Chapter Text
2035 – Fall of the ADVENT Coalition:
With the collapse of ADVENT, Humanity reclaimed most of its cities after twenty years of alien occupation. Some retaken cities tolerated the surviving aliens. Others formed death squads dedicated to hunting xenos down, determined to purge the planet and restore it to a pre-invasion state. XCOM, the resistance movement that led the charge, tried to maintain neutrality—yet many of its veteran soldiers quietly cheered the purges.
2045 – Rise of the Terran Empire:
The world unified under the iron rule of Konrad Shepard, a charismatic warlord who declared himself Emperor. Survivors of the alien occupation were herded into internment camps, worked to death, starved, and brutalized as retribution for their crimes against Humanity. The Reapers and Templars, once XCOM’s black-ops specialists, evolved into a brutal enforcement arm of the regime. Public support for alien extermination was near-universal, fueled by the memory of loved ones lost in ADVENT’s gene clinics. Even some of XCOM’s old leadership, like Bradford, crossed the line into collaboration, favoring the new regime over a return to pre-invasion democracy.
2055 – The Discovery of Skip Space:
Specialized psionic humans, called Navigators, unlocked the ability to tear holes in spacetime—skip gates—allowing ships to travel interstellar distances without ever exceeding the speed of light. Skip space travel turned theoretical dreams into brutal practicality, enabling Humanity to reach distant stars in minutes. Experiments with time travel ended in failure: extremists trying to change history instead vanished, trapped forever in the nightmarish dimensions of skip space.
2075 – The Era of Colonization:
In just twenty years, Humanity colonized over a dozen planets. Colony ships, guided by Navigators, scouted nitrogen-oxygen worlds, deploying construction drones to assemble cities from native materials. The Empire’s expansion wasn't focused on luxury: it was about output. Planets were turned into agri-worlds, forge-worlds, and factory-worlds. Agri-worlds fed the Empire. Factory-worlds churned out consumer goods. Forge-worlds crafted military hardware: elerium weapons, power armor, and superconductors for AI cores. Humanity was no longer just surviving—it was industrializing the stars.
2095 – The Militarization of Space:
In the Asgard System, colossal megastructures, fifty kilometers across, pumped out warships like assembly lines. Cord Hislop Aerospace designed the ships; North Atlantic Heavy Industries built them. Every two months, fleets of cruisers and battleships launched into space. By 2095, the Terran Empire boasted a navy of seven thousand vessels: twenty supercarriers, two hundred battleships, eight hundred cruisers, and six thousand destroyers. Civilian luxury was an afterthought; war drove the economy.
2125 – The Rise of the Pleasure Worlds:
Beyond the fringes of Imperial space, private entrepreneurs carved out pleasure worlds: luxury havens for the rich, corrupt, and depraved. Here, anything went—except crimes involving animals or minors. Genetically engineered, psionically programmed sex slaves were legal. Hard drugs like cocaine, meth, and synthetic opiates were sold openly. Flights from the Imperial core to these frontier worlds boomed as even the poor tried to buy genetically tailored partners. The Empire, officially, turned a blind eye. As long as it stayed off the books and outside official territory, nobody cared.
Space was silent in the uncharted backwaters near the Parnitha system, thirty light-years from the nearest mass relay.
No relay.
No patrols.
No chatter.
Just one isolated garden world, abandoned by the Citadel Races — too far, too costly, too difficult to claim.
The system's star — a searing trinary of blue — bathed the planet in shimmering cerulean light.
Rumors spoke of a tropical paradise: massive reptiles prowling beneath alien jungles, the planet's low gravity birthing monsters not seen on Thessia since the time of ancient oceans.
Captain Taezzi Cato stood stiffly at the bridge of Parnitha’s Eternal Flame, the colony ship she commanded — or rather, her last chance at mattering.
Once, she had been a Huntress — a veteran of the Krogan Rebellions.
Once, she had a name whispered in respect across battlefields.
Now, she was a half-crippled relic with one prosthetic leg, a face half-consumed by thermite fire, and a blind eye that stared endlessly at the void.
The military had discarded her.
Society had pitied her.
The commercial sector tolerated her.
Her therapist said this new life — managing colonists, barking orders, forcing herself forward — was "healing."
Taezzi sipped the bitter Asari equivalent of coffee, pacing the bridge in practiced silence.
It was the only thing that kept her from thinking too hard.
Keep moving. Keep breathing. Keep being useful.
That illusion shattered with a single call from the communications pit.
“Captain! Planet Athame Prime — it’s not uninhabited!” the junior officer yelped, voice cracking.
Taezzi’s single good eye narrowed.
“Report.”
“Goddess… Captain, a whole continent’s lit up! Cities — or something like cities. Estimated four hundred thousand population minimum! Structures are — ornate. Traditional stonework, not prefab. No skyscrapers. Looks… ancient. But advanced.”
Disappointment gnawed at her gut.
No untouched paradise.
No easy colony contract.
No personal redemption carved into stone and soil.
Instead — more paperwork. More jurisdictional nightmares.
More failure.
The aerial probes sent back their feeds.
Taezzi leaned over the console, scrutinizing the images.
Homes of limestone and marble, sprawling estates instead of towering mega-cities.
Effortlessly intricate architecture — too complex for unaided organic hands.
Automated construction, clearly. Possibly AI.
Even the Asari hadn’t bothered with true stonework in centuries. It was inefficient.
But it wasn’t the buildings that caught her breath.
It was the statue.
A towering figure of marble stood in the center of a plaza.
Feminine in form — Asari-like in some ways, but alien in others.
Sharp facial features. Long flowing hair, unlike the Asari's natural baldness.
And strange funnel-shaped structures along the sides of the head — some kind of evolved auditory array, she guessed.
The resemblance was eerie.
As if the same gods that sculpted Thessia’s daughters had crafted a different line here, in isolation.
Before she could study further, the sensors spiked.
The ship shuddered.
At first, she thought it was mechanical failure. Then she looked at the main screen.
A tear had opened in space itself.
A swirling purple wormhole, kilometers across, its surface shimmering like a pool of oil.
Inside, she saw another world — teeming, shining, impossibly dense with life.
Not the garden world.
Something older. Larger. Hungrier.
Out of the wormhole sailed a starship.
It was like nothing Taezzi had ever seen —
A cathedral forged in orbit.
Its hull shimmered with opalescent purple scales, honeycombed with hexagonal armor plating.
Green energy pulsed from turrets nestled across its hull.
There were no visible thrusters — no sign of FTL drives — just silent, impossible movement.
Its weapons turned.
Instinct screamed in Taezzi’s chest.
"Run."
Before the words left her lips, the first shot came.
A globule of green light — thick as a house — slammed into the ship’s sensor array.
The bridge flared white, then went dark.
Blind.
The second and third shots struck the engines and communications.
The Eternal Flame bucked hard, throwing Taezzi against the nearest bulkhead.
Dead in the water.
Drifting.
She fought to her feet, heart hammering.
"Contact the Asari Gover—"
She stopped mid-order.
Realization dawned cold and brutal.
The communications were ash.
They were deaf, dumb, blind, and crippled — adrift before a god they had unknowingly angered.
On the main screen — through static and fractured imaging — she saw the alien ship approaching slowly, patiently, like a predator sizing up its kill.
Captain Taezzi Cato, war veteran, broken survivor, merchant captain, gripped the railing tight enough for the joints of her prosthetic leg to creak.
For the first time in a long, bitter life — she felt something close to awe.
And terror.
"All hands," she rasped through the emergency intercom, voice stripped of all pretense.
"Brace for contact."
Aboard the TNS Des Moines, Captain Isaac Macready stood silently, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the main viewscreen.
Before him floated the crippled alien vessel — its engines dark, its communications silent, its occupants completely at their mercy.
Macready had ordered it disabled without hesitation.
As per Terran Military Protocol: encounter with unknown xeno lifeforms demanded immediate neutralization.
Kill or be killed.
Nature’s oldest law — and humanity’s hardest lesson.
One hundred twenty-two years ago, the Elders had driven that lesson home.
The near-extermination of mankind had not bred peace or idealism.
It had bred a leaner, crueler humanity — one that understood the Dark Forest theory not as speculation, but as scripture.
If they are stronger, hide. Build. Then destroy.
If they are weaker, exterminate before they grow strong.
The galaxy was no place for mercy.
The bridge around him was a fortress — deep within the bowels of the ship, shielded by meters of etherite alloy armor.
Minimal lighting cast long shadows against the walls.
Banks of consoles flickered with streams of data — ammunition counts, energy reserves, shipboard temperature and damage control feeds.
At the helm, the pilot was slouched back in an ergonomic cradle, cybernetic plugs burrowed into his skull. Commands flowed from mind to machine seamlessly — maneuvering thrusters adjusting by thought, weapon batteries arming with a simple impulse.
Behind the Captain, Navigator Jacob Lessing cradled a white orb of psionic matter in gloved hands.
The orb pulsed and shimmered with his touch, mapping the hidden geometry of spacetime around them.
Given a star system’s coordinates, Lessing could open a portal anywhere — from another solar system, another galaxy, to the atmosphere of a planet itself.
It was the only FTL humanity had — and it worked because ninety percent of humanity, thanks to aggressive gene therapy, was now psionically active.
Skip-navigators had become as essential as oxygen in modern naval warfare.
The bridge’s heavy doors slammed open.
Colonel Jonathan Armstead Whitehill stormed in, each footfall pounding like a hammer strike against the reinforced floor.
His frame was monstrous — clad head-to-toe in Mjolnir II powered armor, an industrial nightmare of reinforced plating, kinetic absorption fields, and electrically triggered artificial muscle bundles.
Fifty millimeters of armor protected his chest.
Twenty-five millimeters wrapped his arms and legs.
An energy shield layered over it all, able to dissipate plasma, laser, and kinetic threats with contemptuous ease.
The Terran Federation hadn't designed the Mjolnir II to survive on the battlefield.
It had been designed to dominate it.
Whitehill himself was a product of XCOM’s "Ascendant" project — super-soldiers, bred and brainwashed from prisoners, their genetics rewritten, their bodies reforged.
Their psionic talents magnified to monstrous levels — some even able to bend the atmosphere, turning air itself into lances of burning death.
He was humanity’s wrath, forged into human form.
"Our next move, Captain?" Whitehill growled, his voice metallic behind the helmet’s speaker grille.
Macready didn't turn.
He spoke with the flat certainty of a man discussing weather patterns.
"As per the Bradford Protocol," he said, "we board the vessel. Kill all non-essential personnel. Secure the bridge. Extract navigational data for intelligence."
"And high-value targets?"
"If possible, alive."
Whitehill’s armored head gave a slight nod, more mechanical than human.
"Understood," he rumbled.
For a moment, silence hung over the bridge — a grim, almost reverent stillness.
Then, without ceremony, Whitehill turned and left, heavy boots booming back down the corridor as he marshaled his strike team.
Macready continued to watch the crippled alien ship spinning gently against the trinary backdrop of Parnitha’s stars.
He thought briefly — not of mercy, or diplomacy, or regret.
Only of survival.
The galaxy was no place for second chances.
Outside the dropship, Colonel Whitehill scanned the surroundings. Stacks of containers loomed in the dark — massive, towering, disorganized. Their dropship had landed through a smoldering, white-hot hole, torn into the xeno vessel's hull by the Des Moines’ plasma cannons. The wound gaped behind them, a ragged entry point into the heart of the ship.
Silence. Not just quiet — dead silence. No whispers, no shuffling, no signs of life. Explosive decompression had likely vented the ship’s crew into the black void. Worse, the power was out, leaving the interior in near-total darkness. Whitehill pivoted, his AP-15 plasma rifle sweeping left and right, HUD glowing faintly green through night vision. The cargo bay seemed empty, but instincts told him to expect the worst.
Flanking him was Corporal Hans Geist, dual plasma auto-pistols drawn, psionic energy humming faintly around his sleek, lightly armored frame. Geist’s armor favored amplification over brute defense; instead of shields, a telekinetic field crackled invisibly over his skin-tight plates.
On Whitehill’s other side stalked Garry Sykes, a close combat brute armed with a Westinghouse Plasma Scatter Gun and a mono-molecular blade wreathed in superheated plasma. He wore Wraith X armor, thickly plated but capable of phasing through solid matter, a ghost in the machine.
"What are we supposed to bloody do now?" Sykes muttered in his cockney accent, voice tight.
"Make for the bridge. Kill any X-rays. Capture the Captain. Extract nav data," Whitehill answered crisply.
"I've been itching to butcher xenos since I was a lad," Sykes grinned, cocking his scattergun. "Not many left since the 21st."
The squad moved forward in a tight wedge formation. The alien ship’s hull was a strange, semi-organic ceramic polymer, vaguely familiar — like the plate carriers humans used before etherite armor came standard. Visibility was garbage. No light, no sound, no oxygen. They stayed close, weapons high, every movement sharp.
At least gravity was still functional. They didn’t need to magnetize their boots or punch handholds into the deck to avoid getting flung into space.
Ahead, a sealed door gleamed faintly, marked by the telltale brightness of a recent weld. Unlike human ships — using energy field doors for almost a century — this was solid metal, thick and ugly.
Whitehill planted his fingers into the seam, servo-muscles whining as he wrenched the doors apart. Metal screamed. Inside: blinding white corridor lights, a stark contrast to the bay’s darkness — and a sudden blast of internal atmosphere.
A figure was expelled — feminine, humanoid — flying helplessly into the void. Her blue pebbled skin flash-froze instantly, crystallizing. Her body grotesquely bloated as trapped gases expanded violently. Her eyes ruptured in twin puffs of mist, and her corpse spun away into the blackness.
Suppressing a gag, Whitehill motioned the team inside.
The door hissed shut behind them, sealing the atmosphere. Their suit readouts stabilized; no more precious oxygen ticking downward.
Inside the corridor, they toggled off night vision. Walls were lined with intricate artwork and statues — disturbingly human in shape, but marred by grotesque cranial ridges. The decadence of a dying civilization.
Security protocols seemed laughable. Doors opened automatically at their approach — no codes, no locks, no defenses. A red flag.
Inside the next chamber, unarmored xenos in civilian jumpsuits scattered in panic at the sight of armored human giants. No weapons. No threats.
Orders were orders.
Whitehill raised his rifle and fired. Plasma bolts screamed across the room, boring white-hot tunnels through alien flesh. Purple fluid sprayed. Two more xenos dropped under Whitehill’s methodical, center-mass shots.
One desperate alien charged Sykes with a scrap of metal — an act of pure suicide. Sykes calmly blasted her apart, limbs shearing off in sprays of gore, her head vaporizing into purple mist. The stench of burnt meat filled the corridor.
More hostiles poured in — these ones armored, armed with sleek alien weapons. They ducked into cover; Whitehill’s squad mirrored them.
Plasma fire lit the room. Whitehill’s shield flared golden as a round clipped his helmet, draining a sliver off his HUD’s shield meter.
The firefight was brutal, chaotic. The xenos used flimsy plastic furniture for cover — barely slowing incoming plasma bolts.
"Garry, phase-flank them!" barked Whitehill.
Without a word, Sykes vanished, sprinting through the bulkheads. He emerged behind the enemy squad like a vengeful specter, scattergun on full-auto. Green beams shredded the xenos. Bodies collapsed in writhing heaps, purple blood soaking the deck.
The few survivors turned to face Sykes — and were immediately gunned down by Whitehill’s precision fire.
One alien — mangled, her legs blown off — tried crawling toward an exit. Sykes casually walked over and crushed her skull underfoot. Purple pulp splattered the floor. He chuckled. Whitehill didn’t even blink.
"To the bridge," Whitehill snapped.
They stormed through the corridors, cutting down any unarmed xenos that crossed their path. Plasma was merciless. It vaporized flesh and armor alike. Hague Conventions didn’t matter anymore. Humanity fought for survival — not ethics.
Finally, Whitehill found the bridge door — recognizable by the alien glyphs etched above it. No locks. No guards.
One brutal kick. The door exploded inward, slicing a technician in half and wrecking a console in a shower of sparks.
Inside, the bridge was intact. A battered low-res hologram of the Des Moines floated over the central console. Good — the tech boys would have plenty to dissect later.
The Captain revealed herself — or what was left of her. A hideous figure, bearing the scars of ancient burns. One melted eye rolled blindly. Torn lips exposed rotten teeth. For a race that worshipped beauty, she was an outcast, a monster. It made sense she'd claw her way to command.
"Looks like this bird took a bloody plasma grenade to the face," Sykes sneered.
"Secure her," ordered Whitehill.
Sykes holstered his scattergun, seized the Captain with a vice grip. As she struggled, blue energy crackled at her fingertips — but Geist was faster. Purple psionic tendrils whipped across the room, latching onto her mind. Her body went limp, unconscious.
Whitehill’s squad regrouped. Mission parameters still flashing in their HUDs.
Bridge secured. Target captured. Victory — brutal and absolute.