97 - Skirmish
Aratoht was, simply put, a dusty red shithole. Heat and low air pressure forced the inhabitants to stay inside sealed biodomes, with the exception of a few skilled workers who operated out of mobile bases whilst they went around seeding the oceans with cyanobacteria.
The vast majority of the people on the planet were slaves, forced to dig away at the rich metal crust for resources the Hegemony could put to use in their industrial machine. The rest were wealthy slave owners, - who lived in penthouse apartments and partied away the nights with alcohol, expensive food, and Asari sex slaves, - and their immediate subordinates - shuttle pilots, security guards, and chefs.
Luckily for me, the legitimate military presence was rather low - only a single division planetside, who possessed, from what I could see, only a few dozen armoured vehicles, and a lackluster fleet of six frigates and three cruisers. I had to wonder if that was simply standard fare for the Hegemony's shitty planets they didn't care about or if there was something else going on.
They probably had decent reasons for it. Prior to Logasiri the NBR hadn't really struck any Hegemony world with an actual invasion force, and places like this crappy backwater were probably last on the list for reinforced garrisons. Not to mention how far it was from Logasiri and Lorek - even if it wasn't a strategically unimportant slave mining camp, it would probably still be low on the list just because of how far from the supposed 'front line' it was.
As much as you could define 'front lines' in a galaxy where travel routes were arbitrarily defined by Mass Relays and the Hegemony's territory was split up as it was in such an awkward and incohesive manner.
Or perhaps there was something going down inside the Kite's Nest that warranted the attention of a lot of their ships? Or maybe their military simply wasn't as big as it made out to be - given they had been described in canon as something of a paper tiger empire, that was possible.
Either way, the nine vessels that were hanging around Aratoht were holding in a similar pattern those above Logasiri had used - the cruisers hung close to the planet whilst the frigates, in two groups of three, performed somewhat longer-distance patrols.
I issued the Stealth Fabricator one last order before sending it to take shelter in a little cave it carved for itself amongst the mountains just north of Aratoht's one and only city.
My six vessels dropped out of Phase just four hundred kilometres from the first group of roaming frigates, and immediately dozens of Firefly Interceptor Drones disengaged from the cruisers, dashing towards the frigates at full throttle.
The Firefly drones were weak little things - very similar to the drones used in the FTLverse, with admittedly much greater technology under the hood. They were effectively unmanned fighters, designed to fulfill two roles - firstly, the decimation of enemy fighter craft with their lasers, which like GARDIAN arrays had none of the usual target-tracking issues against STL craft, and secondly, distracting the enemy's GARDIAN arrays, soaking up laser blasts with their 2-Layer Phase Shield.
It wouldn't protect them from sustained attack, but each drone requiring three shots in quick succession to destroy meant that the enemy could only target a third of the usual number of enemies before their weapons began overheating.
At which point I would break out the missiles.
The Hegemony frigates immediately took the bait, GARDIAN arrays swivelling to target the approaching drones as their engines flared, all three vessels immediately breaking away from combat to rally with their comrades. Although the drones were more than capable of taking the hits, I had each one activate its Phase Cloak if it came under fire, and the Batarian GARDIANS moved on, picking new targets as the frigates made their escape.
Thus conveniently confirming that the Batarians didn't have the sensor capacity to pick up my cloaking. I hadn't really expected them too, but, then again, better safe than sorry.
I could have done the same thing I'd done to the Logasiri fleet, and incapacitated them all with nanite bombs teleported halfway across the system, but this time, I wasn't going for subtlety. This attack, combined with the simultaneous raid of Lorek, was more about sending a message on the behalf of the NBR.
Which meant that flashy drone swarms and awesome-but-impractical EVA raids were the way to go. Given the intent was to embarrass the Hegemony either way, I figured I may as well do it in style.
I allowed the frigate group to distance themselves from my fleet, whilst I pointed my ships in the direction of Aratoht itself, engines on a low burn.
---
The frigate group I'd ambushed almost immediately jumped to FTL, reappearing on the far edge of the system. They then began to turn around, presumably so they could FTL closer to the planet and the rest of their allies.
Sneaky. But not sneaky enough.
The second group simply turned tail and fled - I was far enough away that they could escape without risking a counterattack.
My fleet made little effort to catch up with the retreating frigates, instead drifting slowly towards the planet itself, and I merely watched through the eyes of my avatar as the nine ships rallied around Aratoht, preparing to fight a battle they almost certainly knew they would lose.
Their cruisers were the first to open fire, a trio of golden streaks shooting across the void towards the FFV Sweet Autumn. The ship made no effort to dodge, and the mass accelerator rounds slammed violently into the ship's shimmering Phase Shield, whereupon they exploded harmlessly.
I chose not to return fire, even as the second and third volleys of mass accelerator rounds crossed the gap between us. The Sweet Autumn took the majority of the hits, but the frigates had instead begun to focus on her literal sister ship, FFV Skye Autumn, instead.
Both ships withered the assault without issue. Due to the rather binary nature of the Phase Shields, each shell knocked off only a single layer of protection, and the time between volleys was sufficient to regenerate at least one layer.
With a total of seventy four layers of shield on each ship, that meant a solid thirty six volleys would be required to down a single ship's shields.
Well, the Phase Shields. Then they had to get through the Kinetic Barriers and the Marauder Shields, neither of which were remotely as effective as the Phase Shields, and then the composite Elysion Alloy plating… they weren't destroying my fleet anytime soon.
I, on the other hand, had plenty enough firepower to plough through their weak Kinetic Barriers and shred apart their vessels, should I even desire to use kinetic weapons in the first place. The CLAWs would have been more than sufficient to shred them, after all.
But, alas, that wasn't part of the plan, so I ignored the hail of incoming cannon fire and continued drifting lazily towards the planet, thrusters still on minimum power.
The Fireflies, which had been slow-burning across the system using the cruisers as cover, now began to accelerate, crossing the six point five thousand kilometre gap as quickly as they were able, throwing themselves into barrel rolls, dives, and other random aerobatic maneuvers at high enough Gs to mulch humans.
As expected, the show was pointless, and every single one of the drones caught at least one laser burst from the Batarian point defense. Luckily, their shields protected them from significant damage, and none were destroyed, but a few marked themselves as requiring minor repair for thrusters and armour.
The moment the lasers hit, I once again had each and every targeted drone activate their Phase Cloak, and teleported a few piles of scrap metal into their place instead - from the Batarian's perspective, it would seem that each and every one of the targeted drones had been destroyed or mission killed instantly. The blue flash of the teleporter even worked to simulate the usually-orange explosions, almost.
Either way, it worked, because the Batarian's point defence network immediately settled back down, and my drone swarm advanced unopposed until they were less than a kilometre away from their targets.
Just as planned.
The drones continued their silent approach, like a school of piranhas closing in on their prey, and began circling the enemy vessels as I prepared the second stage of my not-so-diabolical plan.
As one, my entire fleet jumped to FTL, reappearing just a few hundred meters from the defending force.
And then my old Avatar Droids, new and improved with Covenant anti-grav and handheld plasma cutters, began swarming from the ship's airlocks, a handful of similarly equipped AeroAvatars following behind.
My abrupt arrival must have startled the Batarian forces - the even more abrupt decimation of their engines, their communications arrays, every single one of their GARDIAN arrays and a large majority of their mass driver cannons, even more so.
Especially at the hands of the drone swarm they'd just 'killed'.
By the time even a single Batarian ship had begun to react, pivoting on the spot and firing all available weapons into the protruding bridge of the FFV Charlotte Wray, it was far, far too late.
Avatar Droids carved through airlocks and obliterated windows, - the Geth had it right, they were structural weaknesses, - and within ten seconds each and every one of the defending vessels had been boarded.
The poor Batarians never stood a chance. The AeroAvatars began accessing internal computers and ship-wide networks, providing an avenue for my digital invasion, whilst the Avatar Droids made their way through the narrow corridors of the ships, subduing every crewman and marine they came across with tasers, stun staffs, and sleep darts.
Vented airlocks and forced hull breaches merely forced the droids to up the power of their flight packs slightly, and sealed blast doors were an issue only until a droid with a plasma cutter arrived and tore a hole in the reinforced plate.
Twenty five minutes after I'd arrived in system, I had assumed complete and total control over their fleet.
And so, as my new Batarian fleet, hastily upgraded with Phase FTL Drives, made its way back to Miranda for a full refit, I turned my attention planetside.
Luckily, Aratoht had only a single city, Ectah, nestled in a mountainous region near the sea, as well as two smaller outposts for the atmospheric engineers along the coast, and all three sites had already been visited by the Stealth Fabricator I'd sent ahead of my main force.
Because of that Fabricator, or more accurately the signal interceptors it had left in its wake, not one of the sites had received any messages from the Hegemony Fleet in the last half-hour. Which meant no one on the planet was currently aware of my presence.
There wasn't even the risk of some jerk with a telescope looking up and seeing me, since everyone lived in a nice, enclosed environment.
And that was going to absolutely suck for them.
Aided by the Jackson Whalebrook's enhanced sensors, a handful of stealth drones teleported inside the dome, granting me a near-perfect bird's eye view of the area.
Including a very sharp image of a guy throwing a party on the roof of his penthouse. Typical slaver, partying away his sorrows whilst hundreds of thousands of people slaved away in mines dozens of floors below.
Well. Can't have that.
