Chapter 173

A/N: Hope you guys enjoyed the story this far, I'm kind of tied down deciding what to do with the story going forward. 

I have this arc already planned out, but I think the story has been dragged on longer than it needed to be.

At first I started this story because of the lack of finished Halo fanfics and wanted to try my luck, which in my opinion has been a success and you the readers have helped me craft somewhat of a good average story that could be improved in many aspects.

I plan to continue for a few chapters before I make a decision and if I do decide to drop this, I do plan to do another Halo story, from the prospective of an Insurrectionist.

Once again thanks for the support and I hope everybody have a good weekend.

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—Unknown location-

"From what we learned, the Forerunners had been exiled for a long time due to the Parasite that was left in the galaxy, unfortunately, the Parasite didn't kill all the Forerunners but managed to force them into a long exile until recently." stated Zyphoros a Precursor who was the one responsible for gathering information on the newly discovered Imperial Ascendency.

Utilizing the Reaper fleet before it was destroyed, the Precursors had managed to learn about the Imperial Ascendency and its history. They were intrigued by the fact that the Humans who they were going to pass the mantle to anyway were the ones in control of this Imperial Ascendency and had united the Galaxy under a powerful ruler who was loved by the people.

But, after uniting the galaxy and claiming the mantle, they had brought back the Forerunners and had begun to work alongside them, following in their path. This was something that the Precursors did not like, the Forerunners were the ones responsible for their species almost becoming extinct.

And now the humans whom they once considered best species to inherit the mantle, was working alongside them and saw the Forerunners as allies rather than the villains they truly were. This was an affront to everything the Precursors now stood for.

"Something must be done about this," one of the Precursors sitting around the council table murmured, his voice low and heavy with concern.

"We have been in the shadows for too long," another added "We have already separated their leader from them, now we should go and take revenge for what the Forerunners did to us."

"But what about the humans." asked another.

Zyphoros chimed in, "What about them? They are following the same path as the Forerunners and even if we try and negotiate with them, their ideals won't allow them to simply allow us to kill every single remaining Forerunner in their galaxy. This situation needs to be solved by force. We will wipe out everything related to the Forerunners and reclaim the galaxy for ourselves."

"I agree, we should first focus on finding the leader of the Imperial Ascendency, finish him off, while also preparing this galaxy for a massive war into the Milky Way." Voiced a Precursor.

"True, but the rebellion by the Kynthari and the Eldorans has halted our efforts to fully unite the galaxy. Already we have various other species fighting against them, but they have taken the technology that we gave them and have broken free from our influence." replied Zyphoros.

The Precursors mustered a deep sigh collectively. They understood that their dormant years had only allowed the uprising of dissenting factions, and now they were faced with a divided galaxy on the brink of chaos.

In the end, they decided to bring in outside species from other galaxies to fully control this galaxy, so they can focus their efforts on the Ascendency. They have dozens of species under their control, with hundreds of billions of people to throw at the Ascendency.

In addition to that, they needed gather information on the Ascendency's strength as they didn't want to face the same defeat that they did at the hands of the Forerunners.

———

Meanwhile within the Mass Effect Milky Way Galaxy. Peace had once again prevailed over the galaxy, as reconstruction efforts were under way to fix all the damage done during the war.

Various species had requested to join the Ascendency which allowed their influence to spread all across the galaxy, even within Turian controlled space. Small species such as the Volus, Elcor, and Hanar had left the Citadel and sought the protection that the Ascendency could bring them.

In response, Miranda had come up with the idea to create a new galactic Council which would represent all species unlike what the Citadel did. The new Galactic council would be led by the Ascendency to represent every species no matter how powerful they were.

Every species was invited to join this new Galactic Council, and every species including the Turians had agreed to join in order to promote unity among the galaxy rather than starting a conflict.

Within a few days, the Galactic Council was officially created, and a Councilor from each species was to be chosen to represent their species on a galactic scale.

Besides the Galactic Council, the Ascendency focused its efforts on finding Axel's location. It seemed to be a far-fetched goal, but they were determined to spend however long it took to find him.

———

Axel had arrived within the unknown star system which turned out to not be an uninhabited star system, but a star system that was filled with alien activity. Exiting slipspace, the first thing Axel saw was an alien fleet of massive dreadnought size ships. These ships weren't like the Reapers or any other ship he was familiar with; these were new ships belonging to an undiscovered species or civilization.

The ships bore a strange insignia, a symbol Axel did not recognize. At the moment, the ship was cloaked to not start a conflict nor risk the lives of those onboard. In their current situation, they couldn't afford to test if these aliens were friendly or not without gathering information.

So, over the next couple of days, they remained within the star system and collected information which involved monitoring their communications, scanning their ships and worlds, and learning as much as they could.

4 scout ships were deployed to nearby star systems to gather more information on the surrounding space and discover any resources while Axel's flagship remained cloaked, observing from the shadows and researching ways to return to their home system. As they learned more and more about this new civilization known as the Nimrathi, they uncovered an interesting discovery.

"Commence decryption," Axel commanded, as Omni had managed to find a military encrypted channel from the aliens. A few minutes later, the decryption process was complete, and the alien military communication was translated.

The message was an incoming invasion fleet. The target? was the current system which the aliens called the Ignis Pathway. Who was attacking was a species called the Kynthari whom Axel didn't know anything about. When the invasion was going to happen wasn't mentioned and Axel speculated that it might be sometime far into the future, maybe a few days or even weeks.

But in the next moment, a massive fleet of 20,000 ships emerged within the system through the very same way that the Ascendency ships traveled, and that was through slipspace. This was an interesting discovery that also raised a lot of questions.

"Omni, how come we didn't get a warning about the incoming fleet" Asked Axel curious as to why they weren't warned when usually they were.

"That's because we can't, Sir." replied Omni. "While we have developed the ability to detect slipspace jumps moments before object exit's slipspace, this time we couldn't detect it until the ship was exiting slipspace."

"Could it be that their technology is far more advanced than ours?" asked Admiral Carter, Axel's current second in command in Taylor's absence. His tone was skeptical yet tinged with a hint of concern.

"Perhaps," Axel replied, "Or they have found a way to mask their jumps. Either way, this is a cause for concern."

As the conversation unfolded, the Kynthari fleet began to attack the Nimrathi defense forces, all over the system. The Nimrathi only had about 10,000 ships in the system and were outnumbered 2 to 1. Axel opted to remain out of any conflict between the two since they didn't have the means to compete.

But this conflict also made him realize that this galaxy might prove to be a problem if there is already a conflict going on. They can't stay cloaked forever and would eventually run out of food and need to find a new source soon enough. They were in the unknown and he would need to first find a way to contact the Ascendency. To do that, he would need to find resources and build the massive inter-galaxy communication structure that was created when they discovered the new galaxy.

Without resources they wouldn't be able to do much of anything.