24 July 3805AD, 180km over Terra II
Space is an amazing contrast to itself in some ways. It contains stars, planets, nebulae, black holes, quasars, and dozens of other types of astronomical bodies. In some small, concentrated areas it has trillions upon trillions of atoms; in others, only one atom per square milliliter. The surface of a star is measured in thousands of degrees Kelvin, yet on average space approaches the limit to the coldest temperatures which mankind believe can exist. Quasars shoot out gamma rays so powerful they could render a planet completely uninhabitable hundreds of light years away. It, like many other things, is a two sided coin; both beautiful and deadly. Space may not have the intricate detail of a waterfall or a mountain range, but from where Captain John Shepard stands, it is definitely beautiful. Peaceful. Serene.
The view presented to him is humanity's crown jewel, Terra II. Well, a part of humanity's. A very small part, he would guess. Nobody had been in contact with Earth for over a thousand years. After the fall of the Star League, Shepard's ancestors left Earth in 2801AD; fed up with the five greedy Successor Lords, hereditary monarchs which reigned over a part of space surrounding Earth approximately 500 light years (ly) called the Inner Sphere. This Great Exodus was led by a charismatic leader, General Aleksandr Kerensky. General Kerensky drove the fleet hard, leaving the inner sphere and ultimately forming the clans. But Shepard's ancestors were not of the clans. A second exodus took place. Tired of being away from their loved ones and the strict rule of General Kerensky, the new exodus, consisting of only six ships, feigned a misjump when the rest of the fleet activated their solar powered Kearny-Fuchida (KF) jump drives to instantly travel through hyperspace to the next fleet rendezvous location. From one Avatar class cruiser, McKenna class battleship, Baron class destroyer, pair of Invader Jumpships, Monolith Jumpship converted for agricultural use, and attached dropships, a new bastion of human power in the Milky Way was born. The jokingly named Exodus from the Exodus Fleet Fleet began to steer back towards Earth when one of the Invader Jumpships experienced a catastrophic failure of its liquid He storage system, resulting in an explosion that blew the ship into two pieces upon activation of its KF drive. The remaining ships rescued the survivors and spent 11 months attempting to fix the vessel. The repairs were a failure, however the micro-fleet grew very close in in this time, and ultimately abandoned their return voyage; they had grown closer to each other than any genetic family. Setting out further spinward and coreward, the fleet arrived at Terra II after almost exactly ten years of space travel. Other garden worlds had been passed, and three other colonization efforts had been made; however all had failed for various reasons. Terra II was unique in that it contained edible flora and fauna, mostly contained in the ocean which covered 85% of the planet. Terra II was the first successful colony developed by this fleet; approximately 20,000 light years away from Earth in a new system named Demeter after the Greek Godess of Life.
In the following decade, a government was formed. A colony was founded on one of the two continents on-planet near the coast. It was decided upon that political leaders should be based upon merit, and five individuals of the then 2049 citizens were elected to a parliament. These five individuals had the ability to set laws, regulations, and such. The whole military was controlled by a High Marshall, fleet by a Fleet Admiral, and ground forces by a Field Marshall. The general idea was that the fleet would keep the planet safe from any rogue asteroids or the majority of other threats (sentient life being at the bottom of this list); and the ground forces acted mainly as a police force and disaster relief. In desperate times, the parliament could agree to give temporary control of the newly formed Terra II Alliance to the High Marshall, but could remove any member of the military from power under the condition that they could not be re-elected at the end of their two year term and must immediately undergo a general election of the populace to determine if they would keep their position for the remainder of their term. Members of parliament could only be elected three times. The average citizen was given resources based upon their contributions to their fellow Terra II natives (there was no currency), and those convicted of extreme crimes were exiled to the wilderness, but able to re-join their former colleagues if they went well out of their way to make reparations though actions such as food gathering and a general vote to repeal their exile was passed.
An emphasis was immediately put on scientific discovery in the new Alliance, and within ten years a means to alter human DNA to avoid the problems associated with inbreeding due to a small original population size was developed. In addition, artificial wombs which could grow fetuses outside of a human were perfected. This resulted in a baby boom which lasted nearly 300 years. Various other technologies were developed in the Alliance's next few hundred years. The mass-alteration drive (MAD) was invented by Doctor Yusei Yokoyama in 3358, which effectively shrunk space-time in front of a starship, and expanded it behind the ship. This revolutionary breakthrough allowed vessels to reach FTL speeds of up to 5000c, but was highly unstable if used nonstop for over 48 hours. An unstable MAD took up to 72 hours to degauss. In 3621, the KF drive was improved upon through revolutionary changes in industry and particle physics by dozens of researchers in the Terra II's college, The Terra Institute of Science. The result was an increase in the instantaneous jump distance of a KF drive by nearly threefold, from 30ly to 85ly. At this point, the population of Terra II was a cramped 4.6 billion, and the citizens were looking to the stars once again. No longer was it adequate to simply journey to the neighboring three planets or one of Terra's two moons. Shanxi was founded in 3645 and was located 163.4ly from Terra II. It acted as a separate entity for two years before being absorbed to Terra II's government. At this point, the Terra II Alliance was renamed to the Systems Alliance. Industrial production began to move away from aircars, refrigeration units, holovisions, and turned once again to ship building. Reinforced carbon nanotubes allowed the construction of three space elevators capable of transporting newly fabricated ships into orbit. Spaceship armor had developed to polarize light and other forms of wave energy 90 degrees to each other, effectively nullifying many sources of hazardous wave energies, and even capital class laser fire (to a degree). The first Systems Alliance Fleet was deployed near Terra II, and the Second Fleet around Shanxi. Three small exploratory fleets were also christened to go fourth and explore more of the galaxy.
The most recent technological revolution came when Doctor John Shepard was working on his PhD in particle physics. Almost out of time before his Officer Candidate School class began in March of 3800, he developed the antimatter energy generator. It worked by stripping a Hydrogen atom of its electron, and smashing it into antiprotons held in place by a magnetic field. The results were groundbreaking. Space travel, ground-side life, everything was changed. No longer were solar, wind, and nuclear power the only ways of producing electricity. Even ships could vector this energy through magnetic fields to act as thrusters more efficient than antiquated H fuel torches. The only downside is that Antimatter Drives were not perfectly efficient, meaning that trace amounts of antimatter escaped through the exhaust nozzles. This increased the risk of an explosion when using the antimatter engines in an atmosphere (in atmo). John Shepard was commissioned in the Terra II Marines as a Second Lieutenant specializing in mechanized combat (to the horror of his professors and military high command), and assigned to the SSV Agincourt, a newly built Lance class cruiser officially stated to be dedicated to exploring the galaxy further spinward for another potential colony location and acting as the Fourth Fleet's flagship. The Fourth (exploratory) Fleet consisted of the Agincourt and its sister ship (the Marathon), four Trident class heavy destroyers, four lances consisting of four Gladius fighters each which were housed in the two cruisers, two Retaliator bombers, two Clipper troop transports, eight Union Mk IV dropships, and seven research, scanning, and support vessels.
It was the view of this fleet silhouetted against Terra II that John Shepard's eyes were treated to. The Marathon hung in space, long and elegant, almost like a spear. The nose of each ship was pointed like an arrowhead, and the hull ran back like the shaft of a spear, ending in a slight pyramid shape which housed five antimatter thrusters oriented in an X pattern. Each ship contained a hangar where six fighters could fit with room, or up to eight could fit in the rather cramped space. Four spires 75m each extended halfway down this shaft, and each spire held one turret containing a large laser and a particle projection cannon (PPC) the main energy weapons of the cruiser as well as the anti-missile system (AMS) designed to shoot down incoming missiles. On the rear of each spire sat a docked Union Mk IV, egg shaped ships which transported men and machines from jumpships to the ground. The nose contained two capital class gauss rifles, and three huge capital class autocannon 20's were arrayed in broadside orientation in four directions along the vessel. The Trident destroyers looked similar to the Lance cruisers, but were much smaller and only carried either a laser or PPC in their spires along with the AMS. The nose housed a single capital class gauss rifle. Rounding out their arsenal, five class 5 naval autocannons were arrayed broadside in two directions. The destroyers also looked boxier than the elegant angular lines of the cruisers due to the added armor which protected the vital KF jump drive, MAD, and antimatter powered generator. Each research ship was curved, with bodies designed to work in an atmosphere as well as space. As Shepard looked past the fleet, he could see the Fujian space elevator was off to his right, and the more distant Washington and Astrakhan elevators were off in the opposite horizon. The city of New Munich sat below, its surrounding lakes visible even this far away.
"Beautiful, isn't it?"
Shepard turned to see Lieutenant Colonel David Anderson, the commander of Marine forces in the small fleet, floating in zero g off to his right. Shepard gave his CO a nod.
"So where exactly are we going, sir? I know opsec is great and all, but there really isn't any reason to be holding out on me. Who am I going to tell? No successor lords out here." Anderson smiled at his XO.
"Loose lips sink ships." Shepard grumbled and pulled himself away from the window, Anderson in tow.
"We are going to stop by Shanxi for an antimatter refuel and to make sure our solar sail is good to go before going out into the wild… black yonder?" Shepard groaned at his CO's attempt at humor.
"Not a whole lot for us to do until the Navy pukes find something interesting and have us land to take a look."
"Sir, the Navy couldn't find water if they fell out of a boat. I think we are going to be pretty pointless to the mission for most of this trip." The pair reached the spinning ring shaped habitation quarters and could finally walk in micro gravity. The habitation quarters of the ship rotated independently from the rest of the ship, allowing the crew to at least lay down while they slept in .17g. A few enlisted crewmen saluted the pair of officers smartly as they passed before carrying on with their duties. Upon arriving at Anderson's quarters and Shepard found himself being steered inside, with the door closing behind him. The senior man turned on a static emitter and John raised an eyebrow, inviting Anderson to speak.
"We found some weird readings around 500ly from Shanxi with the satellite dish farm on Shanxi's moon. As in, off the damn charts weird. The science nerds are saying that it is way too patterned to match anything that is naturally occurring and it doesn't match any known signals. You know enough about science to potentially help figure out what is going on when we get there. The Parliament also has several eggheads from the university coming along in those research ships. They want answers." Shepard glared at the jab at him and his former colleagues.
At this point, the jump klaxon sounded, signaling 5 minutes to the start of their voyage. KF drives took an entire week to charge their capacitors with a massive solar sail which collected energy from a nearby star, and an additional jump could be stored in the on ship batteries for emergencies. While technically the Captain could jump on capacitor power then immediately again on battery power, this was generally frowned upon except in cases of extreme distress. As far as he was concerned, this just meant that John was trapped on this damned tin can for an extra week. Damn Navy.
"I had better get hunkered down for the trip. And thanks for the info." His CO smiled and nodded to him. Joking aside, this was potentially huge. If they could confirm that another space faring species existed, it would change the universe as humans knew it. It explained why an egghead Marine that was only given the rank of Captain a year ago was in a senior Major's billet. John enjoyed research, but wanted to make military a career. He knew that doing a good job here could result in promotions in the future. Everything in the Systems Alliance was given based on merit, especially senior officer ranks, and here he had an opportunity to greatly contribute to his nation. He wasn't about to turn that down. Anderson turned off the static emitter and motioned to the door. Shepard walked down the now empty habitation section hallway to his quarters. He powered up his cryostatis unit and set it for 7 days and 15 minutes. With luck, he would be unconscious when they jumped the second time. While not necessary, John hated the sensation of going through a jump while awake, and being in cryosleep kept him from being bored out of his skull. As the cryo door opened and he attached his medical monitors, he could only think.
I wonder if there is anybody else out there?
4 Sep 3805, Target System Nadir Jump Point
Shepard had been lucky on their trip to Shanxi. He awoke after their jump. This time he was no so lucky. He groggily awoke from his cryo-sleep to hear the 60 second to jump warning klaxon. In his somewhat cognizant state, he shoved the door open and began ripping the electrodes from his body.
Damn, damn damn damn! It was just his luck. While John did not suffer from Transition-Disorientation-Syndrome (TDS), it was still an unpleasant experience to say the least. He strapped into his seat and didn't have to wait long. A final warning tone was sounded for the jump, and seemed to slow down as the KF drive engaged. His surroundings appeared to stretch out forever; his room larger than the universe. Flashes of light in various colors in the visible spectrum exploded in his vision, and John was awed by the spectacle. Just as suddenly as his surroundings had distorted, they snapped back into normalcy. He felt slightly queasy and his knees threatened to give out even in the small amount of gravity as he unbuckled and stood up. A short trip later ended on the command deck, which appeared to be abuzz with activity. He approached one of the sensor consoles being manned by a chief, hearing nervous chatter from the crew.
"What is that? It is massive!"
"I hope it is friendly." Shepard looked at the screen and saw the solar system's layout. The system itself was named Hercules and was located in a cluster of stars designated Attican Beta. There were four planets. The second one, Eletania, actually contained a breathable atmosphere and was a lush green with what were either jungles or forests. But that is not what held his attention. There was an obviously non-natural object orbiting outside of the last planet. It looked sleek. Dangerous. Two connected arms extended outward from a glowing core which seemed to be contained by two spinning rings. It looked like some giant weapon. And the whole thing was over 15km long. Lovely. Rear Admiral (Lower Half) Stephen Hackett approached him, and he quickly greeted the man. Going to attention and saluting was just not practical in the zero gravity sections of the ship.
"Good afternoon, sir." Hackett looked at the screen and wrinkled his brow in frustration.
"Good afternoon, Captain. Any guesses as to what the hell we are looking at?" Shepard just shook his head.
"No clue, sir. If I had to guess it looks like some sort of railgun weapon. The blue ball is likely the energy source, but I don't have a clue about what that source is. It isn't antimatter. It could be fusion powered. Cherenkov radiation could explain the coloration at least, but two spinning rings shouldn't be able to contain such a large nuclear reaction, even if they were magnetized. Also, if it is a railgun, it has to be inefficient as hell. The size of the projectile would have to be big enough to touch both arms, and with a projectile that big, you'd think that any sort of reloading mechanism would be very large. Just speculation though, sir. I really don't have a clue. Fortunately, if it is a weapon, the light from our arrival won't reach it for another 12 minutes."
Hackett had started frowning at the mention of a weapon, and the frown only deepened as John continued.
"Alright, I want the fleet behind a planet. Get something big and solid between us and that thing. Have an emergency course plotted and the KF drive ready to do an emergency jump. Any hint that it has started turning toward us, I want the fleet to be at least 60 light years away from this system." The navigator began relaying his commands, ordering the fleet into MAD powered supercruise to take shelter behind the rocky second planet; it seemed to mass slightly smaller than Terra II.
After a mad dash to avoid being within the line of sight of the newly named "big ass alien gun," by a crusty old Senior Chief, the crew began to relax. The light which they emitted upon jumping in system reached the construct, but it continued on its lazy orbit of the star without turning towards the small human fleet. After an hour of waiting Hackett ordered the SSV Troy, one of the heavy frigates, out of cover in order to investigate the object. The Troy approached carefully and parked one light second away. The mysterious object did not react, and soon the rest of the fleet was burning towards it. The fleet remained in close proximity to the object for five hours while the research vessels gathered every bit of data and readings that their instruments could measure. Hackett ordered the fleet back to the gravity neutral nadir point to collect solar energy so that their return voyage could begin. Each ship unfurled their large and fragile solar sails to power up the KF drive capacitors, and the week long charge up began.
7 Sep 3505, Hercules Nadir Jump Point
John bolted up at the first sound of the general quarters alert and quickly noticed the absence of gravity. All Systems Alliance ships automatically disabled the rotation of the habitation modules whenever general quarters were sounded. Not to save power; but to keep crewmembers who were rushing from one end of the ship to the other from having to swap from a zero g environment to one with gravity simulated by centrifugal force. One advantage of the antimatter power plant was that the ship would rarely need for energy. Shepard "crawled" down the walkway to the main body of the ship, turned towards the bow and then up the second of four spires, this one labelled with a "2." Suddenly the ship lurched, and a deafening bang was heard. Something had hit the ship. As he made his way to his dropship, the Hard Boiled, he could hear the high powered whine of the weapons capacitors bringing the naval PPCs and the pair of naval Large Lasers (LL) up to full power. That got him moving even faster, and he entered the Union IV dropship cargo bay. In the 25th century, mankind invented the Battlemech. Each mech was 10-20m tall and massed between 20-100 tons. John scrambled up the side of his 65 ton Myrmidon and into the cockpit. He quickly grabbed his bulky neurohelmet that allowed him to control the fine motion and balance of the mech with his body's own dexterity and sense of equilibrium and set it on top of his head, connecting the leads and completing the startup procedure. Meanwhile, the dropship he was in shuttered with each launch of the Agincourt's capital size long range missiles (LRMs). Upon powering up fully, he gave his pilot the command to undock. A loud clunk sounded as the docking collar let the Union Mk IV dropship separate from the cruiser. John turned his attention to his command display. His mech was connected to the Agincourt's sensor system, and it showed eighteen ships of unknown origins. The small research fleet's combat vessels were outnumbered 3 to 1.
The sensors showed ships of two sizes. They were all horrifically ugly, and looked like somebody had welded different sized boxes together, with bulbous growths around the outside of each ship. He was relieved to see that the every ship's solar sail had been retracted. A ship would basically be dead in space without it. John zoomed in on one of the three larger ships, roughly the same length of the Agincourt. A spike of energy was indicated, and the ladar system detected an incoming projectile at roughly .01c. The projectile itself was roughly the size of a mech-class gauss projectile. John saw the Agincourt fire its starboard and upward maneuvering thrusters on the display, deftly maneuvering out of the path of the incoming projectile. The LRMs reached the enemy formation, and the few that made it through splashed on some kind of invisible barrier, leaving the cruiser unhurt. As the enemy fleet entered laser and PPC range, John commanded his spherical dropship to take position beneath the cruiser. Hackett had ordered the Fourth Fleet's six combat ships into a planar orientation perpendicular to the aggressors, separated by a scant ten kilometers with the bows of the cruisers and frigates pointed at the enemies. The attackers had separated into three groups of six ships each.
The human cruisers opened fire with their main weapons. Both ships sent four sapphire beams of energy from their spires into the larger ship in the central formation. This time, the barrier did little to stop the high energy lasers fired by the two human cruisers. The blocky target was neatly sliced open by the Marathon, while the Agincourt's lasers refracted from their original path as the barrier futilely flared to life again and neatly cut a fighter sized chunk of the cruiser's front off. Shortly after the lasers had hit, the human frigates opened fire with their PPCs and lasers. A dozen bolts of lightning and light seemed to connect the human fleet with their adversaries. Shepard was watching one of the smaller "frigate" class targets when it was hit by a good (or lucky) shot from two PPCs belonging to one of the human frigates. The impacts visibly shook the target, and electricity scattered over the hull. After the static had dissipated, the dead ship was left drifting towards the humans while slowly rotating from the force of the PPCs, two blackened holes several meters across marking the locations of impact.
The human Gladius fighters picked a frigate that had drifted off from its formation to harass and the Retaliator bombers followed distantly. One Gladius fighter was targeted by some sort of laser point defense system housed in one of the cancer-like bubbles on the ship. The red laser light show was beautiful, a stark contrast to the ugly ship it came from. The Gladius orbited the frigate twice, firing its pulse lasers into the hull of the ship before the laser defense system landed a string of hits, sawing one of the wings off. The fighter looked like it would remain in control until the pilot overcompensated for the lost wing and sent it spinning off away from the battle. The laser defense system zeroed in on the fighter and it came apart in a hail of laser fire. While the point defense had been busy tracking the fighter, the Retaliators had started their torpedo runs, and launched two anti-capital Sunburn torpedoes. Both torpedo engines ignited, one getting past a different point defense system and streaking into the port side of the frigate. Inside the Sunburn torpedo, the thermite nose charge ignited and burned through the hull rapidly before the fission warhead detonated. The explosion ripped the ship into two rough pieces. After a minute, seven enemy ships had been destroyed, and eight more were damaged. However, the Agincourt had taken three hits from the enemy ships along its main hull, and half of one of the spires had been shorn off by another round. All of the other human ships had taken various degrees of damage, with the frigate Troy being the worst off, missing a large piece of its nose and three other hull breaches. John knew it wouldn't be long before the Fourth Fleet would start suffering actual losses. One of the human gauss rounds finally hit a target, and John was shocked to see the blue bubble of light surround the ship, which was unharmed by the capital sized weapon which was on a course for it less than a second earlier. A naval gauss round had enough energy to flatten a large city from orbit, and the projectile had been shrugged off like it was nothing.
His dropship had begun firing away at the closest frigate sized ship with its size 20 autocannons and medium lasers when another hostile projectile was detected by the computer, and John watched the Troy narrowly avoid the shell, only for it to streak into one of the civilian research ships huddled 100km behind the firing line of cruisers and destroyers. The round punched cleanly through one side of the Niels Bohr and out the other, and for a moment John hoped that it hadn't hit anything important. Not even a second later, the Niels Bohr exploded in a giant antimatter fueled explosion. John looked on in shock at the screen as the explosion reached him. Pieces of the research ship peppered his small dropship, and his pilot was barely able to avoid a larger piece of armor that would have clipped the bottom of their craft, likely destroying the engine cowlings. John saw the last enemy cruiser explode in a fusillade of laser fire, and all of the enemy ships quickly rabbited into FTL. The Agincourt tracked them until they reached the giant weapon like construct, and the core flared to life at which point they disappeared from the scope. They had held out against a more numerous foe, destroyed nearly half the aggressor's fleet, and forced them into a retreat with virtually no combatant casualties. John was shocked at the loss of , but he had a job to do, and right now that job was to get his dropship attached to the Agincourt in preparation for an emergency KF jump powered by batteries to get them the hell out of this system. Maybe the Navy was good for something after all.
"Lieutenant Moreau, get us docked back on the Agincourt so we can skip town. I am going to call Hackett and ask him what he wants us to do. Oh, and good piloting. We almost got clipped by that debris, but you did a great job avoiding it." Lieutenant Jeff "Joker" Moreau seemed in a daze when he responded.
"Yes sir, I will get it taken care of." John switched comm frequencies to the Agincourt's bridge and Admiral Hackett's face appeared, looking grim.
"Sir, I have us moving in to dock with the Agincourt, what are your orders?"
"Captain Shepard, unfortunately, you can't dock with us. One of our spires took a hit and got ripped off. We don't have a docking port." Hackett sounded exhausted, even though the entire engagement took less than two minutes.
"I am going to need you to stay here, Captain. Sensors show that the second planet contains a breathable atmosphere and has liquid water oceans. Land there and lay low until we can bring in an actual fleet to secure the region and bring you home."
Shepard couldn't believe what he was hearing. Maybe the Navy was useless after all.
"Permission to speak freely, sir?"
"Granted."
"Sir, you want my single dropship to land on an unknown planet in a system we just had hostile contact in with what was likely to be extraterrestrials? Hostiles which had a fleet of warships and that attacked without agitation? Sir, my dropship can't even take a lance of modern fighters, let alone a frigate. I was watching one of their smaller frigate class ships during the battle. It swatted aside a naval gauss round with some sort of barrier, and most of the Hard Boiled's heavy weapons are Autocannon. I don't have much more armor than the Niels Bohr did."
"Captain Shepard, I understand what I am asking you to do. I believe that you have the command acumen to evade whatever the hell it is that attacked us here. I wish I could do more, but staying here to recharge our KF drives is too risky. If a sail gets damaged, that ship is stuck in the system, and unlike our frigates and cruisers, the Hard Boiled can land in atmo, power down, and pretend it doesn't exist. The Second and Third Fleets will be here to pull you out and engage any more hostiles. I can leave a Retaliator and a lance of Gladiuses with you for close support if it comes to that." Shepard had a bad feeling about what he was asked to do, but couldn't exactly refuse the order.
"Understood, sir. I will get it taken care of."
"I know you will Captain. Hackett out."
John switched channels to his bridge before relaying his orders.
"Joker, get us in an equatorial orbit around that garden planet. 150 kilometers up. We need to find a place to land and power down to keep the hell off of sensors."
"Will do, sir. So we are getting left here while the fleet bravely runs away? It is so nice to feel appreciated."
"Tell me about it."
Two hours later, the Hard Boiled and its five escorts had made their deorbiting burns to set down in a dense jungle. The active scanners had been turned off, and the ship was running on fusion engines instead of antimatter to prevent any unwanted explosions. Four columns of fire vaporized the trees directly beneath the landing site and the 4000 ton dropship settled on its landing gear.
A/N PLEASE READ
This is a universe merger between the Mass Effect and Battletech series. You may know Battletech through the Mechwarrior video game series popular in the 90's. This story is set roughly 700 years later than the dates which the Mass Effect series began, so the technologies available to the Citadel races are slightly more advanced. I plan on keeping this story almost exclusively in the Mass Effect universe, and have decided to not mark it as a true "crossover." This story will be highly AU, and relationships between the Citadel races and humanity will be vastly different than other fanfics out there. Sorry, no human/quarian alliance separate from the Citadel. That said, I hope it will be enjoyable to read. I plan on having each chapter length to be approximately this long. As you may know, in the Battletech series, humanity is in a state of technological decay. I did not want this to be the case in this story, so if you are familiar with that series' lore, you will find this is not the case. The Systems Alliance does not know about the clans, either. That was simply a nod to the Battletech fans out there. I will do my best to explain the weapons and technology from that universe for people unfamiliar with it, however I may not always remember to do this. I encourage you to use the Battletech wiki in times of confusion located at sarna dot net. Even better, go and read the books! They are very good, and I was sorely tempted to have the humans of the Inner Sphere meet the Council races, but that gave me a headache. If you are looking to get into those books, the Warrior Trilogy is a great place to start. A simple google search can tell you where to go from there. I will also try to include a codex of sorts at the end of each chapter to help explain some of the important objects/places/people/other nouns associated with Battletech.
CODEX:
Terra II: Terra II is the homeworld of the Systems Alliance and roughly the same size and temperature of Earth. The length of a Terra II day is 30 standard (Earth) hours, resulting in larger temperature shifts between day and night than those found on Earth. Numbering approximately 6.8 billion by 3805, it is mostly a water world (86% water) with an atmosphere of 36% Oxygen, 63% Nitrogen, and 1% other gases. Two continents exist, one approximately the size of Africa on Earth, and the other the size of North America. Both continents are almost entirely urbanized and the population density is very high. Multiple island chains exist randomly throughout the oceans, and in order to fit the high population on the relatively small land mass, the humans had to build up. Vast skyscrapers standing over 5000m tall make up the largest cities on Terra II. Artificial floating islands give Terra II most of its farmland. Terra II is unique in that aquatic ships make up a very large part of life on planet. The Systems Alliance even maintains a wet Navy responsible for security of the water trade routes. Crime is very low on Terra II, but does exist, mostly in the form of piracy of oceangoing vessels.
Shanxi: Shanxi is slightly larger than Terra II with only a single large ocean. The remaining super continent makes up most of the landmass of the planet, and supports a population of 4 billion. Shanxi is uncomfortably cold, with an average temperature of 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius) during summer months. During winter, the average temperature drops to 0 degrees Fahrenheit (-18 degrees Celsius). Due to even colder temperatures towards the poles, most of Shanxi's population live within 400 miles of the equator. Local flora and fauna flourish despite the harsh conditions, and certain flowers are known to bloom even in the winter time due to proteins which drastically lower the freezing temperature of water in their cells.
Successor Lords/Great Houses: The five entities struggling to claim rulership over the Inner Sphere.
KF drive: The primary method of interstellar travel, the KF drive transports a ship through hyperspace to a new location. Both start and end points must be located at zenith or nadir points. To charge the KF drive, a large "jump sail" approximately 1km in diameter is extended. It takes a week for enough charge to be stored to safely power one jump. On-board batteries can also be charged, allowing one KF jump to be "stored" for later use.
Lance: Not to be confused with the Lance class cruiser, a lance is a unit of four objects. Four mechs, four fighters, four bombers, four soldiers, etc.
Spinward: In the direction the galaxy is spinning.
Coreward: Towards the core of the galaxy.
Anti-Spinward: In the opposite direction the galaxy is spinning.
Rimward: Away from the core of the galaxy.
PPC: Short for Particle Projector Cannon. These fire steams of charged protons or ions at a target, and appears similar to lightning bolts when fired. PPC projectiles move slightly less than the speed of light.
Laser: Short for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Standard lasers burn for approximately one second, while a pulse laser variant fires many successive shorter pulses of energy. Pew pew.
Autocannon (AC): Autocannon are fast firing, auto loading chemical powered weapons. There are four sizes of autocannon: 2, 5, 10, and 20. The larger the autocannon size, the more damage it does. Autocannon can essentially be thought of as large rifles.
Gauss Rifle: Gauss rifles use a magnetic field to launch a projectile at extreme speeds. All gauss rifles in this fanfic will use a standard bullet shaped projectile. It is the 39th century, and in standard battletech Lore, gauss projectiles were balls. Humanity moved past that 10 centures ago. In the case of warship sized gauss rifles, projectiles are fired at approximately .0025c, or .25% the speed of light.
Lance class cruiser: A Lance class cruiser is 802m long, masses 725,000 tons, and is equipped with a habitation module that spins in order to simulate gravity. The Lance class cruiser has a crew of 356. It is armed with 4 capital sized large lasers, 4 capital PPCs, 2 capital gauss rifles, and 12 capital AC20's. The Lance class cruiser is the workhorse of the Systems Alliance Navy.
Trident class destroyer: A Trident class destroyer is essentially a smaller version of the Lance class Cruiser. It is 540m long, masses 485,000 tons, and has a crew of 262. It is armed with 2 capital Large lasers, 2 capital PPCs, a capital gauss rifle, and 10 capital class AC5's. Its appearance is similar to that of the Lance class cruiser, but the Trident class destroyer contains blockier armor which covers the vital KF drive, MAD, and antimatter powered generator which many say detracts from the more angular and sleek look the Lance class has.
i dot imgur dot com /byAYZW1 dot jpg
Gladius: The Gladius is a single seat fighter which is the primary fighter for the Systems Alliance Navy. It is 20m long, masses 16,000 kg (8 tons), and carries 5 medium pulse lasers. ***The Gladius image and ship specs given are from the game Star Citizen. Star citizen is currently in Alpha, but looks like it will grow to be a great game. I highly recommend that you check it out if you like space/flight simulators.***
i dot imgur dot com /rl6pqtp dot jpg
Retaliator: The Retaliator is the primary heavy bomber for the Systems Alliance. It is 71m long, masses 188,000 kg (94 tons), and carries a crew of 6. It has five manned defensive turrets, each with a pair of medium pulse lasers. Additionally, four Sunburn Anti-Capital Torpedoes are housed in its bomb bay. These torpedoes are designed to target ships classed frigate and above. ***The Retaliator is also a ship in the Star Citizen universe. The Retaliator is probably my favorite looking ship out of any Sci-Fi game/movie/series I have seen. The ship is too large for one picture to really do it justice. If you want to see it from multiple angles, I would recommend googling "Aegis Retaliator Pre-Flight Check" and watching the video.***
i dot imgur dot com /VSr49IH dot jpg
Prodigy Class research ship: The Prodigy class research vessel is unarmed and very lightly armored. It is primarily a ship used to gather and analyze data. Inside a Prodigy, the most advances scanner systems available to mankind are housed and coupled to a semi-AI which catalogs and analyzes data faster than any human could. It is designed to be able to land on the surface of a planet to gather readings, so it was designed to be aerodynamically stable and produce lift. A Prodigy class ship measures 210m long, masses 120,000 tons, and carries a crew of 30.
i dot imgur dot com /vFtfQNM dot jpg
Battlemech: The Battlemech is the pinnacle of land-based warfare according to humans. First designed in 2439, it is a walking machine massing anywhere from 20-100 tons. Each Battlemech stands anywhere from 10-20 meters tall and carried a variety of weaponry. Most Battlemechs are bipedal and are controlled with inputs similar to an aircraft's. In order to execute non-orthodox movements or to control balance in uneven terrain or under fire, the pilot wears a neurohelmet. This helmet actually interfaces with the human's brain to allow them complete control of the mech.
Eletania: Eletania is a garden world which is the second planet from its sun in the Hercules system of the Attican Beta Cluster. It is an uncolonized world and is covered by verdant jungles and freshwater oceans. Current estimates give it a 22 standard hour day and an equatorial daytime temperature of 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius) with estimated humidity ranging from 70% to 100% for its current orientation to its sun. No further information is available on Eletania.
Anyways, sorry for the super long author note. It shouldn't be this long again in the future. That said, reviewing this story will help motivate me to continue it. My current goals will put this at approximately 300-400k words when I get through the plot I have planned for the story. I haven't decided on a romance option currently. I am a huge fan of Tali, but there is a large quantity of Tali fics out there and I am not sure what I want to do. What do you think? Leave it as a review!