So, this a prelude to WE3. I bet a lot of you thought this story was dead. It's not, I promise. But WE2 is over. The next chapter I upload will be in Warrior Ethos 3, so look for it. To all of you who have been with me and continue to be with me, I do this for you.

The young marine approached the Admiral's curtain with no small amount of trepidation and uncertainty. His steps, and those of their guest, sounded much louder than the ambient noise of the ship in the deserted hallway. He could feel his already racing heart pick up the pace as he approached the cloth-shielded hatch and held up his hands to clap.

Almost as soon as the sound reverberated throughout the narrow, dark corridor of the vast ship, he received his response.

"You can come in."

He almost didn't want her to be there at all. She a perfectly fine officer to be sure, and a nice enough person if everything he'd heard about her could be believed, but he just didn't like dealing with the brass.

Nothing personal.

Which reminded him...

"Go ahead," said the guest he had escorted here, "I'll wait here until she sends for me."

He turned to the human woman behind him and nodded.

Parting the curtain just wide enough to admit himself, he slipped inside. Before him was an office, an office, twice the size of his entire living quarters and furnished ten times as well. Two floor-to-deck book shelves stood on each of the port and starboard sides of the office, roughly in the middle between the hatch and the admiral's desk. Not an empty space could be found among the numerous authentic paper-pulp texts, though few, if any, were priceless quarian originals. Most, if not all, were of a far more recent human vintage, which saw new publications crafted in that format to this day. He couldn't read a word of the script that covered their spines- he still hadn't gotten around to loading any human translation content- but he could at least recognize it for what it was.

The desk itself, while made of a typical assortment of scrap metal, used ship parts, and other odds and ends, had a seamless finish and a glowing polish, as if made by a master craftsman. Though each part, taken individually, bore no semblance to its neighbor, as a whole they seemed to fit together like a perfect puzzle. The closest he could compare it to were the ancient stone houses depicted in the pictures and paintings of old Rannoch, with bits of ceramic, ferro-crete, and steel used in place of stones. Atop the desk lay a stack of datapads to one side, a terminal in the middle, and three models of ancient ground-cars. The intricately detailed miniatures- each about the size of a quarian's hand- were no doubt representations of human vehicles, though he had no way of knowing for certain.

Behind the admirals desk, centered over the high-backed 'captain's' chair, hung a two meter wide by one meter high digital painting of Rannoch, ruddy tan layered in a sparse and gentle cloud cover, the sun cresting over the horizon as the world slowly turned in real time. Beneath it, and on the port and starboard bulkheads, were an odd collection of other pictures. A house here, a landscape there, one of an animal the marine hadn't seen before hanging from a wire with a human caption beneath, and so on.

Ostentatious as it all seemed, the most eye-catching object in the office sat at the admiral's desk. He had to look twice before he realized that the picture of the admiral and the unmasked quarian didn't, in fact, feature two quarians, and his unseen blush cleared away. The man with the admiral hadn't any faysakt to speak of, and had to be at least as tall as the admiral herself, maybe taller, and uncommon occurrence indeed.

He gave the woman a crisp salute as he stopped at her desk and stood at attention. "Sorry for the interruption, Ma'am. The general staff sections have some urgent news."

"At ease," she replied with a gentle nod. As much as he didn't like dealing with the brass, she was by far the best of them. He actually did feel at ease when she said it. She gestured to one of the two chairs opposite the desk from her. "Take a seat and please explain."

And so he did. "Commo received a transmission about an hour ago from an FTL quantum rely drone of human origin. They requested we allow an envoy to enter Migrant Fleet space."

She nodded, sounding a tad dismissive. "Sounds like politics. But I take it that's not all it is, or you wouldn't be here. Not a threat... Not from humans. An alliance?"

The marine held his tongue on the possibility of human and quarian 'alliances'. It probably would have gotten him spaced. "Perhaps, ma'am," he said, diplomatically. The truth was, he had no idea. "The envoy was accepted, and she asked to speak with you personally. And alone."

"Any overtures of an alliance should go before the whole board... And what diplomat knows me?" she asked, cocking her head to the side, "I mean, not just knows about me, but personally knows me well enough to ask for me specifically? Or is this someone taking a shot in the dark?"

"I'm not sure, ma'am," he said, nodding back towards her office curtain, "But she's a Commodore."

"What?! There's a human rear admiral aboard my flag ship? Outside my office? And no one thought to tell me first?" she leaned across the desk toward the marine, "There are customs and courtesies to observe."

The marine swallowed hard, his suit wicking away the ample sweat he suddenly felt everywhere under the steely glare of her bright and wild eyes. This was the Skull-Taker herself, the one the Geth called Lilith, rightly feared above all others by every sane being in the universe who knew anything of her.

"Nothing was sounded over ship-wide because, well, you're aboard," he swallowed again as she stared, "And the captain said, and I quote, 'She'll get a kick out of the surprise.' Admiral Han'Gerrel seemed to agree."

"I'll bet he did."

The marine knew enough about politics to know that both the ship's captain and the admiral of heavy fleet held some small amount of sway over the Admiral of the Fleet. That, and they were not above teasing her, in as friendly a manner as possible even to this day. Name dropping them would go a long way to pulling the heat off of him, if there was any to be had, and on to them.

"They did want to escort the human commodore down here themselves, but she insisted it wasn't necessary because it was a personal visit. They were happy to bow out of that detail. The captain is coordinating their fleet's holding pattern, and Admiral Gerrel is arranging a visit to their flag ship."

The admiral cocked her head to the side, "Flag ship? What's the name? What kind is it?" She seemed genuinely curious.

"One of the new human super-carriers. I can find out-"

"Wait. You said fleet? As in fleet fleet? So there's a whole human carrier strike group parked in orbit next to the Flotilla? For one envoy who wants to see me personally?"

The admiral shook her head and punched a few buttons on her desk terminal. It was an older model, still perfectly serviceable, with haptic controls but a 2D screen. It sat at an angle so he could just he make out what she pulled up. Over a field of black, a small plume of bright white centered itself on the screen, surrounded by dozens of even smaller points of light.

A key-stroke later and the image resolved from hundreds of sensor overlays into something decipherable. The smallest of the lights became roughly two dozen human ships; a handful of massive cruisers, a dozen or so destroyer escorts, and almost as many frigates. There would be another few stealth frigates somewhere in the area, watching from the periphery, that he knew he would never see.

In the center of the mass of neatly aligned vessels he saw floating one of the most gargantuan constructs to ever have been fitted with FTL engines. The Alliance had ten of the monstrous affronts Ancestors, the beams of each laid down some time after the fall of Saren and the appearance of his 'Geth Dreadnought,' Sovereign, and just after the disappearance of John'Shepard.

He remembered the class name, vaguely, and something about how they were to be employed. The humans used a bold and innovative strategy when it came to space combat; something a far cry from the galactic standard. The Duglass'Mac'Arthor was what the class was called, or something similar. At twice the length of a Liveship, and maybe three times as massive, it made for an immense sitting target, but that mattered little. It was fast, to be sure, but its defense lay in the fact that it was never supposed to see combat up close and personal. Hundreds of drone fighters could be launched, travel in FTL, and even traverse relays, all controlled by the carrier in real-time from the other side of the galaxy if necessary.

He'd seen one hit the batarian pirate-world of Maltiviian in one of the Flotilla's intel briefings. Only after the drones had put down any meaningful resistance, and the frigates had mopped up, and the cruisers and destroyer escorts had secured the area, did the super-carrier make its appearance. From there, it had put well over a hundred landing craft into clear skies in mere seconds.

When the relay-traversing behemoths started making calls to ports across the galaxy not too long ago, the humans had claimed they were for colonial defense against pirates, slavers, and the Geth. The marine knew, as all quarians did, what they were really for. Give the primates credit; they weren't as stupid or blind as the rest galaxy, they just played the part well.

It had taken a moment for the sensors to analyze the data and compare this human ship to what was known of its class-sisters, but in short order, a name materialized over the huge flagship. He heard the admiral suck in a breath.

Her whole demeanor changed. She sat up straight, her eyes started smiling, and she sounded almost bubbly. "Thank you lieutenant, please send our visitor in."

The SSV Margaret Thatcher. What was it about that name?

He stood and made his way towards the office curtain, surprised to find the human commodore snap to attention as he pulled the swirling purple cloth aside. She took a step inside and raised her hand to salute her counterpart, but the quarian admiral had stood and beat her to it.

The Rayyan spoke first. "Admiral Shepard, I'm so glad you paid us this visit."

The marine turned to their visitor in shock, not for the first time wishing he could read her name-tag. The human woman returned the salute with a smirk.

"Admiral Shepard, I'm so glad you could have us." The human crisply returned the salute, but shook her head slowly, her eyes downcast. The rest of the woman's body language proved her disappointment to be halfhearted at best. "I will not have my five-star daughter saluting a lowly one-star flag officer."

With that, the marine felt his knees go weak with shock.

"Lieutenant, you can leave us. I'll let you know when you can escort the other Admiral Shepard back to her shuttle."

Let me know what you thought. Special shout out to to those who encouraged me to write (sometimes not so subtly) through your messages and reviews, and also those who gave me inspiration to write by crafting your own stories of the adventures of Tali and Shep. You know who you are. Oh, and look for more ME:1865 too.