The Shadow of Old Transgressions (Homeworld/Mass Effect Crossover Quest)

Arak System
The Grand Conclave

Things immediately go wrong as you exit hyperspace. For some reason you've exited far closer to the Wraith flagship than you intended. In fact close enough to be in firing range immediately. The battle space instantly fills with deadly energy as hundreds of plasma turrets align with new targets and start unleashing their deadly salvos.

Fortunately you and friends are no longer a green choir on their youthful pilgrimage. No, you are battle hardened and tested in the forge of many battles. Despite the misjump the fleet immediately wheels around in a series of criss-crossed orbits that shelter your most vulnerable ships behind you and oracle while swarms of acolytes sacrifice themselves as living shields.

You have no time to pick the wraiths off one by one so you immediately throw the drone minds of the slingers a targeting solution for the most damaged dreadnought. Then you ping your last shepherd, the Raawan and Oracle 13 to follow you and advance on the second damaged dreadnought.

An almost solid wall of plasma greets you, but you weave back and forth with Oracle switching out your armor and defensive field in order to protect the Raawan and the Shepherd as it produces a massive wing of cherubs. Even as your little flotilla advances all of you lash out with your ion cannons to destroy plasma turrets and slash paths of destruction in the dreadnought's hull.

Halfway through the flight your defensive shields fail and you begin to take hits on your armor even as the acolytes begin sacrificing themselves to help thin the hail of plasma. Fortunately you do not have to endure for long before your reach torpedo range at last and the massed cherubs begin to unleash their deadly salvo. As fusion detonations begin to blanket the dreadnought its fire lessens as more and more turrets are destroyed. Then the Raawan starts her own deadly dance and all three sets of ion cannons methodically slash the dreadnought to shreds.

Meanwhile the slingers are performing their own deadly work. Unheeding of their own casualties they unleashed a blizzard of missiles on the most damaged dreadnought attacking it from every side and all angles. With no protectors of their own slinger after slinger died to plasma fire, but the stalwart drones never let up and the dreadnought soon perished as missile after missile impacted its already damaged hull. The fact that the Guardian cruisers were also taking advantage of its distraction also helped.

Meanwhile Laverna and Ulysses were dealing with the last dreadnought. A single carefully placed siege shot flooded the battle space with light and the area between it and the missile cruisers with much more deadly radiation. Reeling from the massive blow it scrambles to realign its drives and bring its turrets back online even as Laverna vectors a wave of Dervishes in to cut it to pieces. Ulysses takes advantage of the chaos to methodically pick the missile cruisers off one by one.

At last the battle space clears as the three dreadnoughts drift as so much scrap. The only remaining Wraith ship in action is the flagship and Oracle diverts all power to its interdiction field to keep it that way.

For a moment the battle stills as both sides take stock of their damage. Almost all your slingers were lost in their suicidal assault. Your own systems are burned out and your armor shattered. Oracle and Ulysses are heavily damaged. Half the Guardian fleet is just debris now.

The Wraith flagship is streaming crimson fluid from multiple locations and has burns all across its bow. But it still remains a dangerous threat. A mighty beast surrounded by its lessers. Something it proves as the uneasy stillness is broken by a mighty blast.

In one fluid motion the flagship's crimson bow unfolds into a meaty blossom to reveal the tip of a massive weapon. Your sensors barely manage to read a massive energy spike before it fires. A singularity exits the weapon and with deceptive slowness crosses the battle space to touch the defensive sphere. The only way to describe it is a warping of space. Your sensors read only garbage for a few moments as a blip in reality overwhelms them.

When it clears there is nothing left. The mighty defensive stations are simply gone. Not just the one that was touched, but a huge chunk of the sphere in all directions. Even the rear portion of the Guardian fleet has been completely wiped. The way to the Grand Conclave is open, the only thing between the flagship and the galactic council are the merest remnants of the Guardian fleet.

You can't have that. You immediately order everyone forward. Even your own battered shell powers forward to engage the flagship with your secondary batteries. Ulysses unleashes his second and most likely last siege shot to tear into the flagship's flank. Dervishes and acolytes tear into it from all sides while the few surviving slingers bombard it with missiles. And they aren't alone as you, Ulysses, and Laverna unleash your carefully hoarded stocks of Cluster Missiles. The multiple quantum charges tear another huge chunk out of the flagship.

But the flagship is enormous. Even with such massive damage it surges forward physically ramming into and destroying several of the Guardian cruisers that couldn't get out of the way. Or maybe they deliberately stood their ground. In the heat of battle it's impossible to tell.

Distantly you register more Bentusi ships entering the battle space from the direction of the conclave. At first you are confused, but then you recognize them as your own designs. A squadron of slingers escorted by buckler shield frigates and wings of acolytes. Aurora and Iuno must have prepared their own contributions after outfitting the Guardians with anti-subversion modules.

Missiles fly, ion cannons lance out, and plasma turrets respond in kind. The Wraith flagship refuses to die. Its hulls warp and as new crimson flesh crawls across damaged sections filling them in and turning the ship into even more of a monstrosity.

One by one your fleet goes down. The surviving slingers are destroyed by a last ditch wing of wraith interceptors. Ulysses' engines are destroyed by a lucky shot and he angrily falls out of range. Oracle 13's fire slackens and eventually stops entirely as it devotes more and more power to maintaining the interdiction field against wraith carriers attempting to jump into the battle space to assist the flagship.

You yourself make run after run against the flagship. Escorting the Kwan and Rawaan in to score hits and pulling back just long enough to repair your defensive field generators. Eventually you run out of parts and resort to using your own hull until that too is shattered and your flicker allies tug your body out of the flagship's engagement envelope.

The flagship is almost into subversion range of the conclave itself when it is finally destroyed. Not by fire from you or Ulysses. Not from missile bombardment. Not even from a last ditch by the guardians. No, what finally does the mighty beast in is the humble acolytes. Iuno, Aurora, and Laverna have been producing them non stop and they cover the flagship not in dozens or even hundreds, but in swarms a thousand strong.

Each acolyte lashes out with its ion cannons again and again. Alone they would be nothing against the flagship's armor, Their meager damage easily regrown by the crimson mas. But in their thousands they slice it apart with a multitude of tiny cuts. The acolytes don't let up until the flagship is completely destroyed. And once it finally crumbles nothing remains of the mighty wraith invasion force but a cloud of drifting debris. Mere scraps of crimson flesh and dark armor.

Not much is left of your fleet either. Against all odds the last Shepherd destroyer survived, but every other drone in your arsenal larger than a fighter is now dust. You and Ulysses are low on power and drifting in space. Oracle is burning out protecting against carrier attacks, but those abruptly cease as they apparently realize there is no longer a wraith attack force to rejoin.

Even Laverna has taken a large amount of damage, her protected position not counting for much when the fleet is surrounded on all sides. Only Aurora and Iuno are entirely undamaged not having been in the battle proper. They have already exited the remnants of the defensive sphere and have begun repair operations on you and Ulysses.

The Guardian fleet is basically non-existent. Only two of their cruisers and a handful of frigates survived and they are busy rescuing escape pods from all their destroyed comrades. Civilian ships have exited the conclave ship to assist them.

The question is, now what?

[ ] Contact the Conclave
You should probably at least let them know what happened. Maybe now they'll finally deign to acknowledge your warnings. They did just get invaded after all.

[ ] Return to Bentus
You have more than fulfilled your mission. Time to go and report everything you've done to your elders. Maybe get a proper Sentinel fleet to look into the remaining megaliths.

[ ] Rebuild at Irune
There are still more wraiths out there, so you aren't done yet. You're in no condition to fight anyone else right now, but you've still got an open line of credit at Irune. Use their shipyards to rebuild your fleet.