human's position and kept peppering the room with their weapons. The machine guns pumped in a hailstorm of blue streaks of light from the outside, forcing the defenders' heads down. Meanwhile, their comrades downstairs were using the moment to storm upwards, at least, the squad was able to pin them down with grenades for the time being. However, their grenades had already ran out – they were forced to mass deploy them to compensate for the protection available to the aliens.

It was barely a minute since the Turian began the counter-attack, and the situation had been pretty hairy. The sound of explosion quickly filled up the room, fragments flew in all directions in the room, dropping harmlessly on the suits of the soldiers. At least the humans were equipped with a fully sealed helmet. They were quite cumbersome, but at least they protected the human against unknown biological threats from the aliens, and flying debris like this. Draco knew that there had been at least five clouds of wooden fragments being thrown in his face – and that were only the ones he awared off.

Without this helmet, he would have been blind already. Not to mention that the helmet also came with an integrated set of radio and simple HUD, allowing him to co-ordinate the defense of the squad with highest efficiency possible.

Or he could also use it to time the moment his men were done with setting charges, clearing all kind of traces of them being here. The moment the green light was lit, he yelled into the mic, ordering the whole squad to retreat back into the tunnel. Each and every soldier pulled back in neat order, only when under cover fire from the others. In quick order, they were able to get back to the hidden door with zero deaths.

However, they were injured. Greengrass had her bicep hit a few times, Zabini and Carrow were limping backward while both Goyle and Crabbe had cracks on their helmets. Other members were also showing various degrees on injuries, at least, as far as Draco could tell, none was hurt critically. Those wounds were not enough to put them out of the fight – just a patch up here and there and they would be back for the fight.

More importantly, he had been able to secured critical intelligence and technical data. Sure, the Federation was aware of the Mass Effect, and they had extra knowledge after First Contact with the Quarians. But real, hand-on items never hurt, especially when the Quarians refused to share any real working weapons to the Federation.

These four guns would be a tremendous boon for the force. While they were astronomically low in number, they would (probably) be enough to reveal some tactics used by the Turians, and through that, how to defeat these aliens.

The period from the moment to that time was another question, of course.

Location:
Command bunker – approximately 100m underground
Wild primitive jungle
North – East quarter-sphere
Planet Shanxi
Zhusanjiao system (contested)
Hegemony of Oriental
Terran Federation

Time:
12:00 (Terran Standard time) – 13:00 (Local time)
23 February 2201

The captured guns had been delivered safely to the Command. The Slythering Platoon, H Company of 75th Batallion, was the one responsible for securing these weapons. The command staff was in hysteria when they received the toys. (Un)Surprisingly, half of the technical staff volunteered to test the gun – read: they brought them to the firing range to let loose. At least they were able to set up a proper testing apparatus before anything else… Seriously, what the fuck was wrong with those officers? They were all field officers, yet they were like kids in a candy store the moment they laid eyes on those guns.

To be fair, General Williams himself was almost lowering himself to that level, just almost. He was too old to act like a young kid, and his hip lacked too much lubrication to dash towards the firing range. Therefore, he was just sitting there, at the briefing table, with a full crate of coffee and screens blinking around his seat.

It looked like the lair of some evil genius, somehow.

And at the moment, he was sitting at one end of a long table, hands crossing into each other to cover the lower half of his face. His staff officers were no less threatening with their hard, emotionless faces and a deadly intent in the air. Add in the gloomy atmosphere and the low light condition, the image could spook anyone being unprepared for the image. For example, the young Lieutenant who was directly in charge of testing the gun. At least, he was able to keep his pants dry – for the moment.

Of course, General Williams had already instructed his men to not do so. Pranking others was fine and dandy, but pranking in the middle of a full blown war right on the site was definitely a good idea. Bat-shit insane or not, there must be a level of professionalism in the high echelon of leadership here.

Back to the young man, he was now delivering the technical report. While it was just basic Physics, only the Asian could understand it with a single hearing time. For others like him, he could still do so, but only after fifteen minutes of concentration and all technical jargons had been removed.

"… the weight of each metal grain was about 4mg, or four millionths of a kilogram. The Mass Effect core, powered by the Element Alpha, then decreases the mass of the said grain down even further, to microgram scales, which mean a few millionths of a single gram, a decrease factors of roughly a thousand times. The ultra-light metal grain…"

There were too many numbers after that, so General Williams decided to stop listening to it. He could understand the science behind them, but he failed to connect the said numbers into real life. In other words, he did not understand the applications of those numbers. Hopefully, the staff could translate it into more understandable knowledge, without the fuzzy and duzzy numbers… But seriously, how could those Asians understand them flawlessly?

A few (or a lot more than a few) moments later, the Lieutenant finished his report and looked at him expectantly. Sighing out, the General spoke up:

"So, Lt, what is your conclusion? What is the threat level of these guns?"

"Well, sir tactically speaking, It is not that different from ours, something better and something worse."

"And strategy speaking?"

"They trumped us sir. There is no need for them to be as concerned about the ammunition supply as we do."

"OK… begin from the beginning. On a human's body, what is the threat of these guns. And keep things simple please, in English."

It did not go well though. The young man quickly sipped into the technical speaks, quickly giving him a migraine. He could not understand the jargons being used there, which had gone straight from intermediate level to some very advanced stuff. The General did not even know how to spell half the words being used there, which led to him being lost within a few minutes.

Seeing no other ways, he had to signal the young man to stop before gesturing to Lieutenant Colonel Zhou Xiping, one of his staff officers. The man was also a citizen of the Hegemony of Oriental, which meant that he would be very dedicated to the fight here. More reasons for him to gist the technical data (or gibberish) into something understandable.

Luckily, the man knew the dilemma of the General, so he would try his best to translate the numbers into words, into something that everyone could understand. It was quite easy, yet insanely hard and critical in the same time. Not many people had the knowledge and the social skills to actually pull that off though.

The Oriental field officer watched the reports, focusing intently on the Conclusion segment while checking on his own personal datapad. After five minutes of mumbling, he drew his own conclusion.

Simply put, each shot consisted of a spherical grain with a diameter of one millimeter (1mm), taken from the iron-alloy metal block, which gave the bullet a mass of roughly four micrograms (4μg). The Mass Effect, with its bullshit space magic, then made the grain even lighter and propelled it to the staggering muzzle velocity of thirty thousand meter per second (30000m/s). In other word, they were very small bullets travelling very fast. This was in contrast to the Terran philosophy, emphasizing on moderately-sized bullets travelling at a hypersonic speed only (10g travelling at 880m/s). Thanks to kinetic energy being proportional to the square of velocity, the energy of a Mass Effect-based bullet was double than that of the Terran. In translation, it meant the pain was double when shot by a Turian gun than by a Terran shooter. Not exactly a nice scenario then.

However, other than the insane speed, Turian guns were sorely lacking in other performance department. First off, their bullets were purely kinetic, there were no additional effects to increase the damage dealt. To say that they were purely armor penetration would not be a great stretch. There was also no yawing effect, thus damage to flesh was minimal. And even then, even the prowess in anti-armour fights was dubious at best. Their insanely high speed meant great air friction and tremendous heat, which led to a very brief moment they spent going through the body and cauterize the wound. The high muzzle velocity and great air friction also led to the grain being lit up in air, painting a clear spot on the position of the shooter. In terms of warfare, it practically reduced stealth to zero. Fourthly, their momentum was abnormally low, even much lower than a handgun shot in the early twenty-first century. A factor of ten to be precise. The stopping power of the Turian rifle was pretty much zero, giving no advantage in stopping a surging charge.

Meanwhile, the Terran arsenal (read: their history of warfare) provided a much more adaptable ammunition systems, ranging from armour penetration to hollow points to defeat armoured as well as unarmoured targets. Their guns were also configured in a bullpup design, meaning the trigger was in front of the magazine, thus saving weight and overall length. This was quite crucial in prolonged or close-quarter combat. Furthermore, it seemed that the Turian guns were incapable of modding, as in attaching any other tools on it. While the idea was not precisely counter-productive (the most famous example would be the AK/AKM series), having one or two more tools never hurt in the long run. However, the lack of bayonet attachment drew serious questions on the sanity of the designers. At least, it meant the humans would have another advantage for fighting close.

But, before that, the humans would have to close in first, which was quite a challenge by itself. The accuracy of the gun, both at semi- and fully-automatic mode, was frightening. It just had a very small deviation in standard range – and the very shift was more likely due to environmental factors than due to design or operator's error. In fact, its precision and accuracy was comparable to a DMR in the arsenal of Terran Federation. To think that these were assault guns… General Williams had to hope that his men could caught the Turians in an ambush, ultilise the urban setting, and not engage the aliens on an open field without cover or support.

In addition, the Turian guns also came with a virtually limitless ammo supply. A metal block alone could sustain a soldier in intense combat for weeks, if not months. The trade off for this was that the soldiers failed to have sustained fire on the field. The operation resulted in a tremendous amount of heat, even much more than what generated by chemical explosions in Terran gun. While the humans could simply use the air to cool down their guns, the Turians would have to forcefully implement the matter. They would have to manually activate the cooling feature or else the gun would automatically deploy it, effectively shut it down. In general, a full minute and twenty second of consecutive shooting would force the gun to shut down for twenty seconds, the disruption was a bit too frequent. On the other hand, the firing rate was quite high and the whole gun was very light… It was an acceptable trade off though.

"So, in short, sir, this gun was basically a wet dream of a technician after having a heavy drinking with a spec-op soldier."

To be fair, he had a point. There were too many "cool" features there. Sure, the ammunition might be not the best on the market, but it was still able to do the job while looking absolutely cool. That was probably enough to sell on the idea for the soldiers. Besides, being a General and well aware of its shortcomings, using the gun had it certain allure.

And he wondered what would the Turian think about the human's guns though. Based on the given information from the Quarians… May be it would be something on the line of a Krogan-designed, Turian-produced, Salarian-modded, Volus-financed, Elcor-tested, Drell-and-Hanar-sponsored and Asari-used gun. After all, a human's gun was brutal in combat prowess, utilitarian in design, sophisticated and lean in modifications, affordable (cheap) in production yet still durable. With its design, it would not be far-fetched if some assassins actually enjoyed using it and gave recommendations. Therefore, a young and idealistic Asari Maiden would love to pick up such a gun and explore the galaxy.

Or at least, that was what the General would love to happen.