This story was really good :)

Tell them to make it count.

I know this story is long over but I wanted to leave a review anyway.
Very excellent, I like all of the character interaction and the sheer depth of the story. The transitions and insights into the characters' minds is incredible.
Noble Six's final battle with Kreave and his death was truly incredible, it made my eyes water.
You are a very talented storyteller, never stop writing.

You know, there was a missed opportunity here for an awesome snipe. One of the things that moat people tend to forget ia that the Widow is an "anti-material" rifle, not a designated sniper rifle. The difference between the two os that an anti-material rifle is designed to be used to take out softer targets behind hardened defenses. This tends to occur in situations like a ground squad having to deal with an armored unit. Having such a rifle allows the shooter to perform such feets as sniping the pilot of an armored chopper, thereby preventing the squad from having to carry as much in the way of heavy weapons. This has the effect of lightening the squads load without sacrificing effective strength.

In this chapter, there was a scene where Legion spotted a Wraith while set up to cover everyone with his Widow. You had Legion ignore the tank in favor of dealing with the infantry, which I think is the right tactical call at the time, but I also feel that the exposed power-core of the wraith makes for one hell of an alarm blaring "SHOOT ME HERE!" sign for someone to really screw the operator's day over. And Legion just happened to have the perfect weapon to do it with at that moment.

I'm kinda surprised that Garrus didn't suggest that they stick a remote charge on that last artillery position on the off chance that the Covies figure out what he did. All they would have to do is to set it for a different detonation frequency from the others. This at least ensures that the Covies can't use the gun themselves.

I'm still crying like a little bitch, I just spent 7 hours reading this glued to it the entire time and through out the story you used my feeling as a punching bag, and that is a good thing! I'm being serious when I say that this very easily passes as something you'd find in a book store up front with advertisements for it. I really really appreciate you writing this has I have not read a book this good since dean koontz twilight eyes.

Just a minor note, but I think that ffnet may have screwed with the formatting in these early chapters. I keep running into sentences that seem to have missing words or phrases. It likely needs some editing.

Slight math error here. where you describe the UNSC ships, yyou call them "a two ton submarine in space". the problem is that any ship the size of even the Normandy is at least 400 tons in weight, minus the cargo, provisions, crew weight, armor plating, and various other bits that the ship would have to carry.

In essence, ships that size have to mass somewhere in the mega-tons range, not that of a single African Elephant.

I am simply astounded by the way you write these characters. Every single one of them, from Wade Shepard to Kowalski and his pals, are realistic, well rounded, flawed, multi-layered characters. I'll be sticking with this series to the very end, I figure I'll catch up to the last chapter of Guilty Sparks...eventually. LOL

Absolutely amazing story so far! I would list all the things I love about this, but that's pretty much everything in it. : ) I only wish I had read this sooner. And because I like a challenge... I'm going to guess that you are referring to a famous line from the play Richard III. "Now is the winter of our discontent." It's going to be a nasty damn 'winter', that's for sure.

I wonder what would happen if the Normandy tried to use the Mass Effect drive while in slipspace... Exponential speed? Huge Explosions? Universe shredding paradox? Who knows?

Well what to say really, I find it quite unbelievable that the Normandy would survive any and all engagement's with any covenant vessel! That's the first problem and it mainly has with the fact that kinetic shield wouldn't stop plasma or that's what I think, it would burn straight through those week shields and turn the ship to crisp!

the second thing I reacted on/about, is the fact that well, I feel like you made the covenant to stupid, I mean, tali and zaeed manage to stop 75 border's! Not believable at all, and why the hell didn't the covenant troops just throw a couple of plasma grenades up and trough the window, or use active camo?

Then we have the part where shepards team get's on the covenant vessel and no one one the team dies, I mean sure biotics would give the covvies pause, but not for long, its just not believable that they would make it trough a covvie ship with out casualty's or if at all, and again, personal kinetic shield shouldn't stop direct energy weapons, but its just me maybe, but they aren't Spartans, not even odst, except maybe Shepard with his upgrades after project Lazarus! Just saying!

though it's entertaining reading! :)

This story is awesome and I cant wait to read Guilty sparks.

I don't see why you keep referring to the Grunts as a slave race. Yes they are rather low on the Covie Totem Pole, but actually what they have now is much better than before the Grunt Rebellions where they really were basically used as cannon fodder. After that event they were admitted into formerly Elite-only infantry squads (though still mostly cowardly, they showed that when motivated they were competent and ferocious warriors) and received better equipment and actual training.

I am really liking this story, though I have a few issues with how both Shepard and Grunt were able to overpower an elite in hand to hand. For Shepard it would be because he is mostly a normal human (skilled and with implants sure), but Elites are written to have physical strength on par with the Spartans. As for Grunt, the fact that the fight itself was just so short against an Elite Shipmaster (a rank only given to those with the appropriate skill and one held once by the Arbiter) that it's a little unbelievable.
And then there's the whole 'We are in a whole new universe thing'. Just because their are humans with different names for stuff doesn't mean that. It's much more logical for them to think they just arrived in another galaxy due to the wormhole with Human's in it. Just my opinion, I know this story is completed but so far I really am enjoying it.