The idea behind this, rather obviously once you read it, is 'what if the Turians found somebody else fiddling with that mass relay?' and that somebody else in this case is the setting of a WIP story debate. This is, to some degree, intended to sustain my enthusiasm for the setting while it's being worked on, so it's liable to die out at some point, but until then, I figured I could at least get some feedback on it and maybe even tell an interesting or entertaining story.
Mass Effect isn't mine. The Second Sphere setting is a collaborative fiction, and what elements haven't been blatantly (or not so blatantly) ripped off from a copyrighted work belong to whoever came up with them.
Not that Mass Effect really appears in this chapter, anyway.
- - -
Bad Neighbours
Lights shimmered and danced, running through the emptiness like glittering rivers of stars, etching the outlines of a great spiders web across the void. Not a web. Towers, giant towers that stretched towards the black heavens from a ground composed only of light. Then, a forest, an amphitheater and a simple starfield. The entities congregating amongst the glowing shifting light paid their wildly fluctuating surroundings no heed. Indeed, they seemed almost as malleable as everything else, one moment formless clouds of sparkling motes, the next a collection of robed monks.
“They are a threat.”
“They do not concern us.”
“They concern the others.”
“We left the others behind.”
“Not all of us.”
“Some of us wish to see what happens next.”
“They will never follow us if they are dead.”
“It is unlikely they will ever follow us in any case.”
“Nevertheless.”
“We have never fought a war. It would be interesting to see what the results are.”
“Perhaps they hold knowledge of the Precursors.”
“We suggest action be taken.”
“Agreed. Is there objection?”
“No.”
UNS Intrepid
UNSO-083
2195
Leah watched as the airlock opened with a solid clunk, the doors withdrawing into the walls to reveal a gaggle of civilians and a laden micro-gee sled. The large, bearded man in the turquoise and black ARROWS uniform stood out like a sore thumb, because of his almost absurd size as much as the colour of his clothing. Smoothly, he pushed off of the bulkhead he was floating near, dodging around the leading civilians as most of them fumbled with handholds and ziplines.
“Vladimir!” Leah called, waving to attract his attention.
“Ah, Doctor Williams!” Vladimir rumbled. “I was wondering if you would greet me at the airlock.”
“Are you kidding? You came on the first ship to visit this backwater in three months. I came for the news, not you.”
Vladimir laughed. Leah was sure she could feel the bulkheads vibrating under the force of the Russian's guffaws.
“Of course, of course. Come, I must report to the captain of this ship, but we can talk on the way. I will tell you of events outside this system- as if there were much to recount- and you shall satisfy my curiosity.” That said, he launched himself further into the bowels of the cruiser. Leah followed with less than perfect grace, even if almost a year in micro-gee had made her considerably more adept at moving around ships than the newly arrived scientists and technicians. When she eventually rejoined the Russian, he was floating patiently at a six way intersection.
“Ha! It seems there are still things that I am better at than you, my friend, no matter how much you have improved from the last time we met.”
“Some of us don't have your many years of experience, you old reprobate. Not to mention whatever gene tweaks you're holding over me.”
Vladimir simply grinned widely, exposing a crescent of startlingly white teeth from amongst the salt and pepper beard.
“We must all have a few advantages, no? You have a brain many times more powerful than I, and I am better at moving about spaceships than you. You do not have it so bad when looked at in that manner, I think. Now! What is it that you can tell me of this construct I am to help you investigate?”
Leah waggled her finger.
“Ah ah ah, not so fast, buster. You agreed to tell me what's going on in the rest of the Sphere first. We don't get hypercomm here, so this is the only chance we'll have to find out what's happening in the real world for months. I'm telling you nothing until you cough up something interesting.”
“Bah, you drive a hard bargain for such a small woman. But, very well. There is, after all, not much to tell; my countrymen continue to squabble with the Chinese over colonies that want to submit to neither of us. We all know how well that situation worked out for the Europeans and Americans. The Europeans and Zodiacs are still muttering at each other, and trying to prevent the Harawayians, Mercians and Albionans from restarting the war with their stupidity, while the Americans and Japanese sit growing fat and rich. The UN is still debating if it is time to launch another recontact effort into the Deep Rim, and accomplishing nothing. Nothing much has changed since the end of the war; I was considering resigning from my position and taking a job on a drone whaler to relieve the boredom before I was assigned to this system.”
“A whaler, huh?”
“Da. Good job; exciting, well paid...”
“Incredibly dangerous.”
Vladimir waggled his hands from side to side.
“Maybe. A little bit.”
“If the drones don't get you, those crazy transgenes or the pirates would.”
“It would take more than a drone or a few Magnate supersoldiers to lay me low,” Vladimir mimed punching something, narrowly missing a crewman gliding down the vertical accessway before him. “I would break them all, with my bare hands. Then sell their technology and retire to a tropical island. Ahh, yes, sun, sea, sand, attractive women in grass skirts and coconut shell...”
“Alright, that's enough you old pervert,” she interjected. “I'll be grilling you more later, so don't think you've escaped. And nothing more about hula girls, kapische?”
“Yes, yes, no more girls. Now, tell me of this object.”
“It's a catapult. Maybe.”
“You are not sure?”
“Well, it's not doing anything. It seems unarmed, which rules out a defence platform- not that there's anything out here to defend- it's not a research lab or habitat, or if it is, we've found no evidence of habitation inside it, and nothing identifiable as scientific equipment. In fact, we've eliminated just about every option other than it being a cat... except it's not anywhere near a jumpzone.
“That's not the most intriguing thing, though. They'll go into this in more detail when they brief you, of course, but the short version; it's not Postie, and it's not anything like the xenotech we're familiar with. Granted, we're not exactly experts on the latter, but the Zoc professor we've managed to poach from the Kanonese is adamant that it's got no metric-altering tech anywhere that she can find, and it's obviously too artificial to be what we think of as xenotech. So, it's nothing to do with the Precursors, nothing to do with the Posties, and nothing to do with whoever left behind every other example of xenotech out there. We've got no idea how it works, or even how to turn it on. Hell, we can't even interface with any of the computers, which isn't all that surprising, given it's from a completely novel technological background.
“What we can say with certainty is that it's been here an awfully long time; long enough that space dust blown by the solar wind and micrometeorites have scuffed the pain, so to speak. We think that this thing was here well before our ancestors manufactured fire. It's the right time period for the Precursors, but there's no delta dust. What evidence we have points to them using dust for everything, and this thing has no evidence of any sort of dust anywhere. As far as we can tell, it's best friends with Einstein.”
“Hm.” Vladimir nodded. “Interesting.”
“That's all you have to say? Good God, man, this is clear indication of a spacefaring civilisation contemporary with the Precursors. They might have traded with these people, fought wars with them, anything! And it's an intact installation, not fossilised nanocomputers or those wrecked garbage balls that occasionally turn up orbiting a gas giant. Who knows what we might find when we unlock it's secrets? If it is a catapult, then they must have had a metric-compliant FTL drive, for a start, which I'm sure you military types would just love.”
“Of course. Jump lines off of catapult network are slow as shit, even on a good route. If the Europeans could get a fleet to any Zodiac world without worrying about the systems in between, the war would have been over quickly.”
“Right. Same with the Zocs, of course. Good thing this is a UN mission, in my opinion; pirates and drones are bad enough, without the possibility of somebody trying to steal this for their own profit.”
As if provoked by her words, the general quarters siren began to blare. Both of them grabbed for a handhold as the slight illusion of gravity provided by acceleration abruptly ceased and, with a swooping feeling of vertigo, reversed itself, intensifying significantly as the UN cruiser picked up speed. For the first time on the trip out to the jumpzone, Leah was actually standing on something, as opposed to floating with her feet on the deck.
“That was turnover,” Vladimir stated, accent suddenly thickening. “We are headed back to jumpzone. Something must have happened.”
“I just had to mention pirates,” Leah sighed. “Hang on a sec, I'll find out what's going on.”
On wobbly legs she advanced towards the hardline phone secured to a nearby bulkhead. Experience had told her that wireless comm units, at least the sort she had access to, were wholly incapable of penetrating the alloy bulkheads of the cruiser. Snatching up the phone, she punched in her authorisation code, and then stabbed at the button that would connect her to the Intrepid's CIC.
“CIC, Commander Alverez.”
“Commander, it's Doctor Williams. I'm not far from the airlock the transfer shuttle just docked at with Lieutenant Commander Romanov and a bunch of technical staff. What's going on?”
“Ah, Doctor. Now is not the best time. I'll be happy to explain everything after we exit the system, but for now... well, the research station is under attack in some strength by unidentified ships. We can't hope to fight them all, and we're too far away to offer meaningful assistance.”
“So you're just going to leave them to...”
“We won't accomplish anything by charging in and getting everybody on this ship killed as well as those on the station, Miranda and [/I]Lilac[/I]. We will inform the UN what has happened here, and allow them to form an appropriate response. Now, if you would be so kind as to escort our guests to their safe area and inform the Lieutenant Commander that I shall speak to him once we are safe, I have a job to do. Goodbye.”
The Intrepid's captain hung up with a final-sounding click, and Leah turned to Vladimir with wide eyes.
One of the grey skinned aliens moved past the small transparent window set into the door, boots clicking loudly on the metal deck.
“Ugly bastards, aren't they?”
“Hm? What? Oh, yes.” Yamazaki Naomi, Professor of Posthuman Studies, doctor of theotechnology and current prisoner of unidentified and apparently hostile aliens, glanced at the speaker. The man was one of the handful of ARROWs marines that had been aboard the scientific station, and one of an even smaller handful to have survived the boarding action the aliens had embarked upon once Miranda and Lilac had been burnt from space. He was still in his exoskeleton, and the deep gouges scratched into the trauma plates covering his torso indicated that he hasn't simply thrown down his weapons at the first sign of violence.
“Of course, they are aliens, from an unknown biome no less, if that metallic skin is any indication. Perhaps they originate from a metal rich world, although they could of course be engineered. Natural armour composites as an exoskeleton. Hm... if that's the case, I would expect them to show decent resistance to projectile weapons, at least. Did you notice anything like that?”
The marine was looking at her like she had just grown a second head.
“Uh, what?”
Naomi rolled her eyes.
“Apparently, they let anybody into ARROWs nowadays. I suppose I shouldn't expect any better from a buzz-cut barbarian such as yourself. I'll try and explain in terms your feeble mind can comprehend. With two exceptions, Earth and Kanon, every known lifebearing planet in the Sphere was seeded several million years ago. We can tell this because of all the planets that have related biochemistries to each other, despite light years of separation. None of the biomes known to us feature both a significant presence of four limbed animals that could evolve into sentient life and metallic skin or exoskeletons. Therefore, this bunch must be either from a so far undiscovered biome, or they've been engineered by somebody. Since they don't appear inherently more resistant to penetrating or explosive trauma than humans, even allowing for the tiny sample size, however, natural evolution seems somewhat more likely.”
“That's not it! They go over all that crap when you join, and that's not what I meant in the first place! We've been attacked and taken prisoner by the first aliens humanity has ever encountered that are still warm, as opposed to dust and fossils, and you're sitting there rambling about shit that is completely irrelevant to our situation!” The marine leapt to his feet and indicated the ten humans crammed into the cramped room. “Look at this! Don't you think you should be taking advantage of that oh-so-amazing genemodded mind of yours to puzzle us a way out of this mess, rather than waiting for those grey skinned freaks to put a bullet through our brains for whatever reason they had to attack us in the first place. Assuming they had one, and aren't just being dicks because they think it's cool.”
The man's voice had been growing steadily louder throughout his rant, and he practically yelled the last few words into Naomi's face. The other people squeezed onto the uncomfortable benches lining two of the walls- mostly civilian techs, although there was a single ARROWs rating in addition to the marine- made noses of agreement. All of them were from the Core, and, as far as she could tell from their accents, were all European.
“I can only presume your imbecility is the result of Stauss-Kaiserist bigotry, deficient education and some sort of neurological defect that your backwards society deems it unethical to correct. What, exactly, do you propose I do? Tear the door from it's mounting, single handedly subdue an entire crew of armed aliens, decipher the control systems of this ship and fly us to Earth, whereupon we shall be received with cheering crowds, medals and large sums of money for defeating the alien menace? I am truly sorry to disappoint you, but I'm not an invincible superhuman, I can't instantly learn completely unfamiliar alien languages in the blink of an eye, I can't ignore being shot full of holes by angry alien soldiers, I can't leap tall buildings in a single bound and I'm not telepathically connected into a soulless Kanonian hive mind that I can ask for help, contrary to those ridiculous novels you European lackwits seem so fond of.
“Put some thought into this, you idiots. I know it's a strain on your tiny minds, but even you should be able to realise that the chances of us not only escaping, but subsequently gaining control of this ship and then escaping from the rest of the fleet that attacked us without all suffering horrible deaths is minuscule. Meanwhile, if we sit here like good boys and girls, don't cause problems and do exactly what we think our captors are trying to tell us, we stand a chance of being kept alive until the situation is resolved.
“You know as well as I do that Intrepid was out at the jumpzone picking up our next set of lab drones and muscleheaded Neanderthals. The UN's paranoia about letting civilian contractors see what we were doing out here and confining transports to the 'zone, while irritating, means that the Intrepid was on the other side of the system when the attack took place playing the part of an absurdly expensive ferry. The transport that's out there was probably captured or destroyed, unless your compatriots in the Core have managed to develop a drive that doesn't need to de-rezz in the three years I've been out here, but Intrepid was clean. I was in Ops when Commodore Williams sent them a warn off message, and they were right on top of the 'zone. There's no way our grey friends caught them before they jumped, which means that the rest of the Sphere is going to know what happened here as soon as they reach a system they can use hyperwave in.
“At the very least, ARROWs is going to send a response force. If you think the EU, PACT, ZOCU the Russians and the Chinese, not to mention every Indie with a hyperwave receiver, are going to turn down the chance to get direct access to advanced alien tech by helping out when the UN asks, then you're even more stupid than I thought. Either they're going to kill us anyway, or they're keeping us alive for their xenobiologists and xenoanthropologists to poke. If that's the case, then they'll repatriate us when every single great power and half the minor states in the Sphere come knocking on their door. If we make trouble, they will simply kill us and dissect to bodies. I don't believe I would enjoy the experience, but if you're interested, by all means, try a jailbreak. I'll be sitting right here and staying alive.”
She had barely raised her voice, but the marine subsided and quietly slumped onto the bench. He shot her a single venomous glare, then leant back against the wall and stared at the dark metal of the ceiling.
“Um, ma'am?” One of the techs, a mousy looking young woman with untidy brown hair and freckles spoke up hesitantly. “What if they can beat whatever force the UN puts together? I mean, they have artificial gravity, and only the Posties have artificial gravity and everyone knows what those Postie defence drones did to the Deutchland when the DSF tried to clear E003 and, and, if they have a whole fleet of ships like that then we don't stand a chance...”
The woman was on the verge of tears.
“Enough!” Naomi snapped. The tech let out a startled squeak. “If they were Posthuman constructs, or using Posthuman weapons technology, they would not be using railguns. As I said, I was in Ops when they attacked, one the sensor data was perfectly clear. Yes, their railguns were better than ours, and yes, it appears that their shields are as well, but they are not in the same league as true theotech weapons. Besides which, ARROWs ships or any class have never been renowned for their ability to endure a stand up fight at close range, and Intrepid was the only really modern ship in the system, so the fact that Miranda and Lilac failed to impede a numerically and qualitatively superior foe is no cause for alarm.”
Sniffing slightly, the woman nodded. Before she had a chance to say anything, the rating seated next to her spoke up.
“Okay, yeah, that makes sense. But, even if we're in the same league techwise, and they've got antigrav because they cracked a function in Dust that we haven't yet, they could still be flat out bigger than us. I mean, we've seen what, ten cruisers and twice that many destroyers? That tells us nothing; ZOCU could field that many, and unless you knew from other sources, you'd have no idea about the Treaty of Sirius. For all you know, these guys could have three hundred factory worlds pumping out battleships by the dozen and trillions of troops. The entire Sphere put together has maybe a hundred worthwhile battleships, if we really stretch and include everybody in the Core and the Expanse, plus a fraction of that number of carriers. Call me paranoid, but I have a nagging suspicion that the UN isn't going to be able to convince everybody to hand over their entire navy to fight the Alien Menace from Beyond Space and leave their own systems unprotected, either, so it's effectively far less. Not, I submit, an impossible force to overcome, especially if you actually do have a tech edge.”
“Hmph. Maybe you're not all idiots.” Naomi snorted. “Yes, that is a possibility, but it's unlikely. You need look no further than the Zodiac War to see why. Compared to the EU, ZOCU is underpopulated, poor and limited in industry, but the Core couldn't project the power it needed to subdue us.”
“Which is why it was the Deep Space Fleet that was decisively defeated at Haraway... wait, no it wasn't.” The marine leered at her. “'Zodiac Combined Fleet destroyed over Haraway's World'. We kicked your arse, despite all those oh-so-special genemods you're so proud of.”
“Yes indeed, the Battle of Haraway, the Zodiac Combined Militias decisively defeated, ZOCU brought to it's knees... and not a single world occupied. Meanwhile, with the notable exception of New Mercia, we got everything we wanted from the peace. Consider the lack of success of Core ground campaigns throughout the war; PACT lost on Kanon, the EU was kicked off of Haraway despite orbital superiority and the Mercians stalemated you despite being almost cut off behind the front lines for the entire war. Even then, you only held any ground at all because half the planet was in open rebellion before you landed. I have no doubt that it's technically possible for the Core to conquer every ZOCU member world, but considering the expense needed not just to wage a conventional war at such a distance, but then to occupy unwilling worlds after the war is won would be phenomenal. It is, quite simply, not worth the cost.
“Conversely, if Terranova took up arms tomorrow and started executing everybody who didn't have blonde hair, they'd be crushed and occupied within months. It's a simple issue of power projection; the further away from your power centre a place is, the more difficult it is to conquer it. Holding together a giant empire would be... I hesitate to say 'impossible', but certainly difficult.”
“Oh, don't act like you've got any more idea what's going on than the rest of us. I know you can't bear to feel like you don't know everything there is to know about what's going on, but tough shit. You know as much about these bastards as any of us; nothing! If you're so much smarter than us mere baselines, then-”
“Hey, Phil, cut it out. You're not helping.”
“Fuck you! I'm sick of this transgene bitch lording it over us 'lowly baselines,' and now I've got a chance to put her in her place.”
Rising to his feet, he turned to Naomi, fists bunched at his sides. She had just started to unfold herself from the cramped seating when he reached her, slapping aside her hastily raised hands. Accompanied by the whine of his exoskeleton's servos, he tossed her easily against the bare bulkhead opposite the door. Naomi hit hard, her breath exploding from her lungs with a woosh and her head smacking against the alloy with enough force that she saw stars. Before she had a chance to shake off the impact, the marine was on her, picking her up by the throat and lifting her until her feet left the deck. Slowly, his fingers began to close.
Naomi pounded at him with fists and feet, but his exoskeleton, battered as it was, still provided more than enough protection to resist her assault, and her vision started to fade to black at the edges. Abruptly, the door hissed open and a pair of aliens charged into the room, weapons raised and shouting loudly. It was complete gibberish, but the exact meaning of the words wasn't needed to understand what the two guards were saying.
With a snarl, the marine tossed Naomi into one of the aliens, sending both of them sprawling and the creature's gun clattering to the deck. The marine dived for the weapon even as the second guard opened fire. Rounds sparked off of his armour and one of the techs cried out as her leg was reduced to pulped meat and bone fragments. Scooping up the fallen gun, the marine turned and fired at the guard. The alien weapon shook as it unleashed a stream of fire, completely unlike the high calibre, semi-automatic railguns Naomi was used to seeing. Whatever the gun fired, it cracked and whined off of a shimmering barrier that sprang into existence around the guard until finally, the gun fell silent with a hiss and a shimmer of heat haze. The marine threw the overheated weapon to the ground and began to charge the standing guard when the alien's second burst reduced his head to a ruined mess.
More screams ensued as blood and thicker matter splattered the walls of the compartment, coating the prisoners liberally with a spray of bodily fluids. The alien Naomi had landed on shoved her roughly off of him and stumbled to his feet. Picking up his weapon, he did something to it that caused another violent hiss and dropped a glowing sliver of material onto Naomi's leg. She yelped as it seared through her trouser leg and shook it off. The guard who had shot the marine glanced at her, it's alien face unreadable, then raised what she presumed was a comm unit. It spoke into the device briefly, then longer in response to a tinny, incomprehensible voice that emerged from the comm.
More feet pounded outside as a further trio of aliens arrived. Naomi noted that the first of the three to enter wore different facial designs to the first two guards, a bold pattern of red and white, while the two following him themselves wore a complicated blue marking. Both were quite different from the simple white stripe of the first two aliens. She filed the information away in her mind for later examination. Red-and-White spoke with the two White-Stripes, jabbing a hand at the corpse on the floor. The White-Stripe she had knocked down responded, and Naomi was surprised to see just how mobile it's metallic face was. Whatever it said, it obviously satisfied Red-and-White. With an agitated sounding his, it barked something to the Blues that had followed it in.
The two of them slid their guns over their shoulders, where the weapons stuck with a series of clicking sounds. Distantly, Naomi reasoned that they must have had magnetic attachments or some sort, but she was too busy simply breathing, and the overhead lights of the compartment, combined with her head striking the wall, were promoting a skull pounding headache. One of the Blues grabbed the corpse of the dead marine beneath it's arms and started dragging it out of the cell. The other grabbed Naomi by the arm and hauled her upright.
The sudden movement caused the world to swoop around her, and she moaned as a sudden burst of nausea slid seamlessly into a set of dry heaves. Fortunately for the alien's boots, her stomach was empty, but it still made an alarmed sound and jabbered something at Red-and-White. A snapped response later and the alien had her scooped up in it's arms and out of the compartment. A terrible, sobbing scream from inside the cell indicated that something was being done to the woman with the ruined leg, but Naomi was too busy trying not to start heaving again to care.
* * *
“So, what happened?” Konta Szara, captain of the cruiser Baetika, asked as he gazed through the medlab windows at the two wounded aliens. It was obvious what had happened to one; the slugs from the guard Kryik's rifle had shattered it's leg. The other's malady was not so easy to determine, but the medical attendants assumed it was somehow related to one or both of the impacts the alien had taken while being tossed around so casually by the soldier. Unfortunately for both, there was little the turians could do. While the solution to one problem was obvious, they lacked the drugs or knowledge of physiology to do anything to solve it, whereas in the other case, the best tat could be determined was that something was wrong. As a result, the frustrated medics could do little more than watch the alien with the leg wound bleed to death, and hope that whatever was wrong with the intact alien was non-fatal. Apparently, it kept trying to go to sleep, or at least became unresponsive unless constantly monitored. Konta was inclined to agree with his chief medical officer that allowing it to do what it wanted sounded like a bad idea.
“Apparently, one of them tried to kill the one with the black fur on it's head by strangling it. The one with the leg wound was injured when the two standby guards, Kryik and Pallius, tried to break it up. That armour is apparently both rather more effective than we thought, and rather more than simply armour.” Sidon Nadius, Baetika's chief of security said, from his position leant against one of the windows.
Konta grunted.
“I don't care how you do it, but I want all the ones wearing those suits out of them, as soon as possible. One incident like this is one too many. Any idea why it tried to kill that one?” He said, indicating the somnolent alien, which jerked into ill-coordinated movement as a tech poked it roughly in the shoulder.
“No idea. We've get everything on file, of course, but without knowing what was being said, well, it's difficult. I don't think she was particularly popular, though, or at least the rest of her cellmates seemed to side with the armoured one at first. Must've been something she said. Maybe she insulted his clan or something, I don't know.”
“Well whatever you do, don't let the rest of them know what happened. I'd rather not have to inform Admiral Decius that I've had to kill every prisoner on this ship because of an attempted riot.”
“Of course, sir.”
Konta grunted again. He and Sidon had entered the military at the same time, and had spent their entire careers leapfrogging each other in rank. They made sure to retain the technical formalities, but there was little of the 'proper' military courtesy expected between a captain and one of his officers.
“So... any idea what Decius is up to?”
“Trying to win glory and prove himself, I suspect. Idiot.” Konta clicked his tongue disapprovingly. “This entire situation reeks of trouble. These people, whoever they are, obviously had no idea what they were doing or why it's a bad idea. Just look at their equipment; it's not Prothean derived, you can tell that from a glance. The only eezo in this whole system is in the mass relay; those ridiculous 'smallarms' of theirs are actual railguns, not mass effect weapons and like you said, they didn't have artificial gravity on that station. I'm not exactly an expert on these matters, but that seems like a clear cut case of people using their own home-grown tech. I'll grant you that they don't seem to have done half bad, and they've apparently found some way to break the lightspeed barrier without the mass effect, but when you get down to it, we might as well have just clubbed a small child for being too curious.”
“I'm told one of their ships escaped?”
“Yes. Whatever it is they use for FTL drives has an incredible radiation signature. We spotted it clean across the system, easily. I'll tell you something odd, though.”
“Oh?”
“You were on the station at the time, but Decius sent us to investigate. They'd left a ship behind; looked perfectly serviceable, but they'd taken the crew off and it looked like they'd taken the time to strip or break as much of the computer equipment as they could. It was a supply ship, I suspect; we found food, clothes, spare parts, that sort of thing. I don't know why they didn't take it with them or destroy it.”
“If it's their first contact with the rest of the galaxy, maybe they panicked? I doubt any of us would react too well if an unidentified fleet appeared in our midst and attacked using unfamiliar technology. I'd be tempted to just grab the crew and run. Or maybe they didn't have any weapons on the ship that escaped.” Sidon shrugged. “Decius is sending somebody to track them, I take it?”
“He would, if we had the slightest idea how. There's no sign of it in any of the nearby systems, apparently, but the scouts he sent out did find a handful of what are apparently nav beacons, so there's someone out here on a semi-regular basis. No sign of permanent or sizeable habitation, though.”
“So, these people managed to get word out to somewhere that a fleet of hostile aliens- ourselves- attacked a research station with, as far as they know, no provocation, our current location, and our numbers, none of our scouts have found either them or wherever they went and, let me guess, Decius intends to stay put here?”
“Indeed. He's decided to 'protect' the relay from more interference- personally, I think he's realised he's made a mistake, and he doesn't want to blunder into these people somewhere where they can actually put up a fight- and called for reinforcements. Just about the only thing he's done that I agree with is arrange to transfer the prisoners and all the technology we've captured somewhere that they aren't at risk of being killed or destroyed. There's a transport arriving in three days. Good thing too, really; we don't have enough space, and none of us are first contact specialists.”
“You think there really is a threat?”
Konta chuckled.
“Those ships were armed. Not heavily, I grant, but still, it suggests that there's a use for weapons out here, doesn't it?”
Admiral Sir Charles Epsom studied the tactical hologram floating in the centre of his flag bridge, his eyes passing over the constellation of light chips that represented the largest ZOCU fleet to have been assembled since the Battle of Haraway forced the Zodiac War to a close. It was also the largest fleet to leave Zodiac space since Lord Dorrington had led the Zodiac Combined Fleet to Aldebaran and his death at the hands of the EU; a trio of Pallada class battleships, including his own flagship Iceni, three Ionia heavy cruisers, twelve Concord cruisers and a pair of upgraded Spartacus heavy cruisers, as well as over fifty Proton light cruisers and other destroyer weight ships from every member world of the Zodiac Outworld Colony Union.
When Epsom had assumed command of what was then simply Force R, three months before, he had not been expecting anything so grand as becoming Mankind's first line of defence against an apparently hostile unidentified species- presuming, of course, that they weren't simply Rim dwellers using advanced Postie or Precursor tech dug up on some backwater world in the middle of nowhere as he suspected they were. His assignment had simply been to oversee the major annual training exercise and wargames held to give the components navies of the Union experience working together as part of a single fleet. The arrival of Intrepid in the Ophen system, however, had changed everything.
While he didn't for a moment believe that the people who had attacked the UN research mission were actually aliens, the point remained that they had demonstrated clear hostility, and had seized control of a technological artefact of unknown but clearly advanced providence. There was no telling what they'd do with the thing, and even if it was a catapult, and not some sort of weapon or military installation, the technology it contained could well have significant military implications. Epsom had fought in the Magnate War as a Sub-Lieutenant. He knew how odd and twisted isolated colonies could become, and the prospect of a world like Rebirth or Delten arming themselves with salvaged xenotech or Precursor superweapons was terrifying.
It simply couldn't be allowed to happen. He'd given Intrepid access to the military priority hyperwave to get word back to the Core, of course, but he knew that his fleet had been the closest, and there was no telling how long it would take the EU or PACT to organise a response. 'Too long' was his opinion, and that was ignoring the fact that 083 was only four jumps from Ophen. He had cancelled the exercise on his own authority, redesignated Force R to the Zodiac Combined Fleet, a title inactive for a decade, and advanced towards 083. From the tone of the hyperwave broadcasts he had received before the redlines cut off interstellar comms, the politicians on Londenium couldn't decide whether to be angry or elated that he was showing the Sphere ZOCU still had the military muscle to intervene outside it's own borders. At the 'official' request of the UN, in the person of one Commnder Alverez, no less.
He suppressed a chuckle at the thought of the EU reaction to that.
“Initiate jump countdown on my mark... mark.”
“Aye sir, ninety seconds to jump.”
The alarm system hooted the combat jump warning, three high pitched whistles that were distinctly unpleasant to listen to. Epsom reached for the helmet racked beside his acceleration couch. Deftly, he checked the contacts, then slid it over his head. It clicked into the collar ring of his vac suit, locking firmly in place with a cheery beep as his suit electronics registered an airtight seal. All over the flag bridge, and indeed, all across the fleet, men and women were replicating the process; although, objectively, the jump from UNSO-085 to UNSO-083 would take three days, subjectively it would be almost instantaneous. If the arrival jumpzone was invested by hostile ships, combat would be brutal and immediate.
“Thirty seconds.”
“Five seconds.... Three... Two... One...”
Epsom was careful not to wince as the disorienting, nauseating feeling of an FTL jump washed through him. It just wouldn't do to throw up in front of his flag staff; quite apart from any other issues, it would make the inside of his suit smell foul, and he was potentially going to be wearing it for a long time.
“Contact! Single ship, bearing one-three-zero by zero-one-zero at one point five million klicks! Designated Charlie One!”
For an instant, Epsom's blood froze in his veins, but then he relaxed. Only a single ship, and far, far out of range. The logical conclusion was that whoever these people were had spotted Intrepid's departure, but hadn't been able to localise the jumpzone to invest it and had therefore left a sentry to watch the area.
“Anything from the inner system?”
“Aye sir, infrared and microwaves from the vicinity of the artefact. We're too far away for any sort of resolution, though. Charlie One is accelerating towards the inner system at three-one-one Gs.”
He nodded, and firmly suppressed the impulse to try and rub his chin in thought. That was more than 15% greater than the fastest destroyer in the fleet, let alone his battleships. Initiating a stern chase would be a losing proposition.
“Hail them, open channel. Hyperwave, radio, comm laser, everything; make sure they can hear me.”
There was a pause as the two techs at the communications station took to their controls. Then, the section head, a sandy haired Lieutenant by the name of Conroy looked up.
“You're live, sir.”
Epsom nodded.
“Unidentified craft, this is Admiral Charles Epsom, commanding officer of the Zodiac Combined Fleet. You have been involved in an illegal attack upon the United Nations Autonomous Rapid Reaction Oversight Wardens. Strike your drives and prepare to receive my boarding parties to take control of your vessel. Failure to do so will result in the use of force to compel your surrender. You have ten minutes from the receipt of this message to comply. Epsom out.”
“Message sent, sir.”
“Very good Lieutenant. Be so kind as to inform me of any reply.”
“Yes sir.”
The minutes ticked down with no reply, only the cruiser opening a larger and larger lead on the ZOCU fleet. Finally, the countdown expired. Epsom glanced calmly at Conroy. The junior officer shook his head, and Epsom sighed. Briefly he entertained sending another message, then snorted. He had given them more than enough time to surrender; it was clear that either they had no intention of doing so, or they lacked the capability to understand his ultimatum. Instead, he depressed one of the colour-coded comm studs on the arm of his couch.
“Aerospace Control, Commander Gillingham.” The voice of the fleet's seniormost Aerospace Group Commander hissed from his suit speakers.
“Commander, this is Epsom. It seems our friends are still in system, and have left a watchdog out here at the jumpzone. I want him removed from my sky.”
“Admiral, it would be my pleasure.”
* * *
The Legionnaire's acceleration pushed Lieutenant Joanne Thornton back into her seat as the mobile suit sped from the catapults of the Mercian Proton class light cruiser Obdurate. She could see other suits launching from all over the fleet; tiny, incredibly bright pinpoints of fire or glittering trails of stardust accelerating out into the void.
It wasn't as grand a sight as such a spectacle would have been ten years earlier during the middle of the Zodiac war, when ZOCU had been able to field purpose built carriers an addition to the aerospace complements on other ships, and when the Zodiac Combined Fleet had had nineteen battleships and nearly a hundred cruisers, with a total aerospace complement of over a thousand craft... or, at least, that's what the visuals in the training simulators had suggested.
Given that this was her first ever combat mission, and the largest simultaneous aerospace launch she'd participated in, it wasn't something that she had personal experience with. Even so, despite the paucity of ships, despite the fact that the Hoplites had been left in their launch cradles and despite the fact that at least half, and probably more, of the available Legionnaires and Sarissas had also been left behind, it was still an impressive sight.
Her suit prodded at her over her neural interface, and she swung onto a new heading. Compared to a Sarissa or Hoplite, her Legionnaire was clumsy, slow and massive, laden down with armour, missile pods, particle carbine and plasma lance. Nevertheless, it settled easily onto the new heading, pointed squarely at an immaterial dot four light seconds away from the fleet and one light second from the watchdog ship. She couldn't see it with her naked eye, but her suit was feeding her data from it's sensors; the target was moving directly away from them, 'down' towards the ecliptic where, presumably, the rest of the unknown fleet that had pasted the ARROWs expedition was waiting. It was piling on the acceleration- she didn't think any ship that wasn't using postie-derived drives could match that performance- but it wasn't fast enough to escape the wrath of the ZOCU Mobile Suit Corps.
“Alright ladies and gents, now that we're all in space, a quick refresh of what we're supposed to be doing out here,” Lieutenant-Commander Feist's voice crackled through her helmet speakers. The commander of Obdurate's MS team was a weatherbeaten mountain of a man, large enough that Joanne wasn't sure how he managed to squeeze himself into a cockpit, and possessed of bushy, prematurely greying hair. His voice was a perfect match- a gravelly baritone, with a slight, abnormal buzz from the implants that replaced his throat, jaw and part of his face, the legacy of losing a dogfight with an EU fighter in the skies above his home arcology of New Anglia. The hiss and pop of static distorted his voice even further, but his clipped pronunciation made every word crystal clear.
“That fellow in front of us has certainly warned his companions in the inner system that we're here. Or task is not to prevent him from spreading word of our arrival; if it were, we would already have failed. Nor are we to destroy him, if at all possible; access to intact technology, computers and prisoners is an asset that we cannot afford to pass up when it's been offered to us on a silver platter like this. We are aiming to disable him, if at all possible. If that proves impractical, then we can go for the kill, but only then. I don't want to see first battle nerves getting some of us carried away.
“It's only a cruiser, so he shouldn't be much of a threat, but remember that some navies use cruisers as AA platforms; he can still kill you, and will if he gets the chance. Pay attention, and you should be fine. The Sarissas are going to be leading us in, just in case he's got some space superiority fighters or suits he's holding back; we'll follow at a two minute separation. Onslaught, Athena and Felix's teams will follow us in; you've worked with Harawayians before, and Ophen doctrine isn't any different, so you'll be fine. Remember, we aren't the only strike out here, so keep your eyes peeled. I don't want to hear that you got yourself killed by crashing into some prettyboy in a glitterblower.”
Joanne snorted. Feist had flown one of the first Mercian Sarissas to enter service before wartime requirements had led to his transfer to ground support and strike duties for which the Sarissa was unsuited and the Legionnaire was king, and it was well known that he vastly preferred the 'glitterblowers' to the unwieldy strike suits.
“Once we reach the rendezvous point, we've got a ten minute wait before the other two strikes reach us, so feel free to practice your singing or whatever. Just keep it off the team channel. Fleet AGC is 'Penthouse,' Onslaught's strike is 'Raven,' Athena's is 'Stingray' and Felix's is 'Archer'. We've got a long flight ahead, so I suggest you get comfortable.”
Opening a fresh holodisplay and pasting the fleetwide tactical feed onto it, it became uncomfortably clear just what he was talking about. The tiny chips of light that represented friendly suits seemed to crawl across the gap between the fleet and the fleeing cruiser. It was perfectly obvious that the fleet's heavy ships didn't have a chance in hell of catching their speedy quarry, and even at flank speed, ZOCU's destroyers would be left in the dust. As it was, the suits were overhauling the fleeing ship, but it would take well over an hour to catch it.
Being military craft, Legionnaires did not come with entertainment programmes loaded into their computers. Joanne occupied herself with examining what little data regarding their opponents had been made available to lowly MS pilots like her- a tiny fraction of, she suspected, a tiny fraction, if the copious holes and gaps in the data were any indication. Nevertheless, it served to fill the time until she and her team mates reached the rendezvous point.
The sharp alarm her suit computers sent through her link sent a flood of adrenaline crashing through her. A thought dismissed the forest of holographic windows floating around her, leaving only the flight display and the tactical feed. Feist's voice crackled over the comm again.
“Final weapons checks, ladies and gentlemen. Standard attack pattern; main targets are the engines, after that, weapons systems and sensor kit. We want him blind, lame and impotent when the fleet catches up.”
Joanne ran through her mental check-list, reaching out through her connection to the suit to examine the bulky instruments of death clamped onto the suit, or grasped in it's huge hands. Everything checked out.
“Lead, Three, I'm good.”
“Two, good.”
“Four, good.”
“Sit tight, wait for the other strikes to get here. Remember, don't do anything stupid, and you'll be fine.”
Sitting in the outer system of a star so unimportant- up until presumably wondrous xenotech had been found just floating about at least- that it hadn't even been given a name, waiting for sixty eight other mobile suits to catch up with her strike so that they could, as a group, dive directly into whatever volume of AA fire the cruiser could put up, Joanne for the first time in three years questioned just why she thought it'd been a good idea to volunteer for the Aerospace Force. It was glamorous and exciting, but at that particular moment in time, she decided that she would much rather have waited to be drafted and then angled for a nice, safe spot in the Logistics Corps. Then, instead of floating about in deep space with nothing but a thin shell of composite armour and a flash shield between her an vacuum, she would be ensconced in a nice, safe office in an arcology spire or bunker on New Mercia.
“Why the fuck do they send newbies to these stupid training exercises anyway?” She muttered to herself. “Unlike every other fucking world in the Union.”
Further grousing was interrupted by the arrival of the other two strikes, sixteen Legionnaires and eight Sarissas each. There was a brief swirl of confused manoeuvring as pilots jockeyed their craft into position, and then they were ready.
“All elements, Penthouse, you may engage when ready. Good luck, boys and girls, and have fun.”
Joanne didn't think that the AGC would be quite so sanguine if he was out here with them, as opposed to safely buried behind Iceni's massive armour and shields. The Sarissa pilots showed none of her reluctance, however; open comm channels broadcast their shrill whooping war cries as they hurled their machines forwards at the maximum acceleration their physics-bending mercurion drives could manage. Her flash shield sparked and hissed as the glittering quantum dust they spewed behind them washed harmlessly over her suit.
She watched them crawl towards the cruiser on the tactical feed; the enemy ship's drive flare was still little more than an extra, somewhat larger star amongst many, and the relatively tiny drives of the suits rapidly faded into invisibility. When the time came for her to begin her own approach run, she was glad for the neural link; her hands were shaking badly enough tat she wasn't sure she would have been able to keep a firm grip on the controls.
Where the trip to the rendezvous point had seemed to take hours, the dash towards the fleeing cruiser seemed to pass in a flash. Almost before she realised it, the ship was visible in the flight display, a glint of metal poised atop a glaring drive flare, growing visibly larger as her suit hurtled towards it. They were still thousands of kilometres away when the Sarissas in front of them vanished in a boiling could of fire and debris.
“What the fuck?!”
“Holy shi...!”
“Scatterbeams! Break!”
“Ararat, Ararat, please respond on this channel. What is your situation? Come in Ararat...”
Shocked chatter exploded across the comm net; damage reports, demands for information and panicked cursing, all blended together into an impenetrable noise that Joanne didn't have the time to decipher. It was immediately clear that whatever had gotten so many of the leading suits hadn't gotten all of them; friendly IFF codes were still scattered about in front of her, blinking abruptly from place to place as the Sarissas activated their zero shift systems in an attempt to avoid the hellishly effective point defence that had without warning cut a bloody swathe through their formation. The occasional pockmark of flame marked suits that left their micro FTL jumps a few seconds too long, but despite mounting losses, they continued streaming towards the cruiser.
Joanne slipped around a twisted fragment of fused wreckage that came spinning out of the rapidly dispersing debris field between her and the ship, and braced herself for fiery ruin. The Legionnaire shuddered and a warning whooped inside her head as something clawed at her craft, but her flash shield- her wonderful, incredible flash shield- held it at bay, an arcing corona of energy two meters from her armour. Where fully half the Sarissas had died, only three Legionnaires exploded, fused into molten lumps of composite.
“Scatterbeams!” Fiest's voice snapped over the team channel. “Three, keep moving!” Fiest had already thrown his suit onto a wild, spiraling course that probably would have smeared him into a bloody paste on the inside of his cockpit if it hadn't been for his inertial compensators, and her other two team mates were engaging in less impressive evasive manoeuvres. Acutely aware of the certain death with only a wavering energy shield and far, far too thin shell of armour between her and it, she hurled her suit into a wild corkscrew. The beam lost her for several seconds, then hammered at her shield again. More icons vanished from her display.
“Penthouse, Magician lead,” Joanna was amazed as how calm Fiest sounded, even while somebody was doing their very best to murder him. “Enemy scatterbeam point defence is highly accurate, extremely effective against unshielded targets.”
“Roger that, Magician. Can you complete your run?”
“Affirmative, Penthouse. Suggest you recall the Sarissas; they're taking a hell of a pounding. Looks like one hit, one kill from here. Requesting permission to destroy the ship without attempting to disable it.”
There was a pause. The Sarissas were falling back of their own accord, now, their formation and team organisation in tatters, and the cruiser was letting them go, focusing it's attention on the far more resilient Legionnaires.
“Negative, Magician, repeat, negative. The mission is still to disable, not destroy.”
“Acknowledged Penthouse. We'll do what we can.” There was a click as he changed channel. “Alright, Three, you're with me. Two, Four, you follow us in.”
“R-roger that Lead. I've got your back.”
“Gotcha bo...”
“Holy shit! They got 'im!”
“Calm down, Two. Stay close with us, follow Three in.”
“Yes sir.”
The bleeding remnants of the strike hurtled towards the cruiser, twisting and weaving impossibly as they sought to avoid it's scything point defence lasers. There were fewer hits being scored now, a combination of evasive manoeuvres and, though the attackers didn't know it, rising temperatures in their target. Blasting through the wreckage of the foremost Sarissas, the Legionnaires spread out into their final attack formation, before diving down into the teeth of the ship's frantic close range defences.
On of the impossibly accurate beams caught a suit next to Joanne in the centre of mass, burning through it's shield and sending it careening out of formation, straight into her flight path. Even with compensators, her dodge tossed her hard against her flight harness. There was a sickening snapping sound, and a stab of pain from her shoulder, but she hauled her suit back onto course as her suit fed a carefully calculated dose of painkiller into her veins. They were nearly there, only a few hundred kilometers separating them from their target. A thought armed her missiles, and targeting systems lashed out, burning through ECM and latching hold of her foe. For a brief moment, the wildly dodging suits slotted together, opening clear fields of fire for every craft. Missiles blasted away from them; Sledge shipkiller missiles, incredibly short ranged but fast and carrying a heavy warhead that could punch holes deep into the vitals of even the heaviest Core battleship.
Joanne watched in horror as the cruiser clawed all but three of them from space. There had been less than thirty seconds between launch and impact; no point defence could possibly have intercepted such a high percentage of the salvo at that range. But the unfamiliar ship had, and the three leakers impacted hard against the enemy shields. Warheads blossomed against the shimmering barrier, clawing at it madly to get to the ship beyond, but the cruiser ploughed through the impacts as if nothing had happened. The abrupt switch of targets had given the ZOCU suits breathing room, however.
Fiest led them in, with Joanne immediately behind him. The impossible point defence had taken their remaining team mate, and had not been kind to the rest of the strike. Every suit icon on her display blinked the flashing yellow of a damaged unit, but despite the losses they'd taken, they were finally in range, and at last, they could fire back.
Energy poured from the suits; pulse lasers, plasma lances and particle carbines hurled fire and death at the ship that had inflicted such punishing losses on them, passing through it's shields as if they didn't exist and ravaging it's hull; Joanne was sure she saw the beam from her particle rifle sear it's way into an engine housing. Abruptly, the rear of the ship bulged, then split, releasing a cloud of fire, debris and bodies into space and setting the vessel tumbling uncontrollably away from it's previous course. The beams stopped.
She let an incredulous laugh escape her.
“That... that was it? All that... all that and it went down on the first pass?”
“Count yourself lucky you don't have to hang around in it's defence envelope, Three.” Fiest's voice was grim. “If they've got a whole fleet of these...”
He broke off with a grunt, then switched channels.
“Penthouse, Magician Lead. Mission accomplished. I hope the Admiral appreciates this.”
Most impressive.
Even though I have no idea of what this fic is based on it is a good fic, it's not just some mindless hack&slash or blow up them bugs kind of story, I'm looking forward to reading more of this story.
Good work and well done.
LT.Hit-Man
" Remember only you can prevent canibalistic murder, feed your local Sith Lord today. "
“Jesus Christ.” Every eye on Iceni's flag bridge was glued to the main display, and the owners of said eyes looked just as shocked as Epsom felt. He wasn't sure who had released the quiet, incredulous curse, but they were simply putting into words the thoughts of everybody who'd just watched a single ship take apart a strike group that could have, with a bit of luck, taken on a wartime cruiser division with a reasonable chance of success.
“General order,” he snapped. “I want every suit and fighter in the fleet powered down and secured. Nobody is going to launch anything unless I give specific permission.”
“Aye sir.”
“What are the numbers, people?”
“Not good, sir,” Commander Kimiko Yui, Epsom's Chief of Staff, looked up from her console. Like everybody else on Iceni's flag bridge, she wore the mauve uniform of Londenium. Unlike everybody else, she was not a native of Londenium; her shocking head of lemon yellow hair, accent and literally superhuman intelligence betrayed her membership of the Harawayian Yellow Caste. Although he would never admit it, Epsom found the monumental intellect of Yui and her fellow caste members more than a bit intimidating. Transgenes were far from rare on Londenium- indeed, Epsom himself was a transgene- but nobody else in ZOCU had gone to the extremes of Haraway's specialised genetic caste system and... unique... society. Nevertheless, while the idea of actually living on a planet where a person's options in life were heavily dependent on just what genemods they were born with didn't appeal to Epsom- nor, apparently, to Yui, despite being born into one of the more prosperous castes- he wasn't above making use of the considerable innate talents of Yellow or Green caste officers.
“Casualties amongst the Sarissas approaches 90 percent; they apparently remained under fire even after they broke off the attack. The Legionnaires came off better; overall casualties are just a hair over 50 percent, and they're concentrated in the Heaven's Shore contingent. The Ophen and Mercian strikes lost a quarter of their Legionnaires, but the Heavenites were almost wiped out, same as the Sarissas.
“That suggests a fairly obvious conclusion to me, sir. Ophen, New Mercia and Heaven's Shore haven't kept their Sarissa fleets up to date; they lack shields or the latest round of advanced armour composites and ECM kit. Likewise, the Heavenites political problems have kept them from upgrading their Legionnaires to the latest standard. Casualtes amongst those strikes were almost total. In contrast, the Mercians use their Legionnaires for ground support and keep them on the cutting edge- a bit beyond it, honestly, given their armour tech- and Ophen just replaced their fleet with a new built order of OMF-07Cs. They've got the newest shields, armour and ECM, and not coincidentally, they were the only suits capable of surviving inside our friend's defence envelope until they reached attack range.”
“Damn it. That writes off, what, two thirds of our MS strength, and a bit over half our anti-ship strike capability.”
“Umm...” Yui sucked on her bottom lip. “That's when it gets interesting, sir. Up until the suits reached energy weapon range, their performance in every indicator was significantly higher than anything we've seen that isn't a postie drone or defence station. Hell, you saw how their shields took those three Sledges without even flickering. When the suits switched to beams, though, those shields might as well not have been there. I'm not sure if they punched through or if the shields just don't work on particle beams- I'd think the former, given how every know shield works, but until we can put marines aboard what's left of that ship and get a good look at the tech, we won't know for certain. Moreover, whatever they use for armour, it's not up to scratch in a modern combat environment. Even the rubbish the EU was fielding at the start of the War had better armour than that; a Lepanto wouldn't have blown up after a single pass from suits with standard particle beams, that's for damn certain. Given that, mega particle beams are... well, they'll be at least as effective as they were against the EU before they put shields into widespread deployment. Almost certainly more effective, in fact, given that the EU armoured against particle beams and these people don't appear to.
“Essentially, sir, while they've grounded most of our suits, they've also wound back the clock fifteen years in terms of defence technology. At least. Given what we've just observed, even Protons are going to be able to poke holes through them without any trouble at all.”
“Hm,” Epsom nodded as he studied the main plot. “Very well. Have Turbulent and Sparrow take the hulk under tow. Hold it near the 'zone; we'll put marines aboard once we've secured the system. Then I want recon drones fired towards the last know location of their main force. We'll be going for Charlie Four if and when we locate them. Have the fleet stand down from general quarters; I want battle watches maintained aboard all ships. I'll be in CIC.”
“Very good sir.”
The hatch slid sharply into the ceiling as he propelled himself towards it, exposing the plain metal corridor beyond. It wasn't polished to a mirror shine, but it was clean ad clear of clutter, and the maintenance stencils on the various hatches and connectors that dotted the walls were fresh. With practised ease, he launched himself towards the nearest access well.
“Sir!”
Yui's voice blared through his helmet speakers. Grabbing a handhold, he arrested his forward motion, allowing the ex-pat Harawayian to catch up.
“Yes Kimiko?” He said, as the pair pushed off of the bulkhead once more.
“Sir, given what we've just seen... I think it might be a good idea to postpone or cancel our attack.”
“Pardon?” Epsom asked.
“We should call off the attack, sir,” she said again, with considerably more assurance.
Epsom frowned inside his helmet. It was clear that, unless the enemy had received significant reinforcement, he possessed an overwhelming preponderance of force. Despite the unanticipated difficulties involved in launching MS strikes against whoever these people were, so far his losses, despite their troubling implications, had been minor. He wasn't inclined to let the enemy slip away, not when they'd demonstrated not only a willingness to attack non-military targets in overwhelming force and displayed a frankly insane refusal to surrender in the face of what they must have known was an impossible situation. Those two traits combined suggested unpleasant things to him, and ZOCU was much closer to UNSO-083 than any other power. If the newcomers were allowed time to identify the system's jumpzones and start building up navigation data, it was the Union that they'd find first.
That was completely disregarding the fact that he would have just allowed a rogue colony to abscond with UN property, as well as possibly prisoners and whatever information the research team had assembled regarding the artefact, after said rogue colony violated restricted space and launched an unprovoked attack without any sort of warning. The fact that they'd apparently done so through an unmapped jumpzone wasn't all that surprising; 'United Nations Survey Objects' had never been terribly accurately named, and it was more than possible that the initial, far from exhaustive surveys of the system could have missed one- or more- jumpzones, just like they'd missed the huge xenotech artefact floating around in the inner system. Given that it was uncharted, however, it meant that any ships that escaped down it would be essentially out of reach... along with any prisoners and data on board.
Epsom wasn't willing to sit back and let that happen; it would be a significant blow to his personal prestige, for one thing, and it wouldn't reflect favourably on the Union either. No, he had to at least make the attempt to pin the enemy down and retrieve whatever spoils they'd taken from the station.
“I presume you have a good reason for that, Commander?”
“Ah, yes sir. It's just, a number of observed facts don't fit a single rogue colony, or even a group of them.”
“Go on.”
“Well, sir, the performance data. We're behind the Core in a lot of areas, despite the better part of a century of free contact with Earth, even including the breakdown. The effects of that are pretty plain; yes, we're behind the Core, but compared to the Rim? Our longshots left in the same timeframe, had the same tech and same number of people aboard, but they're still stuck in the mid 21st century with a façade of theotech painted over the top. We all know that regular contact with the Core pulled us along with them. These people have got better technology than the Core in many areas, significantly better, not just a few percentage points. No EU cruiser could do what that ship just did, unless you replaced all it's armament with scatterbeams, and we know that these guys have managed to squeeze railguns in there as well from the data Intrepid gave us. Beyond those shields, they've not displayed a trace of theotech.
“If they've got better metric-compliant tech than the Core, then... that's just not consistent with an isolated colony. Every other isolated colony has crappy metric-compliant kit and tries to compensate for that with piles of dust, Velan nanotech or both. Hell, we do the same thing, and we're close enough to be within shouting distance of the Core at least. They just don't fit. I think we should be more cautious, not jump into what could be a meatgrinder without first taking the time to check that it's not going to mince us. For all our assumptions, we don't really know who they are or where they came from.”
Epsom shot an incredulous look at Yui.
“I hope you're not seriously suggesting that they're actually aliens, Kimiko. You know as well as I do that the odds of another spacefaring species of a similar level of development as us being anywhere near our part of the jump network at the same time as us are astronomical!”
“Maybe, sir, but long odds don't make something an impossibility. Even so, there are other options. This whole incident centres around previously unknown xenotech, remember; we've no idea what it's capable of, and it's not inconceivable that they've simply worked out how to use it themselves. Given the number and size of ships that they committed to obliterating a lightly armed research base, they're almost certainly a multi-colony entity; it'd be a sizeable deployment for us, for example, even during the war, and if those ships are here in the middle of nowhere, then they must have more elsewhere. We don't know how many worlds they have, what sort of industrial base or the size of their navy. If they were a normal podunk Rim colonial league, I wouldn't be worried, but they manifestly are not. We could be getting ourselves into another major war and not know it.”
“Those are valid concerns, I admit. Nevertheless, we can't afford to let these fellows slink away through their uncharted 'zone, and I think some of your concerns are overstated. These people attacked an internationally supported ARROWS mission; if they're too big for us to handle alone, we can appeal to the UN- and thus the Core- for help. Assuming that they don't insist on sending it anyway or these fellows don't just roll over as soon as they realise we're here in force and not going to back off. I don't for a minute think they they're actually aliens, even if they are using xenotech, but even if they were, we'd need to show them that attacking human ships and installations without so much as a by-your-leave has consequences and that we won't just let them walk all over us.
“Finally, we're already here, we've already been involved in a shooting incident. Backing off now would tell the Sphere that we're scared, that ZOCU can't handle a bunch of Rimdwellers with some shiny alien-derived toys and had to let the Core do all the hard work. I'm not going to be the man to embarrass us like that.”
“At least wait until we can put marines aboard what's left of the watchdog to che...”
“And be forced to leave them behind if we have to withdraw?” Epsom interrupted. “I think not! No, Commander, we will proceed as planned, depending, of course, on the disposition of the enemy. Now, we've got hours yet until we get solid info on their location. Get some rest. Have a hot meal, clear your head. I'm going to need you in top form when we take these bastards on.”
They'd reached the access well, and Yui snagged a handhold to secure herself as she turned towards the corridor that would, eventually, lead to the galley.
“Very well, sir. I'd like it noted in the logs that I object to carrying through this attack.”
Epsom frowned at her for several seconds.
“So noted,” he said. “Now, go get some rest, Commander.”
* * *
“Sirs, we're getting contact information from the RDs now.”
Epsom and his Flag Captain, Philip Lovell, looked up from their position hovering over the main holotank of Iceni's CIC. Like the flag bridge, the combat information centre was a round compartment, ringed with consoles and centered around a large holographic display. Additional, smaller holograms were suspended at regular intervals around the room. The lights were dimmed and the temperature kept cool, both for comfort and to assist tired ratings on late watches in not drifting off and thus incurring the wrath of their superiors... or something worse.
“Put it up on the secondary display, please.”
“Aye sir.”
The secondary display closest to the pair flickered abruptly, and then switched images. Gone was the duplicate of the main plot it had been projecting, replaced by the datafeed from half a dozen barely-legal stealthy drones.
“Looks like the station is still intact.” Lovell's almost comically high pitched voice- the result of emergency reconstruction of his trachea and larynx- was violently at odds with his bushy eyebrows and abundant facial hair.
“Indeed. And that's all their known ships accounted for.” Epsom said, as he counted the contacts. “More even. These two, here, weren't in the contact data Intrepid gave us.”
He indicated two of the red light chips, both of which hovered right next to the station. The remainder of the enemy ships were spread out in a lose arc between the station and the Combined Fleet. The drones were too far out to gain useful optical data, and switching to active sensors would have given away their positions, so the information in the data codes next to each light chip contained a distressing number of 'unknowns,' but even so, it looked like the biggest ships- comparable in size to the vessel that was now under tow towards the jumpzone- formed the centre of the lose formation.
“They're putting out a hell of a lot of IR,” Lovell observed. “If I didn't know better, I'd say that they were a Rim fleet, still using old-style radiators and all that.”
“It's not an impossibility. It's been pointed out to me that they've not displayed much in the way of theotech. If they are using a so far unknown form of xenotech instead, it might mean that they don't have entropy sinks. I'm not going to gamble anything on that just yet, though; they might just run their ships hotter than we do. Fortunately, I don't think we're going to have any problems; I can't imagine them giving us a better set up if they tried.”
Lovell nodded.
“Agreed. Unless those two by the station are their backstop.”
“They'd be further away from the station and the rest of their fleet both if they were. And they'd be present in greater numbers. I think they're freighters or transports of some sort; we'll want to take them intact, if we can. Still, just in case... hm, yes, Admiral Walker I think. Her Spartaci probably have the firepower to deal with them if they turn out to be something other than transports.”
He gestured at the display, indicating the large gulf between the station and the neatly arranged fleet.
“It's fairly obvious that they expect us to come directly to them. I'm disinclined to bow to their wishes; the plan hasn't changed. We're going with Charlie Four, but rather than putting us in front of their formation, I want us behind them, between them and the station. With any luck, we can finish this before it really gets started.”
* * *
Decius stalked across the floor of Haliat's CIC. He was aware that his restlessness was not inspiring to his subordinates, but remaining still was simply beyond his power. The alien fleet had made it's arrival at the worst possible moment; at any other point in the last two tendays, he would simply have withdrawn from the system. Even without including the alien's completely unprecedented possession of practical directed energy weapons in his assessment, it had been immediately apparent as soon as the other fleet had appeared in the system that the 57th Patrol Fleet was outmatched. The assumption from examining the captured technology on the station and the wreckage of the ships destroyed in the initial attack had been that the turians had the tech edge by a significant margin, but it wasn't enough to make the aliens ineffective. They would have needed a significant numbers advantage.
The force he faced had just such an advantage. They would have been present in overwhelming numbers even if they'd been armed only with the weapons the turians had so far encountered; the energy weapons just made the advantage even more pronounced. Moreover, they knew that kinetic weapons were a known technology for these people. It was a sure bet that the aliens' barriers would be proof against the turians' own mass drivers. Meanwhile, their energy weapons would be striking through the 57th's own kinetic barriers from the outset, and the rapidity of Helika's demise was a disturbing indication that the ablative armour that was so effective against GARDIAN lasers simply wasn't up the the task against whatever it was that these people used.
Unfortunately, retiring from the field now would have left the two military transports docked with the station to the mercies of the aliens, not to mention the personnel and supplies currently aboard the alien habitat. They were clearing out as fast as possible, but sanitising everything they didn't have time to take with them also took time. It would be another two cycles before the station was clear of sensitive information for certain, and given that these people apparently felt strongly enough about his enforcement of interstellar law to send this large a fleet to meet him, he wasn't going to let them get their hands on anything useful that they might be able to use against the Hierarchy- or the rest of Council space- if he could possibly help it.
“Any change?”
“Ah, no sir. They're still holding position exactly where they, ah, appeared. They've collected their surviving smallcraft, and two of the frigates have taken Helika under tow and moved her back towards their fleet. Other than that, they haven't so much as twitched.”
Decius grunted, and spun around to contemplate the tactical display. The thin line of green between the station and the enemy seemed entirely insignificant against the horde of yellow dots hovering motionless at the edge of the plot.
I wonder what they're waiting for, he thought. If they stay there much longer, we might even pull this off. Once we've gone to FTL, there'd be no way they could catch us, and they've waited for nearly four cycles already. Two more shouldn't be beyond the realm of possibili...
“Active sensor sweep!”
Decius jerked in surprise, and snapped his head round to stare at the sensor tech who had yelled.
“Radar, lidar, the works, sir. I count twelve separate point sources; I think they're probes of some kind. Whatever they are, they've gotten a damn good look at us.”
“I think we just found out why they were willing to sit there for so long,” Decius grated. “Why didn't we detect them?”
“No idea sir. At the very least, we should have seen their drives on IR, but until they started pinging us, there was nothing. I'm still not detecting an IR signature much greater than the surrounding space. It's like they're just not generating heat at all.”
“Tell me as soon as they start to move!” Decius snapped. “Raise the station; tell them to get back aboard the freighters and forget about any equipment. We've going to destroy it and leave before they have the chance to...”
He was cut off by an alarmed shout from the sensor tech, and then the his world vanished into a maelstrom of blinding pink light.
The Zodiac Outworld Colony Union had some of the most advanced FTL drives in the Human Sphere. Wedded to that, they had good computers and superhumanly skilled transgene navigators. It was a deadly combination. Simultaneously, the seventy plus ships of the Zodiac Combined Fleet, minus the two tiny Proton class light cruisers towing the crippled turian cruiser, vanished with eye-searing flashes of radiation. Over such short distances, the transit time was almost non-existent. The turian sensor operators had no warning before the human fleet appeared in attack position.
FTL manoeuvres were part an parcel of warfare in all parts of the known galaxy; slogging all the way across a system at sublight speeds simply took too long to be practicable, and made it too easy for the weaker side to avoid contact. Crucially, however, Prothean-derived FTL drives still travelled over a distance. When most of the ZOCU fleet appeared behind them, something that shouldn't have been possible, they were entirely unprepared.
Iceni and her two sisters appeared directly behind Haliat and the other turian cruisers. Thirty six heavy mega particle cannons snarled into life, and three turian ships, including the Haliat exploded into clouds of debris. More bright pink beams erupted from other human vessels, ravaging the turian formation, and three frigates vanished into soundless explosions as the beams struck something vital.
The humans didn't have everything their own way, however. Despite the quality of their equipment, their training and their raw ability, even ZOCU navigators couldn't make microjumps with perfect percent accuracy. Individual ships and even whole squadrons that had missed their jumps formed a halo around the battle. Most of them were too far away to have any effect on the fighting, but a trio of Protons and a single Concord had fallen short of their target coordinates by just enough to put them in front of the turian formation. Even as their fleet dissolved into a desperate flight out of the range of the deadly energy weapons that were carving through their ships as if they were made of butter, spinal mass drivers opened fire on the unfortunate human vessels.
Two of the Protons broke apart under the hammering, and the third detonated in a violent explosion, hurling debris onto the wrecks of its' companions. The cruiser survived long enough to unleash a fusillade of mega particle beams towards the nearest turian frigate before it's shields failed and the front half of the ship converted itself into a cloud of metal confetti. The stern tumbled wildly through space until it too vanished in a tremendous detonation.
With their commander dead and in an impossible tactical position, the surviving turian ships scattered, each dashing away on wildly different courses at their maximum acceleration. Most of them failed to escape the guns of the human fleet, but some managed to avoid the deadly particle beams. Preoccupied with reconstituting it's scattered squadrons, the Zodiac fleet allowed them to flee.
The DEWs give the ZOCU a massive advantage over everybody in the Mass Effect universe. Ignoring their shields and cutting through their armor like a hot knife through butter. It seems that the only advantage the Turians have is better point defense.
I don't see the Turians winning this war, unless they have superior numbers.
What they have in that system is a significant fraction of ZOCU's active units. It's also their entire battleline strength, and just over half their cruisers. They've got some more in reserve, but they need permission from the UN to reactivate them, since they're under an arms limitation treaty. The other Great Powers of the Human Sphere have bigger fleets, but they don't have mega particle beams; it's possible to armour against standard particle beams by just sticking more metal on your ship, and the EU, the biggest military power in the Sphere, uses railguns against which kinetic barriers will obviously be effective. They're actually not as good as ME mass drivers.
What ZOCU just did to the turians is pretty much a replay of what they did to the EU at the start of the major interstellar war that they recently finished losing, because physical armour just doesn't work against mega particle beams, bar recently developed experimental materials that are barely in experimental deployment. In a lot of ways, ZOCU is entirely responsible for the Sphere-wide adoption of shield technology, because it was quite simply the only way to protect against their weapons. Standard particle beams in use by PACT (the Americans/Japanese/Australians/etc) and China aren't anywhere near that deadly, like I said above. ME ships aren't armoured well enough against them, but they can actually fix that. The numbers disparity between ZOCU and the Turians alone, much less the rest of the Council, is a lot bigger than it was between ZOCU and the EU/PACT, especially considering that most of their fleet is either destroyed, scrapped or mothballed.
Events will conspire to make sure ZOCU isn't the only GP involved, however, so they're not going to get completely buried.
“I'm sorry, Arterius, I just can't send anything else forward to you without tipping our hand. If we want to sort out this mess Decius has dropped the bot of us in, we'll need to keep it quiet.” First Admiral Antinus Persis stated from where his holographic image flickered. The flag officer looked drawn and grim, and it was obvious that he had not been getting a great deal of sleep.
“I know sir, I know. It's a bit more difficult to keep that in mind out here right next to these people without a proper fleet, though. If they come after us with any sort of force or determination...”
“It's a risk we have to take. We've been over this; if we try shifting a significant number of ships to the area, then it'll be noticed and questions will be asked. Questions that neither we nor the Hierarchy can afford. If we can keep the situation contained until we can talk to them, then we can explain the situation, and stop anybody from doing anything else rash. We can keep our jobs, the Hierarchy doesn't have to suffer the embarrassment of fumbling a first contact this badly, the aliens can request reasonable compensation and the Council gets another happy, productive Associate Race.”
Area-Commander Radik Arterius leant back in his well padded chair and gazed out of the large windows of his office, taking in the view of the Desdare skyline. The capital of the planet Zenso, the city was a forest of tall spires and elevated expressways, all crowded onto one of the thousands of islands that dotted the planet's northern hemisphere. Tiny flecks of light buzzed backwards and forwards along the roads and across the bridges that linked the towers, while the buildings themselves blazed in the thickening twilight. He sighed.
“Of course, sir.” At the cost of throwing Decius under the transport sled. He kept the thought to himself. It wasn't as if Decius wasn't largely responsible for the situation on his own, after all, but Persis had more or less admitted that, if the aliens wanted Decius as their 'reasonable compensation', then they could have him. It was a policy that didn't sit well with Radik.
“Now, on that note, what can you tell me about them?”
“We've gotten the, ah, 'guests' that Decius sent back, as well as the computers, technology and intelligence he'd gathered at that point. The aliens themselves- we think that their word for themselves is 'human,' by the way,” he said, his stumbling slightly over the unfamiliar word. “Are a levo-protein based, warm blooded species of omnivores, presumably predators given their body layout. They use haemoglobin to carry oxygen in their blood, breathe an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, have at least two genders, possess a calcium skeleton and analogues of all the major organs you'd expect. Some of them have got cybernetics, as well, but whether they're treatments for injury or optional augmentations that they chose to acquire on their own isn't known at present. Their station was generating gravity- via spin- of .92 standard, which we presume is somewhere near the point at which they're most comfortable, but they've dealt well with the gravity on the transports and then here on Zenso fine, so they can tolerate at least some variation either side of that theoretical ideal.
“That's the easy bit, of course; most of that we can tell just by looking at them. Everything else... well, we're limited by both time and available evidence; Senior Researcher Daktarian stopped by earlier today, in fact, to complain about the dearth of new technological and material samples. We've just about worked out how to say 'yes and 'no,' learn a few of their names- we think, at least- and a few other very basic phrases. Progress isn't fast, though; when you get right down to it, they're aliens with a completely unknown language, which we're trying to translate from scratch. It's not easy, and it's going to take more than the handful of eightdays we've had so far. Most of the humans aren't exactly falling over themselves to cooperate fully with us, either, for which I can hardly blame them.
“With that in mind, it's not exactly surprising that we've made very little progress on the computer units we've been sent- beyond learning the symbol they use to mark 'on' buttons at least. The simple fact of the matter is, we don't have any clue how to read their language; the control interfaces are fairly simple, actually, but they all feature some sort of text-input system in addition to a pointer operated by a touch sensitive pad. Most of them have what is pretty obviously a security code lock as well, and without either knowing their writing system or familiarity with the hardware and software, the chance of cracking them is absurdly low. There are some unsecured systems, however, and most of what we've been able to extract from them is in the form of visual data, largely video files. We've learned more than we could ever want or need to know about what are probably human reproductive practices, for a start. Beyond that, we've found reams and reams of indecipherable text data, lots of potentially useful video information- beyond the pornography- and some star charts that make less than no sense. Nobody can work out if that's due to the computers we've been able to salvage being portable units- and, I'd guess, for personal use, given the 'content' on some of them- rather than navigation computers, if it's something to do with the way they represent data, or if it's something to do with the way their FTL drive works. Again, until we either capture one of their ships intact to get a proper look at the hardware or we can get intelligible answers to our questions, that's probably going to remain a mystery.
“The team that's been studying the intelligible output we've been able to generate so far- which is all video, since the corresponding audio tracks are gibberish to us right now- is broadly of the opinion that most of it is entertainment. A large proportion looks to be the sort of military drama peddled all over Council space, set in the Rachni Wars or the Krogan Rebellions, that sort of thing, although the specifics are of course different. Considering the nature of some of the material, it could hardly be anything else; so far, what they've shown me includes energy weapons, space monsters of various shapes, sizes and temperaments, multi-sided factional conflicts, talking energy clouds, killer robots and the like. Conceivably, some of it could be documentary programming rather than entertainment, but without a better grasp on the language there's no way to tell. Therefore, we're being careful about basing assumptions on it unless we have to.”
“That's a very impressive list of things you don't know,” Persis' voice was flat. “An unfortunate list, since we need to be able to talk to these 'humans' in order to fix the mess Decius has dropped us into.”
“I'm sorry sir,” Radik thought he did a good job of concealing his irritation. “We don't have very many first contact specialists or xenolinguists out here, and there's no way to get any in light of our policy regarding this whole situation.
“There is some 'good' news regarding their technology itself, though. They don't have any mass effect technology; no eezo, no kinetic barriers, railguns rather than mass accelerators, spin gravity rather than the mass effect generated version, we've been able to confirm that. That has a downside, though.”
Hi picked up an object from his desk. It was a black cylinder half again as thick as his thumb, and topped with a an elongated, gently pointed blue metal object.
“This is a single round from one of the weapons we captured on the station. In the absence of kinetic barriers, the humans appear to have developed a rather effective powered armour system; we've got several intact suits as well, and the resilience it displays against standard assault rifle fire is astounding. It's not one hundred percent coverage- enough fire will bring it down eventually- but hits on the armoured areas themselves simply bounce off. It's superior to anything in our inventory, based purely on it's value as physical armour, but conversely, it doesn't come equipped with barriers, so the effectiveness should be more or less equal.
“The problem is, this,” he waved the round towards the hologram. “Is by all appearances designed to penetrate that armour with a single hit, as opposed to wearing it down with a large number of small impacts. It's a large calibre explosive round with an extremely dense penetrator head. That's this blue bit. The black cylinder is some sort of chemical explosive, detonated by an electrical charge. From the experience of the teams that boarded the research station, a single hit is potentially enough to penetrate a standard kinetic barrier, and since it's explosive, once it penetrates, it's going to at least wound the target likely severely. In comparison, our weapons need to put a sustained volume of fire onto a person protected by their armour to bring them down, exactly as if they were equipped with barriers. The flip side, of course, is that these things are fairly large, so it's only possible to carry a limited supply, whereas thermal clips are small and thus easier to carry. It's a weakness that's ameliorated somewhat by the load bearing exoskeleton built into the armour- or, I should say, that the armour is built around- but it's fairly obvious that human soldiers are going to have lower combat endurance than our own. Test firings pretty clearly show that it's difficult to fire their weapons without the armour as well, except with a bipod from prone; they're simply too heavy and have too much recoil.
“This problem only exists because their material technology appears to be significantly more advanced than our own. We see it across the board; other than the powered armour, the hull material of the station and the ships Decius destroyed is measurably more durable than the standard alloys used in our own spacecraft, to the point where they're approaching silaris in effectiveness. For their hull, sir, not belt armour. The rails in their railguns- and we've managed to salvage one of the weapons assemblies from the guard ships intact, by the way- show barely any sign of erosion, despite the fact that the weapons were fired dozens of times in the fighting. I'm told that we could manufacture rail assemblies that could hold up under the sort of velocities their slugs were reaching, but the erosion would be bad enough that we'd have to swap the rails after fifty or so shots, and we'd certainly see obvious wear after ten or fifteen. Despite that, those railguns were throwing lighter slugs at nearly half the velocity of Decius' mass accelerators; the biggest contributing factor to that is that they were turret mounted, not spinal weapons, but they didn't compare favourably to our secondaries either. Not too surprising without the help of the mass effect.
“Daktarian insists that it's not actually all that unexpected. As far as he's concerned, this is paradise; a chance to study the technology of an advanced spacefaring race that hasn't been 'contaminated' by Prothean leftovers. The idea is that, since they didn't have the mass effect, they were compelled to develop materials and technology that perform the same tasks, and are thus more technically accomplished than us in areas where we simply use mass effect technology. In the case of their starships, however, kinetic barriers are considerably superior to the capability they've so far displayed.
“Saying that, however, a simple look at the ships pretty clearly implies that they weren't military vessels; in fact, they weren't much more than a crew compartment and fusion torch drive at opposite ends of a support scaffold with some attached, remote-operated railguns. Unfortunately, they were both destroyed before anybody had a chance to gather useful performance data on them, beyond what we can glean from the wreckage; we don't know how fast they were, what their endurance was and the like. We can determine that they were very fragile, which they shouldn't have been if they were warships built with the materials science we've seen evidence of. If ships from any known species were destroyed that easily, it would say to me that they were civilian, or at least non-military. On the other hand, if they were non-military and had security troops or mercenaries that were equipped with these,” he waved the chemical projectile at the hologram. “Then I hate to consider what their regular military might be equipped with.
“There are plenty of things we've made no progress on at all, like their FTL drives, but as I said...”
The door chime interrupted him. Both Radik and Persis turned to look, although Radik knew that the door was out of sight of the holocomm's pickup. The chime sounded again; clearly, it wasn't simply a mistake.
“Enter,” Radik growled.
The door hissed open, revealing a nervous looking turian holding a datapad in both hands.
“Ah, sorry about this sir, but... um... well, there's a cruiser- Baetika- just dropped out of FTL. It looks like they've been... um, that is, they're badly damaged. The captain- Konta Szara- is asking to speak to you personally.”
Frowning, Radik looked back at the hologram of Persis.
“Looks like the humans aren't going to be as sedentary as we'd hoped. I'm afraid I have to deal with this immediately, sir. Once I know what's going on, I'll contact you again.”
Persis nodded.
“Go. Find a way to deal with it, whatever it is, that won't lead to a disaster.”
“I'll try,” Radik sighed, the waved his arm towards the still open door. “Very well, lead on.”
“Yessir!”
* * *
Baetika had, it was immediately apparent, taken a severe beating. From his position standing at the veiwport of Zenso Spacedock's Number Four Slipway, Radik could see scorch marks over almost her entire surface. That wasn't terribly unusual, for a ship that had been in a close action; GARDIAN lasers in anti-ship settings produced a similar damage pattern. What was unusual were the holes that pierced the cruiser. It looked as though an angry god had decided to start sticking red hot needles into the luckless ship and were present in an array of different sizes, from relatively tiny pinpricks- pinpricks that were still as wide as a turian was tall - to a huge cavity punched all the way through the maimed vessel's central spine, fused and ragged edges glinting evilly under the station's lights. Radik could see the opposite bulkhead of the slipway through it.
In fact, it was a miracle that the cruiser hadn't broken up; whatever had caused the damage obviously hadn't hit anything vital, but equally obviously, that hadn't had anything to do with the added protection around the ship's important systems. Whatever weapon had taken Baetika apart simply hadn't hit anything lethal.
Given that she was here alone, without even any of the frigates that had been the only ships Radik dared send Decius, suggested that the rest of the patrol fleet hadn't been so lucky.
Konta Szara didn't look much better off than his ship. The captain was battered and bruised, a pressure bandage covered one of his eyes and one arm was bound securely into a splint. The smell that emanated from his suit once he removed the helmet was even more unpleasant than his battered appearance. Even so, he was clearly better off than the seemingly endless stream of mangled bodies and groaning wounded flowing from the airlock on gurneys, medical orderlies flitting amongst them like insects visiting flowers.
“My apologies for my condition, sir,” he rasped. “But most of the ship is depressurised, and every available intact compartment is being used to care for those too badly wounded to move. I've not had much chance to take care of myself.”
Radik waved his hand, dismissing the apology.
“It's no trouble, Captain Szara. Under the circumstances, it's perfectly understandable... although, I suspect that, once the station's medical staff have given you a once over, you may wish to take advantage of some bathing facilities.”
“The thought had crossed my mind, sir,” Konta twitched his mandibles in amusement. “More important matters just kept getting in the way.”
Radik snorted, then clasped his hands behind his back and spent a long moment gazing out at the ruined cruiser. Finally, he turned to Konta, his face and voice deadly serious.
“What happened? The last report I had from Decius indicated no problems and no sign of any movements from the human forces in the system his scouts had under observation.”
“They sent a fleet.”
“I'm going to need more information than that.”
“They sent a fleet. I don't know if it was their equivalent of a patrol fleet or what, but it outnumbered us; the better part of a hundred frigates, a dozen or more cruisers and another ship class, bigger than a cruiser, smaller than a dreadnought. We're calling them battlecruisers; they only had three of those. They dropped out of FTL in the same region the ship that escaped did; Decius had left a cruiser out there- Helika, under Lysandos- to watch for anything strange. Well, he warned us, made sure every ship had a copy of Helika's sensor data. It turns out that we have an acceleration edge over them, and it looked like he was going to get Helika away without any problem. Then they launched smallcraft.
“They didn't look like fighters- too small to fit in useful drives, barriers and weapons- and there weren't enough of them to saturate Helika's GARDIAN system. That's what we thought, at least, especially when they split up their strike... up until the lead wave started... teleporting, I suppose. It wasn't FTL, not anything like ours, anyway, they just appeared somewhere without crossing the space in between. That should have been our first clue to get out while we could.
“Even so, Helika burned most of the first wave out of space, but when the second wave went in... it turned out that their barriers can block energy weapon as well. If you needed more confirmation that they weren't using the mass effect, that's it. They still died, but not so fast as the first wave, so they got into range. First they tried missiles, but those didn't work out very well for them, and then they used some sort of energy weapon- mounted, I remind you, on something smaller than a fighter, along with shields and a drive system that none of us have ever seen before- that popped Helika like a balloon. We still received some telemetry after that- they had what was left of her under tow, so I presume that they have any survivors as test subjects for their own xenologists now.”
“You didn't try to retrieve her?”
“No sir. We wouldn't have stood a chance. Even if they'd been using conventional technology, they had enough ships to fight a major war in the system. Except for dreadnoughts, at least. We wouldn't have lasted five minutes. No, Decius made the decision to withdraw, sent a message to the frigate we had watching their inhabited system to make it's way back here directly, and then set about organising our departure. The aliens-”
“They're called humans, it seems.”
“Ah, the humans,” Konta stumbled slightly over the unfamiliar word. “They were crossing the system at sublight. We would have used FTL to cut down the distance, of course, so Decius assumed that they couldn't use their FTL in a star system, and we had time to strip the station of any sensitive material before we left. So, rather than picking up our investigation teams, they started loading equipment.
“It turned out that they could use their FTL drive in a star system. It's just a great deal more inaccurate than our own, it seems. The sublight trek was apparently to give their probes enough time to get into position and have a good look at us.”
“Probes? Surely you noticed them on their way in, if they were faster than the starships?”
“No sir. I don't know what they were using as a drive, but it wasn't a fusion torch. It wasn't what their starships and fighters were using- that wasn't a torchdrive either, but it was obvious- and whatever it was, it barely had an infrared signature above the background. Certainly, not enough to be an active probe. They barely had and radar cross section either, and just like their drives, the probes themselves had an IR signature more or less identical to the background level. I don't know how they did it without cooking their electronics, but it's probably something to do with why their ships and the station radiate less IR than we thought they should.
“We only noticed the probes when they turned on their active sensors. I don't know how long they'd been sitting there watching us, but as soon as that happened, they used their FTL to close directly into combat.”
“What? That's insane- coordination would be impossible and if you didn't drop out at the right moment, you could...”
“I know, sir. But, apparently, it's not an issue for whatever they use, or at least, not as much of one. Remember what I said about their fighters moving between two points without apparently crossing the distance between them? They came out of FTL behind us, for the most part, but they were scattered all over the place. That didn't matter, though, because they energy weapons on their ships as well as their fighters. I don't know if they were the same, but they had a different colour; bright pink, rather than blue or white. Whatever they were, they obviously went right through our barriers, but they treated our armour the same way. Like it wasn't even there. I suppose it was never intended to stand up to true ship to ship energy weapons like that, but...” He shook his head.
“Haliat died in the first barrage; whatever those battlecruisers targeted, they killed. Fortunately, they couldn't get a shot at us. No, we had frigates and cruisers- that big hole through the mass accelerator mounting? That's from one of their cruisers. We managed to kill a handful of their frigates and a cruiser that dropped out of FTL in from of us, so we know that their barriers aren't as impossible as their weapons, but they do work on kinetic weapons. Well, the fleet scattered, since it was the only way any of us would survive, and they didn't follow. It looked to me like they were trying to reconstitute their formation. Every survivor was damaged, and none of us wanted to wait around to see if the ali- humans were going to pursue, so we all made our own way back here. It looks like we're the first, given you didn't already know what happened.”
“Yes, no other ships have arrived for the last three days. If this frigate- which ship did you say it was?”
“I didn't, sir. It was Fulminus.”
“If Fulminous set off immediately upon receipt of Decius's message, then we can expect her back tomorrow, at the earliest, presuming she sets a speed record crossing that distance. Do you know how far out the other survivors are?”
“No sir. We didn't drop out of FTL on the way back.”
“Hmph. I'll make arrangements,” Radik said. “Now, captain, you've given me a lot to think about with just that. I need to contact Admiral Persis and tell him about this. Get yourself to the hospital and have your injuries seen to, and then have a bath and a meal. When we've gone over the sensor take from your cruiser, we're going to have more questions for you. Now, if you excuse me, I've got to make a call that I'm not going to enjoy.”
“Ah, yes sir.” Konta turned to leave, then stopped. “Sir, when you talk to the First Admiral, tell him we need a proper fleet in this cluster. There's no way we can stop them without dreadnoughts if they follow us. Not with those weapons and the sort of numbers they put into a simple quick response fleet.”
“I'll take that under advisement, captain. Now, go get your rest.”
As Konta stumbled off, Radik returned to contemplation of the ruined Baetika. This wasn't in the plan, not at all. He wondered if this was what the Salarians who had discovered the Rachni had felt like when they realised that their recklessness had changed everything. It wasn't a pleasant feeling, and the thought of arguing with Persis- again- over whether any dreadnoughts should be sent to the area was not something he looked forward to.
Sighing, he turned away from the veiwport and began the trek to the shuttle station that would return him to the surface.
They're the setting of a (future) story debate on SB.com, not a published series. It borrows (to the point of outright stealing in some cases) heavily from all sorts of scifi, from Gundam to Transhuman Space. You can find a wiki that is only partially out of date here, under the 'Second Sphere' bit. Given that it's changed somewhat since I planned out this story, it's not entirely accurate, however.
This war could go either way at this point. I want the Turians to win, but I'm not sure if they're capable of it. Ignoring the Turian shields is a big advantage.
ebs2323 wrote:Nice to see this updated. So how long are you going to make this story, in terms of actual length and in universe time.
In terms of length, it'll be as long as it ends up. I've got the plot sketched out, so I know what I want to do, but how many chapters that will take I don't know. In-universe, this is basically the First Contact War and the immediate aftermath. I may do something else with a later post-contact story after this, but that will have to wait.
Equally likely, however, is a background piece for my Sphere power, New Mercia, set during their civil war.
The Vortex Empire wrote:This war could go either way at this point. I want the Turians to win, but I'm not sure if they're capable of it. Ignoring the Turian shields is a big advantage.
ZOCU could have been specifically built to fight Mass Effect on a technical level. The other human states aren't nearly so well placed technologically, but on the flip side, they have more ships and bigger economies as well.
Night_stalker wrote:Yeah, I wonder why the STG hasn't discovered this FUBAR situation that Decius helped create...
Not enough time to really notice what's going on, especially since Persis and Radik are trying to keep the whole mess hushed up unless they have absolutely no other option. This is more or less how I imagine the decision making process went in the canon FCW as well, because the way the turians acted is so monumentally stupid, there must have been something screwy going on with their command staff. I've chosen to have that something be senior officers trying to cover their arses by making the problem never have existed at all.
This is a crossover with one of those Story Debates on Spacebattles, right? I wonder how the posthumans remaining would react to the Reapers.
It's a crossover with the second version of the Sphere SD, yes. This version still isn't finished rules-wise, but the fluff is more or less complete, in outline at least. The first Sphere (the one that's run and died on SB.com so far) is actually canonically an in-universe anime series, and it's widely panned for being nonsensical, poorly thought out and always being close to having something happen but never actually getting there. As a result, it was canceled at the end of the first season.
As for the posties and the Reapers, they don't get on, but I'll keep my cards close to my chest on that. It's not really relevant for this story, but if I ever do a sequel, it might be.
The main briefing room of the dreadnought Taetrus seemed cavernous with only Persis inside. The compartment was arranged more like an auditorium or amphitheatre than a conference room, with carefully designed acoustics, seating arrangements and lighting that would have allowed anybody sitting in any one of the hundreds of chairs set around it's circumference to clearly see anybody standing at the central podium, and likewise make it as easy as possible to hear what they might be saying. There were, of course, carefully hidden speakers placed at strategic points around the periphery of the compartment, and a microphone concealed within the podium, just to be absolutely sure – there was no point in taking chances that a statement might be misheard or misunderstood, after all – but anybody used to elevating their voice would have had no trouble making themselves heard without such technical assistance.
Finished with polished metal and grey tones, the whole assemblage was impressive purely because of it's size, for space on any warship, even a dreadnought, was always at a premium, rather than anything that even approached decoration.
It was not something that Persis was in the mood to appreciate. The room seemed to swallow him whole, it's acoustic properties eating even any echo he might have produced without any indication that it's silent tranquility had been disturbed, and the sharp, metal on metal tap of his footsteps seemed curiously flat and remote. How much of that was down to the location and how much of it was down to the fact that he was grimly certain was about to happen was not something that he would have chosen to comment on, had anybody else been present to ask the question. There wasn't much chance of that, however; when the Primarchs, as a group, asked for a private meeting with anybody, even such an august personage as a First Admiral, it was a rare officer that would dare deny them.
On reflection, Persis could just as soon have done without the 'honour'.
Taetrus, along with her escorts, had arrived in Zenso four days before, and being personally present hadn't done much to curb Persis' anxiety'. The fact that he'd scraped up every contact specialist, xenolinguist, xenobiologist and technical specialist that he could lay his hands on and brought them with him, along with almost two divisions of regular army troops and transport for them, on top of both dreadnoughts – Taetrus herself and her sister ship Parthius – and almost half of the cruisers and frigates assigned to the Galatana Cluster, which had been trickling into the system over the past sixteen days, contributed somewhat more effectively towards that end. Even there, however, there was the gnawing certainty that his unannounced, unprecedented fleet movements would attract attention, first within the Hierarchy, then in the galactic community at large and, most importantly, with the Council.
That spelt disaster for his intention to keep the entire situation quiet until it could be resolved, of course, but it wasn't likely that the situation would remain unnoticed now whatever he did. The humans' 'energetic' response to what should have been nothing more than a minor boarder incident was worrying, and the number of ships they'd been able to deploy at such short notice even more so. In fact, that scared him more than the fact that they had practicable shipboard energy weaponry.
Before leaving for Zenso, he'd officially notified the Hierarchy that there had been a hostile first contact, but that information was limited. What data Radik had been able to provide him had been included in the dispatch, but it was a tiny offering in the face of what was undoubtedly needed in order to respond effectively to the unwanted and completely unnecessary threat that had appeared out of literally nowhere.
A soft chime filled the chamber, and he cast an eye over the display on his podium, checking the security codes on the transmission attempt. The computer blinked at him, obligingly indicating that the codes had been accepted, and that he would not be explaining the current – and highly classified – military situation to a surprised Salarian making an interstellar call to his cousin on the planet or something equally unfortunate. Sighing, he jabbed a finger at the holographic button that would accept the communication.
The twelve turians that snapped into flickering, red-toned existence represented some of the most powerful sentients in Council space, and they looked every bit the part. Even through the low resolution of the holographic projection, it was obvious that their tunics were fantastically high quality and the crests painted on their faces used the best possible pigments. The fact that their holograms were three times his height, towering over him like house-sized monsters, only reinforced the point, and the perfectly blank expressions on their faces didn't fill him with confidence. Nevertheless, nobody could obtain the rank of First Admiral without the ability to remain calm under pressure, and Persis allowed the silent hostility of the primarchs to bounce off of him without effect.
“My lords,” he said, offering a respectful salute, fist clenched across his chest and body bent forward in a shallow bow.
“First Admiral.” Telarus Invidius, Primarch of Palavan itself, occupied the centre of the semi-circle of rulers. “It seems you've had an interesting few eight-days. We've been over your reports ourselves, and I speak for all of us when I say you owe us an explanation as to just how this... situation... was allowed to occur.”
“Of course, sir,” Persis took a deep breath. “As you know, sixty days ago, the 57th Patrol Fleet detected an operation around Relay 314. Unfortunately, we are not in possession of Fleet Commander Decius' logs, so I can't say definitively why he undertook his subsequent actions, but I can advance and educated guess. Area Commander Arterius nominated him for promotion to Force Commander four years ago on the basis that he had displayed an aptitude for commanding squadrons on independent operations and was extremely aggressive in his support for an implementation of Council policy. Considering the weak hold law and order has on some of the fringe systems out here, he seemed an excellent choice, and indeed, up until this incident, he has performed excellently. In this case, however, he was just the wrong person in the wrong place; there's not a great deal of thought given to how to respond to uncontacted non-Council races attempting to activate relays in the standard responses, and given the poor quality sensor data available on all of the human ships – it's noted in my report that they all have absurdly low infra-red signatures – it's reasonable top conclude that he mistook them for somebody attempting to remain undetected whilst they activated a relay.
“As far as I can tell, his intention was to prevent them from escaping; he dropped out of FTL extremely close – dangerously close, in fact, considering the risk of overshoot or collision – and destroyed both of their mobile units before they could even bring their drives online. He didn't notice the third ship until it lit it's drive off, and didn't catch it before it engaged an unknown form of FTL. Apparently, it was escorting or waiting for a resupply ship, which they managed to sanitize with surprising effectiveness given how little time they had. At that point, he landed troops on the station, and it was only then that it was realised that it was a first contact scenario and not a clandestine mission by one of the lowlife elements out here, and by that point, of course, it was too late. If he hadn't been quite so zealous in his implementation of the ban on activating mass relays without a known destination, then he might have tried to talk first rather than shooting, and the whole situation could have been avoided.
“Area Commander Arterius has all of the captured humans on Zenso, and has been doing the best he can to arrange medical care and suitable conditions for them. In my opinion, considering the communications barrier and inevitable difficulties that occur when dealing with completely novel alien species, he's done an outstanding job.”
“Yes, you noted that in your report,” Vilneus Ephysus, Primarch of Epyrus was an ancient turian, but his gravelly voice remained unaffected by his advanced age. “I find it interesting, however, that that report was submitted almost five eight-days after the incident at the relay.”
The other primarchs made sounds of agreement, and Persis twitched his mandibles.
“That was my decision, my lords. Given the nature of the situation, and the potential for uncontrollable escalation if hasty action was taken, I felt it better to wait an include a useful information packet in my report, rather than cause significant and possibly catastrophic alarm. Given that Geth incursions across the Perseus Veil are becoming more frequent and larger, and considering the apparent primitive nature of the humans' technology outside of the material sciences, it seemed wiser to delay until we had meaningful data on which to formulate a response and – possibly – at least a limited means of communication to open up a diplomatic channel and resolve the situation without further shooting. At the time, all indications were that I had more than sufficient local forces to handle even a significantly larger force of human ships with ease. Moreover, they had no nav data on our space, whereas we had an almost intact computer system from their station, and I hoped that we could extract useful information from that. Even had they proven implacably hostile, it would have taken them significant time to locate us through survey operations.
“However, we have been unable to generate any useful output from the captured computers, at least with regards to navigational data, nor have we yet been able to establish more than very basic communication with the captured humans – many of them don't seem very willing to talk to us, unsurprisingly – but at the time, I didn't anticipate those difficulties. It doesn't help, I'm told, that they may be speaking a number of different languages amongst themselves.
“I was, in fact, intending to delay my report pending the completion of Senior Researcher Daktarian's initial report on the state of the humans' technology and the initial analysis of the output we have extracted from their computers, but their response to Decius' attack on their research station indicated that my earlier stance was in error, and that the ships Decius destroyed were not, in fact, representative of their military technology.”
“Indeed. Teleporting fighters, barriers that can stop GARDIAN lasers, reactionless drives and directed energy weapons. Forgive me if I find those items somewhat hard to accept from a race that can't even generate artificial gravity, First Admiral.” That was the Ventus Halaus, Primarch of Invictus. It was rare to see an overweight turian, but Halaus went far beyond merely 'overweight'. It was a mystery to Persis how he had ever attained the rank of Primarch in the first place, given his slothfulness, but he appeared to manage his colony cluster ably enough, possibly even better than most.
“I raised the same point to Area Commander Arterius and Researcher Daktarian, my lord Primarch. They reminded me that the humans have apparently never encountered the mass effect or prothean technology before. It's not, apparently, unreasonable that they should display a completely different set of capabilites. It was even suggested that as we speak, a human xenologist is remarking about it being hard to believe that a race that can generate artificial gravity can't work out how to build energy barriers or beam weapons.” He quirked a mandible in amusement as something suspiciously like a chuckle emerged from one of the huge holographic figures.
“In any event, as soon as word reached Area Commander Arterius about the way they took the 57th apart, he contacted me,” there was no reason to tell them about the conversation he and Arterius had been having before the news of Decius' final destruction. “I recognised that my assessment of the situation had been in error, and immediately organised a dispatch including all the information we had to date. At the same time, I have begun concentrating my available resources in preparation for movement and heavy combat.”
“I was under the impression that you wished to avoid further shooting, First Admiral.” Telarius' voice was flat.
“I do, my lord. It was always a possibility, however, and not only are the humans considerably more deadly that I believed, they also now have access to captured computer systems. We cannot be certain that Helika managed to purge her computers, and we know that they captured her hulk intact. Moreover, the very reason Decius remained in the system so long when he knew he could not possibly win if the enemy brought him to action was to sanitise the station, and that he did not have time to succeed. They almost certainly captured significant sources of data intact. That means that they may well have secured navigational data that will lead them to our systems, and they've made it perfectly clear what they think an appropriate response to our actions are so far.”
“Your actions, Persis! Decius was your subordinate, and you should have...”
“Peace, Ventus,” the Primarch of Aquilius, Uril Remanus held up a single hand. “With hindsight, the First Admiral made poor decisions, but given the information available at the time, they were excusable. I question the decision not to at least inform us of a first contact, even if details were entirely omitted, but he is correct in assuming that nothing we could do would change things for the better. Indeed, I suspect that some of us would have insisted on reinforcing Decius much more heavily than he actually was, and we would have even more people dead.” Remanus never let his eyes leave the corpulent Primarch of Invictus, and the other turian seemed to shrink in on himself under that unwavering gaze.
“Given that he is the commander on the spot, and has the soundest grasp of the local conditions, I believe it is appropriate that he retain his command, despite his misjudgments. It would be improper to judge his decisions on the basis of information we have now that was not available when those decisions were made,” he continued. “That is, of course, contingent on no more... 'questionable' decisions taking place in the future.”
Persis held his breath as the subject was brought out into the open at last. There was a moment of tense silence, before Invidius nodded slowly.
“I agree. Decius' actions reflect poorly on his judgment, but I have checked the late Fleet Commander's records, and he did perform his job extremely well under most circumstances. We were, as the First Admiral said, simply unlucky that he was the commander on the spot. As for his failure to inform us of the problem, I myself would have waited until I had more information. Not this long, perhaps, but he is perfectly correct that, judging by the information available at the time, the geth appeared to be the larger concern, not what seemed to be a species of primitives without mass effect technology who had no way to reach our worlds.”
With the approval of Palavan's primarch, the decision to retain Persis in command was rapidly sealed – only Halaus and Ephysus dissented.
“Now, First Admiral, I assume you have a plan to deal with the problem?”
“Yes, my lord, several in fact.” He paused and manipulated the holographic controls hovering above the podium. A huge holosphere swelled into life in the middle of the room, dotted with the icons of stars. Those under the control of the turians or other Council races or affiliated burned a steady, unblinking yellow, while the rest were a simple, unimpressive white.
“This is the local starmap. Relay 314 is located here, in an uninhabited system with the number designation X324153,” a star flashed red. “Immediately following the initial action, Decius dispatched a frigate, the Fulminous, to scout for human presence in nearby systems. They surveyed these systems.”
More than two dozen stars flashed, then two thirds of them turned a sickly green colour.
“The green systems were all uninhabited and showed no signs of occupation. These systems,” all but one system turned blue. “Contained signs of technological presence, mostly in the form of what appear to be navigation beacons or survey satellites left in orbit of marginal worlds. We've got a good idea of the temperatures humans prefer from the environmental settings on their station and some of the video media we've discovered, and all the planets in those systems were too cold to be comfortable for them, but were technically habitable. These three showed signs of previous colonisation, but appeared to be abandoned.”
He highlighted two of them with green rings.
“However, this system,” he said, highlighting the final light chip, “is the site of what seems to be a major colony. There is significant activity in orbit of the fourth planet and throughout the asteroid belt, as well as on the surface. It is not, I should stress, the human home world; they require a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, like us, and this planet has an atmosphere that they'd find rather thick; carbon dioxide, water vapour, some hydrogen and noble gases, very little oxygen. It's far too hot for them as well. I'm not prepared to speculate why they appear to have colonised it so heavily, especially considering that there's a perfectly habitable world in the nearest system that they haven't even touched, but it's a point of contact that they probably don't know we have.
“My analysts have performed a threat analysis based on what little information we have available. It's not likely to be the most accurate picture in the world, but we need to make a decision based on something, and it's better – slightly – than simply guessing. It's included in my latest dispatch, but as that may not yet have arrived or you may not have had a chance to be briefed, I'll hit the height points.
“The first is that the humans are obviously a multi-system polity; we've found a well developed – in the tens of millions of inhabitants range – colony on a hostile environment world, so they have at least two, systems, probably a limited number of other core colonies and their homeworld, in addition to smaller resource colonies, but they can't be too widely spread or we'd have found them before now. That's not enough to win a war, unless they have further technological surprises for us to even the odds, but it's also not something that we can push over easily.
“The second is that they appear to have developed a significant industrial and technological base compared to what we would expect a polity limited to less than a single cluster to possess; the obvious fact of their advanced technology is one support for that, but the speed with which they responded to the attack on their research outpost indicates that what hit Decius was a rapid reaction force. We don't know how fast their FTL is, so we have no idea how far away they came from, but the size of their response is disturbing. We've established similar sized forces along the Perseus Veil to respond to major geth incursions – minus these 'battlecruisers' Captain Szara was talking about, obviously – so we have an idea of the expense involved. They, of course, need to cover a much smaller area, but the simple fact is, a force that size is expensive to construct and maintain. They very likely have more than one, and then a main fleet as well. That points to a large, well developed economic base. There's no way they can possibly have as many ships as us, but they're far more concentrated and have far fewer areas they need to cover.
“The third point is that their technology is completely unfamiliar. We accept that at face value, but consider the implications. We have no idea of their ultimate capabilities; so far, what they've displayed is concerning enough, but what haven't they shown us? Can they teleport soldiers onto our ships with their FTL? What sort of weaponry are their dreadnoughts armed with? What sort of systems do they have in their strategic arsenal, and what is their stance on the use of WMD? Those are all important things we don't know.
“Finally, there's the way in which their response force handled the engagement. As I said, they sent Helika a single warning before taking hostile action. There were no warning shots, no second attempts, nothing. Moreover, they didn't give the rest of the 57th any chance to surrender at all, they just blew them out of space. Given the circumstances, that's not entirely outside the realm of expected behaviour, but it suggests that their idea of an appropriate response to this sort of thing is rather harsher than we might hope.
“The summary, my lords, is that we believe that the humans are, for their probable size, a well developed, rich species with a large military, equipped with unknown but powerful technology, and would be willing – and possibly able – to launch retaliatory attacks on our local systems, if given the opportunity.
“That assessment underlies the possible courses of action I'm willing to advance. There are four; The first is to simply maintain our current stance. We can assemble nodal forces in strategically important systems to react to any incursions, garrison our frontier worlds and then focus our efforts and learning how to speak their language. Once we have a firm enough grip on that to engage in diplomacy, we contact them, explain the situation, and attempt to settle things diplomatically. This has the advantage of not getting any more people killed, lowering our exposure to political and diplomatic fallout, the ability to escalate our response if we decide it's necessary, and avoiding the possibility of us getting involved in a war we can't easily withdraw from if we need to – should the geth decide to kick off a major conflict in their end of the galaxy, for example. The disadvantage is that we completely yield the initiative; we aren't putting any pressure on the humans, and we don't know whether or not they will respond with force, so we may end up with a war anyway, and it would be happening in our star systems and on our planets.
“The next option is really a variation of the first; we remain on the defensive, as with option one, but we also conduct an aggressive survey campaign throughout the volume of space they appear to occupy. That will give us more information, and we can then escalate or pursue a diplomatic option if necessary. The advantages are similar to those of the first plan of action, with the added advantage of giving us greater intelligence, rather than leaving us groping in the dark. The disadvantages are the same as well, of course, with the added problem that they're likely to notice us if we get close enough to gather useful information. They probably wouldn't react calmly to that, given that we would essentially be scouting out their space for purposes of , potentially, at least, attacking them, and it's more likely to push them into a war if they were undecided.
“Thirdly, we gamble that they're going to attack us and pre-empt them; I've got two dreadnoughts here, and I've already requested reinforcements. We would attack X324153 and the single colony world we've identified, combined with the extensive survey in plan two, and when we identify other major worlds, we attack and occupy those as well. That puts us in an extremely strong bargaining position and forces them to come to the table, and keeps the conflict away from our planets. We would aim to keep collateral damage to the minimum possible; we are not attempting to destroy them, simply to keep them contained and preoccupied until we can reach a settlement. It has the advantage, as I say, of keeping the war away from our worlds and putting us in control of the operational tempo, but the backside of that is, it involves us in a war for certain, and we aren't sure jut how much fight they can put up. We would certainly win an extended campaign, by drowning them in ships if nothing else, but casualties could potentially be very high.
“Then, as the last option, we could involve the Council. I imagine that such a policy would be similar to the first option, but the disadvantages are mitigated by the fact that we would have far more military muscle available to picket our systems, so the threat of attack is reduced. On the other hand, we would almost certainly suffer a major blow to our prestige for allowing the situation to deteriorate, and since the humans don't know about the Council, it's not going t have a deterrent effect. That would probably result in dead asari and salarians as well as our own troops, and that might well have unfortunate effects on our ability to negotiate a settlement. If we don't involve the Council initially, then we have a third party to mediate should any conflict escalate out of hand.”
“Mmm,” Invidius waved a hand at the starmap. “How fast can we reinforce your operational area?”
“A dreadnought can make the trip here from Invictus in three eight-days. Cruisers and frigates are faster, of course. If my requests are met, I'll have doubled the strength of my screen in the next twenty days, and have seven dreadnoughts in the next thirty two.”
“Which approach do you prefer?”
“In all honesty, my lords, considering their newly displayed capabilities, I'm uncomfortable sitting back and waiting for them to come to us. We know that we won't deploy WMDs on planetary targets, but don't know that they won't. If we knew more about their political situation or military doctrine, or if they were weaker or didn't have such unprecedented technology, I would favour staying on the defensive, as I have until now. In light of current circumstances, though, I think we have to hit them before they hit us.”
“That's a risky option. I believe you mentioned uncontrollable escalation earlier; this would be a sure road directly to that.”
“Yes sir. On the other hand, if they do come after us, they're going to do damage, probably quite a lot, and then we'd have to fight them anyway. If we bring enough force to bear, we can shut them down hard before they do anything rash, and we know that we can keep collateral damage to their worlds low. There's some possibility that they can put up more of a fight, but when it comes down to it, they're a single region of a single star cluster, whereas we're the most powerful military force in the known galaxy. There's no way they can stand us off for an extended period of time, and I'd expect they will recognise the writing on the wall rather than fight to the finish; the humans on the station surrendered, after all.”
The primarchs debated amongst themselves; whatever they said, it wasn't piped to the briefing room's receivers, but eventually, Invidius engaged his connection once more.
“Very well, First Admiral. Proceed as you see fit. We will need regular updates on your planning, and you must request final authorisation from us to do more than simply dispatch scouts, but you may consider yourself free to prepare for an offensive against the humans.”
Hmm, I wonder if he's related to Saren... And if so will his death, or fate at the hands of the humans prove to be motivation for his hatred of humans, which leads into him finding Soverign? That is the real question.
If Dr. Gatling was a nerd, then his most famous invention is the fucking Revenge of the Nerd, writ large...
"Lawful stupid is the paladin that charges into hell because he knows there's evil there."
—anonymous
"Although you may win the occasional battle against us, Vorrik, the Empire will always strike back."
