9 July 2144, Ast system, Alliance battleship Vigilance, approaching relay back to Shanxi
Engineer Jacob Anders suppressed a smile as he listened to the quarian that he was teaching mumble under her breath as she worked on an old 734-Inferno class plasma cannon. The 734 series had been discontinued from being equipped to ships for longer than he had been alive, but it was similar enough to the Mass Effect based projectile weaponry that the quarians and all other races that they knew of used that it was a good starting point for the trading to begin.
His urge to smile fell as the thought of the basis for the rest of the galaxy's tech came to mind. He, like almost every member of the Alliance, felt uneasy about basing their entire tech on the tech of a now extinct race. It was one of the few things that the Alliance and Clans agreed upon, they valued striding across the stars based upon their own knowledge, making their own mistakes and learning from it instead of on top of the remains of a dead race.
The last month had seen several changes within both the Alliance and Clans after coming into contact with the quarian Migrant Fleet. The Fleet had left less than a month after coming into contact with the Clans and Alliance due to their overall views on DIs being close enough to the Geth that most wanted nothing to do with the Alliance and the Clans' territory was almost intertwined with the Alliance's. All the same, a few quarians had chosen to go into Clan and Alliance space for their pilgrimage in the hopes of acquiring new technology for the fleet.
The Alliance accepted these quarians onto ships and did teach them how to handle themselves on them and repair said ships, but only on ships that were over fifteen years old.
With the new maps given to the Clans and Alliance by the Migrant Fleet in the data pack, after figuring out how to adjust them to work with more than just the phase gates, or mass relays as they insisted on calling them, colony expeditions were being formed for places that were unclaimed, and suitable for colonization.
"Excuse me Engineer Anders, could you explain this to me?" the filtered voice of his quarian student asked, bringing him out of his musings.
"What do you need explained?"
"I understand how the plasma is formed and contained so that it doesn't damage the cannon, but I'm having trouble understanding how the blast remains heated and stable through flight until it hits the target."
"Well for starters," Anders' lesson was cut off as the entire ship shook as a result of some sort of weapons fire.
Up on the bridge, the captain was shouting orders as the crew ran for their battle stations.
"All hands battle stations, we are under attack from an unknown enemy. This is NOT a drill, you understand that? THIS IS NOT A FUCKING DRILL!" the captain shouted over the ship's intercom.
"Sir, scans of the ship design attacking us matches profiles of turian patrol ships!" one of the several crewmen on the bridge shouted.
"Damn it, Garth see if you can hack into their systems everyone else get this ship heading for the phase gate!"
"On it boss man," the voice of the ship's DI spoke as another slavo of rounds slammed into the ship.
"And why are we getting hammered, why aren't the shields doing anything?"
"Sir, the rounds that the turian ships are firing are moving too fast for the shields to react in time; they're designed for plasma and slower moving objects not ship mounted railguns!" another of the crewmen stationed on the bridge shouted.
"How long before we can return fire, get the fold engines aligned, or get to the phase gate?"
"Sir, the Hellbringer missiles are locked on and ready to fire."
"Then what are you waiting for? FIRE AT WILL!"
"SIR, YES SIR!" rang out across the bridge and ship as missile bays opened and released their payload into space.
Each missile was a four foot long and one foot radius Hellbringer-class missile. The name was aptly given. The missiles had dumb A.I.s, able to make rapid adjustments on the fly but no real self-awareness, and were tipped by a foot long spike of synthetic-adamantium, allowing it to punch through anything except real adamantium. Once it buried itself into an enemy ship, the top portion of the missile would pop off, and the payload would be released, said payload being a thousand pounds of compressed plasma. Once the spiked cap was released, all of that pressure would cause the plasma to be released with an explosive burst. Contained within the plasma were heat resistant nanites that would begin taking apart everything that they could find within a certain distance of the ship that fired the missile, but would not replicate.
There were a total of twenty Hellbringer missiles heading straight for the small collection of turian ships attacking the Vigilance. The furthest cruiser was lucky, only two hit it. The largest cruiser was hit the worst, twelve of the missiles slammed into it and the other ships watched in horror as it began to dissolve where it was hit.
The turian ships abruptly fled, three of the four falling apart and decompressing before they reached the relay that they were trying to get to. The one cruiser that managed to escape returned to its base with horrific tales.
9 July 2144, Turian Patrol base Ikya, 7 hours later
Admiral Ruso Arterius was not looking forward to the report that he was on his way to make. He had been in the middle of a call with turian Councilor Metaes when the lone survivor from Patrol Entes returned with structural damage unlike any that had ever been seen before. So now that they had determined roughly what happened he had to contact the Council and tell them exactly what they had found.
Stepping into the room that contained the comm. to the Council, Admiral Arterius took a moment to calm himself before dialing the Council Chamber.
The three holograms flickered into existence, showing an asari, salarian, and a turian. Admiral Arterius saluted before launching into his report, "Roughly eight standard hours ago, the cruiser Black Dawn returned from patrolling the edge of the Skyllian Verge where it and the patrol it was with discovered a ship with extremely low heat emissions almost the size of a cruiser traveling towards Relay 314 to unknown space. Patrol Entes attacked the unknown ship assuming that it was a group of pirates trying to activate a relay to uncharted space and dealt severe damage to it before the ship launched twenty missiles at the patrol ships that weren't slowed at all by kinetic barriers. The Black Dawn was hit by two of said missiles, and that alone was almost enough to completely destroy it. Patrol Entes immediately fled from the engagement, but only Black Dawn was able to reach the relay back here before it was destroyed.
"The local STG regiment examined the remains of the missiles that destroyed the other ships of Patrol Entes and found several startling discoveries. The front of the missile is a large spike designed to penetrate through a ship's armor before releasing. The spike is made out of what the STG believe to be an artificial form of adamantium."
"WHAT?" Councilor Mateas shouted in surprise upon hearing that.
"However, the artificial adamantium isn't an exact duplicate. It isn't as strong, and wasn't completely unaffected by element zero. In addition, the missile contained surprisingly high amounts of compressed plasma that burst open like an erupting volcano once the spike fell off the top of the missile. The component of the missile that did the most damage though wasn't the spike or the plasma. I'm forwarding an image of it to you now," Admiral Arterius said as he activated his omni-tool and pressed a few buttons.
Each of the Councilors looked down at their own omni-tools and brought up a picture of what members of the Clans and Alliance would recognize as a robotic lobster. As the Councilors looked at the image, Admiral Arterius continued, "That is an image of one of the millions of microscopic machines that were inside of the missile. STG members examining them have been unable to tell me how they work, but our best guess is that they are designed to take a ship apart once they leave the missile. Why they stopped we don't know.
"With all of the evidence at hand, we believe that we have encountered a new species that came from the other side of Relay 314."
Each of the councilors was silent for several minutes, making Admiral Arterius more and more nervous. He was beginning to be afraid that they would blame him for the new hostile race.
"What is your suggestion Admiral?" Councilor Tevo calmly asked.
"The way I see it we have a few options, first we could bulk up our defenses and send in small teams to learn what we can about them, their primary language, their homeworld, the size of their economy and military just to name a few. The advantages are that we lose very few soldiers, and once we know enough about them we can engage in active diplomacy as well as lowering the chances of us getting pulled into yet another war like the Rachni War. The disadvantages is that we're entirely on the defensive and don't know if they'll attack or with how much force.
"The second option is that we attack in full force. I have five dreadnaughts, sixty cruisers, and one hundred forty frigates here. I'd have to leave at least a third of them here to maintain skeleton patrols, but I'd feel comfortable taking one dreadnaught, thirty cruisers, and ninety frigates. We keep the pressure up until we can find their homeworld, then come to a settlement. We try to keep collateral damage to a minimum and engage civilian targets as little as possible. The advantages are that we keep war away from our doorsteps and give us control of the initiative. The downsides, we're automatically involved in a war and since we lack a great deal of information on them, we don't know what their full capabilities are.
"The third option is a combination of the first two. We fortify this side of the 314 Relay and send remote drones through to figure out as much as we can before sending our fleet through once we have more information. This has the advantages of both, and most of the disadvantages of the second.
"Personally, I favor the second. I'm not comfortable with just waiting and having a war on our turf. We don't know what weapons they possess and we don't know what they're willing to use. The first example that comes to mind are WMDs. We won't use them on civilian targets, but we don't know that they won't. If they attack us, based on that one weapon type alone, they're going to do a lot of damage. We have no way of knowing just how advanced they consider that weapon. For all that we know to them it could be considered outdated. Considering that, I don't want to leave things to the chance that they feel the same way about civilians that we do."
"We will consider your suggestion Admiral, for now reinforce the 314 Relay, but do not send anything except recon drones through. We will inform you of our decision in one Galactic Standard Day," salarian Councilor Haren said as the holograms shut off.
Admirl Arterius let out a breath of relief as the communications ended. He was sure that he was going to be blamed for this. That from the sounds of it that he wasn't was a great relief. Now he had to station ships outside the 314 Relay in suitable numbers.
10 July 2144, Tiger Station, 26 Astronomical Units from star Damascus, 30 parsecs Sirius A
"So let me get this right, we're going to Alliance territory," Private Pauline Cahabu asked Private Darin Carlson walking next to her on their way to the ship that they would be taking to the Shanxi system.
"Correct. Apparently the Alliance had an encounter with the turians, and they asked for backup should they attack. I've heard rumors that the Alliance and Clans will be accelerating the deployment of the teams that will be traveling to the Citadel," Carlson responded as they boarded the Megalodon-class battlecruiser. With rare exceptions, Clan spaceships resembled the animals that their class was named after. The Megalodon-class battlecruisers measured just over five kilometers in length, and packed enough warheads to level a city the size of New York back on Earth three times over.
"So how many ships are going to help out the Alliance?"
"Including this one and the seven dozen Lamprey fighters on board? Last I heard a Kraken defense station was going to wait out in orbit, but otherwise I don't know."
"Attention all hands, ready yourselves for fold travel in T-minus thirty seconds," a woman's voice spoke over the ships' loudspeakers.
"Looks like we boarded just in time," Private Carlson muttered under his breath.
Up in the ship's bridge, pilot James Anderson held in a smirk as his hands flew across the controls with practiced ease. James Anderson was one of the point five percent of mutants that didn't fit into any of the Clans. His particular ability was his body's rubber-like consistency. He could stretch, bend, twist, you name it. That the reason that he could handle a station that typically required two people, one hand and one eye would be at one station while the rest of his body would be at the other.
"All hands we are now folding space, please be sure to hold onto something secure and brace yourselves for one wild ride," James spoke into the intercom as to an outside observer the Megalodon ship seemed to fold in on itself before vanishing.
As the ship reappeared light years away, James Anderson struggled to keep his jaw from reaching the floor as the object of his shock hailed the Clan ship.
"Clan vessel this is the Executor II, state your business in Alliance space or we will obliterate your ship," the cool voice of the captain of the nineteen kilometer long Alliance flagship spoke.
"Executor II we were sent to assist in case of turian aggression," James responded, swiftly snapping himself out of his shock.
"I was expecting more than a single Megalodon. Where's the rest?"
"We were all that was ready… Forgive me for this but I can't hold it back anymore, the Alliance built Darth Vader's FLAGSHIP?"
"Impressive, isn't it? What other forces are the Clans sending?"
"A pair of Kraken defense stations, three more Megalodons, and a Wyvern battleship. Just how long has the Alliance been building that geek's dream come true that you're on?"
"All that I'm allowed to say is that Project GWL is still incomplete. Anything else is classified, especially for the Clans."
"We're here to help aren't we?"
"Touché, just get ready, I'll have my fleet coordinator send you details on where to position. Stay at least a hundred kliks from the phase gate, the area surrounding it has been seeded with T101 mines."
"Don't recognize the classification," James mumbled under his breath before speaking up, "thanks for the heads up Executor, receiving instructions, transiting to destination."
10 July 2144, Turian Patrol base Ikya, one hour earlier
Admiral Arterius looked at the message on his omni-tool. While the Council had decided to go with the third option that he had mentioned, they were sending a Spectre to oversee the operation. Suppressing a growl at the thought that he was incapable of handling the situation, Admiral Arterius scrolled down to see who they were sending.
"Onak Sollus, don't recognize the name though it looks salarian. Great, not only do we have a Spectre, it's a salarian as well. Next thing you know they'll be giving whatever species is on the other side of the 314 Relay a Council Seat," Admiral Arterius grumbled.
"Is there a problem Admiral?" a voice from directly behind the Admiral asked, causing him to jump up is shock as he turned around while simultaneously drawing his sidearm.
And was almost immediately disarmed and had several pressure points pressed in his arm that resulted in said arm flopping uselessly to his side. The salarian that did so stood there with a blank, emotionless face before repeating his question.
"Onak Sollus I'm assuming," Admiral Arterius ventured while forcing his two hearts to calm down.
"Correct. My goal here is to ensure that we simultaneously gain information on this new race and cause as few deaths as possible. I will require a personal ship with advanced stealth drives. Can you provide?"
Forcing back a snarl, Admiral Arterius calmly responded, "Yes I can provide. I'm surprised that you don't want to be on the flagship."
"I work better on my own sneaking behind enemy lines rather than directing combat from a flagship. I will admit, the reason that I was chosen wasn't because of my skill in directing naval warfare. I won't be taking your job Admiral so you don't have to worry about that. The reason that I was chosen was because I specialize in gathering information in a multitude of ways."
"Fine, just be sure to send regular reports. I don't want the Council on my fringe because one of their pet Spectres was captured."
"If you don't hear from me at least once every three days, then assume the worst until proven otherwise."
The pair then continued down through the halls of the base before reaching one of the several hangers prepping for the eventual engagement on the other side of the 314 Relay. Supplies were being loaded into cargo ships to come in after the space just beyond the relay had been secured.
"Have any of your recon drones returned?" Onak asked Admiral Arterius as the pair approached the ship that would take them to the 314 Relay.
"One, from what we've been able to determine the species that is on the other side covered the area around the relay that ships would exit from with mines, turning the relay itself into a trap. The mines themselves are inactive until something gets close enough that triggers them, unfortunately we don't know what that trigger is. The current plan is to drag asteroids from the belt within the 314 system and send them through the relay first to eliminate as many of the mines as possible. Whatever's left should be deflected by kinetic barriers. Once the asteroids have gone through, we'll send in more drones provided by the STG to determine how many are left.
"If there are more than are comfortable, we'll repeat until we can go through without heavy casualties. From there we'll determine where the alien presence is strongest in that cluster and attack."
"A well thought out plan. I will take your best stealth ship and hopefully sneak past their lines and gather information on them and their society. Unless I come across something major expect updates on the schedule I gave earlier."
"Very well, I will have the Barnok loaded into the hanger of the Majesty. We'll be pulling out in one hour. Can you be on board by then?" Admiral Arterius asked while turning towards Onak, only to see that Onak had vanished.
"…I hate it when Specters do that."
10 July 2144, Shanxi system, Executor II, two hours later
"Captain, we've picked up repeated signs of the T101 mines detonating just beyond the Shanxi-Theta phase gate. We have been unable to pick up any life signs before each detonation, leading us to believe that their sending drones through to clear out the mines," one of the several helmsmen on the bridge of the Executor II called out from his station.
"So it will begin soon. Send out a general order, make sure that the Clan vessel gets it as well, be ready. Those turian bastards will be coming through soon enough," Captain Robin Wise ordered, staring at the large screen providing live image viewing from the cameras on the outside of the bridge, making it appear that there was a window.
"Yes my master," a deep, semi-mechanical voice said from the bridge's speakers.
"And cut that out, you are not Vader so stop acting like it!"
In front of the captain a hologram of the ship's DI appeared as his chosen avatar, an exact duplicate of Darth Vader, before speaking in a voice completely unlike Vader's, "Part of my contract upon being assigned to the Executor II was that I was free to act as much like Darth Vader as I wished. You don't like it, you can suck my digital…"
Vader's head jerked up as something caught his attention. Holographic avatar vanishing, Vader began speaking through the bridge's speakers again, "Captain, they're here."
"How many mines are left?"
"Checking, out of the original few thousand I'm able to find fifteen."
"Damn, they got through those faster than we expected. Alright, everyone get ready. How are the other ships defending Shanxi?"
"Ships 0-5C through 0-5Z reporting ready," one technician called out.
"Ships 2-1A through 4-2A reporting ready," another called out.
"The Mutant Clans' Megalodon reporting ready," a final technician called out.
Captain Robin stared at the screen with narrowed eyes as she mumbled under her breath, "So it begins."
10 July 2144, Majesty dreadnaught, just past 314 relay, same time
"Admiral, we have passed through the relay and are heading towards the only planet in this system," one of the several operators on the bridge called out as he read the report on his monitor.
"Good, find the flagship of the planet's defensive forces and hail them," Admiral Arterius said while looking at the galaxy map in an attempt to discern where the relay led them.
"Spirits… sir, you need to take a look at this."
"What is it?"
"Well sir, we think that we've found their flag ship but…"
"But what? Spit it out soldier."
"It's even larger than the Ascension at the Citadel."
"How larger?"
"Almost five times the mass sir. It has a triangular body and measures at best guess around forty-five funtas long."
"Admiral, we're being hailed," another operator directly behind the Admiral called out.
"Good, bring it up."
"We can't sir, it's in a format that our computers won't read."
Admiral Arterius growled before barking out orders. "Send the prerecorded message; if we can't get their initial hail then perhaps we can get them to change it."
Hands and talons danced across holographic screens, loading the order for the opposing fleet to surrender and submit before the might of the Citadel fleet.
A few moments later, a repeated hail from the fleet surrounding the target planet arrived, this time in a format that the turian computers could recognize as an audio/video file. Bringing it up to replace the galaxy map, Admiral Arterius was surprised at the figure that appeared. It had a very vaguely asari form, wore an all-black body suit with a back fabric going over his shoulders and down its back and a round helmet with an intimidating face mask. The accentuated breathing furthered the intimidating nature and sent a chill through Admiral Arterius' body.
"Foreign fleet, I am representing the Executor II of the Systems Alliance. You are invading our territory and are ordered to leave. Failure to follow this order will result in the destruction of your entire fleet. You have five minutes to comply," the deep, hollow voice of the figure declared before vanishing. There was one problem with the message that caught all present turians off guard; it was spoken in the quarian language.
"Admiral, your orders?" the helmsman asked after a few moments of silence on the bridge.
"Continue as planned, once we've gained control of their world we'll find out how they knew the quarian language," Admiral Arterius ordered, hoping that he wasn't making a big mistake.
"Understood sir, sending orders now."
Admiral Arterius took a deep breath as the frigates and cruisers in his fleet advanced towards the alien fleet. Hopefully these aliens didn't have enough surprises to overcome the sheer numerical advantage that the turians had. From what he could see of the preliminary scans, the aliens had at best three dozen ships. While it was intimidating that the majority of the ships were larger than any dreadnaught he had ever seen, it is possible that as a race they favored quality over quantity. If that's the case then at least the Treaty of Firaxen shouldn't be a problem.
"Admiral, our ships will be in firing range as soon as we pass through the outer asteroid belt," one of the men sitting in front of one of the ship's scanners called out.
"Good, any surprises beyond the mine field that they left?" Admiral Arterius asked.
"One sir, one of their ships, about five times as big as a regular dreadnaught, is emitting some kind of radiation unlike any we've any seen. I must emphasize that it is just that one ship, and it's the only one we can get an easy read on," another technician responded.
"Have one of the forward frigates see if they can get a visual on that ship when they're closer."
"Yes sir."
"Passing through the asteroid belt."
Admiral Arterius tensed in preparation, if any trap was going to activate, it would be here. Minutes passed without any hazard or ship receiving any kind of interference, and he allowed himself to relax. Apparently they either didn't think of using the asteroid belt or didn't have time to…
"Sir! The Balksteer has reported boarders!" the Majesty's communications officer called out.
"What? How did a ship manage to get close enough without any of our scanners noticing?"
"That's just it sir, the Balksteer wasn't boarded by a ship, they're saying that the invaders are just appearing out of thin air!"
"That's impossible!"
10 July 2144, Balksteer cruiser, same time
"How much you want to bet there's some big wig on one of these ships claiming that this is impossible?" Wolverine Jason Kent asked his fellow boarders as he gutted another turian with the adamantium blades extending from his elbow.
"Pretty high sir, just save some for the rest of us," Tank Clan marine James Conner returned as he dug his fingers into the metal sheet that formed the wall and easily tore it off before hurling it at a group of turians.
"Ah well, we'd better find the bridge before the other ships in the fleet blast this one to smithereens," Speed Clan marine Maria Hernandez commended as she blurred past several turains, stealing weapons and slashing throats with her bowie knife.
"Infiltration teams, this is Alpha Squad, report," Jason said into his comm. before waiting for the response from the other teams that were teleported onto the turian ship.
"Beta Squad, I think we landed in one of the armories if the weapons here are anything to go by," the guttural voice of the Beast Clan leader of Beta Squad reported in.
"Gamma Squad, I believe that we're in the ship's bridge. We've got the ship's captain at metal spike point and uploading Jimmy now," the Magnet Clan squad leader reported.
At the bridge, Captain Vegrull Vallokius stood in sheer terror as these aliens uploaded something into his ship's computers. What kind of virus it could be he didn't know, and that combined with the fact that they had teleportation technology along with apparently several squads of super soldiers made him feel that the Hierarchy had made a terrible mistake in attacking.
"Ladies, Gentlemen, and Turians; I am pleased to announce that I have full control of all systems and am willing to vent any and all life support systems as I bring this ship to Shanxi in order to be studied by the government there. If you cooperate I will let you all live. If not then I will have our squads leave and then vent all atmosphere that this ship has. And remember: Big Brother is watching," a voice very much like the aliens in perfect turian came over the speakers all over the ship.
Captain Vallokius' plates spread in horror as he realized what the aliens had uploaded. They hadn't uploaded a virus, they had uploaded an AI. He had to find some way to get a message out to Admiral Arterius before the attack commenced. Looking at the sharp shards of metal hovering around him, it began to sink in that there was no hope of that happening.
10 July 2144, space between Shanxi and the asteroid belt, same time
"Vader, give the order."
"Yes, my master."
All across the fleet defending the human colony of Shanxi, every Alliance ship received a single order simultaneously. All across the fleet defending Shanxi, laser batteries aimed and opened fire at the invading turian fleet. Mass accelerated round shot across the space to slam into shields defending Alliance ships. Fighters weaved around each other and larger ships, weakening barriers and launching torpedoes. Unnoticed, a single ship slipped past all of the fighting and headed towards the planet that all of the fighting was over.
'These aliens are more advanced than we first expected, I'll have to be careful,' salarian Spectre Onak Sollus thought to himself as he directed the small ship through the planet's atmosphere.
AN: Okay, I want to address a few things that were brought up in multiple reviews. The first being the military information that the Clans and Alliance gave to the quarians are decades out of date. Both the Clans military strategies have changed and advanced in that time period.
In addition, I am really looking for a beta reader for this fic. As it stands I am uploading these as soon as I finish them. And while that means that they're out sooner than if they had gone to a beta, there are still problems that I miss while writing. So if anyone is willing I'm accepting volunteers.
Edit: I'm putting this in about an hour and a half after I uploaded the chapter, but it occurred to me that I should give some more information about Alliance and Clan ship classifications so here they are.
Mutant Effect Alliance and Mutant Clans Military Ship Classifications
Fighter – 1 man ships anywhere from 5 to 15 meters in length
Frigate – 80 to 100 meters
Destroyer – 100 meters to 1 kilometer
Cruiser – 1 to 2.5 kilometers
Battlecruiser – 2.5 to 6 kilometers
Battleship – 6 to 10 kilometers
Dreadnaught – 10 to 25 kilometers
Special – 25+ kilometers
