The Great Admiral

A/N this fanfiction is a story of humanity kicking ass and taking names, not so much focus on ground to ground combat or characters but rather on the strategy. The focus will be around an incredible human admiral who's inspired greatly by Grand Admiral Thrawn from the Star Wars EU. Don't expect me to focus on Shepard though he will show up as this story ultimately follows Chandler Pulare. With that out of the way I hope you enjoy.

The life of a fleet admiral was a lonely one, men and women here wouldn't see home in months. Communication had been a problem over such vast distances so there were no relationships those not of special rank and yet, Chandler Pulare wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. To have people respect you and your orders and the feeling of authority was something the admiral could appreciate more than any other human can. More importantly the feelings of victory could not be grasped any more firmly anywhere else in the galaxy.

Rear Admiral Pulare was not the usual build for an admiral, being only four feet and nine inches tall he was smaller than his peers and he held a cold in his eyes as his face was shallow. He was never physically intimidating however. His XO Williams was the opposite, he was a boaster and had a body worth boasting about, and a fire of a similar calibre. The admiral currently was sitting in an elevated leather seat to meet the height of his XO, in front of him, a holographic display of the old American navy warships. The ship he was in was designed as one, with grey metal and wooden handles. The Galaxy map was one of the few things updated to modern times, though limited in detail.

"Sir we've received an urgent message from the SSV Paris" came the voice of Williams.

"On screen" replied Pulare in a lazy fashion, putting the old holographic design away.

The message was of poor quality, for the audio did not survive the trip, resulting only in static, the video though had one frame surviving. Frozen on that single frame was an image of six spacecraft, the flagship larger than the human counterpart in the Rear Admiral's fleet, the five frigates the size of his destroyer. All of their ships dwarfed his frigates. The bridge was now naught but silence.

"Dear God, aliens. Actual aliens" exclaimed Williams, his singular voice breaking the silence.

"And they're headed straight for us" said Pulare darkly, adopting a far more calculated persona. Now his every syllable was calculated to indicate the response he needed. Every alien ship shown was bigger, and more technologically advanced than his own four frigates and single destroyer. He was also outnumbered.

"What makes you think that?" Williams asked fearfully.

"What would you do if you had met and defeated the vanguard of a hostile alien race?" Pulare continued, preferring to lead Williams to his conclusion by taking his steps.

"Look for their homeworld" he said revelation on his face.

"Precisely, they'll come here for clues" he said, now performing calculations in his head. "We have twelve hours before they get here, bring the image on screen"

All was silent as the single frame came on screen, though the aliens themselves were absent, their ships were clear. The ships were designed very much like a bird of prey, yet the nature of the bird was much more like those of ancient dinosaurs, which indicated the aliens were scaled. Which indicated many possibilities of their homeworld.

The ships themselves were large, clear and intimidating with weaponry clear to all who see. There was no attempt at subtly, of course. The designs were large and bulky, implying little interest of the species for agility, they may have been agile. Yet the lack of streamlining in the design implied a lack of focus. This species was a head on force, not used to tricks and ambushes.

Pulare was silent for several more moments, before Williams decided to interrupt.

"Sir, shouldn't we start evacuating" Williams begged, it was time.

"That'll be futile and unnecessary, the enemy fleet can only be stopped in orbit if the people of Shanxi were to have a chance" he explained, making William's face go white. "I do however have a plan"

"You do?" he begged disbelievingly.

"Of course, examine this ship and please tell me what you see" he said pointing to the ship on the screen.

"The big one appears to be size of some sort of cruiser whilst the others appear to be the equivalent to a destroyer" he said confused.

"Indeed, the nature of these vessels are clear, each one of them intricately designed with not just military value in mind but with intent of intimidation. This species is very geared towards its military and it is ingrained into their culture, every one of these ships is an art." Pulare droned on, if the fate of humanity wasn't at stake, they'd be bored but instead they held onto his every word, "the ship wastes resources in several areas, for this species has been dominant in the size of their fleet for centauries and can afford to be wasteful" he estimated "They are also likely to serve some sort of police force or peacekeeping group in their civilisation.

"How does this help us?" begged Williams.

"Because it is not in their nature to fight those who'd use trickery but only in overwhelming fire power" he said, hesitating before ordering "cut all systems excluding heat and oxygen, and tell the colony to put up distress beacons".

Turian Fleet Commander Nikta- 37th Turian Expedition Fleet

"Sir we've found the closest primitive planet" said his sub commander.

"Excellent, we'll get to the bottom of this" he said, "These primitives were trying to activate a relay, we'll soon find out why".

"Yes Sir" saluted the sub commander. It was rare but not unheard of to meet new races, but normally the Asari dealt with them. When new races were met it was always a risk, some like the rachni were grave threats to civilisation, and some were great booms to their citadel like the proud Turian hierarchy. Some were peaceful on first contact, like the Volus and some had to be told who was in charge like the Batarians but they always obliged to the invincible might of the Citadel fleet.

"Coming in range of the planet now Sir" came the voice of his sub-commander, "Sir, we're getting distress beacons"

Nikra paced towards the window, the fleet here appeared to be completely destroyed, had slavers beat this meagre military?

"Attack position, put the destroyers ahead of the flagship, and be on the lookout for slavers" he said, if they had attacked the people, primitive or not, it was their job to defend them.

They passed the destroyed fleet in relative silence, the ships clearly stood no chance, mere cyberwarfare could have disabled them. "Divert power to the kinetic barriers at the front of the fleet and reinforce firewalls"

After another five minutes passed the planet was in sight, though they were no enemy ships.

"Sir the primitive fleet is powering up" yelled his communications officer.

"What?!" he shouted seeing the new info into the holographic battlefield map. "Bring the ships around quick-"but Nikra would never say another word as his ship was destroyed.

Rear Fleet Admiral Pulare-Shanxi Defense Fleet

"Wooo, that's another one down" shouted Williams cheering, Pulare betrayed a smile.

"Leave that one alive, and prepare boarding craft" he said his voice cold to maintain discipline.

"Yes Sir" replied Williams, his voice now full of exhilaration, the room now was full of cheers over humanities first victory with these hostile enemies. The war wasn't over though, he hoped, and Pulare intended to find something on their homeworld in their databanks.

All of the enemy ships now were destroyed, barring one that had merely been disabled as per Pulare's orders, he wanted to see their technology, to use it against them and their art so as to understand them fully. The enemy were so drunk on their century long dominance that they never had a foe who'd think of fighting them that weren't simple pirates. It took them several hours, Pulare knew prisoners would be rare among this sort of species, though they did manage to take around seventy, out of a ship with a crew numbering around a thousand.

"Is the ship secure" asked Pulare after 30 minutes of sweeping for survivors.

"Yes Sir you're free to come abroad" came the officer's reply.

The ship inside was of considerable size, the ship was inspired heavily by war, and these people took clear pride in their military and were certain to believe it invincible. Therefore, it had stagnated allowing them to win. The aliens as it turned out were bipedal and almost skeletal in nature. On the corpse on one of the aliens was some sort of holographic orange arm or sleeve. Looking at his arm he identified the source and took it, it was a bracelet wearing it. It hummed for a few moments then.

"New User identified. I am the VI interface for this version of omnitool, I've adapted for the unknown language you process, how may assist you" came a voice from the tool, a holographic display appeared around Pulare's arm. Neither Pulare's face nor voice betrayed a flicker of surprise. A hologram of a strange almost blue alien appeared, not turian but rather human and clearly female, the only difference to a human as far as Pulare could tell was the colour of its skin, the aforementioned blue and the head which had tentacles that were groomed towards the back of the skull, like hair.

"No password, no safety features?" he asked shrewdly.

"Unnecessary, this device cannot be operated remotely, and the user will never depart from the tool" it explained "Therefore it would be unlikely. Furthermore no personal details may be stored on this version"

"What features do you hold?" asked Pulare.

"This version of the omnitool holds a translation matrix for all species and can decrypt languages for new species whom may operate one, in addition this unit can access the extranet" it replied.

"What's the extranet" asked Pulare, hoping to confirm his suspicions.

"A system connecting all terminals across the galaxy through websites, communication and data" it explained, so he was right, beyond his wildest hopes. A small smile flickered on his face, what better weapon could one ask for?