Fleet Admiral Farla's inspection tour had proven to be extremely prudent. The raw recruits, fresh out basic training, had proven to be nearly inept at their stations. It was decided early on by Farla and his alien counterparts that full combat sims had to be run on every unit in the galaxy.
Though every commanding officer was an experienced sailor who'd served in their respective fleets for years, many of the junior officers, tasked with enforcing the CO's orders, were fresh out of officer candidate school with no real experience whatsoever. This was not the case with the vessels that regularly encountered Shepard's forces as those ships were staffed with experienced sailors and marines.
The many NCO's could only provide so much support to the headstrong, completely green, new officers. This ensured that the grunts and low ranking sailors that had signed on only months before were effectively useless.
The combat simulations would be run until each unit was up to par. After witnessing many of these simulations in the space surrounding the units' defensive objectives over the course of the Rainier's journey across council space it had been proven to be necessary. Though some systems fared better than others, they all had vast room for improvement and a technological advantage meant nothing without the ability to utilize it.
As Farla and the Rainier neared the end of their journey, only one cluster from the final stop of Earth, he knew that his forces were nearly ready to proactively attack Shepard.
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The Captain of the Waterloo, one of Terra Nova's new guardian frigates, was determined to prove to the Rainier and Fleet Admiral Farla that they could protect their colony. Captain Johnson had been a sailor in the Alliance Navy for most of his adult life. Initially, he'd been chosen to help protect the Citadel after Saren had destroyed much of the Citadel fleet with his dreadnought Sovereign. At the time, he toasted Commander Shepard as a true symbol of what humanity could do.
He was a hero for many members of the Alliance, the pinnacle of human ingenuity and decisiveness. In defying the council, the governmental body that had held humanity back since they'd arrived in the galactic community, he'd proven humanity's worth.
And now, all of humanity was, if not openly hated, distrusted. His betrayal had been an affront to everything the Alliance stood for and the consequences of his actions were felt by every human in the galaxy. There were even reports that he'd destroyed a relay, killing hundreds of thousands of batarians.
He'd made an enemy of every species in reach of the Citadel and Johnson was determined to destroy his forces. That's why he'd been running simulations almost nonstop since he'd heard about the Rainier's tour. His crew had taken his lead, devoting themselves to the perfection of real combat strategies.
And because he was the commanding officer of the unit in charge of protecting Terra Nova, a unit of nearly three hundred warships, he had ensured that every ship in the area was as properly trained and practiced.
He got a kick out of calling a fleet of nearly three hundred ships nothing more than a unit. The sheer scale of galactic total war had put the grouping conventions of every military into a new perspective. With every major colony protected by a large fleet and the Citadel and all the major home worlds protected by vast armadas the Council had decided that it needed to draft a new naming scheme.
Johnson chuckled quietly at the comical actions of the bureaucracy. He was glad he didn't have to deal with authority of that level directly; he might lose his mind in the complete logical vacuum.
Through the port side windows of the bridge he could see the Rainier waiting for the demonstration combat sim to commence. Beneath the assembled ships, which consisted of a dozen new dreadnoughts filled with marines itching to fight the geth, nearly a hundred cruisers, and the rest brand new frigates armed with Thanix Cannons, sat the expanse of Terra Nova's surface. A desert stretched all along the planet's equator while the colony itself resided on a continent of the northern hemisphere.
It was truly amazing what a dedicated people could accomplish in a short span of time. Johnson was reminded of the story of WWII back at the start of the 20th. A dedicated people declared total war, turning car factories, furniture factories, and toy factories among many others into war material factories. They churned out thousands of planes, tanks, trucks, and warships in the span of only a few years while at the same time drafting millions of soldiers.
The same exact concept had been writ large, with trillions of people to help the process. Were it not for this enormous pool of resources, the rebuilding and expanding of the Citadel militaries could not have occurred in the tiny amount of time it had.
Johnson was interrupted from his contemplation of the scale of the accomplishment he found himself a part of by his LADAR specialist and external sensors officer Ensign Ro, "Sir we have unidentified vessels approaching from out system."
"Can't you get a LADAR silhouette from them?" Johnson asked, suddenly nervous. "Unidentified" was an immediate red flag.
"Negative sir, they're too far out," Ro responded. Ensign Ro had been one of the few junior officers to carry over from a previous posting. She was experienced from her time aboard several of the Alliance's now defunct warships. Johnson knew that she understood her station better than anyone on the ship.
"Ensign Avalos, get me the Rainier," Johnson commanded. Unlike Ro, Avalos had been a thorn in Johnson's side from the moment he'd come on board. Headstrong, manipulative, and cowardly he'd attempted to skirt every duty he was assigned. Johnson had had a hell of a time making him fall in line and even that was tenuous at best.
"Yes, sir," came the slightly snide reply as Avalos tapped on his holographic interface. "Patched in."
"Rainier, this is Waterloo, we have unidentified vessels closing on our position from out-system," Johnson said. "Requesting instructions."
"We see 'em too Waterloo, standby for the Fleet Admiral," came the reply from the Rainier's communications officer.
"Captain Johnson, this is Fleet Admiral Farla," Farla said. "Move to engage. Confirm the identity of those ships immediately."
"Understood sir, moving to engage," Johnson replied. "Ensign Avalos, contact the Gettysburg, Honolulu, and San Francisco and tell them to have their contingents form up on us.
"Lieutenant Jacobs, get us within range of those ships," he continued to his helmsman. As their ship moved toward the unidentified vessels, the dreadnought contingent took position at the rear while the cruisers positioned themselves between the frigates at the front and the dreadnoughts.
The group of warships fanned out into a staggered delta formation with several kilometers between each vessel.
As they moved forward through the intervening space Johnson had Ensign Ro activate the long range cameras to try and get an image of the approaching ships. What they saw in the images the cameras provided immediately caused Johnson's nervousness to skyrocket straight into real fear.
The dozen or so ships approaching them from the blackness of space looked similar in shape and dimensions to Sovereign, the geth dreadnought that had plowed straight through several warships during Saren's attack four years ago as if they weren't even there.
It had been the pinnacle of geth engineering, a ship so advanced that it could do maneuvers in the gravity wells of planets that would destroy even the Citadel's new and improved warships despite being larger than any dreadnought that any of the council races had ever conceived of building.
And now it appeared as if there were more than a dozen of them advancing toward their skeleton crew of warships. Johnson immediately cried, "Ro, I want a LADAR silhouette profile on each of those vessels and I want it NOW!"
"Sir, LADAR confirms, the inbound vessels match that of Sovereign" came the declaration Johnson least wanted to hear.
"Avalos, contact the other ships; tell them to fall back!" Johnson commanded.
As Avalos half-heartedly conveyed the message to the other ships Johnson said, "Jacobs, get us the hell back to Terra Nova!"
"Aye, aye sir," Jacobs said, engaging the controls in front of him with the swift fingers of a well practiced helmsman.
As the group of ships turned tail to regroup with the rest of the unit, Johnson commanded, "Avalos, link me to the Rainier right now."
"Yes sir," Avalos said, again only half-heartedly punching in the commands. Johnson couldn't understand Avalos' resistance but at the moment he could do nothing about it. He spoke into the communications console, "This is Captain Johnson. We have confirmed the inbound vessels identity: They are nearly identical in both appearance and LADAR to Sovereign. Prepare for inbound hostiles."
"Say again Waterloo, did you say identical to Sovereign?" came the incredulous reply.
"Affirmative Rainier. Requesting instructions," Johnson said.
"Standby Waterloo," was the brief answer. It took a few moments before the communications officer on the Rainier came back on the line and said, "Continue your withdrawal. Regroup at these coordinates," the console in front of Jacobs flashed with the new set of coordinates and Jacobs immediately plotted a course for them.
Johnson took a moment to convey the instructions to his fellow ships before he walked over to Ro's console to stare at the advancing enemy. The entire development drive of the Citadel had been designed to combat the vessels that Shepard had used to abduct the council. It had been assumed that it would be prohibitively difficult to construct more warships like Sovereign yet there were what appeared to be over a dozen such ships advancing on their position.
As the Waterloo and her contingents of warships reached the rendezvous point, Johnson received further instructions, "Captain, direct your vessels to spread out in volley formation between the advancing ships and the colony."
Surprisingly it was the voice of Fleet Admiral Farla he heard over the radio. Johnson quickly did as he was told, positioning the dreadnoughts again at the rear in a staggered line. Each of the frigates and cruisers had been equipped with Thanix Cannons but the technology had yet to be tested on an enemy vessel of the size and power they were about to face.
Johnson could do nothing but wait as the enemy ships advanced, slowly for ships that size. It became a nerve wracking waiting game, watching the enemy slowly advance but knowing that attacking directly was foolish.
It was a full twenty minutes before the enemy got within range of the dreadnoughts but when they had, every dreadnought on the line opened fire on predetermined targets. The hundreds of heavy tungsten rounds appeared to do absolutely nothing to the advancing ships, their inexorable drift slowed not at all. Soon, they were in the range of the carriers' fighters and the frigates and by that time, the anti-hacking protocols were being heavily tested.
Every ship in the fleet was attacked through the wireless network they used to share battle information. Though the initial spike in activity nearly crashed the computers that housed the protocols, it was eventually rebuffed.
Unfortunately that was not the case with the fighters whose onboard computers couldn't handle the simultaneous attack and failed. That left hundreds of single man fighters drifting uselessly in the middle of the battlefield.
Though this forced the frigates to maneuver carefully to avoid killing any of the pilots it was a weakness that wasn't shared by the incoming enemy. They opened fire on the nearby frigates, destroying several before the helmsmen could adapt. The survivors immediately opened fire with their Thanix cannons, but to no avail. The enemy ships didn't even shiver from the collisions of over a fifteen simultaneous attacks per vessel.
It was in this instant that Ensign Avalos stood from his chair, pulling from his hip a pistol. As he moved to aim at Captain Johnson, who was looking over Jacob's shoulder, Ro looked up.
Instinctively, she jumped up from her chair behind Avalos and dove at him, tackling him to the ground. His pistol discharged harmlessly into the floor. Ro struggled to keep his pistol trained away from her Captain and the rest of the crew and then several others moved to help her, restraining Avalos and taking away his pistol.
It was a scene mirrored aboard dozens of the other ships in the unit and in some cases it resulted in the destruction of the vessel. Everything from eezo plants forced into meltdown, helmsmen driving their ships straight into enemy fire, and life support officers venting the ships of atmosphere ended the lives of hundreds of sailors and marines.
This gave the enemy ships the opportunity to send hundreds of troopships to the surface of Terra Nova and then turn and destroy several more warships.
The Alliance forces scrambled to send off their ground troops and reengage the enemy.
