Honestly, I think this entire story should be rewritten to get rid of the Halo spartan program; it's the usual, "It was cool in Halo so let's do it here!" while ignoring the moral implications of the spartan program.

Spartans ignore human psychology. Traumatised orphans do not make good super soldiers unless you want a bunch of broken adults that would likely turn against humanity in the end; and, honestly, I can argue they're not even necessary in your ME universe; most of the people are powerful already, the training is spot on, you've hinted at stuff like memory and knowledge transfers, and better augmentations or genetic engineering, and like, instead of using it to mass produce better soldiers as adults, you're using it to torture children for no good reason.

This chapter made me realize how bad an author this guy is, how desperately he tries to elevate his self insert McGraw by inventing shit ad hoc on a character he deems necessary to confront to put himself as priority above Shephard's own mother in the most "puppies with cancer" attempt to defenestrate someone I've seen in fiction. This entire story becomes unreadable at this point after tolerating this reddit atheist self insert of a loser that is constantly fucking up and desperately being written after the fact as being right. It's just not bearable to be told someone is smart when the author himself isn't so and doesn't know how to write a smart person, much less advance the plot in a way that proves it.

Waste of time to have gotten this far, glad that it seems he isn't writing anymore.

Stainless steel table can't block bullet, most table can't, only the reinforced ones (the big, ugly, very heavy ones) that made bulletproof on purpose.
22nd century security cameras still didn't have backup batteries?
...
There's too many bad scenes lately, mostly on John's. I'm starting to think focusing on him is a bad idea.

Fucking Civilian!

I thank you for the chapter.

im loving the attention to detail with Sigma's thought process

"WEEEEE" LOL

I'm sixteen and I can easily lift 145 pounds for reps, John's strength test in this chapter makes no sense because 130 pounds, especially in this context, is light weight.

I thought the Systems Alliance had this particular system under surveillance.

I can definitely see where halo provided some inspiration for your writings

Maybe I missed something, but where did the SIGMAS go?

Such extreme actions on the part of the Alliance murdering innocent civilians and slaves is a war crime they are the bad guys.

I agree with Earth and the UN something needs to be done about the Alliance but I don't agree with them suddenly attacking the Alliance ships and embassies they should have ordered the dissolution of the Alliance and give X hours to comply but I don't know how they would respond to that maybe the Alliance would have just attacked in response and a first strike was the correct answer.

I was really hoping Mcgraw died I hate that character type. I thought he made a deal to let Hannah Sheppard go so why is he saying he was going to keep her in that room her whole life? Him doing that just made me want him dead even more. I don't like anything about him really. I dont like you went with the whole all priests are scumbags and pedophiles trope.

Your characters are Bond Villians essentially.

I could understand the Batarians Deserting but I don't understand the Captain/Admiral turning to the Alliance he offered a cease fire between the Batarians and Alliance he said the Batarians would not fire upon the alliance when they arrived he said he knew the war would not be won at least with his current forces so why did he maintain the assault? More than that why would he reach out to the Alliance if the Alliance is going to show up and kill all the Batarians? Especially if he knew the Alliance would declare war upon all the Hegemony there is no way the other Captains would go along with this in fact he is at risk of his own XO killing him. The Batarians have orbital dominance so why are they bothering to go in atmosphere to compete with Saltorian air power? I understand it is a story and you want to keep the action going but you dont explain the why. Like what happened to all the Rachni? I know there was a battle where a lot of them got killed but surely that wasn't all of them. The Saltorian Capitol is the size of half a continent why have the Batarians not leveled it to resemble a pancake? I'm serious the Batarians want to subjugate the Saltorians so focus on the rural areas for capturing Saltorians especially children they could have that operating the first day of invasion as for all the Cities don't even bother sending in your army bomb it into oblivion and anytime your army encounters stiff resistance bomb it too. This is what a week long invasion and it's already lost I don't buy it but this is already plenty of time for Saltorians to have been shipped to Batarian Space.

You state that Director Trent did not want to jeopardize his reelection by declaring another war so just don't the Batarians have launched an invasion into territory which the Alliance has not officially recognized as part of their domain they have no actual infrastructure this would be like Spain complaining about English settlers west of the Mississippi before America bought it yes they kinda own it but don't use it. The Alliance are not allied with the Saltorians and therefore are not obligated to protect them and Alliance territory is around it but it is not theirs that system is owned by the Saltorians so as I understand it the Alliance is about to wage another costly war in both manpower and money because they are upset that the Batarians traveled through their territory without being noticed and not attacking any Alliance holding that would be like America going to war over the Chinese spy balloon.

You take great care to point out the disparities between the Alliance naval vessels and the Batarians which means the Batarians would be very aware of this disadvantage which means the best thing they could do would be to withdraw and try to separate the Alliance navy to a more manageable size not sit there and wait to be fired upon.

The Batarians had no reason to make use of the Relay as they could have used the Warp to get home.

I know this story is over but I have one final question to ask about this chapter. How are the Humans going to handle Batarians surrendering? Especially with Saltorians present are the Humans going to accept their surrender and if so how are the Saltorians going to respond to that? The Saltorians according to their Holy War rules are not accepting surrender. So the Alliance would be in a bit of a pickle either they gun down the Batarians who want to surrender or they have to protect them from the Saltorians.

RIP Daszd you did what anyone would have and deserved better.

Feels like Cassidy s really underused as a character.