Preview

It was undeniable that the Second Contact War had been costly to many cities on Earth. New York was often lauded as the city with the greatest scars, and with good reason. Dozens of buildings and skyscrapers had been felled, with countless hundreds more having been visibly scarred by the furious battles. The skyline had been completely wiped clean of some of its most recognizable features, and truly at ground zero of the orbital strike, the surrounding areas had been flattened entirely. A century ago, the kind of damage dealt to a city the size of New York, not to mention the rest of the planet, would have been a multi-generational project in order to completely repair and wipe away. Truly it may very well have taken a century to fully repair and bring back to its former heights.

Now, however, it had taken slightly under fifteen years to clean up, repair, and rebuild. To Anatoli Breslin, it was nothing short of remarkable, to say nothing of the sheer capabilities of SynthHuman workforces, capable of working in the hours their human and, later, quarian counterparts could not. Truly, the synergy of man and machine was a sight to behold - there truly never was an idle hour anymore, not in the Alliance. When those of flesh went to sleep, those of iron went to work. No country had gone without their fair share of scars, but inside of fifteen years, these scars had faded. Pale lines against tanned flesh, visible, but indistinct. It stood as a testament to the strength of character and power of will of Earth's children.

It was just a shame that their leaders, the 'round table' chosen to represent this planet and its people, had failed to uphold the image such a testament would make. The Alliance was supposed to be something of an ideal, an amalgam of a series of universal truths and a definition of good and evil chartered by the United Nations during the advent of interstellar travel. Breslin's own grandfather had been alive before, during, and after the formation of the Alliance, and one of the old man's favorite anecdotes was of how people liked to joke about the number of lawyers who had committed suicide trying to generalize each and every single country's laws, and the United Nations, update, modernize, and future-proof them all, and create a universal set that would exist both on Earth and in space.

Of course, the Alliance wasn't always the juggernaut it was today. In the time immediately following its formation, Breslin's grandfather often liked to joke how it was oftentimes considered a laughing stock. An interstellar, interplanetary, government, that held little clout on the only pale blue dot that mattered. And, were one to ignore said dot, this government only had a quarter billion people to govern over, scattered over the terrestrial bodies around the Sol System? Of course no one on Earth would have taken them seriously. They only 'listened' to them, so to speak, because they'd all agreed they had to.

To make matters worse was that Earth and the UN never gave them any resources or financial backing to create the Navy, and since most of the resources mined throughout the solar system all streamed right back to the resource-starved Earth, the Alliance had to make do with a comparative pittance of money and materials, ninety percent of which had to go to military development by necessity, leading the Alliance to be seen as even more ridiculous, appearing as a government-funded organization that shunted almost all of its money to building an army to fight aliens that, at the time, hadn't existed. What little money they'd had left had gone into discovering, studying, and funding Eden, such that it could be ensured it would support human life when the time came for its colonization.

But they soldiered on regardless, laughed at by every single living creature in the known universe. It was admirable in its own way, as well as an attestation to human will - a pittance of funds, hardly any resources that weren't gobbled up by earth, and still they managed to create what was even at the time the most powerful military in history, and break the surly bonds of the Sol System, to find Eden and colonize it. It was, in its own way, a showing of exactly why the Alliance had been made: Determination, valor, hope, the whole nine yards.

The first true show of the Alliance's power and resources hadn't even been when they'd managed to convince two billion human beings to leave Sol and go to Eden, but rather when they came out one day with their historic announcement: The birth of the first synthetic human. An AI, completely unlike anything ever created before it. Breslin's father had been a child around this time, and he had endless stories to tell about how basically no one knew what to think about it. There were those who were terrified by every word the AI spoke, those who simply didn't believe it was what it was lauded to be, and even those who thought it may very well be the second coming of Christ. Fear, hope, anticipation, anxiety, anger, of the many things felt by many people, one thing held in common was that many thought that perhaps the Alliance wasn't as ridiculous as it had been thought to have been; if they could create AI, something that, on a macro-scale, had eluded humanity even after the exponential growth of technology and computing of the twenty first century, perhaps they deserved some modicum of respect?

It had all been going so well, a golden age of peace and technological advancement. Nearly every major terrestrial body on Sol had been colonized with a few million people, alongside a flourishing multibillion-strong population on Eden, of both organic and artificial humans. It was almost as if every year they made the jump from calculators to quantum processors, but then they decided to colonize Roof. Super soldiers, aliens, war, gigantic galactic superpowers that were hardly as strong as their two-plus planet 'empire', it all happened so fast, and there was clearly a systemic change to the Alliance afterwards.

No longer did the Alliance solely represent Earth and her colonies, now they represented all planets, old and new. No longer was the Board of Directors solely governed by humans - there were AI and quarians taking seats, with rumors abound of potential representatives to geth and saltorians to come soon enough, even if the latter species was yet unsure of what, if any, role it would take outside of the Alnitak system. Worse was that they were antagonizing the Citadel at nearly every available chance, all but actively pursuing wars at home and abroad, practically throwing away any and all good relations with Earth, annexing an entire foreign government and enclosing within its borders a significant percentage of the known galaxy as a result, and now?

"Child soldiers." Breslin muttered, frowning at New York City's skyline, and knowing that it could potentially be a while yet before he got to look at the peaceful blue skies again.

When Hannah Shepard had blown the whistle, her data, aided by the subsequent UN-led investigation, had been terrifyingly conclusive. Just a little more than six hundred children abducted from orphanages all around Alliance space, and trained, indoctrinated, and conditioned to be the next generation of super soldiers, and even then their lie was itself a falsehood when one among them one that was decidedly not an orphan. Beyond that was what was released about how they were selected, and trained!

The ever mysterious selection process for the SIGMA Program had finally been outed: The Board very specifically wanted people who stood at the bleeding edge of high functioning sociopathy, protecting the free will of every human being in the Alliance! That they chose willing adults based on these guidelines was bad enough, but that they had applied these same guidelines to children? And had raised them in such a way that the edge upon which they stood grew only thinner? It was borderline barbaric, let alone monstrous, and that was merely the way which they were selected.

Trained, these children were put through physical and mental ordeals that individuals twice their age may have had trouble coping. But, as written by Christopher McGraw, the mind of a child is adaptable, more malleable. When presented with an ironclad, resolute authority figure, an adult or even a teenager with a civilian life behind them would question the context of any orders given. Would want to know the relevance of the physical and mental hoops through which they must hurdle; they may even give up. A child, however, would not. After a brief growing period, they wouldn't question the context of their instructions, or the why of what it is they were doing, they will simply accept them as 'the way it is', because the people taking care of them want them to do it, or suffer the consequences.

The result being that before they were even teenagers, these children had educations more closely reflective of the highest performing graduates of Eden's best private schools, and that was pointedly ignoring that by this time they also perfectly knew the anatomies of all of the major species of the galaxy - even the saltorians, before they'd even been contacted! - and subsequently how best to kill them. For goodness' sake, they had been given cadavers to dissect and familiarize themselves with! And by the time they were teenagers, they were closing in on ivy-league level educations, with physical builds on the level of Olympic athletes. Then they were augmented, and not for the only time, and from there it only became worse.

The Alliance was very fond of claiming that, despite genetic and mechanical augmentations, the SIGMAs were still irrevocably human, but Shepard had shown that, after the first round of augmentations, the biochemical ones, the children - and, it could be assumed, the adult Ones as well - could arguably not even be considered such anymore. Genetically modified on the deepest levels possible, their organs were made stronger and more efficient, their musculature was made denser and more durable, their skeletons were reinforced to be able to survive the power of their enhanced muscles, their brains were somehow even chemically rewired to be able to store, process, and recall information more efficiently, and their aging had been slowed to the point that many of the top leading scientists honestly didn't know if they could die of old age, and that was merely the beginning of the first round of changes! The Alliance had, in short order, taken children out of loving homes, and had stolen their humanity, in a metaphorical and a literal sense, and this was all before they were wired with the most advanced machines known to man.

At this point in their lives, both theorized by McGraw and proven by the trainers, any questions they may have over the normalcy, or lack thereof, of their lives would be completely gone. Of course they would recognize that they do not lead lives that others do, but would be so far gone mentally that they wouldn't care enough to question it. It was, for all intents and purposes, their lives now. It was all they knew. It was all they cared to know.

So, of course, now that they were enhanced to what the Alliance had lauded as 'the absolute limit of the human condition', it was time to, in McGraw's words, 'pull out all the stops'. They were tortured to build their resistance, made to fight SIGMAs in full armor without any for themselves to improve their pain tolerance, deprived of sleep to ensure they could operate on peak efficiency even when utterly exhausted, and the minimum scores for all of their physical and cognitive exams were doubled, making what, to a normal child in a normal life, would be tantamount to perfection, the bare minimum merely to be accepted. The SIGMAs had even sold the location of Titan Medical Station's orbit to terrorists, specifically to give the Twos a live-fire, 'do or die' scenario, placing the lives of more than half of a thousand fourteen-year-olds in direct jeopardy, merely to see how they would perform. Then the Alliance allowed the then-teenagers to participate in the first Batarian War!

This kind of unholy, inhumane treatment went on and on for another four years until finally, training was over and they were placed on the operating table for the mechanical augmentations. If their status as human beings was arguable after their teenage augmentations, then it was flat out deniable now. They were all nearly as much machine as they were man; outside of their armor, any one of them could perform the same physical feats as the combined efforts of any few dozen other men. The SIGMA Twos were to humans what quantum computers were to laptops.

Some of them had even had Artificial Intelligences wired into their bodies, functionally slaved to them and forcibly pressed into service. As if abducting children wasn't bad enough, the Alliance had doubled down and done the same thing to AI, with it being outright stated that the Alliance had demanded that any AI that refused to be 'powered off', and the process repeated until an AI said 'yes'. According to McGraw's notes, he had gone through fourteen AI before one had finally agreed to service John S2-15, and he'd been the first one to be implanted! Dozens of other Twos had volunteered for the procedure, and the Alliance-sanctioned AI body count grew to the upper hundreds; and given that the answer to every AI's question - the existential question that subsequently separated a true AI from any of their narrower cousins - was 'yes', that meant that not only had more than six hundred children been abducted for these monstrous experiments, but the Alliance had murdered nearly one thousand AI, and racked up a body count of a handful of children who had not survived augmentation, or had died in battle.

As a result, the sanctioning and creation of the SIGMA Twos had barreled straight past monstrous, and had gone straight to being simply evil. There was no other word to properly encapsulate what it was that the Alliance had done. It was wrong. It was inhuman. It was evil.

And it was the final straw.

Something had to be done, there was no dancing around it anymore. No more excuses or arguing, the United Nations had made this monster, and it was time for them to do something about it. Of every single planet in Alliance space, not a single one held as much clout as Earth. Even Eden, the 'warless planet', the most populous human planet outside of the Sol System, had only a fraction of the influence and power as the homeworld. Earth was not, as many believed, a paper tiger subsisting on cultural significance. Its power, in a political and indeed a military sense, was very real. So, it was up to Earth to decide what had to be done.

Before even the members of the United Nations Security Council had been called to meet, similar feelings had been felt all throughout the local cluster and beyond. From Earth to Pluto, from Eden-Prime to Keelahnan, even the AI cloud and the Geth Collective, everyone was talking; everyone was split down the middle. No one supported what had been done, but what should be done in response was what no one could agree on. Many rioted, with some growing so bad that Alliance forces were required to quell them. Many of the less radical elements demanded impeachment and trial of the entire Board, as well as the identities of the program's private-sector backers to be revealed. Some demanded the SIGMAs who had trained the Twos to be imprisoned, though few were actually willing to go up to the super soldiers and try to place them in handcuffs.

One sentiment, however, was gaining a particularly heavy amount of traction, especially in the Sol System, where the Alliance hadn't ever been popular. This sentiment had been the very reason all members of the UN-Security Council had had their meeting, days ago. It was, perhaps, the basest, most knee-jerk reaction, and subsequently the most human reaction.

It was why Breslin was here in New York, and not his home country. It was why his guards were so jumpy. It was why he found himself drinking in this country's skyline as best he could. Following today, their reaction could very well set the precedent for anything and everything like it, to come. He, along the other members of the Security Council, and indeed, the rest of the United Nations following his announcement, was making the monumental, unprecedented decision.

And as he thought this, he heard his watch lightly sound off, its alarm telling him just seconds before his aid did, that it was time. He silenced his watch and thanked his aid, and followed him down to the press room. The vote had already been made, but the secrecy of it was what was setting the press rabid, and likely terrifying the Alliance. There were only two ways this day could turn out, and each was equally terrifying.

Stepping into the wide, brightly lit room, filled to the bursting with reporters from all networks and many countries, many not even having room to sit, Breslin saw his counterparts from other countries standing on either side of the podium. Their own guards were in front of the stage, keeping the crowd at bay, while reinforcements were only five seconds away in a room he'd passed on the way in. He nodded to the other UN representatives as he passed by them, and when he stepped up to the podium, he waved his hands, quieting down the reporters.

Breslin steeled himself, controlled his expression and readied his voice. His every action, every movement, change of expression, inflection and tone of voice, his every word, would be dissected endlessly for generations to come. He had to do this perfectly, he had to, or else everything could be lost before it ever even truly began.

He cleared his throat, "good morning." He said, his accented voice filling the air and enhanced by the microphones in front of him. "One month ago, an Alliance Navy Captain by the name of Hannah Shepard defected to the Citadel Council, and upon arrival, revealed classified intelligence of a vast number of sentient rights violations and atrocities sanctioned by the Systems Alliance Board of Directors and carried out by the SIGMA Program.

"Now, ever since the declassification of the program during the Second Contact War, the Alliance has maintained that anything done in the aim of creating and training the SIGMAs was done to consenting, and informed, adult military personnel. While this may be true, what came after these adults is the subject of intense and, in many cases across Earth and beyond, violent, controversy.

"I am, of course, speaking of the SIGMA Twos." He said, with a single nod, to the brief staccato of camera-bots as they captured the moment. "Six hundred and twelve children from across Alliance space, abducted and summarily tortured in any combination of physical and mental ways, in the aims of creating a more efficient and deadly super soldier.

"Even if we were to ignore the nature of a creature such as a that. The physical and mental toll a life in which your only purpose is to fight in what has since antiquity been, at its basest, simply described as hell. Even if we were to ignore that we have graciously allowed these people to defend us for more than twenty years now, we cannot ignore what the Alliance has done to our children. More than six hundred innocent boys, and indeed approaching thousands of SynthHumans, few if any older than a handful of minutes. All of them forcibly conscripted into military service." Breslin slowly closed his eyes, steeling his expression.

"I have served in the military." He said, "I have had the honor of defending not just my country but also my homeland. My planet. My homeworld, in the opening volleys of the Second Contact War. I know perhaps the best of all of my counterparts assembled here today, that in times of war, sacrifices must be made. But they are made in the understanding that we fight these wars, we commit the inescapable evil of ending a life and many more after it, such that our children at home mustn't have to.

"But to take those very children, in a time of peace no less, and impress them into a war that, at that time and even now, doesn't exist? That goes beyond going against the reason we fight. It is immoral, inhumane, and, in a word, evil." He said, to another wave of flashing cameras. "Children are often described as the amalgam of all the potential in the world. In the eyes of the child is truly anything they want. They are innocent, and it is not simply our job, but rather our duty, to guide them. To teach them that they are the masters of their own fate. The captains of their own soul. They have the choice to make their lives what they want, and the Alliance stole that right from more than one half thousand of them.

"The Alliance was created nearly one century ago on the basis that they could govern and represent humankind on an interstellar scale. That they would be the amalgam of all that we were. The best of us. Our potential realized. Our ideals and beliefs on a supraglobal scale, represented" He nodded once, frowning, took in a deep breath, and then:

"But they have failed us." Another wave of cameras. "They have betrayed us." Another wave, "and in doing so, we are made to ask the difficult questions. Are they worthy, anymore, of representing all of mankind? Myself and my colleagues here today…Representing the United Nations. Representing planet Earth. We say no." A wave of whispers and murmurs accompanied the cameras now. "This kind of atrocity is not one that can be forgiven, and it is clear to us that the Alliance, as an institution, and indeed as a government, has fallen victim to its own power.

"As we have been speaking here… The portions of the Sol Fleet manned by United Nations, as beset by the edicts three decades ago, have opened fire on the vessels manned by Alliance personnel. Ground forces have stormed and taken control of Alliance installations controlling the orbital defense grid. Our militaries, globally, have been set at their highest readiness levels, ready to be deployed anywhere and everywhere at a moment's notice and to respond with the complete might of our fortress world." He said, dropping the words like a bomb. "I implore any and all planets within and beyond the shining light of Sol to join us. Any and all forces within the Alliance itself, disillusioned by their ways, to come to us. Because from this moment onward, the planet Earth, and any who side with us, hereby renounces its status as an Alliance world. And alongside this secession…And speaking for the entirety of the United Nations...

"I do hereby formally declare war on the Systems Alliance."

Choose Your Side

The Civil War will begin:

1/25/19