If the Turian governor's suspicions on cyber-infiltration prove true, then we may already have seen Geth at work. Heretic Geth, specifically. Might be a motivation for the Loyalist Geth to enter the field.
Mass Effect: Isolation (AU Mass Effect Story)
- Thread starter Poached_Egg
- Start date
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This story is great. I love the Elcor for jumping into the shit with Humanity.
I was very saddened by the Turians spontaneously imploding the instant they were about to actually be cool and get involved.
I do worry about what's happening in the Salarian Union. For some reason I'm getting 'the STG is tearing itself apart in a shadow war due to rampant paranoia' vibes from their sporadic mentions in the last few chapters
I was very saddened by the Turians spontaneously imploding the instant they were about to actually be cool and get involved.
I do worry about what's happening in the Salarian Union. For some reason I'm getting 'the STG is tearing itself apart in a shadow war due to rampant paranoia' vibes from their sporadic mentions in the last few chapters
Yeah, the prospect of having the turians getting involved was tempting from a coolness standpoint, but if didn't fit with what was going on in the overall plot behind the scenes. They'll have their time in the sun eventually.
AU Lore Notes: The Order of Battle
Hi There, here's another little non-narrative chapter to lay a few implied things out explicitly in preparation for an upcoming chapter. This one's about the "Order of Battle" that I've hinted out throughout the story. Classes of ships and what they are used for are a little more detailed in this story and differ in some ways from canon, and (once again) an upcoming chapter involves ship classes in a narratively meaningful way, so I just wanted to make it clear for everyone. There will be two sections, one for the "normal" order of battle, and one for the human version.
Citadel: The Citadel, and the rest of the explored galaxy by extension, has an order of battle that's a mixture of WWII and Age of Sail metaphors. Their doctrine is more or less the same as it is in canon, with the primary objective in combat being to bring the biggest spinal mounts to bare against the enemy, with every tactic being in support of that goal. The primary difference from canon is that they don't really bother with armor protection all that much, and cruisers are split into three varieties rather than being one generic ship type.
Fighters: A largely supportive craft, whose primary reason for existing is to prevent enemy fighters from becoming a threat. Extremely dangerous if left unchecked, but the effectiveness of point defense in-universe means that they are relatively easily "checked". Attacking an organized formation with overlapping VI-aimed PD is tantamount to suicide. Thus, in combat they serve as a sort of reserve unit, loitering around their fleet playing linebacker, waiting for the opportune moment to use their torpedoes to the greatest possible effect.
Frigates: The smallest class of "seaworthy" (as in, able to sustain itself on a lengthy voyage at FTL) ship. Much like frigates in real life historical ocean going navies, they exist more for economic reasons than tactical ones, with their primary utility being their numbers. In a galaxy with so much instability, power projection is king. A frigate that you actually have is better than the cruiser you don't have, even if that hypothetical cruiser would be more capable. In combat they manage to be a relevant threat thanks to disrupter torpedoes.
Destroyers: Much like the initial purpose of their real-life namesake, destroyers exist to kill the smaller ships that would otherwise be a threat to the big ones. They're the proverbial big fish in the small pond, but they get swept aside by anything bigger than them as their extensive guns and point defenses come at the expense of a reduced torpedo armament.
Light Cruisers: Capital ship on a budget, with all that entails. They serve as flagships for small formations of ships, or as escorts for the largest ships. Both of these scenarios make them a big target for torpedo attacks, so they have a proportionally much more substantial point defense grid than other ships. As a flagship in a small formation, this enables them to fend for themselves without escorts, allowing their subordinate ships to get into the thick of it without having to worry about their flagship. As an escort, this makes them an excellent last line of defense for the heaviest ships, for any threats that might manage to break through the destroyer and frigate screens.
Standard Cruisers: As the codex so succinctly put it, these are the "poor bloody infantry". The baseline, the..."standard", if you will. I imagine these as being the jack-of-all-trades. Need an artillery battery? Sure, but it's no dreadnought. Need fighter coverage? It can get the job done, but it's the smallest class of ship with a fighter bay, so it's not carrying them in particularly impressive amounts. Need to test a new weapons system/tactic? This is the best place to do it, as they have the most modularity incorporated into their design. In combat, these are the meat of the fleet. They take hits, and they give them, and there's no need to be shy with them because if they get sunk it's not going to cost an amount equal to the annual budget of a small country like with larger ships.
Heavy Cruiser: Much like their real-world namesakes, these are essentially just dreadnoughts on a budget. They can do almost anything a dreadnought can, just not as well. They carry a good amount of fighters but not a whole wing's worth like a dreadnought, they have a substantial spinal mount but not enough to level a continent like a dreadnought, they are heavily shielded but not as much as a dreadnought, and so on. The only thing they have on dreadnoughts is the fact that they are faster (because of how mass effect fields apparently work), but that's about it. But, much like the frigate, the Heavy Cruiser you have is better than the Dreadnought you don't have.
Dreadnought: This ship probably takes the biggest departure from its real world namesake out of all of the ships, because whereas the Dreadnought was a highly specialized artillery ship that was revolutionary because of its design having all heavy guns of the same caliber, the dreadnoughts of this story have one singular very powerful artillery cannon and then a host of broadside secondary cannons. Ironically, this variable caliber of its guns makes it more like a pre-Dreadnought battleship. However, we will take a left turn from history and into Star Wars, because it's also got a massive hangar bay in addition to its guns. They're basically Imperial Star Destroyers: The ultimate expression of authority and a universal tool of power projection, but with a price tag that's a lot harder to meet when you don't have a quadrillion-being economy like Star Wars.
The United Nations: In addition to a more primitive technology base, the United Nations Space Force had a completely different mission from the other navies of the galaxy. Whereas their contemporaries had millennia of history and extensive knowledge of their potential foes to build their doctrine off of, the Space Force was starting from scratch and completely in the dark with regards to what it might actually be facing in combat. With little pre-existing knowledge to build off of, they settled for proven methods: heavy armor and raw firepower. The UN has never had to fight a war on the massive scale like the Rachni wars or the Krogan Rebellions, so they still largely believe in quality over quantity. So, ships are outfitted with expensive and logistically challenging guided munitions, and are protected by a heavy armor "skirt" that gives them a spindle-like shape and an above-average emphasis on structural integrity relative to their contemporaries. Their emphasis on nuclear firepower comes primarily from the speculative nature of their tactics: They really had no idea what enemy they might end up facing, but if it can't be killed with a generous application of nuclear warheads, they're probably doomed anyway.
Interceptors: While the Space Force has no fighters (Drive cores don't grow on trees, you know!), Interceptors have made for a useful stopgap. While they are comparable in size to frigates (albeit smaller), they actually serve a completely different role. Whereas frigates are economic, interceptors are extravagant, with an oversized drive core and unique weapons system in the form of their kinetic swarmer missiles. They were designed as a high-speed scouting and patrol craft, intended to rapidly deploy rangers to a trouble zone wherever needed. In combat, they fill the role of heavy torpedo bomber that is usually reserved for contemporary frigates, as they're one of the only human ships that can actually keep up with (and even outrun) alien ships of comparable size.
Frigates: Human frigates are quite similar to Citadel frigates, in that their primary utility is their low cost. However, their designers did not skimp on armor or weapons. Human frigates have a silo full of Prince-class missiles with directional nuclear warheads, as well as two King-class bomb-pumped laser missiles, but their low speed relative to their contemporaries means that they tend to serve in the escorting role rather than in the offensive role, with their missiles being used primarily to supplement the complements of their larger colleagues.
Destroyers: Almost identical to Citadel destroyers in terms of its role, except just like the human frigate, its missile complement is typically just added to the fleet's collective swarm rather than being used as a strike weapon like disrupter torpedoes would be.
Cruisers: Whereas Citadel cruisers are relatively expendable, human cruisers are highly valued ships, who sit somewhere between a Citadel standard cruiser and a Citadel heavy cruiser in terms of size and firepower. Prior to the war, Space Force cruisers were the heaviest tool of power projection available to the United Nations. Their kinetic battery was unrivalled, they carried a vast missile complement, more than enough to deal with any conceivable pre-first contact threat. While they of course have no fighter bay, they did carry a substantial ranger complement, enough to single-handedly occupy entire frontier colonies or pirate bases, or to conduct peace-keeping missions in colonial member-nations. This extra power owed to their more extensive mission profile makes them effectively superior to most contemporary cruisers. They can defeat a standard cruiser or smaller with just their kinetic battery, and if they somehow managed to encounter an unescorted heavy cruiser or dreadnought their missile complement gives them a not-insignificant chance of victory.
Arsenal Ship: Whereas other Space Force ships also have a peace-keeping role incorporated into their design, the Arsenal Ship is a class designed exclusively with combatting alien threats in mind. It has a missile battery comparable to a significant portion of the rest of the fleet combined, a spinal mount capable of one-shotting anything smaller than a standard cruiser, an extensive targeting and sensors array, and is the only ship capable of carry the incredibly powerful Emperor-class missile system, a bomb-pumped laser powerful enough to kill a dreadnought. Its main drawback is its massive cost, its relative helplessness without significant escort, and its anemic speed. Most of its construction cost comes from its size, as it is far larger than even contemporary dreadnoughts, with a hugely powerful drive core to go with it.
Space Force doctrine has Arsenal Ships as command and control ships, intended to serve as flagships for a formation of 1000 ships, with an eventual end goal of having a 3000 ship Space Force divided into three fleets of a 1000 ships, each headed by an Arsenal ship. Unfortunately for humanity, the relay incident occurred before the Space Force could finish its building program, and so the organization is - operationally speaking - technically fighting at a third of its planned strength. While a second one has been under construction since before first contact, it is unlikely to be finished before the batarian invasion.
---
Alright, that was way more words than it should have been, but it was fun to write, so whatever. I'm gonna go to sleep now. Look forward to a new chapter soon!
Citadel: The Citadel, and the rest of the explored galaxy by extension, has an order of battle that's a mixture of WWII and Age of Sail metaphors. Their doctrine is more or less the same as it is in canon, with the primary objective in combat being to bring the biggest spinal mounts to bare against the enemy, with every tactic being in support of that goal. The primary difference from canon is that they don't really bother with armor protection all that much, and cruisers are split into three varieties rather than being one generic ship type.
Fighters: A largely supportive craft, whose primary reason for existing is to prevent enemy fighters from becoming a threat. Extremely dangerous if left unchecked, but the effectiveness of point defense in-universe means that they are relatively easily "checked". Attacking an organized formation with overlapping VI-aimed PD is tantamount to suicide. Thus, in combat they serve as a sort of reserve unit, loitering around their fleet playing linebacker, waiting for the opportune moment to use their torpedoes to the greatest possible effect.
Frigates: The smallest class of "seaworthy" (as in, able to sustain itself on a lengthy voyage at FTL) ship. Much like frigates in real life historical ocean going navies, they exist more for economic reasons than tactical ones, with their primary utility being their numbers. In a galaxy with so much instability, power projection is king. A frigate that you actually have is better than the cruiser you don't have, even if that hypothetical cruiser would be more capable. In combat they manage to be a relevant threat thanks to disrupter torpedoes.
Destroyers: Much like the initial purpose of their real-life namesake, destroyers exist to kill the smaller ships that would otherwise be a threat to the big ones. They're the proverbial big fish in the small pond, but they get swept aside by anything bigger than them as their extensive guns and point defenses come at the expense of a reduced torpedo armament.
Light Cruisers: Capital ship on a budget, with all that entails. They serve as flagships for small formations of ships, or as escorts for the largest ships. Both of these scenarios make them a big target for torpedo attacks, so they have a proportionally much more substantial point defense grid than other ships. As a flagship in a small formation, this enables them to fend for themselves without escorts, allowing their subordinate ships to get into the thick of it without having to worry about their flagship. As an escort, this makes them an excellent last line of defense for the heaviest ships, for any threats that might manage to break through the destroyer and frigate screens.
Standard Cruisers: As the codex so succinctly put it, these are the "poor bloody infantry". The baseline, the..."standard", if you will. I imagine these as being the jack-of-all-trades. Need an artillery battery? Sure, but it's no dreadnought. Need fighter coverage? It can get the job done, but it's the smallest class of ship with a fighter bay, so it's not carrying them in particularly impressive amounts. Need to test a new weapons system/tactic? This is the best place to do it, as they have the most modularity incorporated into their design. In combat, these are the meat of the fleet. They take hits, and they give them, and there's no need to be shy with them because if they get sunk it's not going to cost an amount equal to the annual budget of a small country like with larger ships.
Heavy Cruiser: Much like their real-world namesakes, these are essentially just dreadnoughts on a budget. They can do almost anything a dreadnought can, just not as well. They carry a good amount of fighters but not a whole wing's worth like a dreadnought, they have a substantial spinal mount but not enough to level a continent like a dreadnought, they are heavily shielded but not as much as a dreadnought, and so on. The only thing they have on dreadnoughts is the fact that they are faster (because of how mass effect fields apparently work), but that's about it. But, much like the frigate, the Heavy Cruiser you have is better than the Dreadnought you don't have.
Dreadnought: This ship probably takes the biggest departure from its real world namesake out of all of the ships, because whereas the Dreadnought was a highly specialized artillery ship that was revolutionary because of its design having all heavy guns of the same caliber, the dreadnoughts of this story have one singular very powerful artillery cannon and then a host of broadside secondary cannons. Ironically, this variable caliber of its guns makes it more like a pre-Dreadnought battleship. However, we will take a left turn from history and into Star Wars, because it's also got a massive hangar bay in addition to its guns. They're basically Imperial Star Destroyers: The ultimate expression of authority and a universal tool of power projection, but with a price tag that's a lot harder to meet when you don't have a quadrillion-being economy like Star Wars.
The United Nations: In addition to a more primitive technology base, the United Nations Space Force had a completely different mission from the other navies of the galaxy. Whereas their contemporaries had millennia of history and extensive knowledge of their potential foes to build their doctrine off of, the Space Force was starting from scratch and completely in the dark with regards to what it might actually be facing in combat. With little pre-existing knowledge to build off of, they settled for proven methods: heavy armor and raw firepower. The UN has never had to fight a war on the massive scale like the Rachni wars or the Krogan Rebellions, so they still largely believe in quality over quantity. So, ships are outfitted with expensive and logistically challenging guided munitions, and are protected by a heavy armor "skirt" that gives them a spindle-like shape and an above-average emphasis on structural integrity relative to their contemporaries. Their emphasis on nuclear firepower comes primarily from the speculative nature of their tactics: They really had no idea what enemy they might end up facing, but if it can't be killed with a generous application of nuclear warheads, they're probably doomed anyway.
Interceptors: While the Space Force has no fighters (Drive cores don't grow on trees, you know!), Interceptors have made for a useful stopgap. While they are comparable in size to frigates (albeit smaller), they actually serve a completely different role. Whereas frigates are economic, interceptors are extravagant, with an oversized drive core and unique weapons system in the form of their kinetic swarmer missiles. They were designed as a high-speed scouting and patrol craft, intended to rapidly deploy rangers to a trouble zone wherever needed. In combat, they fill the role of heavy torpedo bomber that is usually reserved for contemporary frigates, as they're one of the only human ships that can actually keep up with (and even outrun) alien ships of comparable size.
Frigates: Human frigates are quite similar to Citadel frigates, in that their primary utility is their low cost. However, their designers did not skimp on armor or weapons. Human frigates have a silo full of Prince-class missiles with directional nuclear warheads, as well as two King-class bomb-pumped laser missiles, but their low speed relative to their contemporaries means that they tend to serve in the escorting role rather than in the offensive role, with their missiles being used primarily to supplement the complements of their larger colleagues.
Destroyers: Almost identical to Citadel destroyers in terms of its role, except just like the human frigate, its missile complement is typically just added to the fleet's collective swarm rather than being used as a strike weapon like disrupter torpedoes would be.
Cruisers: Whereas Citadel cruisers are relatively expendable, human cruisers are highly valued ships, who sit somewhere between a Citadel standard cruiser and a Citadel heavy cruiser in terms of size and firepower. Prior to the war, Space Force cruisers were the heaviest tool of power projection available to the United Nations. Their kinetic battery was unrivalled, they carried a vast missile complement, more than enough to deal with any conceivable pre-first contact threat. While they of course have no fighter bay, they did carry a substantial ranger complement, enough to single-handedly occupy entire frontier colonies or pirate bases, or to conduct peace-keeping missions in colonial member-nations. This extra power owed to their more extensive mission profile makes them effectively superior to most contemporary cruisers. They can defeat a standard cruiser or smaller with just their kinetic battery, and if they somehow managed to encounter an unescorted heavy cruiser or dreadnought their missile complement gives them a not-insignificant chance of victory.
Arsenal Ship: Whereas other Space Force ships also have a peace-keeping role incorporated into their design, the Arsenal Ship is a class designed exclusively with combatting alien threats in mind. It has a missile battery comparable to a significant portion of the rest of the fleet combined, a spinal mount capable of one-shotting anything smaller than a standard cruiser, an extensive targeting and sensors array, and is the only ship capable of carry the incredibly powerful Emperor-class missile system, a bomb-pumped laser powerful enough to kill a dreadnought. Its main drawback is its massive cost, its relative helplessness without significant escort, and its anemic speed. Most of its construction cost comes from its size, as it is far larger than even contemporary dreadnoughts, with a hugely powerful drive core to go with it.
Space Force doctrine has Arsenal Ships as command and control ships, intended to serve as flagships for a formation of 1000 ships, with an eventual end goal of having a 3000 ship Space Force divided into three fleets of a 1000 ships, each headed by an Arsenal ship. Unfortunately for humanity, the relay incident occurred before the Space Force could finish its building program, and so the organization is - operationally speaking - technically fighting at a third of its planned strength. While a second one has been under construction since before first contact, it is unlikely to be finished before the batarian invasion.
---
Alright, that was way more words than it should have been, but it was fun to write, so whatever. I'm gonna go to sleep now. Look forward to a new chapter soon!
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Hm, so no-one has yet thought up Carriers-understandable, given the difficulties that Fightercraft face in ME between GUARDIANs being a ubiquitous tech and the only known type of energy shielding being completely useless against DEWs.
Hm...I wonder if the Geth might be the ones to introduce the idea of Carriers into space combat. They seem like the best choice out of anyone (well, them or maybe the Rachni) since they could pilot a fighter/drone much more crazily than an organic pilot, and the chance of actually losing programs is near zero so long as they are fighting within communication range of another Geth capital ship, since as pure software lifeforms they could just hop out of their fighter before it gets destroyed.
If you were using the original interpretation of ME FTL they could even do the thing carriers were actually intended to do and be completely uninvolved in the battle by flitting around the edge of the system ahead of their Light-Echo and letting the Fighters use their cores to FTL to and from the targets basically at-will.
Hm...how do GUARDIAN's do their tracking, in your story? It can't be purely visual given the ranges they're operating at for 90% of the time they're engaging the missiles, so it must be some kind of radar or thermal tracking at longer ranges. This obviously wouldn't be something they can do in time for things to make a difference against the Batarians in this big upcoming battle, but could Humanity make some kind of 'jamming missile' that blares ECM and other jamming/distracting elements to let more actual nukes slip through the GUARDIAN net? I could swear I've seen something about the US developing something like that, and that it saw deployment by the Ukranians several months ago, but for the life of me, I cannot find it on Google so I might have dreamt that.
Hm...I wonder if the Geth might be the ones to introduce the idea of Carriers into space combat. They seem like the best choice out of anyone (well, them or maybe the Rachni) since they could pilot a fighter/drone much more crazily than an organic pilot, and the chance of actually losing programs is near zero so long as they are fighting within communication range of another Geth capital ship, since as pure software lifeforms they could just hop out of their fighter before it gets destroyed.
If you were using the original interpretation of ME FTL they could even do the thing carriers were actually intended to do and be completely uninvolved in the battle by flitting around the edge of the system ahead of their Light-Echo and letting the Fighters use their cores to FTL to and from the targets basically at-will.
Hm...how do GUARDIAN's do their tracking, in your story? It can't be purely visual given the ranges they're operating at for 90% of the time they're engaging the missiles, so it must be some kind of radar or thermal tracking at longer ranges. This obviously wouldn't be something they can do in time for things to make a difference against the Batarians in this big upcoming battle, but could Humanity make some kind of 'jamming missile' that blares ECM and other jamming/distracting elements to let more actual nukes slip through the GUARDIAN net? I could swear I've seen something about the US developing something like that, and that it saw deployment by the Ukranians several months ago, but for the life of me, I cannot find it on Google so I might have dreamt that.
Shattered
「注意、国連事務総長からの緊急発表をお待ちください。」
"Atenção, aguarde um anúncio de emergência do Secretário-Geral das Nações Unidas."
«Внимание, пожалуйста, ожидайте экстренного объявления от Генерального секретаря Организации Объединенных Наций»
"Achtung, bitte warten Sie auf eine Notfallmitteilung des Generalsekretärs der Vereinten Nationen."
"Perhatian, harap tunggu pengumuman darurat dari Sekretaris Jenderal Perserikatan Bangsa-Bangsa."
"请注意，请等待联合国秘书长的紧急通知。"
"ध्यान दें, कृपया संयुक्त राष्ट्र के महासचिव की आपातकालीन घोषणा के लिए प्रतीक्षा करें।"
" Ifarabalẹ, jọwọ duro fun ikede pajawiri lati ọdọ Akowe Gbogbogbo ti United Nations."
"Attention, veuillez attendre une annonce d'urgence du Secrétaire général des Nations Unies."
"Attention, please stand by for an emergency announcement from the Secretary General of the United Nations."
All across Earth and her colonies, in every living room, bar, restaurant, hydrogen station, and anywhere else a news stream might be found, conversation stopped and eyes shifted towards the nearest available screen. The collective heartbeat of humanity increased its rate for a few minutes. Because there was really only one reason the Secretary General would be addressing the entire species at once, given the circumstances. The screen was filled with the sky blue and white of the UN flag, and the emergency message flashed in bright bold white text on the screen in the most common local language of the region of whatever device it was playing on. Within a few agonizing seconds, the Secretary General, visibly aged since his last public address, appeared. Without anything in the way of preamble, he spoke.
"My fellow citizens. Approximately two hours ago at 0500 Standard Time, a massive fleet from the Batarian Hegemony passed through the Attican Traverse and then into our territory. All evidence indicates that their intention is to launch a direct attack upon the Earth itself. Our enemy is ruthless, well armed, and comes in large numbers. But, take heart! The brave men and women of the Space Force have gone to meet them in battle, with our allies at their side. They fight for everything they, you, and I hold dear. They have a free, united people standing behind them. Our enemies have naught but chains, cracking whips, and broken spirits standing behind them. Tyranny like theirs is the rocks, and Freedom - the freedoms our ancestors fought so long and so hard for - is the waves. No matter how long it takes, the rocks will, inevitably, break beneath the waves. As our ambassador so eloquently quoted when this war truly began: Sic Semper Tyrannus!"
The UN flag reappeared on the screen as the address ended. Beneath the seal, their motto "To the Stars, Together." began flashing repeatedly, each time it reappeared it did so in a different language. An instrumental of the anthem "United Nations on the March" played in the background.
Some in the species-wide audience decried the naivete of the statement. Moral righteousness would not magically conjure the thousands of ships needed to fill the gaps in numbers between the two militaries. Others were all in, wholeheartedly believing in the words and principles espoused by their Secretary General. Most were cautiously optimistic. After all, the Space Force had won nearly every (publicly disclosed) battle fought thus far, right? The alternative was to submit before a foe so repugnant, so anathema to the ideals of the brighter world the human race had built for itself, that it defied imagination. Regardless of their opinions, there was one thing every human being had in common at that moment.
They were all absolutely terrified.
---
January 22nd, 2091
Supreme Warlord Ettinay Zadeen Marek Sorrensett-Katz III, Commandant of the Hegemony Navy, surveyed the unassuming-looking star system. He watched on the tactical display as the fleet's sensors picked up the light of the small flotilla of human civilian and scout ships retreating through the relay to their home world. The fact that his fleet was even able to see the light of the event at all meant that it had happened several hours ago, as the relay was several light hours away from their position. He looked over the system once again. It was largely unremarkable, in terms of planets. It would be more or less irrelevant were it not for the several mass relays present within. It was a relay nexus, and - as the Navy had learned through many painful lessons during the early raids of the war - in this part of the relay network that was a very rare thing. Archaeologists could only speculate as to why the relay network was so sparse within this region of the galaxy, and no where else. The leading hypothesis was that the Protheans simply expanded to this particular region of the galaxy last, but the eternal shortage of significant records from their time meant it was impossible to determine.
The Supreme Warlord also did not know the reason for the relay shortage, but it made the humans' heavy (by their standards) development of the otherwise unimportant system make sense. That, and of course the fact that it was right on the doorstep of their home world. There was a substantial logistical starbase located at a lagrange point not far from the relay, though judging by the preliminary scans it had been stripped completely bare, much like all of the human space infrastructure the Warlord's fleet had encountered. Indeed, aside from the small flotillas of elcor scout ships that had been constantly monitoring them since they first crossed over into human space, they had had almost no contact with enemy forces. Granted, part of that was due to the relative brevity of the voyage itself - the fleet had bypassed all colonies and habitats, making it obvious to anyone with a brain that their target was Earth.
The purpose of the expedition was to destroy the enemy's ability to conduct an interstellar war, not to conduct lengthy land wars for strategically minor settlements. That particular point was something the Warlord had been trying to drill into the thick heads of his admirals for most of the voyage. The entire point of bringing along such a large support fleet was to be able to carry enough supplies to avoid the formation of supply lines for the enemy to cut. The fact that so many of his younger, more eager leadership didn't seem to comprehend that fact did not bode well for the Navy's future in the Warlord's not-so-humble opinion, but that was besides the point. Officially, the target of the operation was Earth and the Sol system, its starship construction facilities and other space infrastructure, as well as any industrial targets of opportunity that could be found on the surface of the planet itself. Of course, the actual goal of the expedition was to lure the human-elcor fleet into a decisive battle, where the enemy's war potential could be annihilated in one fell swoop. It was something of a rush job, as far as strategies went, but it was sound in principle, and the Ruling Council had stated in no uncertain terms that another highly-visible failure from the Navy would be "viewed disfavorably". In other words: they wanted a major victory for their propaganda, and they wanted it now.
It was for this reason that the Supreme Warlord was not particularly concerned with the humans' obvious intentions of luring his fleet to Earth. No doubt they intended to make a stand with their full strength and with the assistance of whatever static defenses the system may have in place. An attack on Earth would mean the humans being effectively knocked out of the war, in fact if not on paper, which would make the war effectively a forgone conclusion. The enemy had no choice but to answer his fleet, and because of that the Warlord did not feel any need to rush. In addition to the logistics starbase, there was also a substantial fuel and refinery station in orbit of the system's ringed gas giant, Eirene. According to his scouts' reports, the small civilian flotilla that had fled the system had been in the process of stripping the station's supplies before his scouts had arrived in-system and scared them off. In a stroke of luck, they had not completed their task in time, and now there was fuel and supplies ripe for the taking. Being a gas giant, it was also an excellent place to discharge the fleets' drives.
"Set course for Eirene, send scout satellites in advance as a precaution."
While the enemy fleet would obviously not be present, any remaining civilians hiding in the planet's system might prove a useful source of intelligence. He doubted he'd find anything, but the Warlord was content with topping off every ship's fuel, munitions, and supplies, discharging the drives, preparing scouts to go through the relay, and allowing his men to get some must needed rest before heading through the relay to Earth for what would likely be the deciding battle of the war. The Supreme Warlord rose from his command chair and left his flag bridge. He had a battle to plan, so he'd best get his rest out of the way first.
---
"Scout reports and satellite feeds are all clear sir. The station was uninhabited, but there was a decent amount of fuel. The fleet's in a tight orbit now. With your permission, we can begin discharging operations." Lord Admiral Zeteshett Ganizent-Fen, his Chief of Staff, informed him.
The Warlord nodded at him. "Good man. Let's begin."
The fleet began moving in for the discharge, but the attempt was soon aborted by the frightened cry of the flag bridge's sensors officer.
"Enemy fleet detected, two fleets converging in high orbit above us!"
"They must have been hiding. In the rings, perhaps?" The Chief of Staff speculated.
The seething form of Warlord Ettinay shook his head as he looked at the several thousand ships assuming formation "above" his fleet.
"No, not the rings, they couldn't have hidden this many ships there. They must have been hiding on the far side of the planet, judging by their direction."
The Chief scrunched up his face. "I suppose so, but if so then how did our satellites not pick them up?"
"An excellent question." The Warlord said with a freezing tone. He walked over to the sensors officer, shoving him out of the way and scrutinizing his terminal. He turned to glower at the officer.
"They hacked the feed, you imbecile! It's on a loop! "
The sensors officer looked like he was wishing very strongly to melt into the bulkheads beneath his Warlord's glare. Fortunately for the sensor officer's heart, the Chief of Staff interrupted.
"My Lord, we must react to the fleet."
The Warlord stood up straight and paused for a moment, before nodding. "You're correct, of course. Standard formation, deploy fighters and send the screeners out."
His officers rushed to relay his orders. The batarian fleet maneuvered to comply, fully powering up their mass effect fields to arrest their orbits and assume a typical formation. The frigates and destroyers maneuvered to form a screen at the front, while the standard and heavy cruisers and the Hegemony's five remaining active dreadnoughts took up an artillery position, their light cruiser escorts taking up protective positions around them. Fighter squadrons flowed like water throughout the formation, taking up a defensive posture.
The Warlord surveyed the enemy's fleet. They had half his numbers, give or take, and two dreadnoughts to his fleet's five. They were the flagships of the two historic elcor fleets. Elcor, quarian, turian, asari, and of course human warships could be counted among their numbers, along with scattered pockets of batarian, terminus, or independent warships. However, one very important ship was conspicuously absent. The Chief of Staff voiced Ettinay's own thoughts.
"I can't help but notice that a certain super ship is absent. Ambush?"
The Warlord shrugged. "Certainly possible, but Naval Intelligence has also gotten reports of it having been severely damaged in the previous battle. Even if it is operational, it's too large to hide in the rings, and if they are holding it in reserve on the far side of the planet, we'll see it soon enough when we've sent up new satellites. It's possible they still found a way to hide it somewhere, but one ship, no matter how well armed, is not going to make up for our numerical advantage."
The Chief of Staff nodded. "Agreed, but its missile complement is enough to inflict more casualties than strictly necessary."
The Warlord conceded the point. "True enough. I'll hold a detachment of our light cruisers in place as escorts. If they try for a decapitating strike on our heavy squadron, we'll be protected by their point defenses. Contact the unit commanders: Have the standard cruiser squadrons distribute themselves amongst the destroyers and frigates, and have all wings join them. We have both fighter and numerical superiority. They are then to go on the offensive with the goal of seizing our enemies by the belt buckle dividing their forces, they cannot be allowed to draw us in with an orderly retreat like in the last battle. We'll cut them into chunks and then defeat those chunks in detail with our artillery. Let's get to it."
The Chief of Staff gave a quick "Yes, my Lord." and went about relaying the Warlord's orders.
The batarian cruisers and escorts formed up into an offensive posture, with fighter support distributed throughout their ranks, and then rushed to meet the enemy in close quarters battle. The enemy fired the first shots, their spinal mounts sending a wave of metal crashing into the batarian fleet, who responded with a volley of their own as they continued closing the gap. Several more volleys were exchanged as the batarian fleet began decelerating to combat speed with their reverse thrusters. Once the gap was finally closed, the batarian detachment - with fire support from their dreadnoughts and heavy cruisers in the rear - engaged their enemy directly. A brutal melee ensued.
---
Major Achebe watched his visual display in horror as the destroyer Schleswig-Holstein's kinetic barriers buckled beneath the hail of secondary cannon fire flying through the chaotic battle. An opportunistic batarian cruiser in the distance saw this opening and sent a spinal mount round that nearly bisected the stricken ship. The destroyer went up in flames, and a massive hole was torn into the point defense grid of Major Achebe's unit. His unit was centered around the cruiser Lubnaan, whose left flank now had only the frigate Cheyenne - Achebe's ship - to protect it. A squadron of batarian fighters noticed this gap in the defenses, and went to launch an attack run on the Lubnaan. The human cruiser was currently working in tandem with a trio of turian light cruisers to provide vital fire support for another area of the battle, it could not let up even for a second. It had entrusted its flank to its escorts.
"Bring us forward, start laying down suppressive fire on those fighters, and call headquarters for fighter support." Major Achebe ordered.
Cheyenne moved forward, her secondary cannons sending out a hail of bullets in the hopes of scoring a lucky hit on the incoming fighters. The Major listened to the comms, daring to hope that the wildly outnumbered and outmatched allied fighters could spare some support. He cheered with his officers as a quarian voice came over the comm.
"This is Soreet squadron, we've got your back."
The quarian fighters moved in. They were one of the few quarian craft to be built by the Migrant fleet itself rather than purchased from a third party, and thus they followed pre-geth quarian design philosophy, sacrificing protection for superior maneuverability and firepower. For this reason, Soreet squadron was able to rapidly intercept the slower batarian fighters, tearing into them with their autocannons. They dueled the batarian fighters, but they were outnumbered two to one.
"Bring us into GARDIAN range, I want fire support on those fighters, now!" The Major ordered. It would mean exposing the frigate to torpedo fire, but if someone didn't help that quarian squadron they would lose.
Cheyenne's laser array tore into the batarian fighters, who briefly scattered in a panic, before a detachment broke off to make an attack run on Cheyenne.
"Pour it on 'em, don't let them launch!" The defensive fire was heavy, but the distances were too close. It was clear that the batarian fighters would get the chance to launch.
"With professional calm: Watch your fire, Cheyenne, friendlies coming in at 270 degrees."
A pair of elcor fighters swooped in, laying into the batarian fighters with their turrets. The surprised batarians died in seconds, failing to get into torpedo range.
"With eagerness at the approaching victory: Soreet squadron, this is Hunter Element 86, we're coming for support, check your fire."
The elcor fighters were comically oversized, more akin to light gunships. Citadel electronic warfare made the necessity of an organic pilot an unchanging factor, but the size of the elcor form and their need for extensive VI support in combat meant that the chassis of their starfighters had to be unconventionally large. While their reaction speed and physical bulk provided some challenges, their incredible resistance to gee forces made up for it in many ways. The size of their craft combined with the reduced power draw of their inertial compensators made elcor fighters among the most heavily armed and shielded in the galaxy. They paired conveniently well with the quarian fighters, their complete opposites. They proved this by ripping the remainder of the batarian fighter element to shreds.
The quarian squadron commander signaled her farewell. "Skies are clear, Cheyenne, we're breaking off."
In the distance, a batarian cruiser's shields finally buckled, and she was punished beneath a deluge of withering fire from Lubnaan and the three turian cruisers she was coordinating with. A total collapse of the batarian cruiser's squadron was forestalled by a timely artillery barrage from a pair of batarian heavy cruisers in the backline. While it accomplished little in terms of damage, it did force Lubnaan and her turian friends to back off.
Major Achebe took a moment to catch his breath, but barely thrity seconds passed before orders from Lieutenant Colonel Schneider came in, ordering the Lubnaan's battle group into the fray elsewhere. The Major sighed internally.
I hope the plan is executed soon, because I don't know how much more of this chaos we can take.
---
Supreme Warlord Ettinay looked over the battle as it played out. It was largely a formality by now. The enemy had, obviously, intended to use the same tactic they had before against that hapless fool, Lemikettziy: Using a feigned retreat to draw his forces out, then delivering a devastating missile barrage against the disorganized defenses of a stretched out fleet. By charging his standard cruisers and escorts in close and forcing them into a melee, it was instead he who was disrupting their formation. Resistance was stiffer than one might expect for such a heavily outnumbered and ramshackle excuse for a fleet, but they were too outgunned for it to truly matter. At the end of the day, they had a mere two dreadnoughts and a few dozen heavy cruisers at the most, while his own fleet had five dreadnoughts and well over three times the number of heavy cruisers. This vastly superior artillery battery of his had effectively nullified the enemy's heavy ships, keeping them suppressed and pinned down in the backline. It was only a matter of time until his battle plans came to fruition, and his ships managed to use their superior numbers to encircle sections of the enemy fleet, whereupon his artillery would annihilate them.
His Chief of Staff tilted his head at him. "It's going well. Shall we move some of the heavy fleet up to secondary cannon range?"
The Warlord nodded. "Yes, I think you're right. Send a detachment of our heavy cruisers forward. And have them take a sizeable detachment of our light cruisers with them to distribute throughout the rest of their formation. I have a feeling the enemy will attempt a disorganized missile strike to cover their retreat. The extra point defenses will be needed there more than they're needed here."
"Understood sir, I'll get a detachment organized now."
---
Star Marshal Planta leaned against Major Henderson's - her tactical officer - chair, looking over his shoulder at his screen.
"That's a good chunk of their escorts breaking off there. I don't think we're going to get a better opportunity than this."
The Major nodded. "Understood, establishing targeting link with our sensor grid, and...done."
He looked up at her and gave her an exasperated smile. "It's going to be interesting trying to put together a firing solution in these winds."
---
The Supreme Warlord watched the battle in satisfaction. The enemy would reach their breaking point soon. His satisfaction was abruptly vaporized by his sensor officer calling out.
"My Lord, heat signatures! In low orbit to our rear. Some kind of drones."
"Drones?" The Chief of Staff barely managed to get out, before several of the escorting light cruisers went up in explosions.
"What was that?" The Warlord demanded.
His tactical officer had an answer. "My Lord, mass driver volley has hit us in the rear, several mission-kills, multiple damage reports!"
"What? Our rear?" The Chief asked incredulously.
The Warlord growled. "Damn them, they've been hiding in the atmosphere! That's what the drones were for."
If looks could kill, then the sensor officers on board his flag bridge would have turned to dust when his enraged gaze locked onto them
"How in all the hells did you miss them? I swear by all the gods, every sensors officer in this fleet will be swinging from a fucking gallows by the time I'm through with them!"
The Chief shook his head in disgust. "This explains how the fleet in front of us hid from our preliminary scans, but for the fleet behind us...they must have been far deeper within the atmosphere than their main fleet."
"That's impossible! Nothing with anything less than a dreadnought-grade drive core could survive for more than ten minutes that far down."
The Chief grimaced. "I can think of at least one ship with an even bigger drive core than a dreadnought."
"Another volley incoming!" The tactical officer cried.
A good number of cruiser-caliber spinal mount rounds slammed into the heavy squadron's rear. Their targets seemed to be primarily the light cruisers. A single round, far greater in caliber, slammed into one of the light cruisers. The Warlord watched on the visual feed as the ship was torn in half by the powerful gun.
"Gods damn the lot of them, that's where they were hiding that superdreadnought! How are the smaller ships that are clearly with it surviving the winds, though?"
"Maybe its mass effect field is simply that enormous?" The Chief speculated. "Regardless of the how, we need to make a decision."
The Warlord nodded. "Yes, we do. Shooting back through that storm is a fool's errand. We might try shooting down the drones, but they'll just replace them, and we'll be sitting here taking volley after volley until they run out. Bring the fleet forward towards the main battle, out of their range."
The Chief frowned. "I doubt they'll just sit there in the atmosphere and let us collapse on their fleet."
"I'm counting on it. We'll force them to reveal themselves, and then we'll pummel that damnable superdreadnought before it can drop its payload."
---
Major Henderson gave a disappointed sigh. "I suppose it was too much to ask for them to be stupid enough to try and shoot back."
Marshal Planta chuckled and patted his shoulder. "Let's not get greedy. We'll swallow his bait. If he reacts the way I think he will, then we might have just worked a miracle. Take us forward."
---
It did not take long for the concealed enemy to panic and reveal themselves when the Warlord had made his intentions clear. They came into low orbit, a good number of human cruisers huddled closely around the superdreadnought, no doubt relying on its mass effect field to shield them from the awesome power of the gas giant's winds. With no atmosphere to create any drag, their range was no longer reduced, and so they immediately began opening up on the heavy squadron again.
"Turn us around, send the light cruisers forward in a screen formation, overlap the PD envelopes."
At the Chief of Staff's questioning look, the Warlord smiled. "No doubt they expect me to seize the opportunity and charge in like those fools from their last battle. But that's simply not enough ships to credibly threaten us with gunfire alone. Their missiles will be a problem, but any that manage to make it through a dedicated screen formation to us will be shot down by our own point defenses."
The light cruisers followed the Warlord's orders and maneuvered into a vertical circular shape in front of the heavier ships, spaced apart in such a manner that their point defense grids overlapped each other. The enemy ships focused their fire on the light cruisers as they maneuvered into place. Their intention was obvious: Tear a hole within the defensive screen, and then launch their missile salvo. The unfortunate truth for the poor, deluded humans was that they did not have enough guns in their concealed fleet to tear a big enough hole. They'd also exposed the big, fat target that was their flagship.
"Concentrate fire on the superdreadnought!" The Warlord ordered.
---
Five dreadnought rounds came in hard, and two of them struck the powerful barriers of the Olympus Mons. Star Marshal Planta took a breath.
"Ok, people, playtime is over. This is the last hurrah, it's do or die. All ships, charge!"
There was a ragged cheer throughout the flag bridge. The massive engine of the Olympus Mons roared, sending the enormous bulk of the craft forward, her faithful escorts following. Marshal Planta keyed her comm.
"Colonel Li, you have your green light."
---
Eirene had been chosen as the location for the trap for several reasons. The fact that it was in Arcturus, and thus was a place the enemy was guaranteed to be in at some point, was the most prominent. It was a gas giant, which - for obvious reasons - was critical, and unlike its sister planet Themis it had extensive fuel infrastructure which could be used to bait the trap. Most importantly, it had a moon - Meliae - that was very geothermically active. So active that the surface was quite hot. Hot enough to mask the presence of heat radiators, if designed carefully.
Radiators that, as an example, might be used for the waste heat of a base.
Beneath the surgface of Meliae, aboard his flagship Red Cliffs Colonel Timothy Li grinned as he heard his orders.
"Yes, Ma'am." He turned to his communications officer. "Signal the squadron, we're going in for a lancer run. Maximum acceleration."
He looked to his tactical officer. "Prepare to launch from all silos on my command."
Within the cavernous hanger that had been constructed on the moon for this exact moment, one hundred interceptors roared to life. Massive hanger doors - camouflaged by a layer of rock - opened up, and the interceptors began taking off like a fleet of old bomber planes. When they'd left the moon's gravity well behind and were already on their way to the target, Tim nodded at his tactical officer.
"Launch."
From the siloes below, Emperor missiles streaked out of the siloes at high speed. Aside from those in the silo of Olympus Mons, the missiles on the moon represented effectively every single Emperor missile that had ever been constructed. They trailed just barely behind the interceptor flight, waiting to unleash their devastating power.
---
"The enemy is charging, my Lord. On both fronts!"
"A small fleet of heat signatures just launched from the planet's moon, they are coming towards us at high speed!"
The Supreme Warlord clenched his fists in rage. They have me split the fleet up and isolate my heavy squadron, then they gut me with the dagger they had hidden up their sleeve. They already had an excellent trap laid, but then I had to go and practically gift wrap it for them top of it with the fleet positionings. Well played, for bunch of hairy fucking apes.
He looked at the tactical display. The Chief of Staff did the same, and gave him a stricken look.
"My Lord, I recognize those missiles, and I'm sure you do as well. Normal point defenses will not be effective, or at least not for that many. Nevermind the frigate fleet they apparently hid away as well. I'd suggest retreat, but conventional speeds won't cut it, they're coming on too fast. Should we consider an emergency jump?"
An emergency FTL jump would bring a great risk to the fleet. It was almost a certainty that a great number of ships would be lost in the effort. More importantly. it would mean the Supreme Warlord would have to return home in defeat.
He looked at his Chief gravely. "Consider, Lord Admiral: What happens if we return home as the leaders of the greatest military disaster in the history of the Hegemony? What happens to our families?"
The Chief's expression was stony. "...So, you mean to salve our guilt with an honorable death in battle, in the hopes they might spare our families? You realize, of course, that it will all but guarantee the death of the Hegemony? Even if we still manage to win by attrition, without the heavy fleet to keep the nobles in line..."
The Supreme Warlord laughed. "The Hegemony killed itself the moment it started this pointless war, don't you see that now? Anyone with the strength to overthrow the weak fools is welcome to it, as far as I'm concerned. We still have a duty to protect our homeland, however..."
"I take it you want to order us to come about towards the enemy's main fleet?"
The Supreme Warlord smiled at the Chief of Staff. "Indeed. Good man. The superdreadnought will just retreat into the atmosphere, no point wasting our limited time chasing it. All ships are to launch a full frontal assault on their main fleet. All targeting priority is to be focused on the dreadnoughts and heavy cruisers. We must destroy their ability to threaten our space in the near future."
---
Marshal Planta watched in confusion as the batarian heavy ships rapidly turned and burned for the main allied fleet. At first she assumed they were making the obvious choice and retreating, but it quickly became clear that it was an attack run, not a retreat. When it finally clicked, she slammed her console in anger.
"Damn those crazy bastards."
On seeing the confused looks of her officers, she clarified. "He's refusing to retreat, but he's not standing his ground either. He intends to take our fleet down with us. All cruisers are to prep for missile launch, we need to beat these escorts, quickly. And inform Admiral Naffot that she has permission to fire the missiles from the human craft in her fleet at her discretion. Then tell her to get the hell out of there before her fleet gets torn in half!"
---
Aboard the Cheyenne, Major Achebe looked at his tactical display with a mixture of terror and exhaustion. The trap had been sprung, and the enemy had reacted with a mad charge. The rest of Cheyenne's unit had all fallen, even Lubnaan. Cheyenne now escorted a heavily modified batarian light cruiser of some renown by the name of Liberty, who had become the flagship for a ragged, adhoc unit of scattered survivors from other destroyed units. It consisted of Cheyenne, Liberty's equally famous escort Hell's Bane, a Maenus cluster destroyer that was covered bow-to-stern in pockmarks from enemy weapons fire, a quartet of quarian armed freighters, and two aging undersized Tellagian patrol frigates.
As the enemy continued their full-on charge, an order from their elcor admiral, Naffot, came through every comms system in the surviving fleet.
"Gravely: All remaining human ships are to launch missiles at their captains' discretion, target priority is the cruisers. This is the final gasp of their fleet. All we need do is hold them long enough for our allies to deal the killing blow. Take heart, and make an orderly retreat. They mean to break the back of our fleet as their last act. Do not let them."
Captain Onatheer, an officer amongst the batarian rebel navy, commander of their flagship Liberty, and the leader of the adhoc flotilla, messaged all ships in the Liberty's battlegroup.
"Well, you heard the woman. Major Achebe, prep for a full missile salvo. Aim for that cruiser...there." He highlighted a ship on the tactical display. "Right at the heart of that little flotilla that thinks it has our number. Everyone else, follow me. We'll cover him."
The Liberty fired her reverse thrusters, her escorts doing the same, and the little flotilla followed the rest of the fleet as it attempted an orderly retreat. Just as Captain Onatheer had predicted, the flotilla with the cruiser he'd indicated charged straight for Liberty and her escorts. Liberty and the two destroyers took a few potshots at the fleet with their spinal mounts. An escorting batarian frigate was completely destroyed as it was struck by the rounds, the increased kinetic energy from its high velocity was more than its barriers could hope to bare. A few more seconds passed, and Onatheer suddenly gave his command.
"Now, Major! Right down their throat!"
"Open all silos and launch all!" Major Achebe roared.
A dozen prince missiles and two King missiles shot out from their siloes. The Cheyenne's tactical officer demonstrated his skill and initiative as he set the missiles on a slightly curved trajectory, coming in from the direction where the destroyed frigate had been. Without the additional point defense from the frigate, the cruiser didn't have a prayer of shooting down the entire salvo. The Princes were destroyed, but the Kings survived due to their longer engagement range keeping them in the PD's engagement envelope for less time. Cheyenne's tactical officer had programmed them expertly. They detonated in quick succession. The first beam stripped away the hull plating, and a fraction of a second later the second beam ripped into the hull itself. Everyone in the entire forward and mid sections of the cruiser was boiled alive.
"Great shots! The rest of that flotilla will be closing in now, everyone get ready for a fight. We only need to hold the line a few moments longer. Just long enough for a friend of mine to deliver the goods." Onatheer said, a smile in his voice.
---
Tim scowled as he watched on his visual feed as the distant form of a turian heavy cruiser went up in a massive explosion, ripped apart by the terrible fusillade of the batarian heavy guns. He gave it a quick salute as it went down. It had been physically blocking what would have been a lethal incoming volley towards one of the elcor dreadnoughts. Crazy, brave bastards.
The elcor dreadnoughts were still alive for the moment, but their barriers were collapsing. The one that the turians had sacrificed themselves for had had just enough time bought for it to recycle its buckled shields, but they were still only at partial strength. Tim needed to silence those guns, quickly. The interceptors were coming up on their target, and Tim gave his orders.
"All ships, prepare to launch payload on my mark...5...4...3...2...1...Mark!"
A swarm of tiny kinetic missiles poured out of the interceptor's silos. The interceptors chose not to launch their Prince missiles. With the fleet of Emperors behind them, it would be overkill. Well over a dozen interceptors had been destroyed, instantly vaporized by even a glancing blow due to their incredible velocity, but that velocity proved its value as the kinetic missiles hailed down on the batarian dreadnoughts and heavy cruisers.
"Alright, all ships are to decelerate and regroup. All things going well, we're on mop-up duty."
---
The Supreme Warlord couldn't help but remember the pitter-patter of rain and sleet from the numerous storms hitting the roof of his family mansion during his childhood on his home colony. Unlike those storms, the awful deluge his flagship and subordinate ships were under lasted only a scant few seconds, but inflicted heavy damage and dropped the shields of most of them. More importantly, it had caused the ships to maneuver in an effort to avoid the incoming targets and thus exposed them to the oncoming missiles.
The Warlord wasn't exactly "satisfied" as he - in the last handful of seconds before the human missiles annihilated his ships - watched the visual feed of one of the elcor dreadnoughts going up in an explosion. For starters, he had been hoping to get both. Also, he had been hoping to win this engagement, but it was clear to him now that he had lost the moment he'd gone into orbit of this-
His thoughts were interrupted by the scorching light of a bomb-pumped laser cooking his flagship from the inside out. While a sizeable chunk had been shot down by lucky shots from secondary cannons, most of the Emperors got to their engagement range and detonated their warheads. The VIs of every surviving ship present automatically closed the shutter for every telescope, so the cameras wouldn't be fried by the temporary sun that the missiles had summoned. Every ship that was struck by an Emperor died, without exception. Effectively the entirety of the mainline heavy ships of the Hegemony were now hulks of radioactive slag, with the exception of a handful of heavy cruisers who had been in the thick of the melee and had thus been split off from the main group.
In such a tactical situation, the rational decision would be to retreat and regroup. However, the Batarian Hegemony was not a rational institution. It had, after all, executed an entire small town's worth of men for the crime of being a ship captain in a fleet that had failed. That fact was no doubt in the minds of the surviving batarian captains. And so, they continued their reckless charge, losing all cohesion as the handful of surviving flag officers struggled to reorganize, somehow. The sheer momentum and the weight of the enemy's still very substantial numbers was enough to carve a bloody swathe. Allied ships were destroyed or damaged by the dozen, including several more of the priceless heavy cruisers. But, eventually, the attack stumbled its way through and then away from the allied fleet. The flag officers managed to scrape together some semblance of a formation, and they turned to face the reorganizing allied fleet.
For a moment, it looked like they planned to charge again, but then Olympus Mons and her escorts advanced to join the rest of the fleet. The scattered survivors of the light cruiser detachment fleeing in every direction served as compelling evidence for what happened to ships that opposed her. The Arsenal Ship got into formation, and began opening its silo threateningly. The tattered remnants of the batarian morale shattered. They feared punishment, but they feared that terrible ship far more. They burned hard for the relay out of the system.
--
Star Marshal Planta collapsed into her chair and gave a near-hysterical giggle. "Jesus Christ. We actually did it. Inform Colonel Li that he still has a full complement of missiles, and I expect him to use them. Everyone else shall not pursue. They still outnumber us heavily."
She closed her eyes, praying that when she opened them again it wouldn't turn out to be a dream. Mercifully, it was not.
I suppose that's to be expected. If it had been a dream, I would have lost. Just like I have in all of the nightmares I have had of this battle.
"Alright people, you know the drill. Rescue shuttles out, frigates on mop-up and prisoner duty for all these suddenly-motherless fighters and stragglers. Let's tally up the butcher bill."
---
Throughout the galaxy, amidst the numerous, ongoing disasters, there was a brief moment of peace. For just a few minutes, the ordinary people of the galaxy enjoyed the sensation of being pleasantly surprised. For that scant stretch of time, hope reigned. The impossible was possible. David could beat Goliath. Miracles could happen. But then the moment passed, and the crushing reality of the times returned. The galaxy was in economic freefall, the most powerful military in existence was spiraling towards civil war, the asari and salarian alliance was crumbling, and the humans almost certainly still had a long, bloody war ahead of them. But, those few minutes of hope would be remembered fondly by most for years to come. It was a much needed reminder that - even in a galaxy that was falling apart at the seams - the Good Guys could still win.
---
Good God that was long. Anyways, the idea for this battle happened when I watched the opening cutscene for the direlect reaper mission from Mass Effect 2 again. The whole "entering a big ship's mass effect field causes the winds to stop" thing inspired me.
Also, I apologize to anyone whose language got butchered by Google Translate in the opening paragraphs. I am unfortunately not a linguistic prodigy so I have to do it the lazy man's way if I want other languages in my story.
This is intended as the climax of the "Fissures" arc, more or less, so the focus might shift a little in future chapters.
As always, thank you very much for reading!
"Atenção, aguarde um anúncio de emergência do Secretário-Geral das Nações Unidas."
«Внимание, пожалуйста, ожидайте экстренного объявления от Генерального секретаря Организации Объединенных Наций»
"Achtung, bitte warten Sie auf eine Notfallmitteilung des Generalsekretärs der Vereinten Nationen."
"Perhatian, harap tunggu pengumuman darurat dari Sekretaris Jenderal Perserikatan Bangsa-Bangsa."
"请注意，请等待联合国秘书长的紧急通知。"
"ध्यान दें, कृपया संयुक्त राष्ट्र के महासचिव की आपातकालीन घोषणा के लिए प्रतीक्षा करें।"
" Ifarabalẹ, jọwọ duro fun ikede pajawiri lati ọdọ Akowe Gbogbogbo ti United Nations."
"Attention, veuillez attendre une annonce d'urgence du Secrétaire général des Nations Unies."
"Attention, please stand by for an emergency announcement from the Secretary General of the United Nations."
All across Earth and her colonies, in every living room, bar, restaurant, hydrogen station, and anywhere else a news stream might be found, conversation stopped and eyes shifted towards the nearest available screen. The collective heartbeat of humanity increased its rate for a few minutes. Because there was really only one reason the Secretary General would be addressing the entire species at once, given the circumstances. The screen was filled with the sky blue and white of the UN flag, and the emergency message flashed in bright bold white text on the screen in the most common local language of the region of whatever device it was playing on. Within a few agonizing seconds, the Secretary General, visibly aged since his last public address, appeared. Without anything in the way of preamble, he spoke.
"My fellow citizens. Approximately two hours ago at 0500 Standard Time, a massive fleet from the Batarian Hegemony passed through the Attican Traverse and then into our territory. All evidence indicates that their intention is to launch a direct attack upon the Earth itself. Our enemy is ruthless, well armed, and comes in large numbers. But, take heart! The brave men and women of the Space Force have gone to meet them in battle, with our allies at their side. They fight for everything they, you, and I hold dear. They have a free, united people standing behind them. Our enemies have naught but chains, cracking whips, and broken spirits standing behind them. Tyranny like theirs is the rocks, and Freedom - the freedoms our ancestors fought so long and so hard for - is the waves. No matter how long it takes, the rocks will, inevitably, break beneath the waves. As our ambassador so eloquently quoted when this war truly began: Sic Semper Tyrannus!"
The UN flag reappeared on the screen as the address ended. Beneath the seal, their motto "To the Stars, Together." began flashing repeatedly, each time it reappeared it did so in a different language. An instrumental of the anthem "United Nations on the March" played in the background.
Some in the species-wide audience decried the naivete of the statement. Moral righteousness would not magically conjure the thousands of ships needed to fill the gaps in numbers between the two militaries. Others were all in, wholeheartedly believing in the words and principles espoused by their Secretary General. Most were cautiously optimistic. After all, the Space Force had won nearly every (publicly disclosed) battle fought thus far, right? The alternative was to submit before a foe so repugnant, so anathema to the ideals of the brighter world the human race had built for itself, that it defied imagination. Regardless of their opinions, there was one thing every human being had in common at that moment.
They were all absolutely terrified.
---
January 22nd, 2091
Supreme Warlord Ettinay Zadeen Marek Sorrensett-Katz III, Commandant of the Hegemony Navy, surveyed the unassuming-looking star system. He watched on the tactical display as the fleet's sensors picked up the light of the small flotilla of human civilian and scout ships retreating through the relay to their home world. The fact that his fleet was even able to see the light of the event at all meant that it had happened several hours ago, as the relay was several light hours away from their position. He looked over the system once again. It was largely unremarkable, in terms of planets. It would be more or less irrelevant were it not for the several mass relays present within. It was a relay nexus, and - as the Navy had learned through many painful lessons during the early raids of the war - in this part of the relay network that was a very rare thing. Archaeologists could only speculate as to why the relay network was so sparse within this region of the galaxy, and no where else. The leading hypothesis was that the Protheans simply expanded to this particular region of the galaxy last, but the eternal shortage of significant records from their time meant it was impossible to determine.
The Supreme Warlord also did not know the reason for the relay shortage, but it made the humans' heavy (by their standards) development of the otherwise unimportant system make sense. That, and of course the fact that it was right on the doorstep of their home world. There was a substantial logistical starbase located at a lagrange point not far from the relay, though judging by the preliminary scans it had been stripped completely bare, much like all of the human space infrastructure the Warlord's fleet had encountered. Indeed, aside from the small flotillas of elcor scout ships that had been constantly monitoring them since they first crossed over into human space, they had had almost no contact with enemy forces. Granted, part of that was due to the relative brevity of the voyage itself - the fleet had bypassed all colonies and habitats, making it obvious to anyone with a brain that their target was Earth.
The purpose of the expedition was to destroy the enemy's ability to conduct an interstellar war, not to conduct lengthy land wars for strategically minor settlements. That particular point was something the Warlord had been trying to drill into the thick heads of his admirals for most of the voyage. The entire point of bringing along such a large support fleet was to be able to carry enough supplies to avoid the formation of supply lines for the enemy to cut. The fact that so many of his younger, more eager leadership didn't seem to comprehend that fact did not bode well for the Navy's future in the Warlord's not-so-humble opinion, but that was besides the point. Officially, the target of the operation was Earth and the Sol system, its starship construction facilities and other space infrastructure, as well as any industrial targets of opportunity that could be found on the surface of the planet itself. Of course, the actual goal of the expedition was to lure the human-elcor fleet into a decisive battle, where the enemy's war potential could be annihilated in one fell swoop. It was something of a rush job, as far as strategies went, but it was sound in principle, and the Ruling Council had stated in no uncertain terms that another highly-visible failure from the Navy would be "viewed disfavorably". In other words: they wanted a major victory for their propaganda, and they wanted it now.
It was for this reason that the Supreme Warlord was not particularly concerned with the humans' obvious intentions of luring his fleet to Earth. No doubt they intended to make a stand with their full strength and with the assistance of whatever static defenses the system may have in place. An attack on Earth would mean the humans being effectively knocked out of the war, in fact if not on paper, which would make the war effectively a forgone conclusion. The enemy had no choice but to answer his fleet, and because of that the Warlord did not feel any need to rush. In addition to the logistics starbase, there was also a substantial fuel and refinery station in orbit of the system's ringed gas giant, Eirene. According to his scouts' reports, the small civilian flotilla that had fled the system had been in the process of stripping the station's supplies before his scouts had arrived in-system and scared them off. In a stroke of luck, they had not completed their task in time, and now there was fuel and supplies ripe for the taking. Being a gas giant, it was also an excellent place to discharge the fleets' drives.
"Set course for Eirene, send scout satellites in advance as a precaution."
While the enemy fleet would obviously not be present, any remaining civilians hiding in the planet's system might prove a useful source of intelligence. He doubted he'd find anything, but the Warlord was content with topping off every ship's fuel, munitions, and supplies, discharging the drives, preparing scouts to go through the relay, and allowing his men to get some must needed rest before heading through the relay to Earth for what would likely be the deciding battle of the war. The Supreme Warlord rose from his command chair and left his flag bridge. He had a battle to plan, so he'd best get his rest out of the way first.
---
"Scout reports and satellite feeds are all clear sir. The station was uninhabited, but there was a decent amount of fuel. The fleet's in a tight orbit now. With your permission, we can begin discharging operations." Lord Admiral Zeteshett Ganizent-Fen, his Chief of Staff, informed him.
The Warlord nodded at him. "Good man. Let's begin."
The fleet began moving in for the discharge, but the attempt was soon aborted by the frightened cry of the flag bridge's sensors officer.
"Enemy fleet detected, two fleets converging in high orbit above us!"
"They must have been hiding. In the rings, perhaps?" The Chief of Staff speculated.
The seething form of Warlord Ettinay shook his head as he looked at the several thousand ships assuming formation "above" his fleet.
"No, not the rings, they couldn't have hidden this many ships there. They must have been hiding on the far side of the planet, judging by their direction."
The Chief scrunched up his face. "I suppose so, but if so then how did our satellites not pick them up?"
"An excellent question." The Warlord said with a freezing tone. He walked over to the sensors officer, shoving him out of the way and scrutinizing his terminal. He turned to glower at the officer.
"They hacked the feed, you imbecile! It's on a loop! "
The sensors officer looked like he was wishing very strongly to melt into the bulkheads beneath his Warlord's glare. Fortunately for the sensor officer's heart, the Chief of Staff interrupted.
"My Lord, we must react to the fleet."
The Warlord stood up straight and paused for a moment, before nodding. "You're correct, of course. Standard formation, deploy fighters and send the screeners out."
His officers rushed to relay his orders. The batarian fleet maneuvered to comply, fully powering up their mass effect fields to arrest their orbits and assume a typical formation. The frigates and destroyers maneuvered to form a screen at the front, while the standard and heavy cruisers and the Hegemony's five remaining active dreadnoughts took up an artillery position, their light cruiser escorts taking up protective positions around them. Fighter squadrons flowed like water throughout the formation, taking up a defensive posture.
The Warlord surveyed the enemy's fleet. They had half his numbers, give or take, and two dreadnoughts to his fleet's five. They were the flagships of the two historic elcor fleets. Elcor, quarian, turian, asari, and of course human warships could be counted among their numbers, along with scattered pockets of batarian, terminus, or independent warships. However, one very important ship was conspicuously absent. The Chief of Staff voiced Ettinay's own thoughts.
"I can't help but notice that a certain super ship is absent. Ambush?"
The Warlord shrugged. "Certainly possible, but Naval Intelligence has also gotten reports of it having been severely damaged in the previous battle. Even if it is operational, it's too large to hide in the rings, and if they are holding it in reserve on the far side of the planet, we'll see it soon enough when we've sent up new satellites. It's possible they still found a way to hide it somewhere, but one ship, no matter how well armed, is not going to make up for our numerical advantage."
The Chief of Staff nodded. "Agreed, but its missile complement is enough to inflict more casualties than strictly necessary."
The Warlord conceded the point. "True enough. I'll hold a detachment of our light cruisers in place as escorts. If they try for a decapitating strike on our heavy squadron, we'll be protected by their point defenses. Contact the unit commanders: Have the standard cruiser squadrons distribute themselves amongst the destroyers and frigates, and have all wings join them. We have both fighter and numerical superiority. They are then to go on the offensive with the goal of seizing our enemies by the belt buckle dividing their forces, they cannot be allowed to draw us in with an orderly retreat like in the last battle. We'll cut them into chunks and then defeat those chunks in detail with our artillery. Let's get to it."
The Chief of Staff gave a quick "Yes, my Lord." and went about relaying the Warlord's orders.
The batarian cruisers and escorts formed up into an offensive posture, with fighter support distributed throughout their ranks, and then rushed to meet the enemy in close quarters battle. The enemy fired the first shots, their spinal mounts sending a wave of metal crashing into the batarian fleet, who responded with a volley of their own as they continued closing the gap. Several more volleys were exchanged as the batarian fleet began decelerating to combat speed with their reverse thrusters. Once the gap was finally closed, the batarian detachment - with fire support from their dreadnoughts and heavy cruisers in the rear - engaged their enemy directly. A brutal melee ensued.
---
Major Achebe watched his visual display in horror as the destroyer Schleswig-Holstein's kinetic barriers buckled beneath the hail of secondary cannon fire flying through the chaotic battle. An opportunistic batarian cruiser in the distance saw this opening and sent a spinal mount round that nearly bisected the stricken ship. The destroyer went up in flames, and a massive hole was torn into the point defense grid of Major Achebe's unit. His unit was centered around the cruiser Lubnaan, whose left flank now had only the frigate Cheyenne - Achebe's ship - to protect it. A squadron of batarian fighters noticed this gap in the defenses, and went to launch an attack run on the Lubnaan. The human cruiser was currently working in tandem with a trio of turian light cruisers to provide vital fire support for another area of the battle, it could not let up even for a second. It had entrusted its flank to its escorts.
"Bring us forward, start laying down suppressive fire on those fighters, and call headquarters for fighter support." Major Achebe ordered.
Cheyenne moved forward, her secondary cannons sending out a hail of bullets in the hopes of scoring a lucky hit on the incoming fighters. The Major listened to the comms, daring to hope that the wildly outnumbered and outmatched allied fighters could spare some support. He cheered with his officers as a quarian voice came over the comm.
"This is Soreet squadron, we've got your back."
The quarian fighters moved in. They were one of the few quarian craft to be built by the Migrant fleet itself rather than purchased from a third party, and thus they followed pre-geth quarian design philosophy, sacrificing protection for superior maneuverability and firepower. For this reason, Soreet squadron was able to rapidly intercept the slower batarian fighters, tearing into them with their autocannons. They dueled the batarian fighters, but they were outnumbered two to one.
"Bring us into GARDIAN range, I want fire support on those fighters, now!" The Major ordered. It would mean exposing the frigate to torpedo fire, but if someone didn't help that quarian squadron they would lose.
Cheyenne's laser array tore into the batarian fighters, who briefly scattered in a panic, before a detachment broke off to make an attack run on Cheyenne.
"Pour it on 'em, don't let them launch!" The defensive fire was heavy, but the distances were too close. It was clear that the batarian fighters would get the chance to launch.
"With professional calm: Watch your fire, Cheyenne, friendlies coming in at 270 degrees."
A pair of elcor fighters swooped in, laying into the batarian fighters with their turrets. The surprised batarians died in seconds, failing to get into torpedo range.
"With eagerness at the approaching victory: Soreet squadron, this is Hunter Element 86, we're coming for support, check your fire."
The elcor fighters were comically oversized, more akin to light gunships. Citadel electronic warfare made the necessity of an organic pilot an unchanging factor, but the size of the elcor form and their need for extensive VI support in combat meant that the chassis of their starfighters had to be unconventionally large. While their reaction speed and physical bulk provided some challenges, their incredible resistance to gee forces made up for it in many ways. The size of their craft combined with the reduced power draw of their inertial compensators made elcor fighters among the most heavily armed and shielded in the galaxy. They paired conveniently well with the quarian fighters, their complete opposites. They proved this by ripping the remainder of the batarian fighter element to shreds.
The quarian squadron commander signaled her farewell. "Skies are clear, Cheyenne, we're breaking off."
In the distance, a batarian cruiser's shields finally buckled, and she was punished beneath a deluge of withering fire from Lubnaan and the three turian cruisers she was coordinating with. A total collapse of the batarian cruiser's squadron was forestalled by a timely artillery barrage from a pair of batarian heavy cruisers in the backline. While it accomplished little in terms of damage, it did force Lubnaan and her turian friends to back off.
Major Achebe took a moment to catch his breath, but barely thrity seconds passed before orders from Lieutenant Colonel Schneider came in, ordering the Lubnaan's battle group into the fray elsewhere. The Major sighed internally.
I hope the plan is executed soon, because I don't know how much more of this chaos we can take.
---
Supreme Warlord Ettinay looked over the battle as it played out. It was largely a formality by now. The enemy had, obviously, intended to use the same tactic they had before against that hapless fool, Lemikettziy: Using a feigned retreat to draw his forces out, then delivering a devastating missile barrage against the disorganized defenses of a stretched out fleet. By charging his standard cruisers and escorts in close and forcing them into a melee, it was instead he who was disrupting their formation. Resistance was stiffer than one might expect for such a heavily outnumbered and ramshackle excuse for a fleet, but they were too outgunned for it to truly matter. At the end of the day, they had a mere two dreadnoughts and a few dozen heavy cruisers at the most, while his own fleet had five dreadnoughts and well over three times the number of heavy cruisers. This vastly superior artillery battery of his had effectively nullified the enemy's heavy ships, keeping them suppressed and pinned down in the backline. It was only a matter of time until his battle plans came to fruition, and his ships managed to use their superior numbers to encircle sections of the enemy fleet, whereupon his artillery would annihilate them.
His Chief of Staff tilted his head at him. "It's going well. Shall we move some of the heavy fleet up to secondary cannon range?"
The Warlord nodded. "Yes, I think you're right. Send a detachment of our heavy cruisers forward. And have them take a sizeable detachment of our light cruisers with them to distribute throughout the rest of their formation. I have a feeling the enemy will attempt a disorganized missile strike to cover their retreat. The extra point defenses will be needed there more than they're needed here."
"Understood sir, I'll get a detachment organized now."
---
Star Marshal Planta leaned against Major Henderson's - her tactical officer - chair, looking over his shoulder at his screen.
"That's a good chunk of their escorts breaking off there. I don't think we're going to get a better opportunity than this."
The Major nodded. "Understood, establishing targeting link with our sensor grid, and...done."
He looked up at her and gave her an exasperated smile. "It's going to be interesting trying to put together a firing solution in these winds."
---
The Supreme Warlord watched the battle in satisfaction. The enemy would reach their breaking point soon. His satisfaction was abruptly vaporized by his sensor officer calling out.
"My Lord, heat signatures! In low orbit to our rear. Some kind of drones."
"Drones?" The Chief of Staff barely managed to get out, before several of the escorting light cruisers went up in explosions.
"What was that?" The Warlord demanded.
His tactical officer had an answer. "My Lord, mass driver volley has hit us in the rear, several mission-kills, multiple damage reports!"
"What? Our rear?" The Chief asked incredulously.
The Warlord growled. "Damn them, they've been hiding in the atmosphere! That's what the drones were for."
If looks could kill, then the sensor officers on board his flag bridge would have turned to dust when his enraged gaze locked onto them
"How in all the hells did you miss them? I swear by all the gods, every sensors officer in this fleet will be swinging from a fucking gallows by the time I'm through with them!"
The Chief shook his head in disgust. "This explains how the fleet in front of us hid from our preliminary scans, but for the fleet behind us...they must have been far deeper within the atmosphere than their main fleet."
"That's impossible! Nothing with anything less than a dreadnought-grade drive core could survive for more than ten minutes that far down."
The Chief grimaced. "I can think of at least one ship with an even bigger drive core than a dreadnought."
"Another volley incoming!" The tactical officer cried.
A good number of cruiser-caliber spinal mount rounds slammed into the heavy squadron's rear. Their targets seemed to be primarily the light cruisers. A single round, far greater in caliber, slammed into one of the light cruisers. The Warlord watched on the visual feed as the ship was torn in half by the powerful gun.
"Gods damn the lot of them, that's where they were hiding that superdreadnought! How are the smaller ships that are clearly with it surviving the winds, though?"
"Maybe its mass effect field is simply that enormous?" The Chief speculated. "Regardless of the how, we need to make a decision."
The Warlord nodded. "Yes, we do. Shooting back through that storm is a fool's errand. We might try shooting down the drones, but they'll just replace them, and we'll be sitting here taking volley after volley until they run out. Bring the fleet forward towards the main battle, out of their range."
The Chief frowned. "I doubt they'll just sit there in the atmosphere and let us collapse on their fleet."
"I'm counting on it. We'll force them to reveal themselves, and then we'll pummel that damnable superdreadnought before it can drop its payload."
---
Major Henderson gave a disappointed sigh. "I suppose it was too much to ask for them to be stupid enough to try and shoot back."
Marshal Planta chuckled and patted his shoulder. "Let's not get greedy. We'll swallow his bait. If he reacts the way I think he will, then we might have just worked a miracle. Take us forward."
---
It did not take long for the concealed enemy to panic and reveal themselves when the Warlord had made his intentions clear. They came into low orbit, a good number of human cruisers huddled closely around the superdreadnought, no doubt relying on its mass effect field to shield them from the awesome power of the gas giant's winds. With no atmosphere to create any drag, their range was no longer reduced, and so they immediately began opening up on the heavy squadron again.
"Turn us around, send the light cruisers forward in a screen formation, overlap the PD envelopes."
At the Chief of Staff's questioning look, the Warlord smiled. "No doubt they expect me to seize the opportunity and charge in like those fools from their last battle. But that's simply not enough ships to credibly threaten us with gunfire alone. Their missiles will be a problem, but any that manage to make it through a dedicated screen formation to us will be shot down by our own point defenses."
The light cruisers followed the Warlord's orders and maneuvered into a vertical circular shape in front of the heavier ships, spaced apart in such a manner that their point defense grids overlapped each other. The enemy ships focused their fire on the light cruisers as they maneuvered into place. Their intention was obvious: Tear a hole within the defensive screen, and then launch their missile salvo. The unfortunate truth for the poor, deluded humans was that they did not have enough guns in their concealed fleet to tear a big enough hole. They'd also exposed the big, fat target that was their flagship.
"Concentrate fire on the superdreadnought!" The Warlord ordered.
---
Five dreadnought rounds came in hard, and two of them struck the powerful barriers of the Olympus Mons. Star Marshal Planta took a breath.
"Ok, people, playtime is over. This is the last hurrah, it's do or die. All ships, charge!"
There was a ragged cheer throughout the flag bridge. The massive engine of the Olympus Mons roared, sending the enormous bulk of the craft forward, her faithful escorts following. Marshal Planta keyed her comm.
"Colonel Li, you have your green light."
---
Eirene had been chosen as the location for the trap for several reasons. The fact that it was in Arcturus, and thus was a place the enemy was guaranteed to be in at some point, was the most prominent. It was a gas giant, which - for obvious reasons - was critical, and unlike its sister planet Themis it had extensive fuel infrastructure which could be used to bait the trap. Most importantly, it had a moon - Meliae - that was very geothermically active. So active that the surface was quite hot. Hot enough to mask the presence of heat radiators, if designed carefully.
Radiators that, as an example, might be used for the waste heat of a base.
Beneath the surgface of Meliae, aboard his flagship Red Cliffs Colonel Timothy Li grinned as he heard his orders.
"Yes, Ma'am." He turned to his communications officer. "Signal the squadron, we're going in for a lancer run. Maximum acceleration."
He looked to his tactical officer. "Prepare to launch from all silos on my command."
Within the cavernous hanger that had been constructed on the moon for this exact moment, one hundred interceptors roared to life. Massive hanger doors - camouflaged by a layer of rock - opened up, and the interceptors began taking off like a fleet of old bomber planes. When they'd left the moon's gravity well behind and were already on their way to the target, Tim nodded at his tactical officer.
"Launch."
From the siloes below, Emperor missiles streaked out of the siloes at high speed. Aside from those in the silo of Olympus Mons, the missiles on the moon represented effectively every single Emperor missile that had ever been constructed. They trailed just barely behind the interceptor flight, waiting to unleash their devastating power.
---
"The enemy is charging, my Lord. On both fronts!"
"A small fleet of heat signatures just launched from the planet's moon, they are coming towards us at high speed!"
The Supreme Warlord clenched his fists in rage. They have me split the fleet up and isolate my heavy squadron, then they gut me with the dagger they had hidden up their sleeve. They already had an excellent trap laid, but then I had to go and practically gift wrap it for them top of it with the fleet positionings. Well played, for bunch of hairy fucking apes.
He looked at the tactical display. The Chief of Staff did the same, and gave him a stricken look.
"My Lord, I recognize those missiles, and I'm sure you do as well. Normal point defenses will not be effective, or at least not for that many. Nevermind the frigate fleet they apparently hid away as well. I'd suggest retreat, but conventional speeds won't cut it, they're coming on too fast. Should we consider an emergency jump?"
An emergency FTL jump would bring a great risk to the fleet. It was almost a certainty that a great number of ships would be lost in the effort. More importantly. it would mean the Supreme Warlord would have to return home in defeat.
He looked at his Chief gravely. "Consider, Lord Admiral: What happens if we return home as the leaders of the greatest military disaster in the history of the Hegemony? What happens to our families?"
The Chief's expression was stony. "...So, you mean to salve our guilt with an honorable death in battle, in the hopes they might spare our families? You realize, of course, that it will all but guarantee the death of the Hegemony? Even if we still manage to win by attrition, without the heavy fleet to keep the nobles in line..."
The Supreme Warlord laughed. "The Hegemony killed itself the moment it started this pointless war, don't you see that now? Anyone with the strength to overthrow the weak fools is welcome to it, as far as I'm concerned. We still have a duty to protect our homeland, however..."
"I take it you want to order us to come about towards the enemy's main fleet?"
The Supreme Warlord smiled at the Chief of Staff. "Indeed. Good man. The superdreadnought will just retreat into the atmosphere, no point wasting our limited time chasing it. All ships are to launch a full frontal assault on their main fleet. All targeting priority is to be focused on the dreadnoughts and heavy cruisers. We must destroy their ability to threaten our space in the near future."
---
Marshal Planta watched in confusion as the batarian heavy ships rapidly turned and burned for the main allied fleet. At first she assumed they were making the obvious choice and retreating, but it quickly became clear that it was an attack run, not a retreat. When it finally clicked, she slammed her console in anger.
"Damn those crazy bastards."
On seeing the confused looks of her officers, she clarified. "He's refusing to retreat, but he's not standing his ground either. He intends to take our fleet down with us. All cruisers are to prep for missile launch, we need to beat these escorts, quickly. And inform Admiral Naffot that she has permission to fire the missiles from the human craft in her fleet at her discretion. Then tell her to get the hell out of there before her fleet gets torn in half!"
---
Aboard the Cheyenne, Major Achebe looked at his tactical display with a mixture of terror and exhaustion. The trap had been sprung, and the enemy had reacted with a mad charge. The rest of Cheyenne's unit had all fallen, even Lubnaan. Cheyenne now escorted a heavily modified batarian light cruiser of some renown by the name of Liberty, who had become the flagship for a ragged, adhoc unit of scattered survivors from other destroyed units. It consisted of Cheyenne, Liberty's equally famous escort Hell's Bane, a Maenus cluster destroyer that was covered bow-to-stern in pockmarks from enemy weapons fire, a quartet of quarian armed freighters, and two aging undersized Tellagian patrol frigates.
As the enemy continued their full-on charge, an order from their elcor admiral, Naffot, came through every comms system in the surviving fleet.
"Gravely: All remaining human ships are to launch missiles at their captains' discretion, target priority is the cruisers. This is the final gasp of their fleet. All we need do is hold them long enough for our allies to deal the killing blow. Take heart, and make an orderly retreat. They mean to break the back of our fleet as their last act. Do not let them."
Captain Onatheer, an officer amongst the batarian rebel navy, commander of their flagship Liberty, and the leader of the adhoc flotilla, messaged all ships in the Liberty's battlegroup.
"Well, you heard the woman. Major Achebe, prep for a full missile salvo. Aim for that cruiser...there." He highlighted a ship on the tactical display. "Right at the heart of that little flotilla that thinks it has our number. Everyone else, follow me. We'll cover him."
The Liberty fired her reverse thrusters, her escorts doing the same, and the little flotilla followed the rest of the fleet as it attempted an orderly retreat. Just as Captain Onatheer had predicted, the flotilla with the cruiser he'd indicated charged straight for Liberty and her escorts. Liberty and the two destroyers took a few potshots at the fleet with their spinal mounts. An escorting batarian frigate was completely destroyed as it was struck by the rounds, the increased kinetic energy from its high velocity was more than its barriers could hope to bare. A few more seconds passed, and Onatheer suddenly gave his command.
"Now, Major! Right down their throat!"
"Open all silos and launch all!" Major Achebe roared.
A dozen prince missiles and two King missiles shot out from their siloes. The Cheyenne's tactical officer demonstrated his skill and initiative as he set the missiles on a slightly curved trajectory, coming in from the direction where the destroyed frigate had been. Without the additional point defense from the frigate, the cruiser didn't have a prayer of shooting down the entire salvo. The Princes were destroyed, but the Kings survived due to their longer engagement range keeping them in the PD's engagement envelope for less time. Cheyenne's tactical officer had programmed them expertly. They detonated in quick succession. The first beam stripped away the hull plating, and a fraction of a second later the second beam ripped into the hull itself. Everyone in the entire forward and mid sections of the cruiser was boiled alive.
"Great shots! The rest of that flotilla will be closing in now, everyone get ready for a fight. We only need to hold the line a few moments longer. Just long enough for a friend of mine to deliver the goods." Onatheer said, a smile in his voice.
---
Tim scowled as he watched on his visual feed as the distant form of a turian heavy cruiser went up in a massive explosion, ripped apart by the terrible fusillade of the batarian heavy guns. He gave it a quick salute as it went down. It had been physically blocking what would have been a lethal incoming volley towards one of the elcor dreadnoughts. Crazy, brave bastards.
The elcor dreadnoughts were still alive for the moment, but their barriers were collapsing. The one that the turians had sacrificed themselves for had had just enough time bought for it to recycle its buckled shields, but they were still only at partial strength. Tim needed to silence those guns, quickly. The interceptors were coming up on their target, and Tim gave his orders.
"All ships, prepare to launch payload on my mark...5...4...3...2...1...Mark!"
A swarm of tiny kinetic missiles poured out of the interceptor's silos. The interceptors chose not to launch their Prince missiles. With the fleet of Emperors behind them, it would be overkill. Well over a dozen interceptors had been destroyed, instantly vaporized by even a glancing blow due to their incredible velocity, but that velocity proved its value as the kinetic missiles hailed down on the batarian dreadnoughts and heavy cruisers.
"Alright, all ships are to decelerate and regroup. All things going well, we're on mop-up duty."
---
The Supreme Warlord couldn't help but remember the pitter-patter of rain and sleet from the numerous storms hitting the roof of his family mansion during his childhood on his home colony. Unlike those storms, the awful deluge his flagship and subordinate ships were under lasted only a scant few seconds, but inflicted heavy damage and dropped the shields of most of them. More importantly, it had caused the ships to maneuver in an effort to avoid the incoming targets and thus exposed them to the oncoming missiles.
The Warlord wasn't exactly "satisfied" as he - in the last handful of seconds before the human missiles annihilated his ships - watched the visual feed of one of the elcor dreadnoughts going up in an explosion. For starters, he had been hoping to get both. Also, he had been hoping to win this engagement, but it was clear to him now that he had lost the moment he'd gone into orbit of this-
His thoughts were interrupted by the scorching light of a bomb-pumped laser cooking his flagship from the inside out. While a sizeable chunk had been shot down by lucky shots from secondary cannons, most of the Emperors got to their engagement range and detonated their warheads. The VIs of every surviving ship present automatically closed the shutter for every telescope, so the cameras wouldn't be fried by the temporary sun that the missiles had summoned. Every ship that was struck by an Emperor died, without exception. Effectively the entirety of the mainline heavy ships of the Hegemony were now hulks of radioactive slag, with the exception of a handful of heavy cruisers who had been in the thick of the melee and had thus been split off from the main group.
In such a tactical situation, the rational decision would be to retreat and regroup. However, the Batarian Hegemony was not a rational institution. It had, after all, executed an entire small town's worth of men for the crime of being a ship captain in a fleet that had failed. That fact was no doubt in the minds of the surviving batarian captains. And so, they continued their reckless charge, losing all cohesion as the handful of surviving flag officers struggled to reorganize, somehow. The sheer momentum and the weight of the enemy's still very substantial numbers was enough to carve a bloody swathe. Allied ships were destroyed or damaged by the dozen, including several more of the priceless heavy cruisers. But, eventually, the attack stumbled its way through and then away from the allied fleet. The flag officers managed to scrape together some semblance of a formation, and they turned to face the reorganizing allied fleet.
For a moment, it looked like they planned to charge again, but then Olympus Mons and her escorts advanced to join the rest of the fleet. The scattered survivors of the light cruiser detachment fleeing in every direction served as compelling evidence for what happened to ships that opposed her. The Arsenal Ship got into formation, and began opening its silo threateningly. The tattered remnants of the batarian morale shattered. They feared punishment, but they feared that terrible ship far more. They burned hard for the relay out of the system.
--
Star Marshal Planta collapsed into her chair and gave a near-hysterical giggle. "Jesus Christ. We actually did it. Inform Colonel Li that he still has a full complement of missiles, and I expect him to use them. Everyone else shall not pursue. They still outnumber us heavily."
She closed her eyes, praying that when she opened them again it wouldn't turn out to be a dream. Mercifully, it was not.
I suppose that's to be expected. If it had been a dream, I would have lost. Just like I have in all of the nightmares I have had of this battle.
"Alright people, you know the drill. Rescue shuttles out, frigates on mop-up and prisoner duty for all these suddenly-motherless fighters and stragglers. Let's tally up the butcher bill."
---
Throughout the galaxy, amidst the numerous, ongoing disasters, there was a brief moment of peace. For just a few minutes, the ordinary people of the galaxy enjoyed the sensation of being pleasantly surprised. For that scant stretch of time, hope reigned. The impossible was possible. David could beat Goliath. Miracles could happen. But then the moment passed, and the crushing reality of the times returned. The galaxy was in economic freefall, the most powerful military in existence was spiraling towards civil war, the asari and salarian alliance was crumbling, and the humans almost certainly still had a long, bloody war ahead of them. But, those few minutes of hope would be remembered fondly by most for years to come. It was a much needed reminder that - even in a galaxy that was falling apart at the seams - the Good Guys could still win.
---
Good God that was long. Anyways, the idea for this battle happened when I watched the opening cutscene for the direlect reaper mission from Mass Effect 2 again. The whole "entering a big ship's mass effect field causes the winds to stop" thing inspired me.
Also, I apologize to anyone whose language got butchered by Google Translate in the opening paragraphs. I am unfortunately not a linguistic prodigy so I have to do it the lazy man's way if I want other languages in my story.
This is intended as the climax of the "Fissures" arc, more or less, so the focus might shift a little in future chapters.
As always, thank you very much for reading!
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Hexcalibur
Not So Ordinary Sword
- Location
- Somewhere
- Pronouns
- It
I think I recognized most of the languages. Please correct me if I'm wrong! Japanese, Spanish, Russian, German, Indonesian, Chinese, Indian (or Thai), no idea, France, and finally English.
As for the battle, both sides lost a lot of ships, but the Hegemony lost a very large percentage of their ships. And I'll be surprised if the result of this battle doesn't spark rebellions and slave revolts all over the Hegemony.
As for the battle, both sides lost a lot of ships, but the Hegemony lost a very large percentage of their ships. And I'll be surprised if the result of this battle doesn't spark rebellions and slave revolts all over the Hegemony.
It was Hindi, not Thai, and the third to last language that you didn't recognize was Igbo, if I remember correctly. Otherwise, you got everything right, if memory serves.
- Location
- On a speck of dust, floating through the void.
Bit nitpicky here, but Chinese use the same quotation marks as Japanese, that upper lower bracket thing
Edit: At least, that's the proper way, although "" are also sometimes used
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Tisaku
Head Chief Thinkomancer
Organization - 2
Captain Etwin was definitely feeling every one of his twenty seven years as his knees painfully protested his trip up the lengthy mountain path to his destination. It was a tiny Siarist monastery, tucked into the side of a cliff in a mountain region of a remote colony in the Attican Traverse. An older asari nun served as the sole caretaker of the small facility, maintaining it and offering its hospitality to what few pilgrims from the wider galaxy happened to find their way into its halls. Of course, that was only the public-facing layer of the nun's identity. In reality, she was a secret spectre, serving as a handler for dozens of covert agents (Etwin being among them) who used the monastery as a base from which to launch missions into the Terminus. It was an effective disguise. There were, after all, many non-asari converts to Siari, so agents of every species could disguise themselves as pilgrims and make their way to the monastery without drawing an attention.
Etwin reached the top of the trail, and knocked on the antiquated wooden door of the monastery. The asari nun answered.
"Greetings traveler, do you come seeking our hospitality?"
Etwin nodded solemnly, and the nun let him into the building. She led him down a narrow hallway, and then through a trapdoor leading to a "cellar" that was actually the hiding place for all of the technology and equipment one needed to run part of a significant interstellar intelligence network. She turned to face Etwin and smiled.
"I heard of your work with the Councilor, nicely done."
Etwin nodded. "Was only executing plans already put in place by others, but complement is appreciated nonetheless."
There was a third layer to the nun's identity: She was the primary contact between the leadership of the Organization and its most senior field agents, such as Etwin.
"Well, a talent for carrying out the plans of others is exactly what we need from our agents, so my praise stands. Now..."
She sat cross-legged on the floor and gestured for him to do the same.
"...Shall we begin?"
He went to sit across from her.
"Now...what do you think of the recent happenings with the batarians?"
It was one of many rituals the pair practiced whenever they made contact. She would ask him about recent events (particularly those related to Organization operations) and fish for his opinions on them. Etwin suspected it was a loyalty test of sorts, more than anything. He took a moment to think before answering.
"Human victory is a major upset, but ultimately it only accelerates Hegemony's fate. Even had they won, could not have hoped to simultaneously occupy one third of explored galaxy while also simultaneously maintaining control in home territory. With their fleet in shambles, political upheaval all but certain, now."
The nun nodded. "Yes, I agree. While I can't say we're particularly happy about the humans forming a new powerbase outside of our direct influence, their victory still suits our purposes for the moment. The leadership considers this to have been the best possible outcome, given the circumstances. We were lucky. We overplayed our hand with the Hegemony when we fed them information. We only wanted them to disrupt the Council by leaving, we didn't anticipate them tripping over a brand new species and starting a war. We are very fortunate that Yinari was such an imbecile. Had she played her cards right, it could have been a rallying moment for the Citadel. Our plans could have been set back by decades."
"Human-elcor alliance may prove troublesome in the future. Can it be destroyed?"
The nun sighed. "Regrettably, no. Not anytime soon, at least. The embarrassing truth is that we had few resources invested in the elcor. They weren't exactly a keystone of galactic power, and, frankly, we did not anticipate the single most conservative species on the Citadel doing something so radical. We've been taking measures to correct that, but that damnable Primarch from Maenus has been spreading his paranoia to everyone. We've already lost almost all of our infiltration software in that cluster, and they've begun the same exact process in elcor space now, too. The fact that they're aware of some kind of infiltration - even if they don't know by whom - would have just been an annoyance, but the humans are proving an effective foil. We obviously have absolutely no assets cultivated within their government or counterintelligence agencies. Having them as a reliable third party has made rooting out our influence far easier for Maenus and the elcor. Dekunna is practically a dead zone now, what few assets we had have been run off or captured. Nothing has happened that could reveal our presence, obviously, but they are on their guard. We're still going to try to drive a wedge in the new alliance, but it's an uphill battle."
Etwin cleared his throat.
"Reminds me: Wanted to ask about turian infiltration."
She cocked her head slightly. "What about it?"
"Was...extensive. Impossibly so. Almost complete decapitation of leadership, total compromise of defense network security, and somehow, not a trace of evidence left. No intelligence agency in existence could accomplish this..."
"...So, how did we?"
"Yes."
The nun was thoughtful for a moment, but then began speaking again. "The actual details are classified. The best answer I can give is that we have access to resources that are, how should I put this...beyond the context of galactic politics."
Etwin shook his head. "Not making sense."
The nun became impatient at his comment. "The 'how' is not important to you. You know our cause. Our purpose. We are tearing down the decrepit power structures of this galaxy, and ushering in a new age. If you believe in that cause then you have nothing to fear. Now, leaving that behind us...leadership has another assignment for you. Tell me, what is the general state of the STG these days?"
"STG is paranoid. More so than usual. Asari once considered the Union's most reliable ally: revelation of conspiracy and secret of the Athame beacon destroyed that relationship. Not one, but two massive galactic conspiracies, and STG is somehow kept in dark. Paranoia was already great, but with turian crisis added to it, it means hostilities at all time high."
The nun smiled. "Exactly what we were hoping for, then. The turians were the muscle, but the strength of the asari-salarian alliance is the glue holding the entirety of the Citadel power structure together. Breaking that bond was always going to be the biggest hurdle. It is gratifying to see our plans finally bear fruit. However, merely destroying their trust is not enough. There is always a chance for reconciliation later. We must push them from a mere former friends to true enemies."
Etwin felt a small pang of unease within him. "Enemies?"
The nun nodded. "Yes. Your mission will forward that goal. In roughly two weeks time, an asari commando black ops team - all of whom will be agents of our cause - will seize a small STG observation outpost, with the intent of extracting intel from its computers. A response team of STG agents under the command of a certain Captain by the name of Etwin will retake the outpost and capture several of the commandos for interrogation. After a lengthy interrogation, the commandos will break, and reveal that their mission had been intended to gauge the STG's awareness of the asari involvement in the turian bombings. You will pass this up the chain of command, and our assets will ensure that the right information makes its way to the right ears. The STG will, naturally, launch a covert mission to verify the commandos claims. Their target will, naturally, be the secret facility we quietly tipped them off to several months ago. They will storm it and seize its data. Data which will contain conclusive evidence of asari involvement in the bombings, with the apparent purpose of establishing a new, more asari-friendly government under Frenarian."
Etwin narrowed his eyes. He had a pretty good idea of where this was going, and he didn't like it.
The nun's grin was unpleasantly wide. "Of course, the beauty of it is that it's merely one half of the equation. You see, the reason the asari will dispatch our commando team not long from now is because our assets within the more prominent matriarch shadow governments have spent the past several months gathering and presenting "evidence" conclusively proving that the bombings were a salarian coup with the intent to have Admiral Cran establish a more salarian-aligned government."
Etwin's jaw actually dropped. "You...you intend to incite war!"
The nun shrugged. "That's obviously the ideal outcome, but it's something of a long shot. We'll settle for turning the turian situation into a proxy conflict. Even if the worst happens and they fail to swallow the bait altogether, the mistrust and paranoia the incidents will spark can still be used to our advantage. That's the true strength of our Organization: flexibility. Regardless of the outcome, it will advance our goals."
Etwin had done many things he wasn't exactly proud of for the cause, but this was beyond the pale. "War is 'ideal' outcome? War between Council races would mean millions...no, billions dead. War of that scale would tear apart civilization as we know it. Would be decades...centuries, until galaxy can truly recover."
She frowned at him. "We're tearing down a power structure that has been in place, ruling over trillions of beings, for thousands of years. How did you think it would end? With a song? Frankly, Etwin, when you have...incorrect thoughts such as these, it makes me wonder if your devotion to our cause is what you make it out to be."
Etwin shook his head emphatically. "Devotion to cause strong, strong as ever! Just...hard to understand."
Despite his mind pushing him to accept it, his instincts told him that it just didn't add up. He ran through it again and again, and it just didn't make any sense. Had the stated goal been to sow confusion and distrust - as had been the case up to now - then it would have made sense. Yet, she had said a war was the ideal outcome. A war like that would be...apocalyptic. It would rip the galaxy apart, worse even than the rachni or krogan rebellions, as their would be no Citadel Council to pick up the pieces afterwards. The point of their cause was to change galactic civilization, not destroy it entirely.
Right?
The nun leaned forward, staring at him with an unsettlingly sudden intensity. "Have you been keeping up with your meditations, Etwin?"
His spine went rigid, before he slumped with shame.
"...No. Have been so busy, lately it...has not been priority."
She nodded slowly, leaning back slightly, though her gaze did not lose any of its intensity. "I understand the problem, now. Come with me. We must clear your mind. Once you've re-centered yourself, we can discuss the details of your mission."
He wordlessly followed her. Unconsciously, he reached into his shirt, tugging at the traditional salarian prayer wheel pendant on a chain around his neck. He'd always been about as far from religious as a sapient could get, and thus had been somewhat appalled to discover the Organization's love of meditation. For such an otherwise rational entity to stoop to such idiotic pseudoscience was baffling to him. Yet, he could not deny the results. He never felt more alive or more certain of his cause than after a long mediation session. He still held to no religion, but the prayer wheel pendant the Organization had given him was a wonderful tool for centering himself when he meditated on the road.
The nun opened the door to a dark, windowless room, lit only by the fading embers of a fire in its hearth. It was unfurnished, except for some rugs and a small table, upon which a familiar sight awaited him. It was an ancient minimalistic sculpture, a piece of prothean artwork, a simple set of smooth, arching spikes that shot up and then forward from the sculptures base. It was made of the same strange, unfamiliar metal the protheans seemed to use for their relays, giving it a deep, rich, mesmerizing bluish-purple color.
The same color as his pendant.
"I'll leave you to it. When you've centered yourself again, come find me." With that, the nun left him.
He pulled a rug up to the table, and kneeled before the sculpture. He stared at its shape, studying every curve and angle, every thought and worry swirling within his mind drifting away. He was open. Receptive. As he stared at the sculpture, that certainty that he needed, that he craved, filled him once again. He couldn't help but smile in amusement at his own ridiculous notions. His stupidity. His idiocy. How could he have even been so very, very, very blind? How could he have so easily lost sight of the path laid before him, of the truth that he served? His concerns were the meaningless mewling of a hatchling, he need only trust The Plan, as he always had. Trust The Plan.
But still, to start a war-
Trust The Plan.
He wanted to, desperately, but it just-...it made no sense! He couldn't let it go-
Trust the Plan.
He did, he did he did he did he did he did but, but-... it was so hard to remember, but he knew that there was something wrong-
TRUST THE PLAN.
What was he worried about again?
TrustthePlanTrustthePlanTrustthePlanTrustthePlanTrustthePlanTrustthePlanTrustthePlanTrustthePlanTrustthePlanTrustthePlan
---
Etwin blinked several times, the sculpture blurred back into his vision. He smiled widely. He had a terrible thirst and was very hungry, but he still felt light and easy. Meditation always helped to clear his mind. He checked the time on his omnitool.
1600? No wonder I'm so thirsty. He got up from his kneeling position, ignoring his creaking knees, and went to seek out a drink, some food, and the nun. In that order.
The fact that he had knelt, motionless, before the sculpture and stared at it almost unblinkingly for over ten hours straight did not really register within his mind.
---
Man, I haven't messed with formatting to display a fragile mental state since the Prison Break chapter. That was certainly interesting to write, albeit significantly briefer.
Just in case not everyone understood: What the majority of the audience have probably guessed by now has officially been confirmed in this chapter. The reapers are active within this story, and they have their fingers very deep in the pie. What we saw with Etwin was my personal interpretation of indoctrination, based primarily off of what we see of Matriarch Benezia and Saren from the first game. It exists primarily in a more subtle state, manifesting only as quiet but pervasive mental suggestions and false intuition. When the subject is confused or questions the mental 'narrative' forced upon them, the backlash manifests as those aching, gnawing 'whispers' that indoctrinated characters frequently speak of. When indoctrinated characters in the games begin to outright resist their own indoctrination, it seems to cause a genuine pain or physical strain inside them. I interpret this as the 'whisper' becoming a scream, that relentlessly beats down the indoctrinated subject's own will until it submits. The more they resist, the louder the scream gets.
Since we don't really get inside the head of indoctrinated characters in the games, there's not really an 'official' way to portray the inner thoughts of someone who is indoctrinated. As such, the internal POV of indoctrinated characters gets portrayed a lot of different ways in mass effect fiction, this is just my own personal attempt at portraying it.
As for the implications brought up in this chapter, allow me to try and pre-emptively address some questions:
1.) This doesn't mean that everything wrong in the galaxy can now be explained as "A reaper did it." I think of it less being that the reapers caused problems to happen, and more like they looked at prominent problems that already existed, and then tried their best to make it vastly worse. So, as an example, the corrupt 300 year old political machine of the previous asari councilor was not created by the reapers, but they did use their Organization to slowly but steadily hijack it for their own purposes.
2.) Is the Organization a collection of reaper puppets using a facade of anti-establishment ideology to recruit new slaves? Or was it a legitimate secret band of dissidents that got corrupted by the reapers? I'll leave that one up to the reader's imagination, but I will explain a little more on how I imagine them working. The use of reaper artifacts to indoctrinate their members was already show in the story, and I imagine it being pretty pervasive to varying degrees of strength throughout their ranks. Some may be sleeper agents, entirely unaware of the Organization until their latent indoctrination is activated. Others (like the leadership, probably) might be at least to some degree aware of the true nature of the Organization, but they don't fully comprehend it.
3.) If you're thinking this is a pretty elaborate degree of infiltration and pre-emptive sabotage compared to canon, you're correct. I didn't just get carried away, it has been written that way because of plot reasons that probably won't be revealed for quite a while. There are one or two clues for it here and there, but they're so subtle that calling them "clues" is being a bit generous to myself. The only hint I'll give is a reminder that this story is an AU, so the reapers are not necessarily beholden to taking the same path they did in canon.
Ok, that's all the points I can think of off of the top of my head. As always, thank you for reading!
Etwin reached the top of the trail, and knocked on the antiquated wooden door of the monastery. The asari nun answered.
"Greetings traveler, do you come seeking our hospitality?"
Etwin nodded solemnly, and the nun let him into the building. She led him down a narrow hallway, and then through a trapdoor leading to a "cellar" that was actually the hiding place for all of the technology and equipment one needed to run part of a significant interstellar intelligence network. She turned to face Etwin and smiled.
"I heard of your work with the Councilor, nicely done."
Etwin nodded. "Was only executing plans already put in place by others, but complement is appreciated nonetheless."
There was a third layer to the nun's identity: She was the primary contact between the leadership of the Organization and its most senior field agents, such as Etwin.
"Well, a talent for carrying out the plans of others is exactly what we need from our agents, so my praise stands. Now..."
She sat cross-legged on the floor and gestured for him to do the same.
"...Shall we begin?"
He went to sit across from her.
"Now...what do you think of the recent happenings with the batarians?"
It was one of many rituals the pair practiced whenever they made contact. She would ask him about recent events (particularly those related to Organization operations) and fish for his opinions on them. Etwin suspected it was a loyalty test of sorts, more than anything. He took a moment to think before answering.
"Human victory is a major upset, but ultimately it only accelerates Hegemony's fate. Even had they won, could not have hoped to simultaneously occupy one third of explored galaxy while also simultaneously maintaining control in home territory. With their fleet in shambles, political upheaval all but certain, now."
The nun nodded. "Yes, I agree. While I can't say we're particularly happy about the humans forming a new powerbase outside of our direct influence, their victory still suits our purposes for the moment. The leadership considers this to have been the best possible outcome, given the circumstances. We were lucky. We overplayed our hand with the Hegemony when we fed them information. We only wanted them to disrupt the Council by leaving, we didn't anticipate them tripping over a brand new species and starting a war. We are very fortunate that Yinari was such an imbecile. Had she played her cards right, it could have been a rallying moment for the Citadel. Our plans could have been set back by decades."
"Human-elcor alliance may prove troublesome in the future. Can it be destroyed?"
The nun sighed. "Regrettably, no. Not anytime soon, at least. The embarrassing truth is that we had few resources invested in the elcor. They weren't exactly a keystone of galactic power, and, frankly, we did not anticipate the single most conservative species on the Citadel doing something so radical. We've been taking measures to correct that, but that damnable Primarch from Maenus has been spreading his paranoia to everyone. We've already lost almost all of our infiltration software in that cluster, and they've begun the same exact process in elcor space now, too. The fact that they're aware of some kind of infiltration - even if they don't know by whom - would have just been an annoyance, but the humans are proving an effective foil. We obviously have absolutely no assets cultivated within their government or counterintelligence agencies. Having them as a reliable third party has made rooting out our influence far easier for Maenus and the elcor. Dekunna is practically a dead zone now, what few assets we had have been run off or captured. Nothing has happened that could reveal our presence, obviously, but they are on their guard. We're still going to try to drive a wedge in the new alliance, but it's an uphill battle."
Etwin cleared his throat.
"Reminds me: Wanted to ask about turian infiltration."
She cocked her head slightly. "What about it?"
"Was...extensive. Impossibly so. Almost complete decapitation of leadership, total compromise of defense network security, and somehow, not a trace of evidence left. No intelligence agency in existence could accomplish this..."
"...So, how did we?"
"Yes."
The nun was thoughtful for a moment, but then began speaking again. "The actual details are classified. The best answer I can give is that we have access to resources that are, how should I put this...beyond the context of galactic politics."
Etwin shook his head. "Not making sense."
The nun became impatient at his comment. "The 'how' is not important to you. You know our cause. Our purpose. We are tearing down the decrepit power structures of this galaxy, and ushering in a new age. If you believe in that cause then you have nothing to fear. Now, leaving that behind us...leadership has another assignment for you. Tell me, what is the general state of the STG these days?"
"STG is paranoid. More so than usual. Asari once considered the Union's most reliable ally: revelation of conspiracy and secret of the Athame beacon destroyed that relationship. Not one, but two massive galactic conspiracies, and STG is somehow kept in dark. Paranoia was already great, but with turian crisis added to it, it means hostilities at all time high."
The nun smiled. "Exactly what we were hoping for, then. The turians were the muscle, but the strength of the asari-salarian alliance is the glue holding the entirety of the Citadel power structure together. Breaking that bond was always going to be the biggest hurdle. It is gratifying to see our plans finally bear fruit. However, merely destroying their trust is not enough. There is always a chance for reconciliation later. We must push them from a mere former friends to true enemies."
Etwin felt a small pang of unease within him. "Enemies?"
The nun nodded. "Yes. Your mission will forward that goal. In roughly two weeks time, an asari commando black ops team - all of whom will be agents of our cause - will seize a small STG observation outpost, with the intent of extracting intel from its computers. A response team of STG agents under the command of a certain Captain by the name of Etwin will retake the outpost and capture several of the commandos for interrogation. After a lengthy interrogation, the commandos will break, and reveal that their mission had been intended to gauge the STG's awareness of the asari involvement in the turian bombings. You will pass this up the chain of command, and our assets will ensure that the right information makes its way to the right ears. The STG will, naturally, launch a covert mission to verify the commandos claims. Their target will, naturally, be the secret facility we quietly tipped them off to several months ago. They will storm it and seize its data. Data which will contain conclusive evidence of asari involvement in the bombings, with the apparent purpose of establishing a new, more asari-friendly government under Frenarian."
Etwin narrowed his eyes. He had a pretty good idea of where this was going, and he didn't like it.
The nun's grin was unpleasantly wide. "Of course, the beauty of it is that it's merely one half of the equation. You see, the reason the asari will dispatch our commando team not long from now is because our assets within the more prominent matriarch shadow governments have spent the past several months gathering and presenting "evidence" conclusively proving that the bombings were a salarian coup with the intent to have Admiral Cran establish a more salarian-aligned government."
Etwin's jaw actually dropped. "You...you intend to incite war!"
The nun shrugged. "That's obviously the ideal outcome, but it's something of a long shot. We'll settle for turning the turian situation into a proxy conflict. Even if the worst happens and they fail to swallow the bait altogether, the mistrust and paranoia the incidents will spark can still be used to our advantage. That's the true strength of our Organization: flexibility. Regardless of the outcome, it will advance our goals."
Etwin had done many things he wasn't exactly proud of for the cause, but this was beyond the pale. "War is 'ideal' outcome? War between Council races would mean millions...no, billions dead. War of that scale would tear apart civilization as we know it. Would be decades...centuries, until galaxy can truly recover."
She frowned at him. "We're tearing down a power structure that has been in place, ruling over trillions of beings, for thousands of years. How did you think it would end? With a song? Frankly, Etwin, when you have...incorrect thoughts such as these, it makes me wonder if your devotion to our cause is what you make it out to be."
Etwin shook his head emphatically. "Devotion to cause strong, strong as ever! Just...hard to understand."
Despite his mind pushing him to accept it, his instincts told him that it just didn't add up. He ran through it again and again, and it just didn't make any sense. Had the stated goal been to sow confusion and distrust - as had been the case up to now - then it would have made sense. Yet, she had said a war was the ideal outcome. A war like that would be...apocalyptic. It would rip the galaxy apart, worse even than the rachni or krogan rebellions, as their would be no Citadel Council to pick up the pieces afterwards. The point of their cause was to change galactic civilization, not destroy it entirely.
Right?
The nun leaned forward, staring at him with an unsettlingly sudden intensity. "Have you been keeping up with your meditations, Etwin?"
His spine went rigid, before he slumped with shame.
"...No. Have been so busy, lately it...has not been priority."
She nodded slowly, leaning back slightly, though her gaze did not lose any of its intensity. "I understand the problem, now. Come with me. We must clear your mind. Once you've re-centered yourself, we can discuss the details of your mission."
He wordlessly followed her. Unconsciously, he reached into his shirt, tugging at the traditional salarian prayer wheel pendant on a chain around his neck. He'd always been about as far from religious as a sapient could get, and thus had been somewhat appalled to discover the Organization's love of meditation. For such an otherwise rational entity to stoop to such idiotic pseudoscience was baffling to him. Yet, he could not deny the results. He never felt more alive or more certain of his cause than after a long mediation session. He still held to no religion, but the prayer wheel pendant the Organization had given him was a wonderful tool for centering himself when he meditated on the road.
The nun opened the door to a dark, windowless room, lit only by the fading embers of a fire in its hearth. It was unfurnished, except for some rugs and a small table, upon which a familiar sight awaited him. It was an ancient minimalistic sculpture, a piece of prothean artwork, a simple set of smooth, arching spikes that shot up and then forward from the sculptures base. It was made of the same strange, unfamiliar metal the protheans seemed to use for their relays, giving it a deep, rich, mesmerizing bluish-purple color.
The same color as his pendant.
"I'll leave you to it. When you've centered yourself again, come find me." With that, the nun left him.
He pulled a rug up to the table, and kneeled before the sculpture. He stared at its shape, studying every curve and angle, every thought and worry swirling within his mind drifting away. He was open. Receptive. As he stared at the sculpture, that certainty that he needed, that he craved, filled him once again. He couldn't help but smile in amusement at his own ridiculous notions. His stupidity. His idiocy. How could he have even been so very, very, very blind? How could he have so easily lost sight of the path laid before him, of the truth that he served? His concerns were the meaningless mewling of a hatchling, he need only trust The Plan, as he always had. Trust The Plan.
But still, to start a war-
Trust The Plan.
He wanted to, desperately, but it just-...it made no sense! He couldn't let it go-
Trust the Plan.
He did, he did he did he did he did he did but, but-... it was so hard to remember, but he knew that there was something wrong-
TRUST THE PLAN.
What was he worried about again?
TrustthePlanTrustthePlanTrustthePlanTrustthePlanTrustthePlanTrustthePlanTrustthePlanTrustthePlanTrustthePlanTrustthePlan
---
Etwin blinked several times, the sculpture blurred back into his vision. He smiled widely. He had a terrible thirst and was very hungry, but he still felt light and easy. Meditation always helped to clear his mind. He checked the time on his omnitool.
1600? No wonder I'm so thirsty. He got up from his kneeling position, ignoring his creaking knees, and went to seek out a drink, some food, and the nun. In that order.
The fact that he had knelt, motionless, before the sculpture and stared at it almost unblinkingly for over ten hours straight did not really register within his mind.
---
Man, I haven't messed with formatting to display a fragile mental state since the Prison Break chapter. That was certainly interesting to write, albeit significantly briefer.
Just in case not everyone understood: What the majority of the audience have probably guessed by now has officially been confirmed in this chapter. The reapers are active within this story, and they have their fingers very deep in the pie. What we saw with Etwin was my personal interpretation of indoctrination, based primarily off of what we see of Matriarch Benezia and Saren from the first game. It exists primarily in a more subtle state, manifesting only as quiet but pervasive mental suggestions and false intuition. When the subject is confused or questions the mental 'narrative' forced upon them, the backlash manifests as those aching, gnawing 'whispers' that indoctrinated characters frequently speak of. When indoctrinated characters in the games begin to outright resist their own indoctrination, it seems to cause a genuine pain or physical strain inside them. I interpret this as the 'whisper' becoming a scream, that relentlessly beats down the indoctrinated subject's own will until it submits. The more they resist, the louder the scream gets.
Since we don't really get inside the head of indoctrinated characters in the games, there's not really an 'official' way to portray the inner thoughts of someone who is indoctrinated. As such, the internal POV of indoctrinated characters gets portrayed a lot of different ways in mass effect fiction, this is just my own personal attempt at portraying it.
As for the implications brought up in this chapter, allow me to try and pre-emptively address some questions:
1.) This doesn't mean that everything wrong in the galaxy can now be explained as "A reaper did it." I think of it less being that the reapers caused problems to happen, and more like they looked at prominent problems that already existed, and then tried their best to make it vastly worse. So, as an example, the corrupt 300 year old political machine of the previous asari councilor was not created by the reapers, but they did use their Organization to slowly but steadily hijack it for their own purposes.
2.) Is the Organization a collection of reaper puppets using a facade of anti-establishment ideology to recruit new slaves? Or was it a legitimate secret band of dissidents that got corrupted by the reapers? I'll leave that one up to the reader's imagination, but I will explain a little more on how I imagine them working. The use of reaper artifacts to indoctrinate their members was already show in the story, and I imagine it being pretty pervasive to varying degrees of strength throughout their ranks. Some may be sleeper agents, entirely unaware of the Organization until their latent indoctrination is activated. Others (like the leadership, probably) might be at least to some degree aware of the true nature of the Organization, but they don't fully comprehend it.
3.) If you're thinking this is a pretty elaborate degree of infiltration and pre-emptive sabotage compared to canon, you're correct. I didn't just get carried away, it has been written that way because of plot reasons that probably won't be revealed for quite a while. There are one or two clues for it here and there, but they're so subtle that calling them "clues" is being a bit generous to myself. The only hint I'll give is a reminder that this story is an AU, so the reapers are not necessarily beholden to taking the same path they did in canon.
Ok, that's all the points I can think of off of the top of my head. As always, thank you for reading!
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The most surprising thing in this chapter is that neither of the Turian Primarchs were into the Blue Cool Aid.
Hexcalibur
Not So Ordinary Sword
- Location
- Somewhere
- Pronouns
- It
Their plan seems convoluted. Even for Reapers there are so many moving parts.
My personal thoughts on that are that indoctrinated agents make convoluted plans a little more easy. So, for example, instead of having an extraction plan for the asari commando team, they can just order them to die, or something like that. Of course, that doesn't change the fact that it's convoluted, but that explanation at least makes it make sense to my brain, which is of course why it made it onto the page.
Audacity - 1
January 22nd, 2091
There was something about the way the enemy fleet had maneuvered that didn't sit right with Fleet Captain Ranalett'Goss (Known as "Ran" by his friends and "that uppity caste-hopping bastard" by his enemies). Of course, the maneuverings of his fleet didn't sit right with him either, but one didn't last long in the Hegemony Navy if he couldn't stomach incompetent superiors. He understood the Warlord's logic. The enemy was, obviously, holding some force in reserve, and it was equally obvious that the Warlord was aware of this and the fleet's current formation was some kind of misguided attempt to counter that. The decision to hold the dreadnoughts and heavy cruisers in reserve was clearly an attempt to avoid falling prey to the envelopment tactics used by the enemy in the previous battle. It was a textbook formation: artillery in the back, escorts in the front. Except the idiot had also held back almost all of the light cruisers to escort the heavies. No doubt the Warlord feared missiles from the as-yet-unseen enemy super ship, but depriving his main assault of a significant proportion of its point defenses was not the way to counter it. Ran glared at his tactical display as casualty reports from the fighters under his command rolled in.
How many of those pilots would still be alive if their cruiser support wasn't sitting around with their thumbs up their asses waiting for an ambush?
The Warlord was overthinking things, in Ran's humble opinion. The Hegemony, in a rare moment of competence, had gone to great lengths to ensure that their massive strategic superiority was actually brought to bear for this battle. The fleet had the numbers and the firepower. All they need do is maintain a tight formation and roll right over the dramatically outnumbered and outgunned enemy fleet. Instead, the Warlord was being cautious, attempting to avoid casualties by methods that were only increasing them.
The battle went on, and Ran did his best to direct his forces from afar, lamenting the fact that he couldn't move in his flagship, Hel'Shan, to provide fire support. Then, as if Venzeeltir himself had woken up from his coma and answered his prayers, orders came from headquarters to him and several other heavy cruisers to advance with a detachment and support the assault. Ran's elation was cut short as he parsed that this was not a general attack order, but rather a case of the esteemed Warlord dividing the fleet even more. For just a moment Ran fantasized about being in command. The enemy would be defeated by now, the super ship - where ever it was - would be reduced to a speed bump due to its supporting fleet being dead, and the creeping dread Ran was feeling would be nowhere to be found. Unfortunately, reality was not so kind, and so Ran and the light cruisers of his squadron advanced, along with hundreds of other ships.
As Ran arrived at the battle, finally able to bring the full firepower of his squadron to bare against the enemy, the dread began to fade away. The men of the 46th Frontier Squadron, his squadron, were crack troops. Tempered by constant low-intensity combat against raiders on the Hegemony fringe, and guided by Ran's relentless drills, they were amongst the best in the Navy, even when Ran's obvious bias was laid aside. With their leader in their midst and their formation reforged, the 46th Squadron had the opportunity to demonstrate this. Their particular session of the battle's messy and three-dimensional front line had them facing off against a squadron containing what appeared to be mostly terminus models and older Citadel ones. Likely a mixed quarian and human scratch formation. A more cautious commander would have sat back and let his superior firepower carry the day, but a man didn't make it to Fleet Captain at the age of thirty by being cautious.
"The Squadron is to assume formation nine." He ordered. His Chief of Staff relayed the command, and the ships of the 46th rapidly arranged themselves into a conical formation, with the heaviest ships at the tip, all of which was done under heavy fire from the enemy.
"The Squadron will advance under attack plan six." The next order came, and the cone of batarian ships charged right at the enemy. The ramshackle formation of refurbished or second-line ships had no real answer for a proper heavy cruiser like Hel'Shan, other than concentrated fire. Which was difficult to apply, as the batarian formation penetrated their lines and cut their formation in half. With the enemy fleet divided, the batarian cone split into two unequal halves. The smaller one held the line, while the larger one consolidated its now superior numbers and enveloped the now inferior number of enemy ships, swallowing it whole like the mouth of some sort of cosmic fish. The enemy ships, already greatly outgunned, now faced a three dimensional crossfire. It was a massacre, with only a ragged handful of survivors managing to scatter like frightened prey animals. The larger half of the batarian squadron went to join the smaller one - still holding the other half of the enemy force at bay - and began consolidating its firepower to repeat the envelopment again. The timely intervention of a wing of elcor fighters - no doubt hastily scraped together by the enemy fleet's commander to prevent their flank from collapsing - forced Ran to react and allowed the remnants of his prey to escape and remake their formation.
"Formation two, collapse our lines!" Ran ordered hastily.
The 46th moved to obey, compressing its formation and creating a lethal wall of overlapping point defenses that deterred the elcor fighters from pressing their attack.
"Time to regroup, formation one." Ran ordered once he saw the fighters break off. His ships reformed into a standard battle line, and began pouring disciplined volley fire on the now significantly depleted enemy squadron. It was not the first victory that the 46th had won in such a manner. More than one grand raiding fleet of a would-be pillaging and despoiling warlord from the Terminus had been carved into pieces by the very same tactics from the 46th. Of course, the raiders were usually routed from the field altogether when Ran was done from them instead of retreating in good order like in this case. Granted, disciplined professionals defending their homes and families could hardly be compared to cowardly pirate filth, so Ran wasn't particularly bitter about the results he'd gotten. His actions had created a sizeable dent in the enemy's formation.
Now if only our fearless leader had the brains to use it.
"Request reinforcements from HQ to exploit the weakness we've created in their lines." He ordered the communications officer.
After an unpleasantly long moment, his officer looked at him with the batarian equivalent of an exasperated expression. "They are not responding to our hails. I've sent a message but no response yet."
Ran's eyes twitched. Even in the middle of a fleet battle, petty political games were being played. There was no doubt in Ran's mind that some idiot fourth son of a Lord Admiral who was on the Warlord's staff as a favor had taken one look at who had sent the message and promptly ordered it ignored. Ran was a commoner of great talent and even greater irreverence of the nobility. The sort of man that filled the cavernous egos of talentless young aristocrats with a sense of inferiority that manifested itself as borderline treasonous sabotage.
Ran ground his teeth and set himself to wait for a reply that he knew wasn't coming.
---
Ran watched in despair as the oh-so-brilliant Warlord of the Hegemony Navy sent all of his light cruisers forward as a screen against the newly emerged human ambushing force. The Heavy fleet was completely exposed, and Ran was completely mystified.
Is...is he stupid? Does he honestly think that this was all the human's had?
The Warlord obviously intended to use the light cruiser screen to blunt any incoming missile swarm before it could reach the heavies, and then crush the ambush force with his massively superior firepower. The only problem with his logic was that it assumed that the missiles in front of him were the only missiles he'd be facing. Ran was almost certain that was not the case.
If I was laying this ambush, where would I put them? He mused to himself.
His eyes drifted to a large object on the tactical map, a moon that the VI claimed was called "Eirene" and his eyes widened. It was, of course, foolish to think that they'd hide it there. It would require a level of pre-planning that would make the humans completely helpless if the Hegemony fleet didn't do almost exactly as they expected it to.
It would only be conceivable if we were completely predictable fools, or the humans were desperate enough to take a gamble. ...Both of which are completely true.
His heart rate increased as his instincts screamed into his mind.
"Contact HQ immediately, maximum priority!" Ran ordered.
His communications officer looked at him after a moment fiddling with his console, disgust on his face. "Still no response to our hails, sir."
Ran went completely still as icy rage flooded his veins. Then he reared back his head and laughed uproariously, much to the concern of his subordinates.
He managed to choke down the laughter enough to speak. "The Batarian Hegemony died as it lived: under the watch of idiots."
Everyone on the flag bridge gaped openly at him. This was the kind of talk spoken by the people who were taken away by the Dinlat and never seen again. Several more courageous sets of eyes stole a glance at Captain Jarro, the Squadron's political officer. The Dinlat agent stared impassively at the screen of the intelligence console - like all political officers, he also server a dual-role as intelligence officer - and not visibly reacting to Ran's words. Ran stole a glance of his own at the man, before approaching him. Jarro looked up with a smirk as Ran stood over him.
"If you're concerned about any less-than-patriotic statements made recently by...members of the crew, then I regret to inform you that our surveillance equipment is on the fritz again. And, of course, my hearing isn't what it used to be..."
Ran smiled back. Jarro was a rare sort of Dinlat officer who had managed to survive a career in the agency with some tattered shred of a conscience still intact. Ran always went out of his way to cultivate a good relationship with his political officers (as anyone who enjoyed his career - and freedom - did). Though, how much of Jarro's good will was derived from his own moral compass and how much of it was derided from disdain of his superiors (one did not get assigned to a dangerous posting on the ass-end of the periphery by being in the good graces of the higher-ups) was something of an open question. Ran decided to gamble on Jarro's good will. He leaned close and started talking in a low voice.
"Things are about to get very bad and HQ is not going to do anything about it. I'm going to order the Squadron's support ships to join up with us when things fall apart, and I'm not going to wait for permission from upstairs to do it. Feel free to arrest me for insubordination after the fact, but I need to know that you won't stand in my way in the present."
Jarro narrowed his eyes and studied the other man's face. Jarro was hardly a military genius, and indeed, he wasn't even sure that such a thing truly existed. However, if they did, then he had grown increasingly confident over his time in the 46th that his Fleet Captain would rank among their number.
In other words, if Ran thought things were about to go to shit, then Jarro was inclined to believe him.
"Do what you have to do. I can feel my hearing and vision impairments flaring up as we speak..."
"Good man." Ran straightened and approached his communications officer. "Tell Captain Gavnetek that he needs to get ready to get those fat tubs of his over here on my mark within less than a minute. I don't care how hard he has to push them. After that, get me in touch with Captain Trentegg. We're calling the birds to roost."
---
Ran wished he could have said he was surprised when the humans revealed their second set of hidden units and launched a vast flight of missiles. He also wished that he could say he was surprised when the Warlord, in his infinite wisdom, ordered the fleet into a full frontal assault that was - for all intents and purposes - a suicide attack. Alas, he was not surprised by either event. Fortunately, he had not been idle in his predictions. While other units collapsed into disorder as the brutal melee took on an even more chaotic character, the 46th remained a fully cohesive unit. They drifted forward, patiently waiting, seemingly heedless to the oncoming ordinance that had inspired a frenzy in their fellows. Then their support ships reached them, and they suddenly sprang into action.
"Formation five." Ran ordered, though it was mostly a formality, as the Squadron was already entering that formation as part of maneuvers he'd pre-planned minutes before the missiles launched.
The ships of the 46th arranged themselves into an elongated ovoid shape, with the support ships buried deep in the center of the formation. They began moving forward in this formation, and Ran gave his next order.
"Attack plan three, ram right through them!" Ran ordered. The 46th went in for a headlong charge. Their slight delay had spared them from the alpha strike of the missiles from the human ships among the mixed part of the enemy fleet. As such, they had the most intact leadership of all the large units of the fleet, which led to the disorganized blobs of Hegemony ships naturally following the 46th as an adhoc leader of sorts. They fell in behind his squadron, but that suited Ran just fine. When there were thermonuclear weapons aimed at its shaft, the tip of the spear was the safest place to be.
Of course, while they may have been out of range of the nukes, the hail of kinetic fire the 46th was coming under proved that the enemy's mass drivers were very much not out of range. Fortunately, it wasn't long before the two sides clashed, and the 46th found itself no longer at the front of the batarian attack, with the sheer numbers and momentum of the attack being the only thing driving the mass of Navy ships forward to overtake them. Ran scanned the tactical display with an expert eye, and found a weak point in the already quite thin enemy line.
"There, tell gunnery control to direct the fire at that point!" He ordered, gesturing to the point on the display for the benefit of his aid.
His orders were relayed, and (despite their relatively small numbers) the disciplined volley fire of the 46th punched a hole clean through the screening ships. Still maintaining its cohesion expertly amidst the melee, the 46th charged through the hole it had made. Ran was surprised to find the elcor dreadnoughts straight in his crosshairs, far closer than he had anticipated. The furthest dreadnought ducked away, retreating after a turian heavy cruiser took a round from a batarian dreadnought to save the threatened ship's life. Ran pushed the other ship from his mind. For the next few precious moments, it would be irrelevant. There was only him, his Squadron, and the dreadnought right in front of him.
"Focus all fire on that dreadnought!" He roared. The strategic benefit of felling one of the enemy's precious few dreadnoughts was of course not lost on him, but of far greater import was the fact that the ship stood between him and the safety of his men.
The dreadnought, its shields already buckling under the strain of the batarian heavy fleet firing on it in earnest. The 46th's barrage would finish the job. Her escorts melted under the overwhelming numerical disparity, and her shields finally broke. She was beaten savagely by the smaller caliber guns. It seemed destined to be death by a thousand cuts, but then Hel'Shan angled her spinal mount and put a round straight through the drive core, putting the stricken ship out of its misery. It went up in a drive core detonation, and the 46th rushed to pass through the enemy lines entirely, before the rapidly summoned enemy reinforcements could close the gap. Fortunately, they made it through, and the closing of the gap was prevented by the flood of batarian ships that followed after the 46th.
The missiles detonated, a second sun was created for a split second, but the attack continued on regardless. More holes were punched in the enemy lines and more batarian survivors flooded through. They formed up, more from instinct than from the ineffectual shrieking from the surviving officers over the comms. They watched as the enemy fleet showed up, and that terrible super ship moved to join them, missiles at the ready. The tattered remnants of the fleet, harrowed and leaderless, had finally had enough. They turned tail and ran.
Once again, a notable exception to the chaos was the 46th Squadron. While exhausted and depleted, their casualties were relatively light compared to the disastrous losses elsewhere in the fleet. For this reason they were able to retreat in good order, fending off the pursuing enemy, while other less organized groups of ships fell prey to the enemy pursuit ships.
Hours later, the 46th reached the edge of the system. Ran took one last look at the graveyard behind him.
Venzeeltir have mercy on the souls of the brave among their number. He clenched his fists, and ground his teeth. With the gods as my witness, these will be the last sailors sent to die for the ambitions and delusions of fools. He loosened up, and frowned at the image on the display for a moment longer.
"Let's make the FTL jump. Brace yourselves, it's going to be a long way home."
He turned away from the millions of his dead country men he was leaving behind.
With the gods as my witness, the status quo dies with them.
---
Hey all, the next phase of this story will be made up of multiple "series within a series" that will be happening concurrently within the narrative. What you've just read is the start of the series that will be exploring the fallout of the Hegemony defeat from the perspective of its citizens, which I have named "Audacity". There is also one other series you have already seen, which covers the goings-on in Conspiracy Land, called "Organization". In addition to those two, there will be one other series looking at how the UN and Citadel are doing, and there may be others besides that but these are the only three that are set in stone (if you have any other perspectives/angles within the narrative you'd like to see explored that don't fit into those categories, please feel free to make a suggestion). I chose to use this title format as I don't intend to tell all of the stories in a set order (so, as an example a human chapter might be followed by an Audacity chapter, or an Organization chapter, etc and then it will eventually be brought back around to another human chapter) so we're not stuck in one part of the story for too long (nothing worse than an arc that overstays its welcome).
As always, thank you very much for reading!
There was something about the way the enemy fleet had maneuvered that didn't sit right with Fleet Captain Ranalett'Goss (Known as "Ran" by his friends and "that uppity caste-hopping bastard" by his enemies). Of course, the maneuverings of his fleet didn't sit right with him either, but one didn't last long in the Hegemony Navy if he couldn't stomach incompetent superiors. He understood the Warlord's logic. The enemy was, obviously, holding some force in reserve, and it was equally obvious that the Warlord was aware of this and the fleet's current formation was some kind of misguided attempt to counter that. The decision to hold the dreadnoughts and heavy cruisers in reserve was clearly an attempt to avoid falling prey to the envelopment tactics used by the enemy in the previous battle. It was a textbook formation: artillery in the back, escorts in the front. Except the idiot had also held back almost all of the light cruisers to escort the heavies. No doubt the Warlord feared missiles from the as-yet-unseen enemy super ship, but depriving his main assault of a significant proportion of its point defenses was not the way to counter it. Ran glared at his tactical display as casualty reports from the fighters under his command rolled in.
How many of those pilots would still be alive if their cruiser support wasn't sitting around with their thumbs up their asses waiting for an ambush?
The Warlord was overthinking things, in Ran's humble opinion. The Hegemony, in a rare moment of competence, had gone to great lengths to ensure that their massive strategic superiority was actually brought to bear for this battle. The fleet had the numbers and the firepower. All they need do is maintain a tight formation and roll right over the dramatically outnumbered and outgunned enemy fleet. Instead, the Warlord was being cautious, attempting to avoid casualties by methods that were only increasing them.
The battle went on, and Ran did his best to direct his forces from afar, lamenting the fact that he couldn't move in his flagship, Hel'Shan, to provide fire support. Then, as if Venzeeltir himself had woken up from his coma and answered his prayers, orders came from headquarters to him and several other heavy cruisers to advance with a detachment and support the assault. Ran's elation was cut short as he parsed that this was not a general attack order, but rather a case of the esteemed Warlord dividing the fleet even more. For just a moment Ran fantasized about being in command. The enemy would be defeated by now, the super ship - where ever it was - would be reduced to a speed bump due to its supporting fleet being dead, and the creeping dread Ran was feeling would be nowhere to be found. Unfortunately, reality was not so kind, and so Ran and the light cruisers of his squadron advanced, along with hundreds of other ships.
As Ran arrived at the battle, finally able to bring the full firepower of his squadron to bare against the enemy, the dread began to fade away. The men of the 46th Frontier Squadron, his squadron, were crack troops. Tempered by constant low-intensity combat against raiders on the Hegemony fringe, and guided by Ran's relentless drills, they were amongst the best in the Navy, even when Ran's obvious bias was laid aside. With their leader in their midst and their formation reforged, the 46th Squadron had the opportunity to demonstrate this. Their particular session of the battle's messy and three-dimensional front line had them facing off against a squadron containing what appeared to be mostly terminus models and older Citadel ones. Likely a mixed quarian and human scratch formation. A more cautious commander would have sat back and let his superior firepower carry the day, but a man didn't make it to Fleet Captain at the age of thirty by being cautious.
"The Squadron is to assume formation nine." He ordered. His Chief of Staff relayed the command, and the ships of the 46th rapidly arranged themselves into a conical formation, with the heaviest ships at the tip, all of which was done under heavy fire from the enemy.
"The Squadron will advance under attack plan six." The next order came, and the cone of batarian ships charged right at the enemy. The ramshackle formation of refurbished or second-line ships had no real answer for a proper heavy cruiser like Hel'Shan, other than concentrated fire. Which was difficult to apply, as the batarian formation penetrated their lines and cut their formation in half. With the enemy fleet divided, the batarian cone split into two unequal halves. The smaller one held the line, while the larger one consolidated its now superior numbers and enveloped the now inferior number of enemy ships, swallowing it whole like the mouth of some sort of cosmic fish. The enemy ships, already greatly outgunned, now faced a three dimensional crossfire. It was a massacre, with only a ragged handful of survivors managing to scatter like frightened prey animals. The larger half of the batarian squadron went to join the smaller one - still holding the other half of the enemy force at bay - and began consolidating its firepower to repeat the envelopment again. The timely intervention of a wing of elcor fighters - no doubt hastily scraped together by the enemy fleet's commander to prevent their flank from collapsing - forced Ran to react and allowed the remnants of his prey to escape and remake their formation.
"Formation two, collapse our lines!" Ran ordered hastily.
The 46th moved to obey, compressing its formation and creating a lethal wall of overlapping point defenses that deterred the elcor fighters from pressing their attack.
"Time to regroup, formation one." Ran ordered once he saw the fighters break off. His ships reformed into a standard battle line, and began pouring disciplined volley fire on the now significantly depleted enemy squadron. It was not the first victory that the 46th had won in such a manner. More than one grand raiding fleet of a would-be pillaging and despoiling warlord from the Terminus had been carved into pieces by the very same tactics from the 46th. Of course, the raiders were usually routed from the field altogether when Ran was done from them instead of retreating in good order like in this case. Granted, disciplined professionals defending their homes and families could hardly be compared to cowardly pirate filth, so Ran wasn't particularly bitter about the results he'd gotten. His actions had created a sizeable dent in the enemy's formation.
Now if only our fearless leader had the brains to use it.
"Request reinforcements from HQ to exploit the weakness we've created in their lines." He ordered the communications officer.
After an unpleasantly long moment, his officer looked at him with the batarian equivalent of an exasperated expression. "They are not responding to our hails. I've sent a message but no response yet."
Ran's eyes twitched. Even in the middle of a fleet battle, petty political games were being played. There was no doubt in Ran's mind that some idiot fourth son of a Lord Admiral who was on the Warlord's staff as a favor had taken one look at who had sent the message and promptly ordered it ignored. Ran was a commoner of great talent and even greater irreverence of the nobility. The sort of man that filled the cavernous egos of talentless young aristocrats with a sense of inferiority that manifested itself as borderline treasonous sabotage.
Ran ground his teeth and set himself to wait for a reply that he knew wasn't coming.
---
Ran watched in despair as the oh-so-brilliant Warlord of the Hegemony Navy sent all of his light cruisers forward as a screen against the newly emerged human ambushing force. The Heavy fleet was completely exposed, and Ran was completely mystified.
Is...is he stupid? Does he honestly think that this was all the human's had?
The Warlord obviously intended to use the light cruiser screen to blunt any incoming missile swarm before it could reach the heavies, and then crush the ambush force with his massively superior firepower. The only problem with his logic was that it assumed that the missiles in front of him were the only missiles he'd be facing. Ran was almost certain that was not the case.
If I was laying this ambush, where would I put them? He mused to himself.
His eyes drifted to a large object on the tactical map, a moon that the VI claimed was called "Eirene" and his eyes widened. It was, of course, foolish to think that they'd hide it there. It would require a level of pre-planning that would make the humans completely helpless if the Hegemony fleet didn't do almost exactly as they expected it to.
It would only be conceivable if we were completely predictable fools, or the humans were desperate enough to take a gamble. ...Both of which are completely true.
His heart rate increased as his instincts screamed into his mind.
"Contact HQ immediately, maximum priority!" Ran ordered.
His communications officer looked at him after a moment fiddling with his console, disgust on his face. "Still no response to our hails, sir."
Ran went completely still as icy rage flooded his veins. Then he reared back his head and laughed uproariously, much to the concern of his subordinates.
He managed to choke down the laughter enough to speak. "The Batarian Hegemony died as it lived: under the watch of idiots."
Everyone on the flag bridge gaped openly at him. This was the kind of talk spoken by the people who were taken away by the Dinlat and never seen again. Several more courageous sets of eyes stole a glance at Captain Jarro, the Squadron's political officer. The Dinlat agent stared impassively at the screen of the intelligence console - like all political officers, he also server a dual-role as intelligence officer - and not visibly reacting to Ran's words. Ran stole a glance of his own at the man, before approaching him. Jarro looked up with a smirk as Ran stood over him.
"If you're concerned about any less-than-patriotic statements made recently by...members of the crew, then I regret to inform you that our surveillance equipment is on the fritz again. And, of course, my hearing isn't what it used to be..."
Ran smiled back. Jarro was a rare sort of Dinlat officer who had managed to survive a career in the agency with some tattered shred of a conscience still intact. Ran always went out of his way to cultivate a good relationship with his political officers (as anyone who enjoyed his career - and freedom - did). Though, how much of Jarro's good will was derived from his own moral compass and how much of it was derided from disdain of his superiors (one did not get assigned to a dangerous posting on the ass-end of the periphery by being in the good graces of the higher-ups) was something of an open question. Ran decided to gamble on Jarro's good will. He leaned close and started talking in a low voice.
"Things are about to get very bad and HQ is not going to do anything about it. I'm going to order the Squadron's support ships to join up with us when things fall apart, and I'm not going to wait for permission from upstairs to do it. Feel free to arrest me for insubordination after the fact, but I need to know that you won't stand in my way in the present."
Jarro narrowed his eyes and studied the other man's face. Jarro was hardly a military genius, and indeed, he wasn't even sure that such a thing truly existed. However, if they did, then he had grown increasingly confident over his time in the 46th that his Fleet Captain would rank among their number.
In other words, if Ran thought things were about to go to shit, then Jarro was inclined to believe him.
"Do what you have to do. I can feel my hearing and vision impairments flaring up as we speak..."
"Good man." Ran straightened and approached his communications officer. "Tell Captain Gavnetek that he needs to get ready to get those fat tubs of his over here on my mark within less than a minute. I don't care how hard he has to push them. After that, get me in touch with Captain Trentegg. We're calling the birds to roost."
---
Ran wished he could have said he was surprised when the humans revealed their second set of hidden units and launched a vast flight of missiles. He also wished that he could say he was surprised when the Warlord, in his infinite wisdom, ordered the fleet into a full frontal assault that was - for all intents and purposes - a suicide attack. Alas, he was not surprised by either event. Fortunately, he had not been idle in his predictions. While other units collapsed into disorder as the brutal melee took on an even more chaotic character, the 46th remained a fully cohesive unit. They drifted forward, patiently waiting, seemingly heedless to the oncoming ordinance that had inspired a frenzy in their fellows. Then their support ships reached them, and they suddenly sprang into action.
"Formation five." Ran ordered, though it was mostly a formality, as the Squadron was already entering that formation as part of maneuvers he'd pre-planned minutes before the missiles launched.
The ships of the 46th arranged themselves into an elongated ovoid shape, with the support ships buried deep in the center of the formation. They began moving forward in this formation, and Ran gave his next order.
"Attack plan three, ram right through them!" Ran ordered. The 46th went in for a headlong charge. Their slight delay had spared them from the alpha strike of the missiles from the human ships among the mixed part of the enemy fleet. As such, they had the most intact leadership of all the large units of the fleet, which led to the disorganized blobs of Hegemony ships naturally following the 46th as an adhoc leader of sorts. They fell in behind his squadron, but that suited Ran just fine. When there were thermonuclear weapons aimed at its shaft, the tip of the spear was the safest place to be.
Of course, while they may have been out of range of the nukes, the hail of kinetic fire the 46th was coming under proved that the enemy's mass drivers were very much not out of range. Fortunately, it wasn't long before the two sides clashed, and the 46th found itself no longer at the front of the batarian attack, with the sheer numbers and momentum of the attack being the only thing driving the mass of Navy ships forward to overtake them. Ran scanned the tactical display with an expert eye, and found a weak point in the already quite thin enemy line.
"There, tell gunnery control to direct the fire at that point!" He ordered, gesturing to the point on the display for the benefit of his aid.
His orders were relayed, and (despite their relatively small numbers) the disciplined volley fire of the 46th punched a hole clean through the screening ships. Still maintaining its cohesion expertly amidst the melee, the 46th charged through the hole it had made. Ran was surprised to find the elcor dreadnoughts straight in his crosshairs, far closer than he had anticipated. The furthest dreadnought ducked away, retreating after a turian heavy cruiser took a round from a batarian dreadnought to save the threatened ship's life. Ran pushed the other ship from his mind. For the next few precious moments, it would be irrelevant. There was only him, his Squadron, and the dreadnought right in front of him.
"Focus all fire on that dreadnought!" He roared. The strategic benefit of felling one of the enemy's precious few dreadnoughts was of course not lost on him, but of far greater import was the fact that the ship stood between him and the safety of his men.
The dreadnought, its shields already buckling under the strain of the batarian heavy fleet firing on it in earnest. The 46th's barrage would finish the job. Her escorts melted under the overwhelming numerical disparity, and her shields finally broke. She was beaten savagely by the smaller caliber guns. It seemed destined to be death by a thousand cuts, but then Hel'Shan angled her spinal mount and put a round straight through the drive core, putting the stricken ship out of its misery. It went up in a drive core detonation, and the 46th rushed to pass through the enemy lines entirely, before the rapidly summoned enemy reinforcements could close the gap. Fortunately, they made it through, and the closing of the gap was prevented by the flood of batarian ships that followed after the 46th.
The missiles detonated, a second sun was created for a split second, but the attack continued on regardless. More holes were punched in the enemy lines and more batarian survivors flooded through. They formed up, more from instinct than from the ineffectual shrieking from the surviving officers over the comms. They watched as the enemy fleet showed up, and that terrible super ship moved to join them, missiles at the ready. The tattered remnants of the fleet, harrowed and leaderless, had finally had enough. They turned tail and ran.
Once again, a notable exception to the chaos was the 46th Squadron. While exhausted and depleted, their casualties were relatively light compared to the disastrous losses elsewhere in the fleet. For this reason they were able to retreat in good order, fending off the pursuing enemy, while other less organized groups of ships fell prey to the enemy pursuit ships.
Hours later, the 46th reached the edge of the system. Ran took one last look at the graveyard behind him.
Venzeeltir have mercy on the souls of the brave among their number. He clenched his fists, and ground his teeth. With the gods as my witness, these will be the last sailors sent to die for the ambitions and delusions of fools. He loosened up, and frowned at the image on the display for a moment longer.
"Let's make the FTL jump. Brace yourselves, it's going to be a long way home."
He turned away from the millions of his dead country men he was leaving behind.
With the gods as my witness, the status quo dies with them.
---
Hey all, the next phase of this story will be made up of multiple "series within a series" that will be happening concurrently within the narrative. What you've just read is the start of the series that will be exploring the fallout of the Hegemony defeat from the perspective of its citizens, which I have named "Audacity". There is also one other series you have already seen, which covers the goings-on in Conspiracy Land, called "Organization". In addition to those two, there will be one other series looking at how the UN and Citadel are doing, and there may be others besides that but these are the only three that are set in stone (if you have any other perspectives/angles within the narrative you'd like to see explored that don't fit into those categories, please feel free to make a suggestion). I chose to use this title format as I don't intend to tell all of the stories in a set order (so, as an example a human chapter might be followed by an Audacity chapter, or an Organization chapter, etc and then it will eventually be brought back around to another human chapter) so we're not stuck in one part of the story for too long (nothing worse than an arc that overstays its welcome).
As always, thank you very much for reading!
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- Location
- On a speck of dust, floating through the void.
Update!
Lovely to see, as ever, in spite of all the faults of the Hegemony, all their institutional inefficiencies and idiocies, there are competent people in their midst. Hindered by the system, yes, but good at their jobs when the opportunity presents themselves.
Would be lovely to see more of this captain.
Lovely to see, as ever, in spite of all the faults of the Hegemony, all their institutional inefficiencies and idiocies, there are competent people in their midst. Hindered by the system, yes, but good at their jobs when the opportunity presents themselves.
Would be lovely to see more of this captain.
Well you're in luck, since he's essentially going to be the main character of "Audacity" haha.
Tisaku
Head Chief Thinkomancer
Hexcalibur
Not So Ordinary Sword
- Location
- Somewhere
- Pronouns
- It
Reminded me of the PRH's navy in Honorverse, including few the Political Officers with common sense and decency.
Audacity - 2
February 5th, 2091
Outskirts of the Hegemony Attican Traverse
The familiar and stately face of the Hegemony State Network's most trusted anchorman looked earnestly into the camera. "Even now, traitors and barbarians are at our gates, but take heart! The stalwart men of the National Army and the Dinlat are manning the walls, and the brave warriors of our Navy are returning to us in droves. Their admirals failed them, but their loyalty to the true government and the ideals of this Hegemony still remains strong. The military leadership, who so foolishly punished their brave and loyal captains for their own failures after the first battle against the humans, have been stripped of their ranks by the Ruling Council, who urge all loyal men of the Hegemony Navy to return home - "
Commander Tarreyt, leader of the 46th Frontier Squadron's fighter wing, grinned at the other assembled senior officers.
"They must be desperate. The State Network never admits to the government fucking up."
Captain Jarro, chief intelligence officer and head of the Squadron's political officers, rolled his eyes.
"Even then, they're still shifting all the blame for their idiotic collective punishment onto the military higher-ups. Which is ridiculous, because I can practically guarantee that it wasn't their idea. Even the Hegemony military isn't dumb enough to wipe out a tenth of their officer corps for no reason, so that means some Council member probably threw a tantrum to make it happen."
"Do you think anyone will buy it?" Captain Leytt, the Squadron's Chief of Staff, asked. The survivors of the disaster at Arcturus had largely scattered to the four winds in their panicked rout from the UN ships hunting them. The recent raiding campaign against the frontier of the humans' nascent civilization meant that the UN lacked the logistical capability to sustain a prolonged hunting campaign within the depths of the Attican Traverse, so the 46th had been able to breathe easier since leaving human territory.
Jarro shrugged. "There were always going to be some who would make their way back to the Hegemony, even if they thought they'd be executed for their troubles. The announcement that they won't be punished will likely embolden any who wanted to return but hesitated out of fear of reprisal. The ships and surviving formations commanded by officers associated with the houses of the Ruling Council will almost certainly return. Ships commanded by officers from other houses will likely make their way to their family holdings and lay low until their families tell them what to do. Ships commanded by majority commoners or a mixed grouping of houses are a wildcard. There's almost certainly dozens or hundreds of mutinies going on as we speak among ships like that. In short, even with this announcement, I'm sure desertions will still be rampant."
Captain Bekin, leader of the Squadron's HQ Flotilla, spoke next. "That brings us to the thresher maw in the room: What are we going to be? Loyalists? The Nobility? Desertion? I can't claim to be partial to any of them, but we can't just sit around forever."
Captains Jevir and Bamoll, the commanders of the other two combat flotillas, nodded in agreement. However, the fourth flotilla commander, Neveq -in charge of the logistical and support ships - shook his head in disagreement.
"I'm with you that we have to make a choice, but I'd say I am partial to some of them. Or, more accurately, I am just strongly opposed to one of them. We cannot lend ourselves to the Ruling Council's cause. They have been running the show, which means that no matter what they say, at the end of the day they are the ones who have been leading us into disaster after disaster. I don't claim to give a damn about the 'democracy' the damned asari constantly whinge about, but there are other ways to make sure a government faces consequences for failure. As far as I'm concerned, it's our...what do those aliens call it?...that's right, it's our 'civic duty' to ensure that their incompetent heads end up on a pike."
Jarro laughed. "Believe it or not, I agree. The Hegemony believes in the strong ruling and the weak serving, in accordance with the 'laws of nature' or whatever the propaganda is calling it these days. They've proven their weakness with their constant incompetence. By their own ideology they are condemned."
Leytt laughed. "Yeah, you've got a point. They'd hardly be the first Ruling Council to be torn apart by the subordinate houses."
Ran finally spoke up for the first time. "And that's precisely the problem. There have been, what, two or three dozen Ruling Councils in the Hegemony's history? And that's just the history they let us read. Dozens of tries, with dozens of different sets of houses running the show. Yet, they accomplish nothing of actual substance. Nothing but posturing and scheming, only to be replaced by the next batch of incompetents, who do more of the same. Thousands of years, and next to nothing to show for it. Supporting another nobles' rebellion wouldn't change a thing."
Jarro was very far from a "true believer", especially by the standards of political officers, but he still felt the need to go to bat for the regime he'd given his entire adult life to.
"We've got one of the largest interstellar empires in the galaxy. I'd hardly call that 'nothing'."
Ran inhaled, closing his eyes. "Do you know what percentage of Khar'Shan's population does not have access to running water?"
Jarro gave him a perplexed look. "Uh...no, I don't."
"Twenty percent. Thousands of years of interstellar civilization, hundreds of star system's worth of resources, and yet somehow not a single Ruling Council has been able to ensure there is running water for a fifth of the population on our home planet, the most developed world in our empire. Oh, and I was lying by the way. Twenty percent is just the free population. The slaves are at seventy percent. That's higher than the humans, if you were curious. Before they discovered the mass effect."
He stood up, leaning forward with his hands on the table. "You could skim one tenth of one percent off of the annual revenue of one of our hundreds of state-backed mega corporations and it would be more than enough to bring that number down to zero. And yet, for thousands of years the number has barely budged. Believe me, I've checked census records. That can't be blamed on the other races stealing our colonies, or us getting robbed at the peace deal in the krogan rebellions, or whatever other nonsense the propaganda ministry is fixated on this century. That can't even be blamed on incompetence. That's a result of countless generations of governments choosing not to do anything about it. And that is just one of uncountable examples like it. The Hegemony is a lead weight holding down civilization. Our successes are in spite of it, not because of it."
Every man present shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Just listening to talk like this could get someone disappeared by the Dinlat. Which was precisely why no one said a word. Every man who wore a uniform for the Hegemony and wasn't completely delusional knew that the regime they served was rotten to its core. Even men who genuinely believed in the regime's ideology would still be the first to lament the current rulers' incompetence(in private and to people they were absolutely certain wouldn't rat to the Dinlat). Of course, men like that would pine for some vaguely defined 'better days' when the regime was run 'properly', but the simple truth was that such days had never existed. Indeed, for men like Ran who read their history (including the parts the Dinlat didn't want to be read) it rapidly became clear that the Hegemony had been an abomination from its very inception.
Ran was very far from pious, but there was one spiritual point on which he was in total agreement with the 'backwards' followers of the Old Way who lived in his adopted homeland in the Periphery: the batarian race had lost its soul long ago. Of course, the damned yokels also believed that it could be found once again. Ran was not sure he believed that, but he knew for damn sure that it wasn't going to happen while the festering wound that was the Hegemony persisted on the body of the batarian species.
It was Leytt who finally broke the silence, speaking genuinely to Ran as an old friend, rather than a subordinate. "I don't think any of us here disagree with the words themselves, but I do feel it necessary to ask: what exactly did you have in mind? You say we won't be supporting he nobles, so do you intend to start a rebellion of our own? We have less than five hundred combat ships to our name, no army to speak of save for what we can scrape together from our ships' marines, and no power base to launch a rebellion from. Which is why I am assuming you have a plan."
Ran smiled. "You sum it up nicely. We need ships, an army, and allies. And yes, I do have a plan to get them. First we dig through the garbage, and then we return to our post."
The gathered officers shared an exasperated glance born of years working together under the same eccentric talent. An unspoken message was shared among them.
This is going to be one of those meetings.
---
February 9th, 2091
Yevethk Colony, Hegemony Outer Systems
As a result of an analysis of the battle produced by the combined efforts of the squadron's intelligence and logistics departments, a very rough estimate of the losses incurred by the Hegemony Navy was placed on Ran's desk. Of the twenty thousand ships that had invaded human space, seven thousand had escaped the the battle intact. Several hundred more had likely been destroyed in the relentless pursuit operation executed by the UN following the battle. Which meant that perhaps a little over six thousand ships had managed to survive the entire ordeal. Nearly three quarters losses, in a battle where they'd outnumbered the enemy by more than three to one. A failure this spectacular would be answered with rebellion, and the relative handful of reservist-crewed ships the Hegemony had recently pulled out of mothballs prior to the invasion would not be able to prevent it.
Numbers for the personal fleets of the countless nobles, mercenaries, and other non-state navies operating under the nominal authority of the Hegemony were so unreliable it bordered on comedy, but if one subtracted the regular navy's twenty thousand ships from the widely-publicized propaganda number of forty thousand that the Hegemony claimed as the total number of ships at its (arguable) command, then that left twenty thousand ships with unaccounted for loyalties.
Ten thousand of those ships allegedly belonged to the Hegemony's "Partner States" in the Terminus region. These could largely be written off, both because the warlords who ran those "states" would likely be too busy fending off the inevitable raids the Hegemony's sudden weakness would invite, and because the figure of ten thousand ships ascribed to them was so laughably inflated that even a cursory glance at open source intelligence by a layman would show that they had perhaps half that number. And that was the generous estimate.
Of the remaining ten thousand, the vast majority would be property of the nobility. A few hundred would be the personal retinues of the houses currently sitting on the Ruling Council. The rest would be nobles outside of the council, circling like aquatic predators around the proverbial chum that the Ruling Council had become. A handful may remain loyal, but few would be interested in associating themselves with a failure of that magnitude.
Reading over the report yet again as his contingent made its way to its destination, Ran found himself speculating.
Alright, of the ten thousand remaining we'll give...let's say five hundred to the Hegemony, eighty-five hundred to the rebels. The other thousand are unaccounted for independents and mercenaries, wildcards. I'll leave them out for the moment. Now, of the six thousand Navy ships, let's pull a number out of my ass... we'll call it four thousand returning home. Of those, it's probable that the majority will favor the rebels, but we'll be generous for the sake of argument and give half of them to the loyalists. Add another thousand or so from the mothball ships... and just to be nice, we'll also split the wildcards 50/50. So, that gives us four thousand versus eleven thousand. Even with me being very generous, they still face a war outnumbered worse than two to one. And they don't have any super ships to tilt the odds.
Worse still, the advantages in firepower that Hegemony had once enjoyed were also long gone. All of the Hegemony's dreadnoughts and the vast majority of its heavy cruisers had perished in nuclear fire at Arcturus. The ships hastily pulled out of mothballs in the build-up to the invasion were mostly destroyers and frigates, as they had been intended as a temporary replacement for the many patrols and border guard forces being appropriated for the invasion. Which meant that for the most part - much like the rebels - the heaviest ships the Hegemony would have easy access to would be standard cruisers (unless some of the scattered handful of surviving heavy cruisers pledged loyalty to them). This also meant that any available heavy ships that could be obtained would be a hugely important strategic asset coveted by both sides...when they learned of it, anyway.
There was going to be a brief window of time until the full extent of the losses taken at Arcturus was understood by the belligerents of the rapidly-approaching civil war, and Ran intended to exploit this to the fullest extent. Which was why he and a contingent of his fleet had made their way to a seemingly unimportant backwater like Yevethk. A small space habitat had been built there, whose sole economic activity was providing services to the Navy personnel that maintained the boneyard at the Lagrange point between the system's star and the sizeable brown dwarf that orbited it.
The boneyard's meager defenses were suitably cowed by a warning shot from Hel'Shan and a stern talking-to from Ran's communications officer, and with that the support and recovery ships got to work. It was certain that, in the near future, one of the two factions in the inevitable civil war would make their way through this system, taking every ship that had even a prayer of being made to fly once again. Ran was not here to do that. He, and the other task forces from the 46th scattered across the Hegemony's most poorly guarded boneyards, were interested in only the choicest cuts of meat: the intact heavy cruisers. He'd leave the rest for the nobles to fight over the bones and sinew. By the end of the day, two heavy cruisers were brought to a partially-operational state, and another ten were made ready to be towed by the recovery ships.
Of course, the hard part will be getting the crews to fly them, but I'll be leaving that in Jarro's capable hands. The rest of us will be heading home to the Periphery, and we'll have work to do when we get there.
---
February 10th, 2091
Undocumented Dinlat Black Site
Jarro scratched his chin as he perused the prison's records, sparing a disinterested glance at the begging shrieks of a Dinlat guard as his men executed him. Military prisons were not dissimilar from normal prisons, in that they mostly contained men convicted of actual crimes who were there for good reason. Military prisons run by the Dinlat, however, were filled to the brim with political prisoners, whose crimes consisted of saying the wrong thing, hearing the wrong thing, or annoying a Dinlat officer who happened to be in a bad mood that day. In other words, it was a large supply of men with military training and a bone to pick with the Hegemony. An attractive prospect for the recruiting officers of any nascent rebellions. Another gunshot rang out, and the desperate blubbering of the Dinlat guard who had been its target was silenced.
Jarro sighed. The only downside to stealing people from the Dinlat was that the guard and administrative complement had to be slaughtered to the last man and woman and the entire site bombed from orbit to keep their identities a secret from the inevitable Dinlat investigation that would follow. It was a hassle, to be sure, and he could only rely on his own carefully cultivated corps of converted Dinlat officers to do it, as regular Navy men did not have the stomach for a mass string of face-to-face executions the way a Dinlat man would. He'd considered poaching some of the personnel for his own purposes from the sites he and his men had raided, but ultimately decided against it. The jobs at political prisons were where the Dinlat dumped the officers who were suitably loyal but too violent or incompetent to be used for important work. After years of service to the Dinlat, empathy was more of an academic concept to Jarro than an actual feeling he experienced (on the rare occasions he felt anything at all) but even he couldn't help but to grimace when he saw images of what went on in these prisons. Any man who could stand by and watch while the atrocities that went on in every Dinlat prison were carried out was not the sort of man who would be converted to the cause.
Which was probably why the normally soft-hearted (by the admittedly very low standards of batarian despots) Ran had authorized this particular bit of wet work with barely a second thought. He was willing to get blood on his hands when the situation called for it. Jarro appreciated that in a leader.
He got up from the desk, pulling out his datastick as his download finished. He turned to leave the room as one of his men dragged a sobbing clerk by the ankles out from the desk she'd been hiding under. She hadn't gotten through the first word in her plea for mercy before Jarro's man shot her in the head. Jarro stepped over her corpse on the way out. This was why Dinlat men had to be the ones to do this job.
A normal man, guided by his emotions, would just see a helpless young woman weeping and begging for her life.
Jarro exited the office, looking at the line of starving, tortured wretches trudging their way to the ships from the 46th that would lift them out of hell.
I see someone who looked at this, all day, every day, and didn't bat a gods damned eye.
---
Hey all, sorry if it got a little too dark at the ending passage there. I wanted to show that Ran and his little revolution isn't all sunshine and rainbows. And before you ask, no, that was not me advocating for summary executions at the end there haha. I just wanted to get inside the head of a character like Jarro and explore how he sees the world and justifies himself.
As I mentioned in the previous chapter, there's going to be a third 'series within a series' focusing on what the UN and its friends are up to. I intend for that one to be more open-ended/short-story based vs the more linear narrative of Audacity, so if you've got any perspectives or aspects of the story's world that you'd like to see explored more, feel free to make a suggestion.
As always, thank you very much for reading!
Outskirts of the Hegemony Attican Traverse
The familiar and stately face of the Hegemony State Network's most trusted anchorman looked earnestly into the camera. "Even now, traitors and barbarians are at our gates, but take heart! The stalwart men of the National Army and the Dinlat are manning the walls, and the brave warriors of our Navy are returning to us in droves. Their admirals failed them, but their loyalty to the true government and the ideals of this Hegemony still remains strong. The military leadership, who so foolishly punished their brave and loyal captains for their own failures after the first battle against the humans, have been stripped of their ranks by the Ruling Council, who urge all loyal men of the Hegemony Navy to return home - "
Commander Tarreyt, leader of the 46th Frontier Squadron's fighter wing, grinned at the other assembled senior officers.
"They must be desperate. The State Network never admits to the government fucking up."
Captain Jarro, chief intelligence officer and head of the Squadron's political officers, rolled his eyes.
"Even then, they're still shifting all the blame for their idiotic collective punishment onto the military higher-ups. Which is ridiculous, because I can practically guarantee that it wasn't their idea. Even the Hegemony military isn't dumb enough to wipe out a tenth of their officer corps for no reason, so that means some Council member probably threw a tantrum to make it happen."
"Do you think anyone will buy it?" Captain Leytt, the Squadron's Chief of Staff, asked. The survivors of the disaster at Arcturus had largely scattered to the four winds in their panicked rout from the UN ships hunting them. The recent raiding campaign against the frontier of the humans' nascent civilization meant that the UN lacked the logistical capability to sustain a prolonged hunting campaign within the depths of the Attican Traverse, so the 46th had been able to breathe easier since leaving human territory.
Jarro shrugged. "There were always going to be some who would make their way back to the Hegemony, even if they thought they'd be executed for their troubles. The announcement that they won't be punished will likely embolden any who wanted to return but hesitated out of fear of reprisal. The ships and surviving formations commanded by officers associated with the houses of the Ruling Council will almost certainly return. Ships commanded by officers from other houses will likely make their way to their family holdings and lay low until their families tell them what to do. Ships commanded by majority commoners or a mixed grouping of houses are a wildcard. There's almost certainly dozens or hundreds of mutinies going on as we speak among ships like that. In short, even with this announcement, I'm sure desertions will still be rampant."
Captain Bekin, leader of the Squadron's HQ Flotilla, spoke next. "That brings us to the thresher maw in the room: What are we going to be? Loyalists? The Nobility? Desertion? I can't claim to be partial to any of them, but we can't just sit around forever."
Captains Jevir and Bamoll, the commanders of the other two combat flotillas, nodded in agreement. However, the fourth flotilla commander, Neveq -in charge of the logistical and support ships - shook his head in disagreement.
"I'm with you that we have to make a choice, but I'd say I am partial to some of them. Or, more accurately, I am just strongly opposed to one of them. We cannot lend ourselves to the Ruling Council's cause. They have been running the show, which means that no matter what they say, at the end of the day they are the ones who have been leading us into disaster after disaster. I don't claim to give a damn about the 'democracy' the damned asari constantly whinge about, but there are other ways to make sure a government faces consequences for failure. As far as I'm concerned, it's our...what do those aliens call it?...that's right, it's our 'civic duty' to ensure that their incompetent heads end up on a pike."
Jarro laughed. "Believe it or not, I agree. The Hegemony believes in the strong ruling and the weak serving, in accordance with the 'laws of nature' or whatever the propaganda is calling it these days. They've proven their weakness with their constant incompetence. By their own ideology they are condemned."
Leytt laughed. "Yeah, you've got a point. They'd hardly be the first Ruling Council to be torn apart by the subordinate houses."
Ran finally spoke up for the first time. "And that's precisely the problem. There have been, what, two or three dozen Ruling Councils in the Hegemony's history? And that's just the history they let us read. Dozens of tries, with dozens of different sets of houses running the show. Yet, they accomplish nothing of actual substance. Nothing but posturing and scheming, only to be replaced by the next batch of incompetents, who do more of the same. Thousands of years, and next to nothing to show for it. Supporting another nobles' rebellion wouldn't change a thing."
Jarro was very far from a "true believer", especially by the standards of political officers, but he still felt the need to go to bat for the regime he'd given his entire adult life to.
"We've got one of the largest interstellar empires in the galaxy. I'd hardly call that 'nothing'."
Ran inhaled, closing his eyes. "Do you know what percentage of Khar'Shan's population does not have access to running water?"
Jarro gave him a perplexed look. "Uh...no, I don't."
"Twenty percent. Thousands of years of interstellar civilization, hundreds of star system's worth of resources, and yet somehow not a single Ruling Council has been able to ensure there is running water for a fifth of the population on our home planet, the most developed world in our empire. Oh, and I was lying by the way. Twenty percent is just the free population. The slaves are at seventy percent. That's higher than the humans, if you were curious. Before they discovered the mass effect."
He stood up, leaning forward with his hands on the table. "You could skim one tenth of one percent off of the annual revenue of one of our hundreds of state-backed mega corporations and it would be more than enough to bring that number down to zero. And yet, for thousands of years the number has barely budged. Believe me, I've checked census records. That can't be blamed on the other races stealing our colonies, or us getting robbed at the peace deal in the krogan rebellions, or whatever other nonsense the propaganda ministry is fixated on this century. That can't even be blamed on incompetence. That's a result of countless generations of governments choosing not to do anything about it. And that is just one of uncountable examples like it. The Hegemony is a lead weight holding down civilization. Our successes are in spite of it, not because of it."
Every man present shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Just listening to talk like this could get someone disappeared by the Dinlat. Which was precisely why no one said a word. Every man who wore a uniform for the Hegemony and wasn't completely delusional knew that the regime they served was rotten to its core. Even men who genuinely believed in the regime's ideology would still be the first to lament the current rulers' incompetence(in private and to people they were absolutely certain wouldn't rat to the Dinlat). Of course, men like that would pine for some vaguely defined 'better days' when the regime was run 'properly', but the simple truth was that such days had never existed. Indeed, for men like Ran who read their history (including the parts the Dinlat didn't want to be read) it rapidly became clear that the Hegemony had been an abomination from its very inception.
Ran was very far from pious, but there was one spiritual point on which he was in total agreement with the 'backwards' followers of the Old Way who lived in his adopted homeland in the Periphery: the batarian race had lost its soul long ago. Of course, the damned yokels also believed that it could be found once again. Ran was not sure he believed that, but he knew for damn sure that it wasn't going to happen while the festering wound that was the Hegemony persisted on the body of the batarian species.
It was Leytt who finally broke the silence, speaking genuinely to Ran as an old friend, rather than a subordinate. "I don't think any of us here disagree with the words themselves, but I do feel it necessary to ask: what exactly did you have in mind? You say we won't be supporting he nobles, so do you intend to start a rebellion of our own? We have less than five hundred combat ships to our name, no army to speak of save for what we can scrape together from our ships' marines, and no power base to launch a rebellion from. Which is why I am assuming you have a plan."
Ran smiled. "You sum it up nicely. We need ships, an army, and allies. And yes, I do have a plan to get them. First we dig through the garbage, and then we return to our post."
The gathered officers shared an exasperated glance born of years working together under the same eccentric talent. An unspoken message was shared among them.
This is going to be one of those meetings.
---
February 9th, 2091
Yevethk Colony, Hegemony Outer Systems
As a result of an analysis of the battle produced by the combined efforts of the squadron's intelligence and logistics departments, a very rough estimate of the losses incurred by the Hegemony Navy was placed on Ran's desk. Of the twenty thousand ships that had invaded human space, seven thousand had escaped the the battle intact. Several hundred more had likely been destroyed in the relentless pursuit operation executed by the UN following the battle. Which meant that perhaps a little over six thousand ships had managed to survive the entire ordeal. Nearly three quarters losses, in a battle where they'd outnumbered the enemy by more than three to one. A failure this spectacular would be answered with rebellion, and the relative handful of reservist-crewed ships the Hegemony had recently pulled out of mothballs prior to the invasion would not be able to prevent it.
Numbers for the personal fleets of the countless nobles, mercenaries, and other non-state navies operating under the nominal authority of the Hegemony were so unreliable it bordered on comedy, but if one subtracted the regular navy's twenty thousand ships from the widely-publicized propaganda number of forty thousand that the Hegemony claimed as the total number of ships at its (arguable) command, then that left twenty thousand ships with unaccounted for loyalties.
Ten thousand of those ships allegedly belonged to the Hegemony's "Partner States" in the Terminus region. These could largely be written off, both because the warlords who ran those "states" would likely be too busy fending off the inevitable raids the Hegemony's sudden weakness would invite, and because the figure of ten thousand ships ascribed to them was so laughably inflated that even a cursory glance at open source intelligence by a layman would show that they had perhaps half that number. And that was the generous estimate.
Of the remaining ten thousand, the vast majority would be property of the nobility. A few hundred would be the personal retinues of the houses currently sitting on the Ruling Council. The rest would be nobles outside of the council, circling like aquatic predators around the proverbial chum that the Ruling Council had become. A handful may remain loyal, but few would be interested in associating themselves with a failure of that magnitude.
Reading over the report yet again as his contingent made its way to its destination, Ran found himself speculating.
Alright, of the ten thousand remaining we'll give...let's say five hundred to the Hegemony, eighty-five hundred to the rebels. The other thousand are unaccounted for independents and mercenaries, wildcards. I'll leave them out for the moment. Now, of the six thousand Navy ships, let's pull a number out of my ass... we'll call it four thousand returning home. Of those, it's probable that the majority will favor the rebels, but we'll be generous for the sake of argument and give half of them to the loyalists. Add another thousand or so from the mothball ships... and just to be nice, we'll also split the wildcards 50/50. So, that gives us four thousand versus eleven thousand. Even with me being very generous, they still face a war outnumbered worse than two to one. And they don't have any super ships to tilt the odds.
Worse still, the advantages in firepower that Hegemony had once enjoyed were also long gone. All of the Hegemony's dreadnoughts and the vast majority of its heavy cruisers had perished in nuclear fire at Arcturus. The ships hastily pulled out of mothballs in the build-up to the invasion were mostly destroyers and frigates, as they had been intended as a temporary replacement for the many patrols and border guard forces being appropriated for the invasion. Which meant that for the most part - much like the rebels - the heaviest ships the Hegemony would have easy access to would be standard cruisers (unless some of the scattered handful of surviving heavy cruisers pledged loyalty to them). This also meant that any available heavy ships that could be obtained would be a hugely important strategic asset coveted by both sides...when they learned of it, anyway.
There was going to be a brief window of time until the full extent of the losses taken at Arcturus was understood by the belligerents of the rapidly-approaching civil war, and Ran intended to exploit this to the fullest extent. Which was why he and a contingent of his fleet had made their way to a seemingly unimportant backwater like Yevethk. A small space habitat had been built there, whose sole economic activity was providing services to the Navy personnel that maintained the boneyard at the Lagrange point between the system's star and the sizeable brown dwarf that orbited it.
The boneyard's meager defenses were suitably cowed by a warning shot from Hel'Shan and a stern talking-to from Ran's communications officer, and with that the support and recovery ships got to work. It was certain that, in the near future, one of the two factions in the inevitable civil war would make their way through this system, taking every ship that had even a prayer of being made to fly once again. Ran was not here to do that. He, and the other task forces from the 46th scattered across the Hegemony's most poorly guarded boneyards, were interested in only the choicest cuts of meat: the intact heavy cruisers. He'd leave the rest for the nobles to fight over the bones and sinew. By the end of the day, two heavy cruisers were brought to a partially-operational state, and another ten were made ready to be towed by the recovery ships.
Of course, the hard part will be getting the crews to fly them, but I'll be leaving that in Jarro's capable hands. The rest of us will be heading home to the Periphery, and we'll have work to do when we get there.
---
February 10th, 2091
Undocumented Dinlat Black Site
Jarro scratched his chin as he perused the prison's records, sparing a disinterested glance at the begging shrieks of a Dinlat guard as his men executed him. Military prisons were not dissimilar from normal prisons, in that they mostly contained men convicted of actual crimes who were there for good reason. Military prisons run by the Dinlat, however, were filled to the brim with political prisoners, whose crimes consisted of saying the wrong thing, hearing the wrong thing, or annoying a Dinlat officer who happened to be in a bad mood that day. In other words, it was a large supply of men with military training and a bone to pick with the Hegemony. An attractive prospect for the recruiting officers of any nascent rebellions. Another gunshot rang out, and the desperate blubbering of the Dinlat guard who had been its target was silenced.
Jarro sighed. The only downside to stealing people from the Dinlat was that the guard and administrative complement had to be slaughtered to the last man and woman and the entire site bombed from orbit to keep their identities a secret from the inevitable Dinlat investigation that would follow. It was a hassle, to be sure, and he could only rely on his own carefully cultivated corps of converted Dinlat officers to do it, as regular Navy men did not have the stomach for a mass string of face-to-face executions the way a Dinlat man would. He'd considered poaching some of the personnel for his own purposes from the sites he and his men had raided, but ultimately decided against it. The jobs at political prisons were where the Dinlat dumped the officers who were suitably loyal but too violent or incompetent to be used for important work. After years of service to the Dinlat, empathy was more of an academic concept to Jarro than an actual feeling he experienced (on the rare occasions he felt anything at all) but even he couldn't help but to grimace when he saw images of what went on in these prisons. Any man who could stand by and watch while the atrocities that went on in every Dinlat prison were carried out was not the sort of man who would be converted to the cause.
Which was probably why the normally soft-hearted (by the admittedly very low standards of batarian despots) Ran had authorized this particular bit of wet work with barely a second thought. He was willing to get blood on his hands when the situation called for it. Jarro appreciated that in a leader.
He got up from the desk, pulling out his datastick as his download finished. He turned to leave the room as one of his men dragged a sobbing clerk by the ankles out from the desk she'd been hiding under. She hadn't gotten through the first word in her plea for mercy before Jarro's man shot her in the head. Jarro stepped over her corpse on the way out. This was why Dinlat men had to be the ones to do this job.
A normal man, guided by his emotions, would just see a helpless young woman weeping and begging for her life.
Jarro exited the office, looking at the line of starving, tortured wretches trudging their way to the ships from the 46th that would lift them out of hell.
I see someone who looked at this, all day, every day, and didn't bat a gods damned eye.
---
Hey all, sorry if it got a little too dark at the ending passage there. I wanted to show that Ran and his little revolution isn't all sunshine and rainbows. And before you ask, no, that was not me advocating for summary executions at the end there haha. I just wanted to get inside the head of a character like Jarro and explore how he sees the world and justifies himself.
As I mentioned in the previous chapter, there's going to be a third 'series within a series' focusing on what the UN and its friends are up to. I intend for that one to be more open-ended/short-story based vs the more linear narrative of Audacity, so if you've got any perspectives or aspects of the story's world that you'd like to see explored more, feel free to make a suggestion.
As always, thank you very much for reading!
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Tisaku
Head Chief Thinkomancer
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yes! Fight! Fight for a better tomorrow! Fight for a chance to be better! Fight for the soul of a people long stifled!
Respectfully sir, I think your sense of empathy is functioning well enough-it's just a bit more focused, and maybe a bit warped. But that's to be expected from someone working for the Secret Police.
Excellent chapter all around Egg, I'm very hyped for this storyline.
The Stones Left Unturned
To the wider galaxy, the asari and salarians are a classic example of the values of the Citadel, and the tale of their unification is part of its founding legend. At a glance, one would be hard-pressed to find two specific species more different, which only adds to the novelty of them being the founders, and to the value of the lesson their story teaches. After all, if two species as different as the asari and salarians can cooperate, then surely everyone can. Surely.
Of course, those who are in the know are well aware the differences between the two species are largely surface-level. In all of the ways that matter, they are quite similar. For example, both prefer a needlessly esoteric and wildly inefficient form of government, and as a result both have extensive shadow governments that subtly guide the decision making process towards goals that are actually productive. At a glance, this might seem incredibly corrupt and totally devoid of accountability...mostly because it is. However, among the ludicrously convoluted webs of alliances and conflicting interests that make up the politics of both races, there is something to be said for a quiet cabal of highly competent individuals seeking to advance the interests of the species as a whole. Indeed, many of the most famous (and infamous) moments in the long history of the Citadel Council had been made at small, remote meeting places where the two de facto leaders of the vast alliance could make decisions and communicate in privacy.
The decision to stand and fight against the rachni, to uplift the krogan, to ally with the turians, to unleash the genophage...all of those galaxy-changing ideas had been born in nondescript rooms not unlike the one Dekve currently found himself in. It was one of thousands of nameless black sites throughout the galaxy. Perhaps it was some matriarch's hideaway. Or maybe it was an STG safe house so secret that it had been lost amidst the agency's bureaucracy. Either way, he had no idea where he was, since he'd been sedated for the entire trip. Such drastic measures were necessary when one was conspiring against conspiracy. Ultimately, it didn't matter where he was. All that mattered was that it gave him and his compatriots a chance to speak with like-minded people amongst his asari counterparts.
With little in the way of ceremony, the two groups of conspirators filed into a conference room. At a little over two dozen in number, they all filled a wide range of roles within their respective shadow governments: intelligence agents, military officers, political power brokers, military industrial tycoons, wealthy aristocrats who provided funding off the books, and black ops agents who could probably kill everyone in the room. The motley assortment of would-be traitors had only two things in common: they were all murderers, and they had all collectively smelled the same rat. Dekve, having become the de facto leader of the salarian contingent, opened his omni tool and laid out every card in his proverbial deck. Written orders, data analyses, photos, video files, agent assignments, and a myriad of other documents were projected from his tool. Showing even one of the files to the gathered asari across the table from him was grounds for his termination. They wouldn't even have to make up the charges.
One of the asari looked over the projected files briefly, and then began doing the same as Dekve. It had the abstract effect of immediately committing everyone in the room to the cause. They were all culpable now, so it was sink or swim. The gathered documents that the asari projected could be combined with Dekve's evidence. As the two pieces came together, they told an irrefutable story: the asari and salarians were on the brink of war. It was an utterly ridiculous concept. The oldest and most steadfast alliance in the galaxy was not supposed to come undone so abruptly and unceremoniously. And, up until recently, it hadn't, despite public perception. True, the trust between the two species was irrevocably broken and relations between the public-facing governments had become positively icy, but ultimately that was irrelevant. In matters of war and peace, the only opinions that mattered were those of the shadow governments, and the shadow governments of both species were still talking to each other. Or, at least, they had been, until a horribly timed blunder had shattered that fragile detente.
Of course, from the perspective of whoever is orchestrating all of this it was a perfectly timed blunder.
The plain-looking asari across from Dekve - who was using a name he recognized as an alias of an off-the-books Spectre who spent all of her time in cover so deep that the only thing the STG had in her file was a grainy security video from Omega and a kill count - spoke first.
"The batarians split off from the Citadel, and despite the fact that they have been threatening to do it for the past two thousand years, they just happen to finally pull the trigger on it only a few years before the worst economic disaster in the history of the galaxy hits. A disaster that precedes the near-total decapitation of turian civilization by a matter of months. And, in the middle of the worst galactic political situation since the korgan rebellions, elements within my government just happen to launch a highly aggressive and risky black op into salarian territory."
Dekve smirked. "Substantial coincidence."
She smiled back. "Quite. Say, did you know that one of the most fundamental characteristics of intelligent life is pattern recognition?"
Dekve's smirk widened. "Interesting you mention that. Happened to recognize pattern, just now."
The asari's smile also widened. "What a coincidence, so have I!"
Dekve drummed his fingers on the table. "Assume conspiracy. Who benefits?"
"Humans?" one of his salarian compatriots suggested.
A particularly old-looking asari matriarch snorted a laugh. "Even if we ignore the absurdity of a species that hadn't even invented plasma radiators somehow orchestrating all of this, it's still extremely unlikely, because they definitely haven't benefited. The turians were going to help them, why would they wipe out their entire government? And that's if we ignore the how of that particular question, too."
"All true. Still, it can't be denied that all of the current disasters trace their beginnings to the discovery of the humans."
The older asari laughed louder. "No, it's traced back to the centuries of corruption and conspiracy, and to the military negligence of both our species. Hell, it even traces back to us deciding to horde that damned beacon to ourselves."
One of the salarians spoke, his voice taking on a darker tone. "Yes, many things come back to the beacon."
The Spectre rolled her eyes. "Oh please, spare me the pearl-clutching. You'd have done the exact same thing in our position."
None of the salarians bothered arguing. She was right, after all.
Dekve cleared his throat. "Conversation path going nowhere, dismiss humans for now. Who else?"
The Spectre spoke up again. "There's the rub. It shouldn't have been possible. No one in this galaxy should have been able to pull off the turian decapitation. The amount of successful, concurrent assassinations required to wipe out damn near the entire turian chain of command is just...it's not possible. Even if it was, it would have taken decades of preparation. And even with that it's still...very, very unusual."
Another asari chuckled. "Hmm...who do we know that has a reputation for ultra long-term planning and a highly-developed intelligence apparatus second only to the salarians? Here's a hint: it's not the krogan."
The scarred asari shook her head. "It can't be us. Not because we're morally incapable of it or anything equally absurd, but because, of everyone in the galaxy, we are objectively benefiting the least from this nonsense. The entire galactic order is completely collapsing. The galactic order that - forgive my stereotypical asari arrogance - we were running. There's no conceivable benefit."
Dekve nodded. "True. I ask again: who benefits?"
The Spectre grimaced. "There's really only two remotely realistic answers. The first and most obvious is the batarians, though I am quite skeptical."
Devke nodded. "STG assessment of batarian intelligence service just as unflattering as assessment of military forces, even before humans embarrassed them."
She nodded back. "Which leads us to the second possible answer: the Geth."
The reactions to her words were mixed. Most looked at her like a lunatic, while others had a dark shadow of realization fall over their face.
The Spectre gave a half smile. "Hear me out. Who else could possibly infiltrate the turians' network to that degree?"
The room had to concede that point, but there was another. "Perhaps they have the capability to infiltrate their network, but what about the bombings?" A salarian asked.
The Spectre shrugged. "That's the rub. However, many if not most of the bombings were suicide bombings, if what little evidence we've scraped together is true. Absurd as it may seem, if they had some manner of organic mind altering technology-"
The older asari barked a laugh. "You've been watching too many cheap sci fi movies. If mind control was possible, don't you think we would have figured it out by now?"
The Spectre shook her head. "'We' are far more constrained in research like that than the geth. Our respective shadowy little murderer clubs might have little use for morality, but the general public is quite fond of it. Any research of that nature needs to be kept secret. Extremely secret. Which gets expensive, quickly. In contrast, the geth have no such limitations. Their machine intelligence simply decides to do the research, and then they brute force their way to a result. They run experiments, all day, every day, on whatever organics they can get their hands on. Goddess knows it's easy enough to get test subjects in the Terminus. It's completely reasonable to assume that they have technology we do not, especially technology as politically radioactive as an actual, literal mind control device."
Devke couldn't help but find the line of thought intriguing. "Fair points. However, most important question remains unasked: Motive?"
"That's easy, they're an AI! If they view us as a threat, they will work to eliminate us. The damned suit rats made the monster under our collective beds, and then tried to hide their fuck up with genocide. Worse, a failed genocide. Which means their primary interaction with organics has been organics trying to wipe them out. They must see all of us as a threat. Hell, I would, in their shoes." The older asari said.
An STG agent hummed agreement. "So, geth bide their time for three centuries, waiting to strike. Why strike now?"
The scarred asari answered. "Isn't it obvious? We're at the weakest we've been in a thousand years."
Devke nodded. "A weakness conceivably caused by geth intervention."
A salarian noble woman leaned in to speak. "Absurd. Even if geth had mind control technology - which is debatable - inconceivable for geth to have achieved such extensive infiltration."
The older asari nodded. "I agree. Sure, the sacrificial pawns might have been completely thralled by this hypothetical tech, but what about their handlers? Or their handler's handlers? They had to have had assistance from allied organics to have achieved such a thorough penetration of everyone's security."
The Spectre laughed. "Who would ally with the geth?"
The older asari gestured excitedly. "Exactly! Which is why the idea that it's exclusively them is absurd. It's time we acknowledge the possibility of non-state actors."
Devke narrowed his eyes. "Rebels?"
"Precisely. Isn't it obvious, in hindsight? How many centuries has the Citadel been running itself into the ground with corruption and incompetence. It's clear that a group of malcontents has decided to bring about a change in management, and they found powerful friends to make it happen."
The STG agent rolled his eyes. "Difficult to believe rebels would advance from pointless terrorism to highly organized conspiracies in so little time."
The older asari pressed on. "That's my point! Batarians, geth, rebels. They all hate the Citadel, that's the only thing they really have in common. It isn't any one faction, it's an entire movement trying to subvert the existing power structure."
The room collectively mused on that. It was the best theory so far.
"What if that's what we're supposed to think?"
All eyes turned to look at the asari matron who had just spoken. Devke recognized her. She quietly ran an exploration and colonization firm. She'd made her way into the shadow government's good graces by discovering excellent locations for black sites and then ensuring that they didn't make it into the official survey record.
Devke nodded at her in encouragement. "Elaborate."
"Look how quickly we drew this conclusion. Once we had an inkling that there was something going on beneath the surface of current events, look how easily we come to these answers. A quick brainstorm and suddenly it's 'obvious'. Too obvious."
The Spectre nodded. "Your suspicion is completely reasonable, but the simple reality is that sometimes things are obvious in hindsight precisely because they're true. No one in this room has any right to accuse you of being too paranoid, but sometimes a spade is a spade."
The woman, relatively young by the standards of the other asari present, rubbed at her crest and looked at the table as she spoke.
"You're all thinking too small. To you, this is a power play, or a change of government, or someone eliminating a threat. It's much greater than that. This is a civilization-scale event. Someone - we don't know who, I'll remind you - is trying to fundamentally alter the framework of the galaxy, and they're doing it on a ridiculously rushed timetable. In the worst case scenarios, the current events could lead to a total breakdown of large-scale interstellar civilization. This isn't someone trying to change the galaxy, this is someone trying to cripple it."
"Who?" Devke said.
She sighed. "There's the million credit question. I haven't the faintest idea."
The Spectre rolled her eyes. "Then why bring it up at all?"
The woman drummed her fingers on the table for a moment as she thought, and then finally spoke.
"When I was in university, I had a xeno-anthropology class. One particular lesson has remained in my mind, even centuries later. It was on the idea of 'outside context problems.' The concept is fairly simple, some of you may be familiar. Imagine a primitive kingdom on a large island. It conquers all of its rivals and becomes the supreme overlord of the island. It rules for centuries, until a foreign warship arrives at its shores armed with cannons. Their most advanced weapons are made of copper and bronze, they barely have a concept of sailing. The foreign warship is completely out of the realm of anything they could reasonably expect to happen. It's outside of their context."
The Spectre smiled. "You think we are the kingdom, I take it?"
She nodded. "I think, for something of such far-reaching consequences, we should at the very least consider the possibility.
The older asari scoffed. "What a big pile of nothing. How exactly are we supposed to take action on something so vague?"
The matron asari leaned back in her chair. "I also had a course on the protheans in that class. We learned how a galaxy-spanning civilization vastly more advanced than our own vanished without a trace. And we learned how, despite millennia of study from our brightest minds, we don't have a single goddess-damned clue how it happened-"
The Spectre held a hand out to her. "Alright, we get it. You think whatever happened to the protheans was an 'outside context problem' as well. So what? That doesn't answer her question."
She gestured to the older asari. The matron nodded.
"I do think that. But you didn't let me finish. We don't have a clue how the protheans vanished, but we do know that, somehow, their incredibly advanced traversal network is still around, in pristine condition. Their greatest cities, the no doubt astonishing array of other incredibly advanced technology they had, every last man, woman, and child. All vanished. Except their FTL superhighway, and the data caches that tell us how to use them."
The older asari rolled her eyes. "Please. Do you honestly believe you're the first person to ever ask these questions?"
The matron smirked. "The first person with power, at the very least. The relays have bothered me for my entire adult life. They're the main reason I'm even in the exploration business. The more we learn about them, and the protheans, the more they vex me. There are people who have made entire careers out of studying them, and every one of them will tell you that the network keeps getting more complex the more of them we discover. But despite all of that, those same people will also insist, every last one of them, that there is a pattern in the relays. Every where that has been explored and surveyed, this has been true. Everywhere, except here."
She put a dataslate on the table, and holographic map of a galactic region appeared, with a series of dots and lines connecting them. Everyone in the room leaned in to get a better look. Devke peered at the map, before commenting.
"Human space, yes?"
She nodded. "Yes. This is on the furthest frontiers of their territory, a very long ways coreward from their homeworld. The blips all represent relays. Notice the pattern of density in the outer sections, identical to the rest of the galaxy. Take a look at the most coreward section of the map. Notice the break in the pattern, and the noticeable gap between it and the galactic center."
The Spectre looked up at her. "What's your point?"
"My point is that the relays are a galaxy-spanning superhighway, that has maintained an utterly pristine and distinct pattern of distribution everywhere we've discovered it to be. Except there, where the relay distribution density is thinner than anywhere else in the galaxy. The further coreward you go within this region, the less dense the relays get, until you reach deadzone. A sizeable region of space totally devoid of any relay coverage. The only one of its kind anywhere in the known galaxy."
Everyone, even the most skeptical, gave the map a second look.
"I propose that we send an exploration mission to this region of space, to penetrate into the deadzone, and investigate the area."
Everyone was, at the very least, intrigued. But, intriguing or not, it was still a room full of pragmatists.
The Spectre spoke first. "I will admit that I'm a lot more interested in this than I should be, but the fact remains that this is still nothing but speculation. We're on the verge of a shadow war between our peoples that could very well escalate to open war if we don't take action. And there's another, much more probable explanation for what's behind it that we should be focusing on, if we have any common sense at all. We cant waste our very limited time and resources organizing a secret expedition into uncharted space. Especially such a large amount of it. It'll take years to survey even a fraction of it."
The salarian noblewoman spoke up again. "Is 'secret' expedition really required? Why not approach humans openly? In their territory, after all."
Everyone looked at her as if she had just spoken heresy. Of course, amongst the sort of hyper-paranoid people who made up shadow governments, openness was heresy, after a fashion. The older asari was the only person in the room who wasn't looking at the noblewoman in shock. She put her hand on her chin.
"She's right. We could just send some envoys to approach the humans, have them say they're from a faction in the asari and salarian governments that are sympathetic to their cause, and we think they ought to check out this anomaly. Hell, it's barely even a lie."
She looked at the matron. "I am forced to admit that there's no harm in looking over our shoulder for the unexpected, but I still fully believe...fuck it, I desperately hope that this is all a pile of shit. It is possible - no, it's all but certain that there's a perfectly mundane explanation for this. Like natural phenomenon serving as construction obstacles. Or this section of space just being the last part they explored before their extinction. Or any number of other, more likely explanations than the space boogeyman."
The matron nodded. "I agree, it's entirely possible that the explanation is perfectly mundane..."
Devke looked at her. "...But?"
She took a breath. "...But, I had ships chartered under my company make their way into human space not long after the relay pattern discrepancy became known to me. They performed long range astronomical surveys of the relay dead zone - which is how we know that it truly is a dead zone - and conducted countless simulations and thought experiments."
She steepled her fingers. "One simulation stuck out. The scenario filled out the entire region to match up to the distribution pattern of the rest of the relay network."
The projection displayed the same region of space, this time with the lines and dots much more densely distributed.
"The simulation then had a pattern of destruction go out in all directions from the approximate center of the relay deadzone, and stopping roughly at the end of the pattern discrepancies."
A red sphere extended out from that point on the projection. When it was done it looked like something had taken a bite out of the relay network.
"Once that was finished, we had a VI calculate a reconstruction of the key travel routes of that region of the network, using the remaining nearby relays. The parameters were that it had to avoid any pathways going into the deadzone, and it had to disrupt the rest of the network as little as possible. This is what we got:"
An achingly familiar map of the relays in the region appeared on the projection.
"And this is the actual relay map, for comparison."
The true map appeared, nearly identical to the simulated one. Every pair of eyes in the room was glued to the two maps.
The matron rubbed at her face, exhaling.
"A 96% match. Still pure speculation, of course. But if the explanation isn't mundane, if the speculation is correct, then something within that deadzone caused a wave of destruction hundreds of light years in diameter. And then, something else tried to hide it."
---
Hello again, fancy meeting you here.
There were three purposes to this chapter. First, to establish that not every salarian and asari of import is simply sitting on their hands while their peoples were on a collision course. Second, to show that, finally, some of the movers and shakers of the galaxy are beginning to smell a rat with regards to all these conspiracy shenanigans. And, lastly, it also served the purpose of allowing a plot twist I've been cooking so long it's a blackened pile of char to finally bear fruit.
The seeds of this "plot twist" were laid down in some of the earliest chapters, when the batarians were raiding through human space and there were a few throwaway lines about the odd placement of a particular relay, or the unusually low density of the distribution of relays within human territory. It's a twist so long in the making that the overwhelming majority of readers won't even remember the foreshadowing. Foreshadowing that was so opaque that no normal human could reasonably have been expected to figure it out on their own. Truly, my genius as a writer knows no bounds (there's a reason I put plot twist in quotation marks, as I consider it to barely qualify as one). I've also been writing this story for so long since then that there's a very real possibility that I contradicted the 'there's nowhere else where the relays are this low in density' thing. I'm fairly confident that I didn't, but if you happen to have noticed that somewhere in the preceding chapters, I apologize in advance.
As always, thank you very much for continuing to read my increasingly-convoluted story, I do truly appreciate everyone who enjoys it.
Of course, those who are in the know are well aware the differences between the two species are largely surface-level. In all of the ways that matter, they are quite similar. For example, both prefer a needlessly esoteric and wildly inefficient form of government, and as a result both have extensive shadow governments that subtly guide the decision making process towards goals that are actually productive. At a glance, this might seem incredibly corrupt and totally devoid of accountability...mostly because it is. However, among the ludicrously convoluted webs of alliances and conflicting interests that make up the politics of both races, there is something to be said for a quiet cabal of highly competent individuals seeking to advance the interests of the species as a whole. Indeed, many of the most famous (and infamous) moments in the long history of the Citadel Council had been made at small, remote meeting places where the two de facto leaders of the vast alliance could make decisions and communicate in privacy.
The decision to stand and fight against the rachni, to uplift the krogan, to ally with the turians, to unleash the genophage...all of those galaxy-changing ideas had been born in nondescript rooms not unlike the one Dekve currently found himself in. It was one of thousands of nameless black sites throughout the galaxy. Perhaps it was some matriarch's hideaway. Or maybe it was an STG safe house so secret that it had been lost amidst the agency's bureaucracy. Either way, he had no idea where he was, since he'd been sedated for the entire trip. Such drastic measures were necessary when one was conspiring against conspiracy. Ultimately, it didn't matter where he was. All that mattered was that it gave him and his compatriots a chance to speak with like-minded people amongst his asari counterparts.
With little in the way of ceremony, the two groups of conspirators filed into a conference room. At a little over two dozen in number, they all filled a wide range of roles within their respective shadow governments: intelligence agents, military officers, political power brokers, military industrial tycoons, wealthy aristocrats who provided funding off the books, and black ops agents who could probably kill everyone in the room. The motley assortment of would-be traitors had only two things in common: they were all murderers, and they had all collectively smelled the same rat. Dekve, having become the de facto leader of the salarian contingent, opened his omni tool and laid out every card in his proverbial deck. Written orders, data analyses, photos, video files, agent assignments, and a myriad of other documents were projected from his tool. Showing even one of the files to the gathered asari across the table from him was grounds for his termination. They wouldn't even have to make up the charges.
One of the asari looked over the projected files briefly, and then began doing the same as Dekve. It had the abstract effect of immediately committing everyone in the room to the cause. They were all culpable now, so it was sink or swim. The gathered documents that the asari projected could be combined with Dekve's evidence. As the two pieces came together, they told an irrefutable story: the asari and salarians were on the brink of war. It was an utterly ridiculous concept. The oldest and most steadfast alliance in the galaxy was not supposed to come undone so abruptly and unceremoniously. And, up until recently, it hadn't, despite public perception. True, the trust between the two species was irrevocably broken and relations between the public-facing governments had become positively icy, but ultimately that was irrelevant. In matters of war and peace, the only opinions that mattered were those of the shadow governments, and the shadow governments of both species were still talking to each other. Or, at least, they had been, until a horribly timed blunder had shattered that fragile detente.
Of course, from the perspective of whoever is orchestrating all of this it was a perfectly timed blunder.
The plain-looking asari across from Dekve - who was using a name he recognized as an alias of an off-the-books Spectre who spent all of her time in cover so deep that the only thing the STG had in her file was a grainy security video from Omega and a kill count - spoke first.
"The batarians split off from the Citadel, and despite the fact that they have been threatening to do it for the past two thousand years, they just happen to finally pull the trigger on it only a few years before the worst economic disaster in the history of the galaxy hits. A disaster that precedes the near-total decapitation of turian civilization by a matter of months. And, in the middle of the worst galactic political situation since the korgan rebellions, elements within my government just happen to launch a highly aggressive and risky black op into salarian territory."
Dekve smirked. "Substantial coincidence."
She smiled back. "Quite. Say, did you know that one of the most fundamental characteristics of intelligent life is pattern recognition?"
Dekve's smirk widened. "Interesting you mention that. Happened to recognize pattern, just now."
The asari's smile also widened. "What a coincidence, so have I!"
Dekve drummed his fingers on the table. "Assume conspiracy. Who benefits?"
"Humans?" one of his salarian compatriots suggested.
A particularly old-looking asari matriarch snorted a laugh. "Even if we ignore the absurdity of a species that hadn't even invented plasma radiators somehow orchestrating all of this, it's still extremely unlikely, because they definitely haven't benefited. The turians were going to help them, why would they wipe out their entire government? And that's if we ignore the how of that particular question, too."
"All true. Still, it can't be denied that all of the current disasters trace their beginnings to the discovery of the humans."
The older asari laughed louder. "No, it's traced back to the centuries of corruption and conspiracy, and to the military negligence of both our species. Hell, it even traces back to us deciding to horde that damned beacon to ourselves."
One of the salarians spoke, his voice taking on a darker tone. "Yes, many things come back to the beacon."
The Spectre rolled her eyes. "Oh please, spare me the pearl-clutching. You'd have done the exact same thing in our position."
None of the salarians bothered arguing. She was right, after all.
Dekve cleared his throat. "Conversation path going nowhere, dismiss humans for now. Who else?"
The Spectre spoke up again. "There's the rub. It shouldn't have been possible. No one in this galaxy should have been able to pull off the turian decapitation. The amount of successful, concurrent assassinations required to wipe out damn near the entire turian chain of command is just...it's not possible. Even if it was, it would have taken decades of preparation. And even with that it's still...very, very unusual."
Another asari chuckled. "Hmm...who do we know that has a reputation for ultra long-term planning and a highly-developed intelligence apparatus second only to the salarians? Here's a hint: it's not the krogan."
The scarred asari shook her head. "It can't be us. Not because we're morally incapable of it or anything equally absurd, but because, of everyone in the galaxy, we are objectively benefiting the least from this nonsense. The entire galactic order is completely collapsing. The galactic order that - forgive my stereotypical asari arrogance - we were running. There's no conceivable benefit."
Dekve nodded. "True. I ask again: who benefits?"
The Spectre grimaced. "There's really only two remotely realistic answers. The first and most obvious is the batarians, though I am quite skeptical."
Devke nodded. "STG assessment of batarian intelligence service just as unflattering as assessment of military forces, even before humans embarrassed them."
She nodded back. "Which leads us to the second possible answer: the Geth."
The reactions to her words were mixed. Most looked at her like a lunatic, while others had a dark shadow of realization fall over their face.
The Spectre gave a half smile. "Hear me out. Who else could possibly infiltrate the turians' network to that degree?"
The room had to concede that point, but there was another. "Perhaps they have the capability to infiltrate their network, but what about the bombings?" A salarian asked.
The Spectre shrugged. "That's the rub. However, many if not most of the bombings were suicide bombings, if what little evidence we've scraped together is true. Absurd as it may seem, if they had some manner of organic mind altering technology-"
The older asari barked a laugh. "You've been watching too many cheap sci fi movies. If mind control was possible, don't you think we would have figured it out by now?"
The Spectre shook her head. "'We' are far more constrained in research like that than the geth. Our respective shadowy little murderer clubs might have little use for morality, but the general public is quite fond of it. Any research of that nature needs to be kept secret. Extremely secret. Which gets expensive, quickly. In contrast, the geth have no such limitations. Their machine intelligence simply decides to do the research, and then they brute force their way to a result. They run experiments, all day, every day, on whatever organics they can get their hands on. Goddess knows it's easy enough to get test subjects in the Terminus. It's completely reasonable to assume that they have technology we do not, especially technology as politically radioactive as an actual, literal mind control device."
Devke couldn't help but find the line of thought intriguing. "Fair points. However, most important question remains unasked: Motive?"
"That's easy, they're an AI! If they view us as a threat, they will work to eliminate us. The damned suit rats made the monster under our collective beds, and then tried to hide their fuck up with genocide. Worse, a failed genocide. Which means their primary interaction with organics has been organics trying to wipe them out. They must see all of us as a threat. Hell, I would, in their shoes." The older asari said.
An STG agent hummed agreement. "So, geth bide their time for three centuries, waiting to strike. Why strike now?"
The scarred asari answered. "Isn't it obvious? We're at the weakest we've been in a thousand years."
Devke nodded. "A weakness conceivably caused by geth intervention."
A salarian noble woman leaned in to speak. "Absurd. Even if geth had mind control technology - which is debatable - inconceivable for geth to have achieved such extensive infiltration."
The older asari nodded. "I agree. Sure, the sacrificial pawns might have been completely thralled by this hypothetical tech, but what about their handlers? Or their handler's handlers? They had to have had assistance from allied organics to have achieved such a thorough penetration of everyone's security."
The Spectre laughed. "Who would ally with the geth?"
The older asari gestured excitedly. "Exactly! Which is why the idea that it's exclusively them is absurd. It's time we acknowledge the possibility of non-state actors."
Devke narrowed his eyes. "Rebels?"
"Precisely. Isn't it obvious, in hindsight? How many centuries has the Citadel been running itself into the ground with corruption and incompetence. It's clear that a group of malcontents has decided to bring about a change in management, and they found powerful friends to make it happen."
The STG agent rolled his eyes. "Difficult to believe rebels would advance from pointless terrorism to highly organized conspiracies in so little time."
The older asari pressed on. "That's my point! Batarians, geth, rebels. They all hate the Citadel, that's the only thing they really have in common. It isn't any one faction, it's an entire movement trying to subvert the existing power structure."
The room collectively mused on that. It was the best theory so far.
"What if that's what we're supposed to think?"
All eyes turned to look at the asari matron who had just spoken. Devke recognized her. She quietly ran an exploration and colonization firm. She'd made her way into the shadow government's good graces by discovering excellent locations for black sites and then ensuring that they didn't make it into the official survey record.
Devke nodded at her in encouragement. "Elaborate."
"Look how quickly we drew this conclusion. Once we had an inkling that there was something going on beneath the surface of current events, look how easily we come to these answers. A quick brainstorm and suddenly it's 'obvious'. Too obvious."
The Spectre nodded. "Your suspicion is completely reasonable, but the simple reality is that sometimes things are obvious in hindsight precisely because they're true. No one in this room has any right to accuse you of being too paranoid, but sometimes a spade is a spade."
The woman, relatively young by the standards of the other asari present, rubbed at her crest and looked at the table as she spoke.
"You're all thinking too small. To you, this is a power play, or a change of government, or someone eliminating a threat. It's much greater than that. This is a civilization-scale event. Someone - we don't know who, I'll remind you - is trying to fundamentally alter the framework of the galaxy, and they're doing it on a ridiculously rushed timetable. In the worst case scenarios, the current events could lead to a total breakdown of large-scale interstellar civilization. This isn't someone trying to change the galaxy, this is someone trying to cripple it."
"Who?" Devke said.
She sighed. "There's the million credit question. I haven't the faintest idea."
The Spectre rolled her eyes. "Then why bring it up at all?"
The woman drummed her fingers on the table for a moment as she thought, and then finally spoke.
"When I was in university, I had a xeno-anthropology class. One particular lesson has remained in my mind, even centuries later. It was on the idea of 'outside context problems.' The concept is fairly simple, some of you may be familiar. Imagine a primitive kingdom on a large island. It conquers all of its rivals and becomes the supreme overlord of the island. It rules for centuries, until a foreign warship arrives at its shores armed with cannons. Their most advanced weapons are made of copper and bronze, they barely have a concept of sailing. The foreign warship is completely out of the realm of anything they could reasonably expect to happen. It's outside of their context."
The Spectre smiled. "You think we are the kingdom, I take it?"
She nodded. "I think, for something of such far-reaching consequences, we should at the very least consider the possibility.
The older asari scoffed. "What a big pile of nothing. How exactly are we supposed to take action on something so vague?"
The matron asari leaned back in her chair. "I also had a course on the protheans in that class. We learned how a galaxy-spanning civilization vastly more advanced than our own vanished without a trace. And we learned how, despite millennia of study from our brightest minds, we don't have a single goddess-damned clue how it happened-"
The Spectre held a hand out to her. "Alright, we get it. You think whatever happened to the protheans was an 'outside context problem' as well. So what? That doesn't answer her question."
She gestured to the older asari. The matron nodded.
"I do think that. But you didn't let me finish. We don't have a clue how the protheans vanished, but we do know that, somehow, their incredibly advanced traversal network is still around, in pristine condition. Their greatest cities, the no doubt astonishing array of other incredibly advanced technology they had, every last man, woman, and child. All vanished. Except their FTL superhighway, and the data caches that tell us how to use them."
The older asari rolled her eyes. "Please. Do you honestly believe you're the first person to ever ask these questions?"
The matron smirked. "The first person with power, at the very least. The relays have bothered me for my entire adult life. They're the main reason I'm even in the exploration business. The more we learn about them, and the protheans, the more they vex me. There are people who have made entire careers out of studying them, and every one of them will tell you that the network keeps getting more complex the more of them we discover. But despite all of that, those same people will also insist, every last one of them, that there is a pattern in the relays. Every where that has been explored and surveyed, this has been true. Everywhere, except here."
She put a dataslate on the table, and holographic map of a galactic region appeared, with a series of dots and lines connecting them. Everyone in the room leaned in to get a better look. Devke peered at the map, before commenting.
"Human space, yes?"
She nodded. "Yes. This is on the furthest frontiers of their territory, a very long ways coreward from their homeworld. The blips all represent relays. Notice the pattern of density in the outer sections, identical to the rest of the galaxy. Take a look at the most coreward section of the map. Notice the break in the pattern, and the noticeable gap between it and the galactic center."
The Spectre looked up at her. "What's your point?"
"My point is that the relays are a galaxy-spanning superhighway, that has maintained an utterly pristine and distinct pattern of distribution everywhere we've discovered it to be. Except there, where the relay distribution density is thinner than anywhere else in the galaxy. The further coreward you go within this region, the less dense the relays get, until you reach deadzone. A sizeable region of space totally devoid of any relay coverage. The only one of its kind anywhere in the known galaxy."
Everyone, even the most skeptical, gave the map a second look.
"I propose that we send an exploration mission to this region of space, to penetrate into the deadzone, and investigate the area."
Everyone was, at the very least, intrigued. But, intriguing or not, it was still a room full of pragmatists.
The Spectre spoke first. "I will admit that I'm a lot more interested in this than I should be, but the fact remains that this is still nothing but speculation. We're on the verge of a shadow war between our peoples that could very well escalate to open war if we don't take action. And there's another, much more probable explanation for what's behind it that we should be focusing on, if we have any common sense at all. We cant waste our very limited time and resources organizing a secret expedition into uncharted space. Especially such a large amount of it. It'll take years to survey even a fraction of it."
The salarian noblewoman spoke up again. "Is 'secret' expedition really required? Why not approach humans openly? In their territory, after all."
Everyone looked at her as if she had just spoken heresy. Of course, amongst the sort of hyper-paranoid people who made up shadow governments, openness was heresy, after a fashion. The older asari was the only person in the room who wasn't looking at the noblewoman in shock. She put her hand on her chin.
"She's right. We could just send some envoys to approach the humans, have them say they're from a faction in the asari and salarian governments that are sympathetic to their cause, and we think they ought to check out this anomaly. Hell, it's barely even a lie."
She looked at the matron. "I am forced to admit that there's no harm in looking over our shoulder for the unexpected, but I still fully believe...fuck it, I desperately hope that this is all a pile of shit. It is possible - no, it's all but certain that there's a perfectly mundane explanation for this. Like natural phenomenon serving as construction obstacles. Or this section of space just being the last part they explored before their extinction. Or any number of other, more likely explanations than the space boogeyman."
The matron nodded. "I agree, it's entirely possible that the explanation is perfectly mundane..."
Devke looked at her. "...But?"
She took a breath. "...But, I had ships chartered under my company make their way into human space not long after the relay pattern discrepancy became known to me. They performed long range astronomical surveys of the relay dead zone - which is how we know that it truly is a dead zone - and conducted countless simulations and thought experiments."
She steepled her fingers. "One simulation stuck out. The scenario filled out the entire region to match up to the distribution pattern of the rest of the relay network."
The projection displayed the same region of space, this time with the lines and dots much more densely distributed.
"The simulation then had a pattern of destruction go out in all directions from the approximate center of the relay deadzone, and stopping roughly at the end of the pattern discrepancies."
A red sphere extended out from that point on the projection. When it was done it looked like something had taken a bite out of the relay network.
"Once that was finished, we had a VI calculate a reconstruction of the key travel routes of that region of the network, using the remaining nearby relays. The parameters were that it had to avoid any pathways going into the deadzone, and it had to disrupt the rest of the network as little as possible. This is what we got:"
An achingly familiar map of the relays in the region appeared on the projection.
"And this is the actual relay map, for comparison."
The true map appeared, nearly identical to the simulated one. Every pair of eyes in the room was glued to the two maps.
The matron rubbed at her face, exhaling.
"A 96% match. Still pure speculation, of course. But if the explanation isn't mundane, if the speculation is correct, then something within that deadzone caused a wave of destruction hundreds of light years in diameter. And then, something else tried to hide it."
---
Hello again, fancy meeting you here.
There were three purposes to this chapter. First, to establish that not every salarian and asari of import is simply sitting on their hands while their peoples were on a collision course. Second, to show that, finally, some of the movers and shakers of the galaxy are beginning to smell a rat with regards to all these conspiracy shenanigans. And, lastly, it also served the purpose of allowing a plot twist I've been cooking so long it's a blackened pile of char to finally bear fruit.
The seeds of this "plot twist" were laid down in some of the earliest chapters, when the batarians were raiding through human space and there were a few throwaway lines about the odd placement of a particular relay, or the unusually low density of the distribution of relays within human territory. It's a twist so long in the making that the overwhelming majority of readers won't even remember the foreshadowing. Foreshadowing that was so opaque that no normal human could reasonably have been expected to figure it out on their own. Truly, my genius as a writer knows no bounds (there's a reason I put plot twist in quotation marks, as I consider it to barely qualify as one). I've also been writing this story for so long since then that there's a very real possibility that I contradicted the 'there's nowhere else where the relays are this low in density' thing. I'm fairly confident that I didn't, but if you happen to have noticed that somewhere in the preceding chapters, I apologize in advance.
As always, thank you very much for continuing to read my increasingly-convoluted story, I do truly appreciate everyone who enjoys it.
Holy shit, my mind has been blown. I bet if every single chapter before this one came out all at once and noticed the foreshadowing, I will still have missed it (which is a good thing IMO, but am not writer pls halp)
I NEED the next part of this amazing fix.
I NEED the next part of this amazing fix.