Chapter Text
________________________________________________
I was not yet born when humanity first uncovered the ruins on Mars in 2148. The discovery was older than me, older even than my parents and grandparents which was greater than anything my adolescent mind could comprehend. I knew of it only from the stories told at the dinner table when I was a girl, my father’s voice carrying a mix of awe and doubt, my mother’s insistence that it was the moment everything changed. To them, it was a miracle—a window torn open onto the greater galaxy. To me, it was akin to fantasy made real, a classical tale of explorers and ancient civilisations.
The scientists of their day called it the greatest discovery in human history. The civilizations already dwelling among the stars that we had yet to encounter had a simpler name for it—the mass effect. With it, the farthest systems became days away, not centuries. Humanity had leapt forward by millennia, and in our eagerness, we scarcely paused to consider what it meant to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with powers who had ruled the galaxy since before our species mastered fire.
By 2157, the Systems Alliance claimed to speak for us all. A bold claim, perhaps, but one we believed. We were restless, young, and certain of our destiny. I was but two years old when the unknown reached back to test us. At Relay 314, our vessels encountered the turians. They were not explorers, nor were they inclined to diplomacy. They were soldiers—centuries hardened, protectors of a law that had ordered galactic life since long before we joined it.
There were no negotiations. There were no warnings. Our meeting was brief, and it was bloody. What might have remained a misunderstanding blossomed into open war. To the turians, our act of activating a dormant relay was reckless, even criminal. To us, their assault was an unprovoked strike. I was too young to understand it at the time, but I remember the tension in my parents’ voices, the way my mother wept at the mention of Shanxi, the way my father tried to explain that alien soldiers now walked upon human soil.
It was Shanxi that burned the truth into us. The turians came swift and merciless, shattering fleets in orbit, raining fire upon the colony, and descending with disciplined force. Shanxi fell, and with it fell the illusion that humanity’s bright new age among the stars would be unchallenged. An alien banner flew above human soil. That was the first time in our history we knew what it meant to be conquered. But it was not the last word. Reinforcements arrived, and with them fury. Against expectation, humanity struck back. Shanxi was retaken. For the turians, it was a wound to pride. For us, it was proof that we could endure, and that we could win.
The war teetered on the edge of escalation, each side prepared to hurl themselves into a conflict that would have consumed us utterly. Only the intervention of the Citadel Council spared us from annihilation. The asari and salarians urged clemency, insisting our trespass was ignorance, not malice. The turians yielded to pressure. Humanity was admitted—reluctantly, warily—into the galactic community.
To the galaxy, we were dangerous children, unpredictable and rash. To ourselves, we were scarred but unbowed. Shanxi became a watchword, a scar across the collective soul. From it, a vow was born: never again would we allow confusion, hesitation, or despair to undo us when the unknown came knocking at our door.
That vow forged a new breed of soldier. Not just warriors, but arbiters of morale and resolve. They studied war, yes, but also history, philosophy, and the frailties of the human spirit. They carried diplomacy in one hand and discipline in the other. They were given authority of judge, jury and executioner beyond the ordinary chain of command—an unyielding presence in every moment of crisis, tasked with silencing fear, cutting through indecision, and holding the line when all else failed.
We called them Commissars.
And though many wore that mantle with honor, one name stands above them all: Ciaphas Cain. To the rank and file, he was everything the Commissariat was meant to be. Fearless, unwavering, forever choosing to stand on the frontlines when others faltered. His courage was not merely in words but in presence—by his own will, he placed himself in the fire so that no soldier under his gaze would dare to break. He desired no safer post, no easy command. His heart was with his men, on the line, always.
That is the truth of Cain’s greatness. He was the Commissar I knew who desired nothing more than to be at the front, defending humanity and the Alliance with every breath.
The man who would become the Hero of the Citadel.
- An excerpt from “Forged in the Ashes: Humanity’s Many Trials Among the Stars” - The collected memoirs of Alliance General Jenit Sulla (Retired)
_________________________________________________
“Divas, you know there’s no place I’d rather be than the frontlines right now.”
Which was, naturally, a lie of the first order. Delivered smoothly, though, with the sort of ease that comes from long practice. By that point I wasn’t really lying to him at all—I was lying to myself, which had become something of a reflex. Still, I’d learned early on that projecting confidence was half the battle. If you sounded like you knew what you were doing, sometimes people believed you. On this occasion, I almost believed it myself.
Divas, predictably, wasn’t entirely fooled. He’d known me too long to take anything I said at face value. Adjusting the sling on his rifle, he gave me that look of his—the one that suggested he’d rather swallow a live grenade than accept an easy answer.
“But Cai, the Verge is flooded with action right now. I just don’t see how you ended up with this post unless it was a punishment, frankly.”
That was Toren Divas in a nutshell: blunt as a hammer and twice as heavy-handed. He was one of the very few men alive presumptuous enough to call me “Cai,” and I’d long since resigned myself to tolerating it. After all, arguing with him was a bit like arguing with a thunderstorm: noisy, tiresome, and ultimately pointless.
He wasn’t entirely wrong, though. Humanity hadn’t exactly made the best first impression on the wider galaxy, what with our knack for blundering into people’s territory and getting shot at for daring to have no knowledge of wider galactic laws. But the Batarians… well, they were a case study in how to make everyone hate you twice as fast as the Turians managed. While bureaucrats back on Arcturus and the Citadel bickered over treaties and the Hegemony swore blind they had no idea what their citizens were up to, the reality out here in the Skyllian Verge was rather more obvious. Isolated colonies raided, freighters disappearing, slavers striking at anything that couldn’t shoot back, and staging outposts springing up like weeds—particularly the one we now found ourselves saddled with observing.
“Punishment?” I repeated, doing my best to make the word sound absurd. “Don’t be ridiculous, I chose this posting.”
In truth, I half suspected he was right. Officially, I’d volunteered for this little jaunt in order to gain more “frontline experience.” After graduating OCS and Commissar training on Arcturus, I’d lingered longer than was strictly necessary, killing time before the inevitable deployment against the slavers. I even managed to wrangle an N4 designation while I was at it, which sounded far more impressive than it felt as I mainly used unconventional combat electives to bolster my less than stellar grades. Leaving before Interplanetary Combatives Training took over for the later levels I’d suggested a posting where I could qualify for the other thresholds, as I put it, “by getting my hands dirty.” At least, that’s what I told the brass—and myself—when I signed the orders. In reality, I’d contrived to land a quiet billet on Krastin V, attached to an artillery unit whose greatest peril was supposed to be shooing away the occasional scavenger from a long-abandoned Batarian slaver outpost. Hardly a tour likely to put me in any actual danger, which had been rather the point.
Unfortunately, “quiet” postings have a habit of becoming anything but once I’m involved—a lesson my training escapades had already proved more than once. I’d barely had time to unpack my kit with the battery before the whispers started up. The old slaver outpost, so I was told, wasn’t quite as dead as advertised. Supply caches vanishing in craters, long footprints where no one should’ve been walking, shadows moving in the corner of someone’s eye and the sounds of grinding earth were apparent. All the little signs that suggested the Batarians were sniffing around their old dens again or god forbid something worse.
And since I had the dubious honour of being the only Commissar within a hundred klicks, Command naturally decided I should be the one to stick my nose into it. Which was why I found myself waiting for the inevitable boot to drop and our commanding officer to summon me like some errant cadet back at the academy. The whole thing had a depressingly familiar air about it—sitting outside an office, rehearsing excuses, and wondering just how much trouble I was in this time. The only real difference was that at the academy my crimes had been limited to relieving fellow students of their credits in a perfectly honest game of cards. A pastime, I should add, that I’d carried cheerfully into adulthood—and which had proved every bit as useful for passing the time in a supposedly quiet artillery battery as it had in the dormitories of Arcturus.
So here I was, up to my neck in the very sort of mess I’d been trying to avoid, while Divas looked at me with a grin that suggested he thought I’d arranged the whole affair for my personal amusement. “You’ll forgive me for saying so, Cai,” he continued, amusement plain, “but this doesn’t look much like the career-building adventure you claimed it was. More like someone threw you to the wolves—only the wolves had the decency not to show up, so now you’re stuck dying of boredom instead.”
He wasn’t wrong, of course. But I’d be damned if I was going to admit it out loud and curse jinxing his proclamation. Instead, I managed what I hoped passed for a nonchalant shrug. “Let’s just say I’m here to keep you out of trouble, Divas.” He barked a laugh, loud enough to turn a few heads. “That’s what makes you the Commissar, Cai,” he said, shaking his head. “Because if this turns out anything like those stories we heard about you back in training, you’ll be seeing action sooner rather than later.”
At least he had the courtesy to treat my impending push to investigate the outpost and face certain death like it was a joke. That alone did wonders for my nerves. But being a Commissar—and worse, one with a fledgling reputation for bravery and skill courtesy of that shiny new N4 designation—I could hardly let on that I was already eyeing the nearest exit. So I gave him the grin I’d perfected in the academy, the one that suggested eager anticipation of the challenge ahead, rather than the very real desire to run for the hills at the first opportunity.
Conversations like these were, regrettably, becoming the highlight of my posting with the Alliance 12th Field Artillery. If only the Batarians had shown the good sense to pick their outposts somewhere more hospitable, I might have had something better to occupy my time.
Krastin V was a mining world, which was another way of saying it was barren, blasted, and about as welcoming as a Turian gunship above Shanxi. The surface was mostly desert, punctuated by jagged mountain ranges that looked impressive enough until you had to try crossing one. Rich mineral veins threaded through the rock, which was the only reason anyone had ever bothered to scrape out a living here in the first place. The climate, naturally, was as unpleasant as the scenery—baking heat by day, bone-snapping cold by night, and dust storms in between—just in case you dared to get too comftorble on this sorry excuse for a planet.
Human habitation was sparse, confined to mining installations and the handful of military encampments propping them up. The planet’s only real value lay in what you could dig out of it, not in actually living there—which was precisely why it made such a tempting hunting ground for Batarian raiders. Isolated settlements, long supply lines, and nothing but open wasteland in which to vanish again. It was practically an instruction manual for slaving operations.
Against this charming backdrop, the 12th Field Artillery had been deployed—our heavy ordnance intended as a sharp deterrent to any slaver vessels foolish enough to try reclaiming their old stomping ground. A sound strategy on paper, of course, though I had my doubts about how effective a battery of guns really was in discouraging Batarians who’d already demonstrated a healthy disregard for legality, decency, and common sense.
Nevertheless, Divas and I remained where we were, staring out at the endless desert expanse in the shadow of our heavy weapon platforms, doing our best to look like men with something important to contemplate. In truth, the only real contemplation involved the contents of our mugs. Mine was filled with a reasonably fresh brew, while Divas had seen fit to fortify his with something stronger, producing the unmistakable tang of Tanner Tea—a concoction whose aroma was considerably more appetising than the ungodly stench drifting from the nearby engineering bay.
The smell was enough to turn stomachs at fifty paces, and considering what passed for rations on Krastin V, that was saying something. Our Makos were being worked on in there, although how replacing an engine block or patching armour plates could produce an odour like that I had no idea. Stranger still, I was fairly certain only one technician was on duty. Blargan, or Bargan—something along those lines. I’d never quite caught it, mostly because I made a point of limiting my exposure to the man and whatever noxious substances he considered essential to the maintenance of armoured vehicles.
With not much more than half a mug of Tanner left, I was dragged from my musings by the telltale ping of my omni-tool. Commander Mostrue’s ident flashed across the holo-display like an unwelcome stain, the kind you have to resist the instinctive urge to wipe off your sleeve. Instead, I thumbed the call through to my comm-bead, doing my best impression of crisp professionalism. “Yes, sir,” I said, in as respectable a tone as I could manage on short notice.
“Commissar, I need your presence in my office. There’s been a development concerning the outpost,” came Mostrue’s voice, gravelly as ever. The kind of gravel that only a veteran of the First Contact War seemed able to gargle with and survive.
I could almost groan as the familiar tightening sensation made itself known around my throat—an invisible noose pulling just that little bit tighter with every word. “I’ll be right there, sir. Do you want me to organise a scouting party?” I asked, pitching my voice with all the false enthusiasm of a man thrilled at the prospect of charging headlong into mortal peril.
“Not necessary, Commissar. I’ll explain the rest in person. Mostrue out.” The line cut with a brisk beep, leaving me staring at the empty channel with the air of a man who’d just been volunteered for latrine duty.
“Duty calls, Divas.” I forced a grin—about as genuine as a forged chit on payday—and tipped the dregs of my mug into the dust before turning towards headquarters. I’d barely made three steps before Divas’s voice carried after me. “Save some glory for the rest of us, Cai!”
I didn’t bother to look back; I could hear the grin plastered across his irritatingly friendly, punchable face. Why couldn’t I have befriended one of the gun technicians when I arrived? You never get backchat from a technician. They just grunt, ask you for the nearest spanner, and get on with their work. Much more civilised.
_________________________________________________
The slow slog to Mostrue’s office took me through the innards of our staging post, which had all the charm of a half-finished mining facility and twice the dust. It made sense he’d set up shop well away from the heavy weapons platforms—no man could be expected to discuss strategy or snatch five minutes of peace with enough artillery fire nearby to shake your fillings loose. Well, no ordinary man. Mostrue, I suspected, could have done it without breaking stride. He was, after all, every inch the grizzled career soldier you’d expect from someone who’d been there at the start of the First Contact War.
Mostrue was a career man—Alliance Navy on paper, though you’d never find him within shouting distance of a ship’s bridge if he could help it. He’d cut his teeth groundside during the war, seconded to the planetary defense corps when the Alliance was still cobbling one together out of anyone who could walk in a straight line and pull a trigger without shooting themselves. His specialty had been keeping artillery and armour working in some kind of order while turians reduced everything else to molten slag from orbit. It wasn’t glamorous work, but he survived it, which was more than could be said for the bright-eyed “heroes” who tried to carve reputations out of other people’s corpses.
The experience left him pragmatic, deliberate, and about as easily rattled as a slab of ferrocrete. It also left him with a nose for glory-seekers and a well-honed distrust of anyone who looked too eager to find trouble. Which made him a difficult audience for me, considering my unfortunate knack for stumbling into precisely the sort of incidents that made a young commissar’s name. My reputation—unwanted, undeserved, and in my view wholly fabricated—already preceded me, and Mostrue treated it with the same scepticism he reserved for rumours of free drinks at the officers’ mess.
These ruminations were cut short as I reached his office, where the man himself gestured me inside without a word. I squared my shoulders, did my best impression of crisp military confidence, and stepped across the threshold, wondering which particular catastrophe I was about to be volunteered for this time.
I snapped to attention as I entered, a gesture of respect on my part for his position considering I existed outside of his usual command structure, though Mostrue waved me down with the barest flick of his fingers and a gruff “at ease.” The man wasted no time on pleasantries; he never did. A few quick taps on the holographic display embedded in his desk brought up a larger projection, the air between us shimmering into a map of the desert wastes. Our own staging position glowed blue, the Batarian outpost in question marked in ominous red a few dozen klicks away.
“As you can see,” he said, his gravelly voice as even as if he were commenting on the weather, “our current staging position these past weeks has registered only brief whispers of activity around the Batarian outpost.” Light points of interest blinked across the display, each annotated with the sort of succinct, bloodless intelligence notes that never quite managed to capture the anxiety they caused among the men listening to them.
He tapped again, and a new trail snaked across the projection. “This was until 0300 local system time today, when sensors picked up a ship matching the signature of a known Batarian pirate vessel—one believed to have taken part in the destruction of a civilian freighter operating in this sector less than a day ago. Its projected course put it heading directly to the outpost.”
The implication was clear enough, and I tried not to have my false eagerness shine too much. “So you’d like me to assemble a squad, ambush the Batarians before they can land, and let the battery finish the job with a fireworks display?” I suggested. It was, after all, the most straightforward solution, and when it came to slavers the most straightforward solution was usually the best.
“Not exactly,” Mostrue replied, and I could have sworn my stomach sank a little at the words. “While we will be destroying their vessel—and with any luck putting on a show worthy of a pyrotechnic Biotiball halftime show—that’s not where I want you.” I raised a brow, confusion genuine this time.
“Half an hour ago we received an alert from an escape pod—originating from the same freighter destroyed by those slavers.” His expression didn’t change, though the map shifted again, zooming out to reveal a blinking point several klicks off from the projected Batarian flight path.
“I want you to take a small squad and a Mako, proceed to the distress signal, and search for survivors. If we received the beacon, the Batarians almost certainly did as well.” I could feel the tension bleeding from my shoulders. Finally, a task that sounded survivable. A quiet rescue mission well away from a pirate-infested outpost was exactly the sort of assignment I could live with—literally. Of course, my palms were already itching, a personal tell that usually arrived right before things went spectacularly wrong.
“If you think that’s best, sir,” I said smoothly, donning my most dutiful expression. “It’ll be a shame to leave the men of the battery behind while we chase survivors, but their safety is paramount and as a Commisar I can more safely deal with their shock thanks to my training. I’ll be more than happy to make sure the Batarians don’t get to them first.”
Mostrue gave me a long, level look. It wasn’t hostile, exactly, but it carried the kind of skepticism only a veteran commander could muster—the unspoken reminder that he’d seen my sort before, and wasn’t buying the act. Not for a moment. “Well said, Commissar. Ever the dutiful soldier.” His tone almost sounded genuine. Almost. “I’ve already assembled a four-man squad. They’re waiting for you in the hangar. Your driver’s been working on the Mako in preparation for your trip and should have it ready within the hour.” At the mention of the driver, a grin tugged at the corners of Mostrue’s otherwise granite features. “I’m sure you’ll get on great… he makes an impression.”
‘That was bloody ominous.’ I couldn’t help but think to myself. If Mostrue thought someone was worth warning me about and took so much glee in his assignment to my squad, it meant I was about to be saddled with either an absolute moron, a complete lunatic, or—most likely—both. With my luck, probably leaning heavily toward the latter.
_________________________________________________