TikiTau
Commander Pangolinski
- Location
- Texas
Kill la Kill, I believe.
Faith in Superior Firepower [Planetary Annihilation Multicross SI]
- Thread starter Faith
- Start date
90 - Interlude: Slavers (Continued)
Faith
Some idea of what I'm doing.
- Location
- Land of Waves and Warmth
People at my work are complaining about how long we've been in 'double shift every shift' mode. I don't know if they realize that the reason we're doing that is because they haven't fucking done their jobs yet stop bitching at Tech please we just want to go home too ugghghghhghghghghghggh
*faints*
90 - Interlude: Slavers 2
The four Batarian guards crept along the shadowed battlements, the roaring battle in the centre of the compound more than sufficient in distracting the invading force.
Splitting his attention between their journey and the battle, Nup noted with displeasure that the damned Asari was still alive, running around waving that stun stick and jumping off walls like some kind of animated character.
Someone really needed to shoot her. It was all rather distracting.
Nup caught himself just in time to avoid walking right out of cover, instead slowly peering over the edge of the wall. The alleyway beyond the wall, an access route between two storehouses, was mercifully empty.
Nup gestured with one hand and rushed past the small break in the wall where the ladder was. His three teammates followed a half-step behind, their rifles raised and ready.
The next access point between the wall and the ground below was the staircase near the guard's quarters. The four Batarians made their way cautiously down the stairs, eyes and rifles scanning from left to right as they proceeded. The worst of the fighting remained in the courtyard, where the Judak Nurr's superior shields and armour allowed them to evenly trade fire with the defenders, who had both high ground and decent cover to exploit.
From what he could see from his perch, Nup assumed that it was only small splinter groups who had broken away from the main force before the fighting had really gotten stuck in who were currently romping around in the dormitories.
Then again, he thought, hefting his rifle, it never hurt to be careful.
The dormitory's airlock hissed and slid open, permitting the group access. They backed into the small room, still watching the path behind them, only turning around when that door shut and the interior airlock door began to open.
From this particular door, there were two routes - one to the right, towards the back of the building, where the medical facility was, and one directly forward, leading to the recreation room.
Yerri made a hand signal and headed right, Vashk following along. Nup and Pormlin shared a glance before taking the forward route. Pormlin muttered something under his breath, but without the microphone in Pormlin's helmet or the speakers in his, Nup found it impossible to hear as anything more that a formless whisper.
The two proceeded down the hallway and into the recreation room itself, quickly scanning the area. A large hole had been blown in the airlock's inner door - despite everything, the outer door was still fine, hence why the building still had breathable air, - and a carpet of rubble and debris stretched across the floor.
Pormlin crossed the room quickly to the far door, leading to the dormitory rooms themselves, and tapped his gauntlet against the pad. Nothing happened.
"Your suit's IFF is down. You'll have to key it in manually."
Pormlin turned back to Nup, making a three-fingered gesture. Nup rolled his eyes and stepped closer, raising his voice. "You'll have to enter the code manually."
Pormlin curled his fingers, tilted his head, and began tapping on the control pad again, quickly keying in the code. With a hiss, the door slid open.
On the other side of the door was an Asari - her waist and legs covered by the torn rags worn by most slaves, and the rest of her flesh exposed, revealing scars and bruises across her torso.
She reached out with one hand, and Nup was flung into a wall.
---
Lieutenant Norr ducked as an angry hiss and a brilliant ruby-red beam shone through the billowing clouds of smoke, piercing through one of the 9th Company's few remaining TN-Z61 transports with the same unerring accuracy that had struck down the rest of the armoured column.
The transport shuddered and dropped to the ground, the laser having carved cleanly through one of its two thruster banks, leaving it totally immobile.
A second laser struck from another direction just seconds later, punching a hole clean through the turret, the edges of the hole sizzling hot and glowing orange.
His Omni-Tool began beeping frantically, and Norr threw himself to the ground, taking cover behind one of the destroyed tanks before answering the call.
"Darish, status report, now!"
Norr recognised the voice of General Kappiru, the overall commander of Logasiri's defence forces, and he strove to keep the fear from his voice as he responded. "General, this is Lieutenant Norr, 9th Company. We're taking heavy fire. Enemy forces have air support and anti-tank weaponry, we need immediate assistance!"
"Lieutenant Norr? Where's Darish?"
Norr paused as one of the Company's heavy gunners opened up with a Kastor machine gun, the rattling roar of the weapon almost deafeningly loud. There was a booming sound, like the rumbling of distant thunder, and the gun fell silent.
"Captain Darish is down, sir! Passing through Nervakk Valley, we were suddenly hit from both sides. Heavy weapons units hidden in the highlands. Darish's tank was one of the first ones hit, haven't heard from him since."
Kappiru began swearing up a storm on the other end of the line. Norr wondered if he knew he was still on speaker. Finally, the swearing stopped. "Pillars, lend me strength… this is madness. We've no support to offer you - the enemy rule orbit and the Jalamup Airbase was taken out in a lightning raid - 4th Battalion is still trying to regain access. Your estimate on company strength?."
Norr poked his head out from behind the tank. The smoke was beginning to thin a little, but still all he could see was the burning wreckage of many a disabled vehicles, and a lot of Batarian soldiers lying on the ground spasming, electricity crackling over their armour. Another hiss sounded, followed shortly after by an explosion.
"Sir, I think we're all out of armour. Estimating casualties at around forty percent, and rapidly rising."
The amount of gunfire originating from the convoy had certainly lessened, although that could have just been because it was impossible to see shit through all the smoke, and the men were conserving ammo.
Norr found the alternative somewhat more likely.
Halfway across the planet, General Kappiru sighed. "Blasted shade… Lieutenant, order all men to lay down arms."
Norr paused. "S-sir? Say again?"
"Lay down arms, Lieutenant." Kappiru sighed again. "We've already lost this battle. We don't have to all die just to prove it."
---
Nup sat up with a groan, pain running down his back and through his arms. He was still in the recreation room, but the mechanical hiss of his rebreather told him the atmosphere was no longer stable.
When had that happened?
He pushed himself to his feet, looking around the empty room. It looked even more of a mess than it had before - the seats had been flung against one wall and smashed, and one desk had been flipped over onto its back, spilling data disks and plates full of Muvka Bites across the already wrecked floor.
Nup winced. Those snacks were expensive - some of the finest imports from the Viper Nebula. A single box of them cost a week's wages - and lasted about three days.
Nup shook his head, trying to restore his focus. Wait, where's Pormlin?
He looked towards the door that he remembered Pormlin attempting to open. Beyond the recreation room, all lights in the corridor had been destroyed, casting the entire place into darkness.
Gripping his rifle, Nup advanced slowly down the corridor, creeping closer to the corner. He peered cautiously around the edge of the wall. More darkness. More emptiness. Gulping, he advanced around the corner, again moving forward with his rifle raised.
The doors lining the walls of this corridor - entrances to the individual guard's rooms - were all locked and sealed, but the one at the end of the corridor had a green light, glowing steadily in the darkness. Unlocked.
Nup sped up, crossing the remaining distance as quickly as he could in his clunky armour - it was much harder to use without the powered exoskeleton, even if it was just a medium hardsuit. The door opened automatically as he neared it, and he was treated to a scene of chaos.
The half-naked Asari from before had apparently disarmed Pormlin, and was currently wailing on him with a piece of rebar, covered in blood both red and purple.
Pormlin backed away, scrambling to retrieve his rifle, but the enraged Asari had a definite advantage. Taking one hand from her impromptu weapon and flexing her bruised fingers, a field of dark energy enveloped his torso and he was flung across the room, slamming into the wall with a crack that left chunks of his armour embedded in the wall even as his body dropped to the ground.
Nup rushed forward, firing a short burst at the Asari's head, but a flicker of biotic energy swatted them from the air.
Without even turning to look at Nup, the Asari curled her fingers into a fist and focused her biotic energies, a large slab of debris from the now-collapsed room lifting unsteadily into the air. Pormlin, still trying to push himself up, could only watch as the rubble drifted across the room, settling above him.
He first looked at Nup, and then turned to the Asari, desperation in his eyes.
She didn't drop the rubble. Rather, she flexed her biotic powers and slammed it into the ground as hard as she could, crushing the lower half of Pormlin's spine in the process. Metal, cartilage and flesh were crushed and torn by jagged metal bars and ceramic polymer plates.
Pormlin screamed in agony. Blood began to seep through the rubble.
The slave lifted the rubble and brought it crashing back down onto Pormlin's head. The screaming stopped.
Finally, the Asari turned to Nup, and for the second time in as many minutes he was lifted from the ground and thrown heavily into a wall.
This time, he remained conscious as he bounced off the wall and sprawled across the ground, his rifle once more slipping from his grip.
As he rolled over to face his killer, he saw another figure - the Asari warrior from before, her green armour covered in dust and grime. She reached out a hand to the slave, speaking calmly in what Nup assumed was Thessian.
The slave struck the soldier with a dizzy jab to the head, and staggered backwards.
Apparently unfazed, the soldier reached out, some kind of green mist spraying from her fingertips and converging on the slave's wounds.
Bruises faded to nothingness, and torn flesh knitted itself back together. Blood, grime and dust vanished from the slave's skin, faded green-grey giving way to a slightly healthier teal.
Then, without looking, the soldier pointed her hand and the spray of mist towards Pormlin's crushed corpse, and it began disintegrating, fading away into dust and nothingness.
Nup attempted to stand, quickly aborting that course of action. His body ached in its entirety, and simply shuffling one leg across the ground sent pain through his spine so violently he reflexively shuddered in agony. The scent of blood filled his nostrils, even inside the confines of his rebreather.
All he could do was glare as the soldier stalked towards him, standing over him. She raised one hand, and green mist filled his vision.
*faints*
90 - Interlude: Slavers 2
The four Batarian guards crept along the shadowed battlements, the roaring battle in the centre of the compound more than sufficient in distracting the invading force.
Splitting his attention between their journey and the battle, Nup noted with displeasure that the damned Asari was still alive, running around waving that stun stick and jumping off walls like some kind of animated character.
Someone really needed to shoot her. It was all rather distracting.
Nup caught himself just in time to avoid walking right out of cover, instead slowly peering over the edge of the wall. The alleyway beyond the wall, an access route between two storehouses, was mercifully empty.
Nup gestured with one hand and rushed past the small break in the wall where the ladder was. His three teammates followed a half-step behind, their rifles raised and ready.
The next access point between the wall and the ground below was the staircase near the guard's quarters. The four Batarians made their way cautiously down the stairs, eyes and rifles scanning from left to right as they proceeded. The worst of the fighting remained in the courtyard, where the Judak Nurr's superior shields and armour allowed them to evenly trade fire with the defenders, who had both high ground and decent cover to exploit.
From what he could see from his perch, Nup assumed that it was only small splinter groups who had broken away from the main force before the fighting had really gotten stuck in who were currently romping around in the dormitories.
Then again, he thought, hefting his rifle, it never hurt to be careful.
The dormitory's airlock hissed and slid open, permitting the group access. They backed into the small room, still watching the path behind them, only turning around when that door shut and the interior airlock door began to open.
From this particular door, there were two routes - one to the right, towards the back of the building, where the medical facility was, and one directly forward, leading to the recreation room.
Yerri made a hand signal and headed right, Vashk following along. Nup and Pormlin shared a glance before taking the forward route. Pormlin muttered something under his breath, but without the microphone in Pormlin's helmet or the speakers in his, Nup found it impossible to hear as anything more that a formless whisper.
The two proceeded down the hallway and into the recreation room itself, quickly scanning the area. A large hole had been blown in the airlock's inner door - despite everything, the outer door was still fine, hence why the building still had breathable air, - and a carpet of rubble and debris stretched across the floor.
Pormlin crossed the room quickly to the far door, leading to the dormitory rooms themselves, and tapped his gauntlet against the pad. Nothing happened.
"Your suit's IFF is down. You'll have to key it in manually."
Pormlin turned back to Nup, making a three-fingered gesture. Nup rolled his eyes and stepped closer, raising his voice. "You'll have to enter the code manually."
Pormlin curled his fingers, tilted his head, and began tapping on the control pad again, quickly keying in the code. With a hiss, the door slid open.
On the other side of the door was an Asari - her waist and legs covered by the torn rags worn by most slaves, and the rest of her flesh exposed, revealing scars and bruises across her torso.
She reached out with one hand, and Nup was flung into a wall.
---
Lieutenant Norr ducked as an angry hiss and a brilliant ruby-red beam shone through the billowing clouds of smoke, piercing through one of the 9th Company's few remaining TN-Z61 transports with the same unerring accuracy that had struck down the rest of the armoured column.
The transport shuddered and dropped to the ground, the laser having carved cleanly through one of its two thruster banks, leaving it totally immobile.
A second laser struck from another direction just seconds later, punching a hole clean through the turret, the edges of the hole sizzling hot and glowing orange.
His Omni-Tool began beeping frantically, and Norr threw himself to the ground, taking cover behind one of the destroyed tanks before answering the call.
"Darish, status report, now!"
Norr recognised the voice of General Kappiru, the overall commander of Logasiri's defence forces, and he strove to keep the fear from his voice as he responded. "General, this is Lieutenant Norr, 9th Company. We're taking heavy fire. Enemy forces have air support and anti-tank weaponry, we need immediate assistance!"
"Lieutenant Norr? Where's Darish?"
Norr paused as one of the Company's heavy gunners opened up with a Kastor machine gun, the rattling roar of the weapon almost deafeningly loud. There was a booming sound, like the rumbling of distant thunder, and the gun fell silent.
"Captain Darish is down, sir! Passing through Nervakk Valley, we were suddenly hit from both sides. Heavy weapons units hidden in the highlands. Darish's tank was one of the first ones hit, haven't heard from him since."
Kappiru began swearing up a storm on the other end of the line. Norr wondered if he knew he was still on speaker. Finally, the swearing stopped. "Pillars, lend me strength… this is madness. We've no support to offer you - the enemy rule orbit and the Jalamup Airbase was taken out in a lightning raid - 4th Battalion is still trying to regain access. Your estimate on company strength?."
Norr poked his head out from behind the tank. The smoke was beginning to thin a little, but still all he could see was the burning wreckage of many a disabled vehicles, and a lot of Batarian soldiers lying on the ground spasming, electricity crackling over their armour. Another hiss sounded, followed shortly after by an explosion.
"Sir, I think we're all out of armour. Estimating casualties at around forty percent, and rapidly rising."
The amount of gunfire originating from the convoy had certainly lessened, although that could have just been because it was impossible to see shit through all the smoke, and the men were conserving ammo.
Norr found the alternative somewhat more likely.
Halfway across the planet, General Kappiru sighed. "Blasted shade… Lieutenant, order all men to lay down arms."
Norr paused. "S-sir? Say again?"
"Lay down arms, Lieutenant." Kappiru sighed again. "We've already lost this battle. We don't have to all die just to prove it."
---
Nup sat up with a groan, pain running down his back and through his arms. He was still in the recreation room, but the mechanical hiss of his rebreather told him the atmosphere was no longer stable.
When had that happened?
He pushed himself to his feet, looking around the empty room. It looked even more of a mess than it had before - the seats had been flung against one wall and smashed, and one desk had been flipped over onto its back, spilling data disks and plates full of Muvka Bites across the already wrecked floor.
Nup winced. Those snacks were expensive - some of the finest imports from the Viper Nebula. A single box of them cost a week's wages - and lasted about three days.
Nup shook his head, trying to restore his focus. Wait, where's Pormlin?
He looked towards the door that he remembered Pormlin attempting to open. Beyond the recreation room, all lights in the corridor had been destroyed, casting the entire place into darkness.
Gripping his rifle, Nup advanced slowly down the corridor, creeping closer to the corner. He peered cautiously around the edge of the wall. More darkness. More emptiness. Gulping, he advanced around the corner, again moving forward with his rifle raised.
The doors lining the walls of this corridor - entrances to the individual guard's rooms - were all locked and sealed, but the one at the end of the corridor had a green light, glowing steadily in the darkness. Unlocked.
Nup sped up, crossing the remaining distance as quickly as he could in his clunky armour - it was much harder to use without the powered exoskeleton, even if it was just a medium hardsuit. The door opened automatically as he neared it, and he was treated to a scene of chaos.
The half-naked Asari from before had apparently disarmed Pormlin, and was currently wailing on him with a piece of rebar, covered in blood both red and purple.
Pormlin backed away, scrambling to retrieve his rifle, but the enraged Asari had a definite advantage. Taking one hand from her impromptu weapon and flexing her bruised fingers, a field of dark energy enveloped his torso and he was flung across the room, slamming into the wall with a crack that left chunks of his armour embedded in the wall even as his body dropped to the ground.
Nup rushed forward, firing a short burst at the Asari's head, but a flicker of biotic energy swatted them from the air.
Without even turning to look at Nup, the Asari curled her fingers into a fist and focused her biotic energies, a large slab of debris from the now-collapsed room lifting unsteadily into the air. Pormlin, still trying to push himself up, could only watch as the rubble drifted across the room, settling above him.
He first looked at Nup, and then turned to the Asari, desperation in his eyes.
She didn't drop the rubble. Rather, she flexed her biotic powers and slammed it into the ground as hard as she could, crushing the lower half of Pormlin's spine in the process. Metal, cartilage and flesh were crushed and torn by jagged metal bars and ceramic polymer plates.
Pormlin screamed in agony. Blood began to seep through the rubble.
The slave lifted the rubble and brought it crashing back down onto Pormlin's head. The screaming stopped.
Finally, the Asari turned to Nup, and for the second time in as many minutes he was lifted from the ground and thrown heavily into a wall.
This time, he remained conscious as he bounced off the wall and sprawled across the ground, his rifle once more slipping from his grip.
As he rolled over to face his killer, he saw another figure - the Asari warrior from before, her green armour covered in dust and grime. She reached out a hand to the slave, speaking calmly in what Nup assumed was Thessian.
The slave struck the soldier with a dizzy jab to the head, and staggered backwards.
Apparently unfazed, the soldier reached out, some kind of green mist spraying from her fingertips and converging on the slave's wounds.
Bruises faded to nothingness, and torn flesh knitted itself back together. Blood, grime and dust vanished from the slave's skin, faded green-grey giving way to a slightly healthier teal.
Then, without looking, the soldier pointed her hand and the spray of mist towards Pormlin's crushed corpse, and it began disintegrating, fading away into dust and nothingness.
Nup attempted to stand, quickly aborting that course of action. His body ached in its entirety, and simply shuffling one leg across the ground sent pain through his spine so violently he reflexively shuddered in agony. The scent of blood filled his nostrils, even inside the confines of his rebreather.
All he could do was glare as the soldier stalked towards him, standing over him. She raised one hand, and green mist filled his vision.
Last edited:
- Location
- Over the hill and far away
...I did not receive an alert from this one. Given the lack of replies this week and that it's only got a third the 'like's of the previous chapter, I bet I'm not the only one. Weird.
Either way, always nice to see more! Keep up the good work and I hope this week winds down your hell shifts.
91 - Summons
Faith
Some idea of what I'm doing.
- Location
- Land of Waves and Warmth
91 - Summons
The battle for Logasiri, if you could call it that, didn't last very long.
The Hegemony forces on the planet, totally cut off from calling for help and blocked from escaping by way of a small fleet of cruisers in far orbit, were quick to lay down their weapons once they realized just how outmatched they were.
The end result was that almost eighty Batarian armoured vehicles had been gutted - an excellent field test for my latest weapon, if a little zealous on the Judak Nurr's part, - hundreds of Hegemony forces had been incapacitated and subsequently locked up, often in the same slave camps they'd been fighting to protect.
Without the whole 'slave labor until you drop dead' thing, of course.
That said…
Well, not every Batarian had made it out alive. For one thing, the Hegemony and the various private guards hadn't been fighting non-lethally, as the Judak Nurr had, and whilst the Faith Foundation overshield modules were more than enough to protect the resistance fighters from harm, more than a few of the slaves had been…slaughtered cut down murdered by you you you your fault
…caught in the crossfire.
And, to make things worse, some of the slaves had decided, upon being set free, to take matters into their own hands. Especially the Asari and the Krogan.
Dozens of prison guards had been killed during the break outs. Often very violently. Hope had apparently witnessed one guard crushed, repeatedly, by a chunk of ceiling thanks to a pissed-off Asari slave. On the one hand, they were definitely slavers and probably scumbags, but… I don't think they deserved death. Not all of them.
I tried not to think about it.
Luckily, in most cases the Judak Nurr were able to restrain the slaves before they could go on huge murderous rampages - with the exception of one Krogan, who killed almost thirty of the guards at his compound before crash tackling a shuttle attempting to escape.
The shuttle crashed in the bottom of a ravine, exploded, and was subsequently crushed by a landslide. By the time the Judak Nurr found the time to check it out, the Krogan was dead - almost six kilometres from the crash site, with both hands missing and chunks of Batarian flesh in between his teeth.
I tried very hard not to think too much about that, either.
The slaves that survived the experience - a mercifully huge amount, thanks to our jamming of the signals required to detonate their bomb collars, - were loaded up onto a number of Voyagers and sent to Miranda, getting them clear from the conflict zone.
Of course, that was only solving the most immediate of their problems. The slaves were… well, some of the more recently enslaved sentients were capable of moving of their own free will, but the rest were just so… broken. They stood silently and wordlessly at all times, as if worried they would be shot just for stepping out of line, but as soon as they were issued an order, they scrambled all over each other to complete it.
It made loading them onto the Voyagers easy, but at the same time it was sad to see so many hundreds of thousands of people acting like lifeless husks.
And to be honest, like almost everything else I'd done in the past few months, this was completely out of my area of expertise.
They… they clearly needed therapy, and probably a lot of it. But… I didn't have the slightest clue on how to help.
Perhaps something to ask Fusou about, in the future.
---
Hope and I sat idle on the bridge of the Jacob Keyes, merely watching through a myriad of monitors as the clean up on the planet below began. For the most part, it was simple busy-work. Not a great deal of collateral damage had been caused in the various slave compounds, which meant that after the few corpses and many many wrecked vehicles were moved out of the way, the place looked pretty much as it had before.
Minus, again, the massed slave labor force.
The city, if you could call it that, wasn't much harder to clean up either. A few flags got burned, some high up officials found themselves engaged in a very up-close inspection of the defence force's jail cells, and half a dozen members of the Judak Nurr's administration division, if you wanted to call it that, set themselves up as the temporary leaders.
Not that they were leading much - the city was essentially a star port, government offices, and a whole load of formerly-slave-labor cargo and shipping services. Mainly because everyone who could derive any value from this crappy rock had the wealth to set themselves up as the rulers of their own little compounds, and why would you live in a city when you can rule a chunk of planet larger than Tasmania?
Regardless, the Judak Nurr seemed to have that situation well in hand, and so we turned our attention elsewhere.
Amongst the files and documents Fusou had provided us was a legitimate record as a Human operated company registered in the Citadel. We'd been planning on making use of it sooner, but preparing the Judak Nurr for the war was somewhat more time-consuming than we'd expected it to be.
Now, though, the Judak Nurr were starting to hit their stride, so we could afford to take a bit of attention away from them.
And thus, the Faith Foundation officially entered the galactic market. Of course, there were two big problems with this - first, the weapons market was relatively stable at the moment and it would take a serious kick to open up enough room for us to become even remotely viable, and second, the market for non-lethal weapons, whilst vast, was nowhere near as big as the market for murder weapons.
The second was easily solved by copying, upgrading, and refining the designs sold by Batarian State Arms, or from our other jaunts around the multiverse, although we toned those designs down a tad, keeping all the handheld lasers (of which there were quite a few) away from the market. At least for now. If we opened with the big bulky cannon, then 'upgrading' to smaller, rifle-sized weapons would seem more legitimate.
Honestly, the first problem was much bigger. Inventing awesome weapons was all very well and good, but if no one ever bought them, it was a huge waste of time and… well, not really a waste of resources, given we were less than a third of the way through hollowing out the moons in our Hub World and still basically drowning in metal, but still.
As crude as it was to say, though, the Batarian Civil War made for good advertising. Several of the resistance fighters were in the habit of uploading combat footage onto the extranet, and already we had, through them, received several requests for our Overshield Packs and Tesla Weapons. Our new anti-tank weapon, I suspected, would also draw in the public eye, once those videos started to circulate.
Man portable laser weapons were… almost, if not entirely unheard of in the Mass Effect universe - between powering the laser and keeping the mechanism cool, it was just too damn hard to fit it into a portable package.
Of course, we cheated, but they didn't have to know that… and besides, thanks to Fusou the Humans in this chunk of the multiverse already had a reputation for advanced technology. A man portable laser cannon probably wouldn't be too much of a shock.
It would certainly revolutionize armoured combat, though. Suddenly tanks would be a hell of a lot less viable, if any infantry squad could carry around a weapon capable of blasting clean through them.
And then there were the other fun things I had to offer - energy crossbows, multi-launch rocket pods, rail guns, plasma rifles and beams… long story short, any militaries investing heavily in armoured assets were quickly going to regret it.
---
For several months, not a whole lot happened. The Hegemony had at some point been made aware of the capture of Logasiri, probably by the primitively-cloaked corvette that we'd let slip out of our orbital blockade early in the siege, but as of yet had apparently not bothered enough to reclaim the place, simply issuing a statement about terrorist activities leading to the temporary occupation of the planet before falling silent on the matter..
Lorek, the nearest garrison, had received reinforcements on a large scale, over a dozen cruisers and three larger ships - battlecruisers, if my memory of naval terminology was right, - but apart from that, nothing had happened.
Miranda's various residential buildings were starting to reach capacity, largely due to the huge influx of slaves, and whilst the less militant members of the Judak Nurr, - amongst whom there were several psychologists of various levels of training, - were trying to help them work through their issues…
It wasn't exactly a fast process. They had a lot of issues.
Whilst their pacifistic members were busy running planetary colonies and rehabilitating slaves, most of the militant group relocated to Michael Bay. Hope and I established a much larger barracks facility in the area, to facilitate long term habitation there, and that saved a couple of hundred rooms in New Bondi which were quickly filled.
The reason for bringing several Batarians a long way down the coast to our military testing lab was rather simple. Despite being a hyper advanced war machine… I didn't really know that much about guns. I mean, general ideas and concepts, sure. Inner workings, piece of cake. But the little details? That was a bit outside of my comfort zone.
And so we outsourced the problem to nine hundred and fifty ex-soldiers, mercenaries, and revolutionaries. It gave them something to do when they weren't flying around the Omega Nebula and causing trouble for the Hegemony by raiding their supply shipments and harassing their patrols.
It also gave us a lot of advertising footage. I mean, the shaky-cam footage of a dirty battlefield, clouded by dust and smoke, certainly made for more atmospheric displays of firepower, but if you couldn't really see the guns in question then it was a bit pointless.
And for the most part, the Judak Nurr fighters did have good ideas about little tweaks to make to the various designs we were throwing around - slightly altered grips and sights, better designed stocks, mounting points for attachments, and the like.
---
The sun had just set three hours prior over Michael Bay when we received an unexpected message over the Command Network, relayed through our Jartar base. A message, specifically, from Commander Fusou, inviting the two of us to visit her on her yacht to trade technologies - something we'd vaguely discussed in our first meeting and promptly forgotten about for two years, - and, to quote directly 'gossip'.
What, exactly, three hyper-advanced war machines were going to 'gossip' about, was left unclear.
Well, whatever it is Hope said cheerily, it would be a shame to turn her down. And it's not like we're doing much here right now anyway.
Admittedly, she was right. We were just kind of sitting around doing nothing.
I guess that settles it, then. Girl's night out!
The battle for Logasiri, if you could call it that, didn't last very long.
The Hegemony forces on the planet, totally cut off from calling for help and blocked from escaping by way of a small fleet of cruisers in far orbit, were quick to lay down their weapons once they realized just how outmatched they were.
The end result was that almost eighty Batarian armoured vehicles had been gutted - an excellent field test for my latest weapon, if a little zealous on the Judak Nurr's part, - hundreds of Hegemony forces had been incapacitated and subsequently locked up, often in the same slave camps they'd been fighting to protect.
Without the whole 'slave labor until you drop dead' thing, of course.
That said…
Well, not every Batarian had made it out alive. For one thing, the Hegemony and the various private guards hadn't been fighting non-lethally, as the Judak Nurr had, and whilst the Faith Foundation overshield modules were more than enough to protect the resistance fighters from harm, more than a few of the slaves had been…slaughtered cut down murdered by you you you your fault
…caught in the crossfire.
And, to make things worse, some of the slaves had decided, upon being set free, to take matters into their own hands. Especially the Asari and the Krogan.
Dozens of prison guards had been killed during the break outs. Often very violently. Hope had apparently witnessed one guard crushed, repeatedly, by a chunk of ceiling thanks to a pissed-off Asari slave. On the one hand, they were definitely slavers and probably scumbags, but… I don't think they deserved death. Not all of them.
I tried not to think about it.
Luckily, in most cases the Judak Nurr were able to restrain the slaves before they could go on huge murderous rampages - with the exception of one Krogan, who killed almost thirty of the guards at his compound before crash tackling a shuttle attempting to escape.
The shuttle crashed in the bottom of a ravine, exploded, and was subsequently crushed by a landslide. By the time the Judak Nurr found the time to check it out, the Krogan was dead - almost six kilometres from the crash site, with both hands missing and chunks of Batarian flesh in between his teeth.
I tried very hard not to think too much about that, either.
The slaves that survived the experience - a mercifully huge amount, thanks to our jamming of the signals required to detonate their bomb collars, - were loaded up onto a number of Voyagers and sent to Miranda, getting them clear from the conflict zone.
Of course, that was only solving the most immediate of their problems. The slaves were… well, some of the more recently enslaved sentients were capable of moving of their own free will, but the rest were just so… broken. They stood silently and wordlessly at all times, as if worried they would be shot just for stepping out of line, but as soon as they were issued an order, they scrambled all over each other to complete it.
It made loading them onto the Voyagers easy, but at the same time it was sad to see so many hundreds of thousands of people acting like lifeless husks.
And to be honest, like almost everything else I'd done in the past few months, this was completely out of my area of expertise.
They… they clearly needed therapy, and probably a lot of it. But… I didn't have the slightest clue on how to help.
Perhaps something to ask Fusou about, in the future.
---
Hope and I sat idle on the bridge of the Jacob Keyes, merely watching through a myriad of monitors as the clean up on the planet below began. For the most part, it was simple busy-work. Not a great deal of collateral damage had been caused in the various slave compounds, which meant that after the few corpses and many many wrecked vehicles were moved out of the way, the place looked pretty much as it had before.
Minus, again, the massed slave labor force.
The city, if you could call it that, wasn't much harder to clean up either. A few flags got burned, some high up officials found themselves engaged in a very up-close inspection of the defence force's jail cells, and half a dozen members of the Judak Nurr's administration division, if you wanted to call it that, set themselves up as the temporary leaders.
Not that they were leading much - the city was essentially a star port, government offices, and a whole load of formerly-slave-labor cargo and shipping services. Mainly because everyone who could derive any value from this crappy rock had the wealth to set themselves up as the rulers of their own little compounds, and why would you live in a city when you can rule a chunk of planet larger than Tasmania?
Regardless, the Judak Nurr seemed to have that situation well in hand, and so we turned our attention elsewhere.
Amongst the files and documents Fusou had provided us was a legitimate record as a Human operated company registered in the Citadel. We'd been planning on making use of it sooner, but preparing the Judak Nurr for the war was somewhat more time-consuming than we'd expected it to be.
Now, though, the Judak Nurr were starting to hit their stride, so we could afford to take a bit of attention away from them.
And thus, the Faith Foundation officially entered the galactic market. Of course, there were two big problems with this - first, the weapons market was relatively stable at the moment and it would take a serious kick to open up enough room for us to become even remotely viable, and second, the market for non-lethal weapons, whilst vast, was nowhere near as big as the market for murder weapons.
The second was easily solved by copying, upgrading, and refining the designs sold by Batarian State Arms, or from our other jaunts around the multiverse, although we toned those designs down a tad, keeping all the handheld lasers (of which there were quite a few) away from the market. At least for now. If we opened with the big bulky cannon, then 'upgrading' to smaller, rifle-sized weapons would seem more legitimate.
Honestly, the first problem was much bigger. Inventing awesome weapons was all very well and good, but if no one ever bought them, it was a huge waste of time and… well, not really a waste of resources, given we were less than a third of the way through hollowing out the moons in our Hub World and still basically drowning in metal, but still.
As crude as it was to say, though, the Batarian Civil War made for good advertising. Several of the resistance fighters were in the habit of uploading combat footage onto the extranet, and already we had, through them, received several requests for our Overshield Packs and Tesla Weapons. Our new anti-tank weapon, I suspected, would also draw in the public eye, once those videos started to circulate.
Man portable laser weapons were… almost, if not entirely unheard of in the Mass Effect universe - between powering the laser and keeping the mechanism cool, it was just too damn hard to fit it into a portable package.
Of course, we cheated, but they didn't have to know that… and besides, thanks to Fusou the Humans in this chunk of the multiverse already had a reputation for advanced technology. A man portable laser cannon probably wouldn't be too much of a shock.
It would certainly revolutionize armoured combat, though. Suddenly tanks would be a hell of a lot less viable, if any infantry squad could carry around a weapon capable of blasting clean through them.
And then there were the other fun things I had to offer - energy crossbows, multi-launch rocket pods, rail guns, plasma rifles and beams… long story short, any militaries investing heavily in armoured assets were quickly going to regret it.
---
For several months, not a whole lot happened. The Hegemony had at some point been made aware of the capture of Logasiri, probably by the primitively-cloaked corvette that we'd let slip out of our orbital blockade early in the siege, but as of yet had apparently not bothered enough to reclaim the place, simply issuing a statement about terrorist activities leading to the temporary occupation of the planet before falling silent on the matter..
Lorek, the nearest garrison, had received reinforcements on a large scale, over a dozen cruisers and three larger ships - battlecruisers, if my memory of naval terminology was right, - but apart from that, nothing had happened.
Miranda's various residential buildings were starting to reach capacity, largely due to the huge influx of slaves, and whilst the less militant members of the Judak Nurr, - amongst whom there were several psychologists of various levels of training, - were trying to help them work through their issues…
It wasn't exactly a fast process. They had a lot of issues.
Whilst their pacifistic members were busy running planetary colonies and rehabilitating slaves, most of the militant group relocated to Michael Bay. Hope and I established a much larger barracks facility in the area, to facilitate long term habitation there, and that saved a couple of hundred rooms in New Bondi which were quickly filled.
The reason for bringing several Batarians a long way down the coast to our military testing lab was rather simple. Despite being a hyper advanced war machine… I didn't really know that much about guns. I mean, general ideas and concepts, sure. Inner workings, piece of cake. But the little details? That was a bit outside of my comfort zone.
And so we outsourced the problem to nine hundred and fifty ex-soldiers, mercenaries, and revolutionaries. It gave them something to do when they weren't flying around the Omega Nebula and causing trouble for the Hegemony by raiding their supply shipments and harassing their patrols.
It also gave us a lot of advertising footage. I mean, the shaky-cam footage of a dirty battlefield, clouded by dust and smoke, certainly made for more atmospheric displays of firepower, but if you couldn't really see the guns in question then it was a bit pointless.
And for the most part, the Judak Nurr fighters did have good ideas about little tweaks to make to the various designs we were throwing around - slightly altered grips and sights, better designed stocks, mounting points for attachments, and the like.
---
The sun had just set three hours prior over Michael Bay when we received an unexpected message over the Command Network, relayed through our Jartar base. A message, specifically, from Commander Fusou, inviting the two of us to visit her on her yacht to trade technologies - something we'd vaguely discussed in our first meeting and promptly forgotten about for two years, - and, to quote directly 'gossip'.
What, exactly, three hyper-advanced war machines were going to 'gossip' about, was left unclear.
Well, whatever it is Hope said cheerily, it would be a shame to turn her down. And it's not like we're doing much here right now anyway.
Admittedly, she was right. We were just kind of sitting around doing nothing.
I guess that settles it, then. Girl's night out!
Glitchrr36
Slick's Short Company, CEO
- Location
- The Wastes
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well that invisitext isn't worrying at all
- Location
- New Zealand
- Pronouns
- He/Him
While the response is understandable, I personally hope Faith doesn't go too far down the angst route. Between Rachel getting brain damage and accidentally armageddoning an earth, Fusou showing off her wall of the dead, and Torroar's... Mess, I just want to see a happy, upbeat commander, y'know?
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Oh, an insane one?
- Location
- New Zealand
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Eh, if they were having fun with it, sure. I mean, right now Commander Rachel is pretty insane, but that's just been really... Depressing.
- Pronouns
- she/her
No, I think they're asking for Gideon.
Alayne
The Reader
- Location
- Home of the Vikings
Actually I'm pretty sure tiki hasn't even arrived yet.
TikiTau
Commander Pangolinski
- Location
- Texas
Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii! <(^.^)<
- Location
- Near Freiburg in South-West Germany
If the less-lethal weapons are more effective than the lethal ones they will find a lot of buyers. If you are on guard duty and attacked by a band of Blood Pack mercs, a tesla gun which can disable a Krogan in two or three shots is probably better then a regular gun which needs half of a thermal clip to put one down. Live prisoners are also somewhat more valuable then dead bodies, even if you just call the local police (if there are any) to deal with them and collect them. And if are somewhat ruthless and you don't need prisoners you can just shoot them anyway once the attack is over.
vyor
KITTY! \o/
That's not a positive sign for your sanity, but at least a small part of you is finally getting the whole "war is hell no matter what" thing.
200w laser built out of scrap parts. Laser tech in the ME universe is fucking sad.
A basic megawatt pulse laser built with some scraps and a defunct military rangefinder. Very, very sad.
The Cain is a thing that exists.
- Location
- North of England
- Pronouns
- She/They
You horrible, terrible person.
vyor
KITTY! \o/
Oh! And here are some things that neuter each of these:
1. Ablative/Reactive/Reflective Armor(this kills the effectiveness of both the laser weapons and plasma weapons, and yes, all 3 at once)
2. Some form of guardian system or other defense of that type(deals with missiles, energy crossbows, some plasma weapons, and some railguns).
3. More powerful ME shields(for the railgun, duh, and the plasma weapons... maybe the rockets and energy crossbow as well)
Oh, and you can have all of these on 1 tank. Hell, we're already doing the first 2 of those(the second is in it's early stages of development) and the better shield will be powered by an eezo core that would already be bigger so the damn thing can move at speed with the other 2 defenses.
In other words it's just an evolution of modern tank design.
I know, and that makes me so sad about the massive gapping hole in the Mass Effect Alliance tech tree, we are working on so many cool technologies right now and they all got thrown out for Eezo/space magic rock #321.
Glitchrr36
Slick's Short Company, CEO
- Location
- The Wastes
- Pronouns
- He/Him
We have literally sci-fi tech. DARPA is working on something that might as well be the V1 Pons from Pacifc Rim, we're already working on goddamn Mech suits, we have the technology to at least start thinking about colonizing the solar system, and who knows what the various world governments have in top secret sites?
But no, we have space magic, we're not going to use it to improve the ideas we have, we're going to be the same as everybody.
That's what disappoints me about mass effect.
But no, we have space magic, we're not going to use it to improve the ideas we have, we're going to be the same as everybody.
That's what disappoints me about mass effect.
Faith
Some idea of what I'm doing.
- Location
- Land of Waves and Warmth
RE: Mass Effect's blatant disregard for technological progression in favour of magic space rocks.
Unlike some Mass Effect fanfic authors, I am choosing to assume for the purposes of FiSF that the Council, and likewise the leaders of every other galactic power, are not retarded, and that they, too, have made developments with regards to non-Eezo tech.
I would like to assume that these advancements lead to technologies that were, at the very least, semi-usable. Especially given the context and time period in which Mass Effect was set. Consider Vyor's linked videos, above. Yes, that 'lazer bazooka' is only 200W and despite looking like a powerful laser canon it takes sustained fire to burst a balloon, but that was made by a hobbyist in 2016, and Mass Effect (as of FiSF's latest chapter) is set in March 2162. That's a lot of time to develop.
On the other hand, the games quite clearly show the absolute dominance of Mass Effect based weapons. Apart from a few niche exceptions - the ever-classic Flamethrower, Rocket and Grenade Launchers, the Cryo gun, the Cain, and the Quarian arc weapons, everything operates through the Mass Effect.
The only thing I can derive from this is that for whatever reason, every single military in the universe decided that Mass Effect weapons were more powerful, more versatile, more cost effective, or whatever, than any other alternative.
The same is to be said of their tanks - the Mako and the Hammerhead have shields with the consistency of tissue paper and their armour isn't much better. It's clear both 'tanks' (APCs, or perhaps IFV is more appropriate) were designed to prioritise mobility over durability. There are good reasons for that (you don't have to repair what never gets hit), but I still dislike it.
As neither of those tanks possess reactive armour or any kind of guardian system, nor do the visible Grizzlies in the first game, I'm choosing to assume that for whatever reason, the armoured doctrine of Mass Effect is less 'tank' and more 'dodge'.
This makes a lot more sense in a universe where the biggest threats to tanks are the relatively slow-firing rocket launchers. I mean, last time I played ME1 I ended up bouncing through Geth bases and jumping over incoming rockets with ease - that's a feature of the Mako and it's a hell of a lot more effective than taking the hits and hoping you don't burst into flames.
Had heavy laser weapons appeared in Mass Effect, then perhaps that would have been different - dodging light is kind of difficult, after all, - but heavy lasers never appeared and therefore I'm assuming that they just aren't used, probably due to the same heat/power issues that plague all of Mass Effect's heavy weapons.
Now, this doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense, per se, but that is the canvas that Bioware left us, and therefore what I'm working from. One of the things I've been trying to do in FiSF is avert that, to some small degree (although it hasn't come up much yet). The factions of the galaxy are trying harder, in the Commander Effect verse, to find non-Eezo solutions to their problems, because Fusou's humanity have shown them that it can be done. Bear in mind that the Asari are an all-biotic race - that massively biases them towards Mass Effect technology, or so I would assume, and they're also the major player of the Citadel, in terms of political influence, which means that same bias is inflicted upon everyone else to some degree, as well.
Finally, on top of all that Doylist crap, I'd like to add that in-character, Faith's experience to 'modern' military tech comes from a terrorist group and the under-equipped border regions of a political entity known for keeping its old tech around for a long time.
Who knows, maybe the tanks recovered from the Kurapp Valley are all outdated, mothballed scout hovercraft modified to fit a small tank gun on the top, like the UK's Sabre 'tank'.
Tl:dr Bioware are dummies, I'm workin' on it.
Unlike some Mass Effect fanfic authors, I am choosing to assume for the purposes of FiSF that the Council, and likewise the leaders of every other galactic power, are not retarded, and that they, too, have made developments with regards to non-Eezo tech.
I would like to assume that these advancements lead to technologies that were, at the very least, semi-usable. Especially given the context and time period in which Mass Effect was set. Consider Vyor's linked videos, above. Yes, that 'lazer bazooka' is only 200W and despite looking like a powerful laser canon it takes sustained fire to burst a balloon, but that was made by a hobbyist in 2016, and Mass Effect (as of FiSF's latest chapter) is set in March 2162. That's a lot of time to develop.
On the other hand, the games quite clearly show the absolute dominance of Mass Effect based weapons. Apart from a few niche exceptions - the ever-classic Flamethrower, Rocket and Grenade Launchers, the Cryo gun, the Cain, and the Quarian arc weapons, everything operates through the Mass Effect.
The only thing I can derive from this is that for whatever reason, every single military in the universe decided that Mass Effect weapons were more powerful, more versatile, more cost effective, or whatever, than any other alternative.
The same is to be said of their tanks - the Mako and the Hammerhead have shields with the consistency of tissue paper and their armour isn't much better. It's clear both 'tanks' (APCs, or perhaps IFV is more appropriate) were designed to prioritise mobility over durability. There are good reasons for that (you don't have to repair what never gets hit), but I still dislike it.
As neither of those tanks possess reactive armour or any kind of guardian system, nor do the visible Grizzlies in the first game, I'm choosing to assume that for whatever reason, the armoured doctrine of Mass Effect is less 'tank' and more 'dodge'.
This makes a lot more sense in a universe where the biggest threats to tanks are the relatively slow-firing rocket launchers. I mean, last time I played ME1 I ended up bouncing through Geth bases and jumping over incoming rockets with ease - that's a feature of the Mako and it's a hell of a lot more effective than taking the hits and hoping you don't burst into flames.
Had heavy laser weapons appeared in Mass Effect, then perhaps that would have been different - dodging light is kind of difficult, after all, - but heavy lasers never appeared and therefore I'm assuming that they just aren't used, probably due to the same heat/power issues that plague all of Mass Effect's heavy weapons.
Now, this doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense, per se, but that is the canvas that Bioware left us, and therefore what I'm working from. One of the things I've been trying to do in FiSF is avert that, to some small degree (although it hasn't come up much yet). The factions of the galaxy are trying harder, in the Commander Effect verse, to find non-Eezo solutions to their problems, because Fusou's humanity have shown them that it can be done. Bear in mind that the Asari are an all-biotic race - that massively biases them towards Mass Effect technology, or so I would assume, and they're also the major player of the Citadel, in terms of political influence, which means that same bias is inflicted upon everyone else to some degree, as well.
Finally, on top of all that Doylist crap, I'd like to add that in-character, Faith's experience to 'modern' military tech comes from a terrorist group and the under-equipped border regions of a political entity known for keeping its old tech around for a long time.
Who knows, maybe the tanks recovered from the Kurapp Valley are all outdated, mothballed scout hovercraft modified to fit a small tank gun on the top, like the UK's Sabre 'tank'.
Tl:dr Bioware are dummies, I'm workin' on it.
- Pronouns
- she/her
Nothing wrong with strapping a gun to a fast recon hovercraft. Those things can wreck more than their tonnage in battlemechs.
Keep in mind that the Hegemony, at least the version from canon!ME and the one that Faith is trying to replace is, IIRC, a sort-of functional Space!North Korea, at least in that they are very much inclined towards propaganda and bragging, as such they might be classifying them as tanks solely for propaganda purposes.
Faith
Some idea of what I'm doing.
- Location
- Land of Waves and Warmth
Presumably, this is why very few factions use mechas.
Cerberus are the obvious exception, but their stupidity is both a) probably a result of Reaper influence and b) well established, so we won't count them.
One of the reasons I started writing Superior Firepower was because I though it would be funny to have a super awesome death machine, but instead of being methodical and competent like Drich, instead they were kind of an incompetent moron with little to no military knowledge. The fact that I fit that bill perfectly just saved me from having to write an OC story, although I did toy with that idea initially for a number of reasons.
Commander!Faith's lack of military knowledge has come up before - including in this latest chapter. It would not be out of character for her to misidentify an APC with big gun on top as a tank. Especially if that's what all the massively brainwashed-by-propaganda Hegemony soldiers refer to them as.
Also, I thought 'technical' generally referred to a ute or other flatbed of some description with a machine gun on the back. I appreciate that it's the same idea as a scout vehicle with a tank gun, but that to me seems a bit big of a jump. I feel like they'd use another term for that. Again, looking at the UK Sabre, it's a 'Combat Reconnaissance Vehicle'. I personally feel that's different enough to a technical to deserve it's own term.
tl;dr even if they were technicals Commander!Faith would call 'em tanks anyway, cos it looks like a tank and it shoots like a tank, so it's probably a tank.
Also, this.
- Location
- Near Freiburg in South-West Germany
I never really got what people find so unbelievable about the dominance of Mass Effect weapons. Sometimes one type of weapon is just more practical than others. Just look at what we use today: lots and of lots of weapons which use some sort of explosive as propellant, some hand thrown weapons (grenades) and missiles/rockets. Thats it, with very few exceptions. There are some experiments in other areas (lasers, ETC (which is just a fancy way to ignite the propellant), railguns, ...) but those aren't really in use yet and when they will be used they will be used in niche applications at first.
Historically there were a lot of alternative ways to propel a projectile: catapults, strings (bows, crossbows, ballistae), air pressure guns, slings, atlatls, .... But none of them are in use today because gunpowder and then other explosive propellants are currently just so much better or have other advantages which makes them preferable.
Historically there were a lot of alternative ways to propel a projectile: catapults, strings (bows, crossbows, ballistae), air pressure guns, slings, atlatls, .... But none of them are in use today because gunpowder and then other explosive propellants are currently just so much better or have other advantages which makes them preferable.