"Radio"

Thoughts

"Normal"

Human Embassy, Torfan, July 21st, 2158, 130 years since First Contact

Prologue

"There's a hell of a lot of rioters outside the gates Ambassador," the security chief warned Ambassador Anita Goyle. She was the seventh ambassador to the batarians, who were a pain in her ass. She watched from the security camera feeds as dozens of protesters and rioters marched outside, holding signs in English, screaming, "Get the Hell out of the Verge!"

She sighed before turning to the head of her security detachment. These men were the best of the best. More rioters arrived, bringing the strength of the opposing force of up to two hundred people. Torfan was the site of the Human Embassy to the batarians or the Separatists, as if they needed one, she thought wily. Several armed men were patrolling the walls of the Embassy, in order to make sure that no damn batarian tried to kill them.

There was also two major military bases that belonged to the humans on Torfan. One was the home to the 75th Ranger Regiment, a detachment that served as the QRF for most places located on the edge of Human and Batarian controlled space. The other was home to the 120th Fighter Wing's 186th Fighter Squadron and their fighter aircraft.

It was a unique arrangement with the hostile-like Separatists, who only had a small naval detachment and ground force there, both serving as the garrison force and the local defense against pirates.

Two vehicles approached the main gate, both of them military. Humming with energy, the main gates opened, and despite rioters throwing water bottles and various...items, the two vehicles zoomed into the compound, and two armed human security personnel closed the gate. Several vehicles were already there, while several armed men and women were moving back and forth from the main building of the Embassy to the vehicles, loading them with various items.

Private First Class Keith "Armadillo" Walter met Security Chief Douglas Hamilton in the main room of the Embassy, located on the fifth floor. The Delta Force operator was new, having recently been promoted to the Delta Force from the regular Army. Three other Delta operators were there, all of them part of Team Viking. Lead by the experienced Sergeant Abdul "Cyclops" Hussein, all of them were battle-hardened and tested.

"Gentlemen, I can't thank you enough. You got us more vehicles and you managed to disperse those protesters for a little while. I don't know what the hell is going to happen, but we're going to bug out of here as soon as the vehicles are loaded," Douglas Hamilton said sternly. He was six feet tall, with a red handlebar mustache and a tattoo of two hands holding several dogtags on his left arm, as if praying. He was a white male hailing from Mars, and was around thirty-five or so. His voice was stern and firm, calm under pressure.

"Good to be here. So how is it looking?" Abdul Hussein asked. He was thirty-two years old and hailed from Earth, Kurdistan to be exact. Born to Muslim parents, he was a secular man who didn't practice his birth religion, though sometimes he said a quick prayer to God. He was around five feet ten inches, with dark black hair covered by a beanie. In his hands was a standard assault rifle, firing a 5.56mm round propelled by magnetic coils at speeds that matched or surpassed Mach 7. Under his barrel was a standard forty millimeter grenade launcher that fired airburst grenades that tore through kinetic barriers like they were nothing.

"Not good. At least two hundred or more protesters are out. We made a call out to the 75th Rangers, see if they can have a QRF ready for us just in case, but they got around a two hours flight just to get here, not to mention they have to pass through Batarian airspace," Douglas replied and the collective members of Delta Force Team Viking groaned.

"Any naval forces in the area?" Corporal Humberto "Taco" Reynosa interjected, hoping to find some shreds of hope still in the situation. Born on Luna, he was the second youngest member of the team, around twenty-five years of age. He was Roman-Catholic and unlike Abdul, was a practicing Catholic. Standing at around five feet six inches, he was also the smallest member of the team. His brown hair was covered by a baseball cap, while he wore sunglasses. He was the marksman of the group, armed with a battle rifle that fired 9.5mm rounds and had an effective range of over 1000 meters. He was able to pick off targets at around 1500 meters.

"We sent a message through the Quantum Entanglement Communicator and they are sending a flotilla to watch over the moon. However, as per the treaty, we have to rely on the Separatists to get us out of this mess," Douglas said somberly and again, Delta Force Team Viking cursed at their luck. On a good day it was hard for a Batarian to even say hello to a human, let alone pull their asses out of the fire.

"What about the 186th? They have fighter aircraft and they can provide CAS until extraction is over," suggested Specialist Shinzo "Poet" Abe. He was from Alpha Centauri, born in New Albany. He was exactly thirty years old, and practiced Buddhism. Standing around five feet and eight inches, he was the second shortest. He had a beard that covered most of his face, unlike the other clean shaved members, and wore a helmet, unlike the other team members. Attached to the magnetic strips on his armor was an automatic shotgun, firing pellets that tore through kinetic barriers easily.

"Not going to happen. These are protesters. Our plan is to just dump tear gas into those sons of bitches and get the hell out of here. Besides, they have to come through Separatist airspace. Trying to get those Separatist bastards to give us permission is too much of a pain in the aren't going to pull our asses of the fire without letting us take some damage," Douglas countered, and the hopes of an easy extraction were dashed. Usually, the Embassy had two Mi-28 transport tiltrotor aircraft for extraction, but those were down for repairs on the 75h Rangers base halfway across the moon. Able to go around three hundred and fifty miles per hour in atmosphere and around 700 miles per hour in space, the Mi-28 was armed with a single fifty caliber machine gun on its ramp and a 7.62mm Gatling mini-gun on the belly. Modeled after America's V-22 Osprey, it was able, spaceworthy and more advanced in every way.

"So we start loading the vehicles, try and get the hell out of here, and if we can't, we drop tear gas and drive the hell out of here?" Keith clarified and the Security Chief nodded. Keith was the youngest of them all, only twenty-two years old, born on Charon, near the Charon Relay. He was around five feet and ten inches, thin and gaunt, but with toned body that spoke of his physicality. He was clean shaven, but he had two red hands painted over his cheeks, signifying his allegiance to the Lakota Sioux. His brown eyes spoke of intelligence and kindness, while his dark black hair was shaven. He wore no covering, opting for a single tactical eyepiece that transmitted information and served as his Heads Up Display. Armed with a M253 SAW, he was the team's machine gunner, and his job was to give suppressive fire and cut down any idiots stupid enough to charge them.

"Shit! We got incoming! I see fucking transports with military grade weapons on them approaching the fucking walls!" came the scream from the communication devices on the men's forearms. All of them reached for their weapons. It was going to be a long day.

"This is Viking Zero One, we are heading to Embassy roof. Armadillo, Poet, go down and help those contractors out. Taco, you're with me, let's go kill some fuckers from the roof," and the team split up, Armadillo and Poet heading straight for the fight, while Taco and Cyclops headed straight up toward the roof, joining two security contractors who were manning a remote sniper system up there.

"Copy that Viking Zero One. I will be known as Mother Bear and the various security contractors are known as Echo One One, Echo One Two, and Echo One Three. The Marines are Misfit One One. How copy, over?" yelled Security Chief Douglas Hamilton over the radio. The tier one shooters of Delta Force nodded to one another, and Armadillo and Poet went down to the first floor of the Embassy building in time to see three batarians slam into the gate with all their might. The two were able to seem them through their magnetic sights. Raising their weapons, the two operators shot over the batarians head, careful not to shoot them, as they were unarmed. The burst of automatic fire was enough to encourage the three Batarians to make a run for it, even if they couldn't see the two Delta Force operators.

Armadillo looked through his HUD, scanning the walls before, once again, activating magnetic sights in order to get a better view of the outside of the walls. Soon the appearance of dozens of protesters were apparent. However, some of them were armed with crude weapons, such as flaming bottles and several had second handed mass accelerator pistols. Then the transports roared, disgorging fresh batarians armed to the teeth.

Armadillo had no doubt that these were members of the Batarian Hegemony. For years the Separatists and the Hegemony had been at war with each other, even fighting on Earth itself, before human innovation and science created a stalemate between the two. It had been over a hundred years ago since First Contact.

These were most likely members of the Special Intervention Unit. Trained to subvert, counter-insurgency, and to destabilize, they were highly trained and very dangerous. Dozens of them in a single place was not good.

"Mother Bear, it seems as those commandeered transports are controlled by the Special Intervention Unit," and there was a long pause followed by a long string of curses.

"Good to know Viking. I need those men on the walls safe. Kill as many as those SIU fuckers you want," and Armadillo grinned. The tier one shooter and his partner raced to the gate, as two vehicles suddenly powered up, and slammed forward, heading straight for the main gate.

Armadillo raced towards the top of the wall, that was right above the gate and started to lay down a blanket of fire right at the two vehicles. One of them was hit by one his bursts and reared to the side, flipping over and skidding to a stop right next to an overturned bus. The other one kept roaring along, despite the pellets that Poet put into it. Armadillo reloaded, slapping in a new drum magazine into his gun.

Armadillo wished that he was back at home, instead of in the middle of the conflict between the Separatists and the Hegemony.

He continued to fire, only to stop to reload. The vehicle roared, humming with death, before a door opened and a batarian tumbled out, rolling as he did so. Armadillo wondered why he did that. Then he saw that the vehicle was heading straight for the gate.

"We got two SIU fuckers trying to snipe us! We're pinned down by the western wall. Anybody handy with a rifle?" one of the security personnel asked over the radio. He was desperate as far as Armadillo could tell but before he could say anything, Taco answered.

"Roger that. I'm heading towards you."

And before anything else happened, he heard two muffled shots echo throughout the compound. That would be Taco, probably taking down the damn snipers. Then he turned his attention back to the gate.

The vehicle slammed into the gate, despite the fire that Armadillo and Poet had fired at the damn thing. The vehicle imploded, detonating at least a kilo worth of explosives, turning the vehicle into an impromptu gate destroyer. He had to give it to these damn SIU fuckers, they knew how to improvise.

The gate was torn off its hinges. However, a second gate started to lower. It was standard procedure. Each human compound had a dual gate system, just in case the first gate was destroyed, denying the enemy any respite.

"Mother Bear, secondary gate deployed. However, doesn't look like the enemy is going to give us any respite," Armadillo muttered through his radio. He then had an idea. Though his magnetic sights allowed for him to look through the compounds of the walls, he couldn't get a fully accurate picture of what was happening. His hands quickly went through his rucksack, when he managed to get his UAV out. It was called the Dragonfire, a UAV that was used for recon. It was small and handy. He threw up the UAV into the air, letting it hover in the air, before he directed it to head towards the massive crowd of protesters and rioters outside the compound. He started to transmit straight to the compound's center, while also broadcasting to the HUDs of his comrades.

The UAV was silent as it hovered right above a group of protesters. However, these protesters weren't ordinary Batarians; they each had a mass accelerator rifle. Two batarians were fiddling with something that looked like a tube, along with legs. He didn't know what it was. He continued to hover right above them, noting that the protesters were essentially covering them with their bodies.

The two SIU batarians were done with whatever they were doing. The UAV continued to transmit the image to his HUD. He then knew what it was.

"Mortar!" he yelled as he turned the UAV to get out of the way. One of the batarians dropped a mortar shell into the tube and covered his ears. The mortar fired, sending a 88mm shell heading straight for the compound. Explosions ripped through the air as the shell hit one vehicle, an unmarked government one, blowing it up and killing two security contractors.

"We have mortar fire coming from the east. Taco, you got those bastards in your sight?" Armadillo asked. The radio was static for a few moments before Taco came on the air.

"Got it Armadillo. Shifting to the east now," Taco muttered. A few seconds later, he heard more muffled shots from the top of the roof of the main building, and through his UAV, he watched as one batarian was killed by a headshot, the other killed by a shot to the neck. The other four batarians dove straight into the crowd, earning a curse from Taco. The protesters quickly enveloped the SIU troopers and shielded them from the fire of the Delta Team. Armadillo then shifted his focus to the gate. The secondary gate was much stronger than the first, but if anyone tried to have a concentrated effort to destroy it, it would go down. The UAV shifted focus to the north, where more rioters and protesters were gathering. The only way in was through the main gates on the eastern gate, but maybe they would try to scale the wall?

"Mother Bear, I have eyes on two shuttles heading straight for us. Did the call to the Separatists get through?" Taco said through the radio.

"Yeah we sent the call. Should be them. I want all available anti-air ordnance pointed at them though. Might be the Hegemony," Hamilton cautioned. Soon, two Marines, part of the Embassy guard, had MANPADs tracking the two shuttles that were quickly racing to the Embassy.

"This is Shuttle 37 of the Separatists. We are here to extract you to your fleet waiting near the moon, as per the treaty. Doesn't make me happy, you human maggots," a rough voice, that could only belong to a batarian, spoke through the radio channel. It had to be the Separatists. Only they had radio channel communications of the humans.

"This is Mother Bear. Good to see you too you ungrateful sons of bitches. We fought three separate wars against the Hegemony with you and you still don't trust us?" Hamilton challenged. The batarian pilot only grunted.

"Whatever human. Just clear a landing zone. I have enough room for twenty people-Oh shit! Shuttle 37 is defensive!" the batarian pilot cursed through the radio. A flash of light was seen from the west and soon a missile was visible over the horizon. It was tracking the shuttle heading straight for the engines. The shuttle zoomed to the east, while its brother in arms started to head south, right over the compound. Shuttle 37 then dove, firing off countermeasures, but the missile ignored them, and slammed straight into the shuttle. The shuttle immediately caught fire and started to smoke.

"Mayday, mayday, I've been hit. Again I've been hit. I'm going down, I'm going do-" and the radio link vanished. Soon, an explosion was heard just a few miles east of the compound. The remaining shuttle, apparently, lost its nerve. It zoomed to the north.

"Well fuck!" Armadillo said to Poet. Poet just shook his head. He pointed straight at the protesters gathering. Bottles were being thrown at the wall and SIU squads were starting to take potshots at the security contractors. More SIU troopers were setting up mortars and heavy infantry weapons to prepare to take the compound.

If the Hegemony could take the Embassy, it would be a symbolic victory. They would have the human ambassador to the Separatists and they would take down human mercenaries and Marines. It would show that the Hegemony would not tolerate human intrusion into the Skyllian Verge and maybe shift public interest on Torfan towards the Hegemony and against the Separatists. Humanity would demand for war. And that could have unforeseen consequences. A war was not what the United Nations Security Council needed. They were having trouble with a resurgent krogan empire on one flank and going against the Hegemony would not bode well for the United Nations of Earth.

"Well there is good news and bad news. Good news is that the freaking Separatist military governor is allowing for the 186th and the 75th to get us out. The bad news? The Hegemony just jumped an entire fleet right into the system."

The words from Douglas Hamilton did not bode well for Delta Team.

"That's right. Looks like open war. Torfan is going to be under siege in less than three hours. I got reports from the Separatists. We got mass uprisings going on in major cities and towns all across the moon. More SIU. If they take Torfan, you know what that means for us?"

Armadillo couldn't fathom it. The humans were barely able to stop the Hegemony last time they attacked Torfan. Torfan had been the former stronghold of a Hegemony warlord. Its population was still mostly former Hegemony citizens and denizens.

A different voice was soon on the air. Ambassador Goyle.

"It means that we'll be on the defensive and with the lost of Torfan, the Hegemony will have a base that is right near one of our major colonies. The shipyards at Alpha Centauri. We need to hold Torfan. Otherwise we'll be seeing the destruction of the UNE."

ACCESSING CODEX….

WELCOME! NEW ENTRIES ADDED AS OF JULY 21ST 2158.

Batarian Separatists: Following the shift destruction of the United States of America during the First Contact War, the Separatists were composed of slaves and plebs dissatisfied with the Hegemony. They rose up, taking a quarter of the Hegemony in their grasp, while individual ship captains of the Hegemony's Navy sided with them. This allowed for the Separatists to gain control of a portion of the fleet attacking Earth, the human homeworld, that grinded into a three year war that saw the rise of Humanity on the galactic scale. Humanity, bolstered by their own ingenuity and new technology, managed to force a stalemate between the Separatists and the Hegemony. Facing slave uprisings across virtually all of their space, the remaining Hegemony forces on Earth and across Separatist space signed the Treaty of Sol that gave humanity their freedom and recognized the Separatists. The Separatists and the humans remain allies, though tensions are high due to the First Contact War. They control around half of what was the old Hegemony, though the Hegemony is much larger and richer.

United Nations of Earth: Following the First Contact War, over two billion humans were killed or enslaved. The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the People's Republic of China, the most powerful nations on Earth, knew that if they were to stand alone the next time an alien force would appear, they would all die. The U.S reactivated NASA following their revival as a nation. Following the revamping of the space program, using mass effect technology and their own tech, they started to colonize various worlds, eventually reaching the Skyllian Verge, which is where current tensions are. Using a mixture of their tech and mass effect technology they have a mixed military; the navy is mostly composed of ships that are similar to batarian naval vessels, but there are rumors of ships that aren't powered by mass effect fields or eezo. Their army uses weapons not powered by mass effect fields. They have fought three major wars with the Hegemony. They are currently an Associate Species of the Citadel, as they made First Contact with them thirty years after the First Contact War.

The Second Krogan Empire: Following their defeat at the hands of the Separatists and the United Nations of Earth at the end of the Second War of Aggression, the Hegemony needed allies. As the humans were accepted into the Council following the war, they were outcasts. Though technically still part of the Citadel, they needed allies that would be stalwart and loyal. The Hegemony, using their vast resources and contacts, financed a krogan by the name of Urdnot Wrex, who wanted to unify the krogans into a powerful nation. One hundred years after he was first contacted by the Hegemony, Urdnot Wrex is the ruler of the most powerful krogan faction since the Rebellions; he called it the Second Krogan Empire. With him as Emperor, he head his forces in the Third War of Aggression, crushing two human worlds, only to be stopped when humanity managed to threaten Tuchanka. The United Nations of Earth and the Second Krogan Empire are currently engaged in a small-scale brushfire war, over the rights to a world known as Blackhaven. The Second Krogan Empire has an embassy on the Citadel, though are they are not considered part of it.

What do you guys think? A humanity that is allied with Separatist batarians? A resurgent krogan empire? I found that I didn't want a humanity allied with the krogan or the quarians. I didn't want a humanity that curbstomped the batarians and the Council. I wanted one that was technologically advanced but not overly so. I wanted one that was able to "hold the line" but not go off and capture Palaven off a whim. I needed a humanity that was strong enough to join the Council. I will be getting into the political ramifications of the new possible war and the offset of krogan militarism what it means for the galaxy. You will be seeing the turians, asari, and salarians, along with the batarian ambassador and the human ambassador, along with a new special forces that is pretty freaking awesome. Well, not really new, but it still is pretty freaking cool.

To my fans of A Black Star Emerges and And So We Rise, I am currently rewriting the chapters. I will be taking down those two stories until I have rewritten them. So please, don't be disappointed. I will also be adding a new Elder Scrolls fiction soon. So, plenty of content, just slowly going. I'm also taking down my Homefront fic, because it is horrible. I will probably not rewrite it. Sorry. Also, this scene is inspired by Command Authority by Tom Clancy.

-DeathBladeVI