Tanda would bring the Thunderflare to the Nubian Expanse at once. Life went on, as it always did. She was bringing her other apprentices up to Kesalia's levels of ability, and reasonably confident against biotics. The needs of the fleet predominated. Supplies were consumed, and slowly not being replaced. Some basic parts were being fabricated by the industry of her protectorate, but they were nothing critical or important. Spin-sealing Tibanna gas from her territory had required the acquisition of very specialized research centrifuges from the Asari Republics which had been enormously expensive to obtain. ...Fuel, for that, Tanda didn't even know where to start. Direct anti-matter annihilation could provide enough power for primitive applications of hyperdrive and ray shielding, but that, too, would be an enormously expensive infrastructure to establish.
And somewhere out there, I have an enemy who may easily overwhelm me. There was a tempting thought in that. Just take the ships, massively stockpile foodstuffs, leave everything else behind. Aim for the home galaxy—they had a fairly good idea of where it was now by correlating the impulses of ancient supernovae—and hope they could, in deep intergalactic space, make enough time to arrive in four years.
But what kind of coward abandons her homeworld to an alien terror when she has even a rock in the hand? The daughter worlds of Alsakan sustained and supported their Mother in Seventeen contests for the fate of the Republic, as a human don't you owe Terra at least one battle? She inhaled a ragged breath and looked uneasily at the small imitation Tessent on her desk. Looked at a new picture, too, of a place so much like that in the famed plazas of Alsakan: The vast lines of Nazca. She imagined fire falling from the sky and blotting them out, when she had never looked on them with her own eyes.
One thing was clear, she had very little doubt that the Reapers were real and were a threat. Her dreams were plagued with whispers, now. There is a path for you to take... There is a place for you to come, for the power to crush them. It had been confirmed. Tali'Zorah's existence had confirmed it. The force was here, and with it, a legacy of what had come before.
When all is in order, secure Terra. Secure the homeworld. When you have defeated the Reapers, they will cheer as you make yourself their Queen. You can do more than see the Nazca lines; you can have them bring the sceptre to you, on the Saksaq Waman, with the sun rising at your back. Tanda had no doubt now that the origins of humanity of Coruscant were in a maroon-camp. It was still strange to digest, but it had made sense from the first. Otherwise the natural progression of humanity would have denied technological development until long after the Hutts had conquered the whole galaxy—or the Duros.
But in the inestimable human spirit, they had revolted. They had fled. They had warred. They had stolen and innovated in equal measure. They had spread across the whole galaxy, created countless unfathomable cultures and even evolved to meet local circumstances. There is indeed no dishonour in the Imperium we called the Republic having been founded in a slave revolt. Follow the inestimable example of your nameless but valiant ancestresses and take what your right hand can hold. Tanda lowered her head, paused in the moment of indecision.
The alarm for her comm trilled, and she started, activated it, reached for her carafe of coffee. "Go ahead, L'tenant Saukon."
"We've detected a Quarian squadron standing off against one cruiser and eight frigates, probably corporate ships, Commodore. Orders?"
"Give me a comm channel to the corporate fleet."
"Understood, Commodore. Attempting contact now."
A moment later the indicators blinked over. The voice on the other side was very subdued. "Thunderflare, this system is the legitimate property of the Eldfell-Ashland corporation. We are defending our legitimate palladium mining claims from the Vagrant fleet."
"I do not care what you think of the Quarians. I have decided to make myself the arbiter of the Nubian Expanse. The Empire will make decisions here. My ship's name precedes me, and it is the name of your demise if you do not leave the system."
"...Thunderflare... Why would you help those damned vagrants? They've spent the past centuries roaming from system to system begging and stealing instead of putting effort into colonizing a new system. We're the humans."
"You are not privy to my objectives. Break off." Tanda killed the link, pushed herself to her feet, and headed out to the bridge. "Condition One, Actions Stations."
But Kessingon was there. And looking balefully at her.
Tanda pursed her lips, and drew up short. "Look, we've got a plan, and we're going to follow it. Obedient Quarians are better than humans unwilling to subordinate themselves to the New Order."
"As you say."
Tanda brushed past. She wondered if this were the moment of the breach. The bridge was far more silent than usual, but seemed to crackle with energy. She glanced back to Kessingon, to the stormtroopers on the bridge. Thought of calling for fleet troopers. Suddenly every officer there was acutely aware of how tenuous their command structure was. Men were wondering, evaluating themselves. Did loyalty to her trump loyalty to the ISB as the representatives of COMPNOR? Who would be in charge back home? Did the Commodore's plan really make killing humans over aliens okay?
A thousand different ideas slipped through the heads of a few dozen men. Tanda and Kessingon glared at each other. Nobody dared speak. A single word might be sufficient spark to start the battle – which would it be, barratry or mutiny? Who, at this moment, in this galaxy, could even tell how it would be seen, who would win?
Then Scolus spoke from the pit. "The corporate fleet has come about and is departing the system, Commodore."
The moment fled. The two exchanged a grimly respectful glance, and it seemed Kessingon was as thankful as Tanda was.
"Hail the Quarian squadron."
"Quarian cruiser Vandertrask responding, Commodore."
"Vandertrask, have you received communication from the Farka regarding our intents yet?"
"The Admiralty Board said to be expecting you, Thunderflare... where are you? Our sensors can't pick you up yet."
"In the outer system. We are quite certain you will find supralight sensors a useful extension of your existing supralight communication technology," she commented perhaps a bit dryly. "We are proceeding to your position."
"We confirm, and welcome you."
An hour later, it all went to hell. As they proceeded in company with the Vandertrask and her squadron, the comms boards lit up. "Distress messages from the Eldfell-Ashland force, Commodore. Say they're under attack by aliens."
"But the Quarians are with us, Commander Gristholm!"
"Nonetheless—we are triangulating the position around mass relay comms... The message has been cut off, Commodore."
"Don't wait for me, make the jump to lightspeed at once." She kicked up and out of bed, slipping into her boots and pulling on her uniform jacket. The alarms for Action Stations sounded as the Thunderflare hauled out, and then shot into hyperspace fast enough her deck groaned from the acceleration.
Tanda padded out to the bridge. The Eldfell-Ashland fleet had been moving through regular FTL to the nearest gate. That meant they were so close to where the attack had taken place that they should be there in minutes. The bridge windows showed only the swirling of hyperspace.
"Did we get any kind of data from them?"
"No Commodore, just the distress message. It was heavily jammed and breaking up, without our computers to filter it we'd have received nothing comprehensible," Lieutenant Scolus stepped up to her side, then lowered his voice. "Commodore, there's also a tiny human outlier colony in the system."
"...The colony disappearances."
"Whomever has been committing them, Commodore, has excellent timing. The Eldfell-Ashland fleet shouldn't have been there. We made them be there. We may have interrupted them."
"Thank you, L'tenant. We'll find out momentarily." The countdown to reversion was already beginning.
With a tearing jerk of reality, Thunderflare erupted into the system, through the scattered plasma of a fleet.
"Scanners, report!"
"Starship grade hull armour, Commodore—and there's an enemy Destroyer in the system."
"Shields."
"Shields at full power, Commodore."
Scolus routed the image onto one of the window overlays. The tactical projection on the holoplot followed a moment later. Tanda glanced between the two for reference. It was bizarre, a ship of rock, like an asteroid turned into a warship. And it was accelerating rapidly. As rapidly as a Star Destroyer could. Away from the planet.
"Main batteries, do we have range?"
"Four light seconds beyond maximum range, Commodore."
"Flank battle acceleration. Give pursuit." The planet was left in the wake of the two ships, as Thunderflare's engines howled. The deck creaked a little. The officers stayed on their feet. Reactor power generation was reaching maximum with all batteries ready to fire and shields and engines at full.
"We're not making ground on them, Commodore," Gristholm reported a minute later. "They match our sublight turn. Permission to prepare a full deck strike?"
Tanda crossed her hands. She had a limited quantity of fighters, and an even more limited quantity of good fighters. Worse, a TIE bomber only had about 114% of the acceleration of an ISD-I; a full deck strike would be hobbled by the slowest snubfighter in the force, and would take a very long time to overhaul the fleeing ship. "No. Cease pursuit. We will render aid to the colony and recover survivors."
"Commodore, these are the people who have been destroying human colony after human colony..."
"And I have less than three hundred starfighters even after we've assembled the knock-down kits. Come about!"
"Commodore, we've got something on sensors still in the system."
"Identify it. Maintain Condition One." Tanda turned back to the front of the bridge. The enemy ship disappeared into FTL.
It was a single escape pod, on a ballistic course.
"The ship's already gone, Sir-nothing else on long-range scans, Commodore - one life sign in the pod!"
"If they do not need immediate medical attention have them brought to my briefing room. Maintain highest degree of watch and enter orbit of the colony."
"Aye sir."
It was... an interesting question as to whether the woman, ethnically Hispanic as the Terrans marked such things, wide-eyed and shaking from shock, needed immediate medical attention. She didn't look physically injured, aside from bruises sustained during the lifeboat blast-away sequence. She was carried straight away to the briefing room after the medical droid scanned her, though. Tanda, waiting for her, took one look and keyed open a cabinet, producing a bottle and glasses. "Corellian brandy. You seem like you need a shot. What's your name?"
"C-Camilla Guiterrez... I was... the Navigator on the MSV Stanislaw... brandy s-seems like a pretty damned good idea now... ma'am."
The snifter was slid across the table to her. "Tell me what happened, Navigator. We only saw the debris of your ships."
"... I didn't see much... the quarians, they didn't have anything to do with it. That silhouette... it was just massive, no way they had a monster like that in their Flotilla. I've never seen anything like it... whoever it was, they blew out our engines before we knew what hit us, there was smoke and screaming everywhere... I heard the captain, he yelled something about boarders before he ordered us to the lifepods... They kept hammering us all the while, I jumped in, there was an explosion, and I was out of there... I blacked out, wasn't really restrained right, and next thing I knew... there weren't any other pods. The beacon hadn't gone off, so I hit it manually. Then you showed up. It looked... I don't know, kind of like an asteroid with a station strapped on? I'm not sure. It was big, and I didn't see much before I blacked out, but no, not that at all."
Tanda showed Miss Guiterrez the image of the ship they had just pursued. "Like this, perhaps?"
She hissed. "That! That's what hit us!"
Tanda sighed. "Report the condition of the colony on the surface," she glanced back to Kesea, who stepped onto the bridge. A moment later her voice came through the comms. "Looks like they were hit by some kind of very powerful weapon centred on the colony. But we have survivors. The enemy didn't have enough time for a landing, it appears."
"Thank you, L'tenant Avera." Tanda poured her own shot of brandy, then cleared the intercoms. "This is the Commodore speaking. We have saved the humans of this system from total extirpation. We will be sending troops to the surface to render humanitarian aid. Stand down to Condition Two."
Tanda tried to think. This was a terrifying sort of war, because she really had no very good way of tracking ships through Mass Relays like she did using subspace sensor technology to monitor ships in hyperspace or FTL that was as old as Xim the Despot. "Is there a way to track where a Mass Relay last activated to?" She glanced to one of her Asari officers.
The woman seemed to think; "No, it would be the traffic buoy that would have the record. We don't know much about how the relays work... they might have a record, but it is illegal under galactic law and convention to tamper with them."
"Is there an intact traffic buoy in this system?"
The woman checked her Omnitool. "Negative - it appears to have been destroyed along with the human ships near the relay."
"I see. That's a Secondary relay so it has a great number of destinations that ship could have arrived from." She frowned.
"That is correct, Commodore. They could be anywhere." The blue-skinned woman offered.
"In otherwords, I shouldn't bother looking." Tanda sighed. It was getting to be a common feature of her life. "Very well, then. Arrange accommodations for Miss Guiterrez. We will make the appropriate dispatches to the Systems Alliance in due course."
"Yes, Commodore."
They were certainly capable of being professional and disciplined on duty! ...Even if their off-duty performance still tended towards the scandalous.
-
When they returned to the Quarians, the Captain of the Vandertrask was not pleased. "...Destroyed?!"
Tanda took a breath. "Destroyed."
"... I... I'm sorry, we can't help you... oh, the bosh'tets are going to blame us for this."
"I'll take responsibility for it."
"Commodore?" Gristholm stared at her.
Tanda blanked the pickup and shrugged. "Well, we can't protect aliens who kill humans, now can we? So we can't let anyone think that the Quarians did this. Whereas some kind of impertinence from another of these absurd corporations seems highly likely to me, so why wouldn't I want to give in and kill them all? - And we need the worker population that the Quarians provide. It's that simple." She knew a lot of her officers were translating that as slave. She had done so herself, but after interacting with the Quarians she was more confident that would not be necessary. If they came to her voluntarily, they could be as trusted as any other reasonable client species, like the Falleen.
Tanda reopened the channel. "Vandertrask, assume defensive posture appropriate for an unknown force being in the system. Just to be safe. We will accompany you to the fleet, now. Thunderflare out."
Then Tanda settled in to wait, the skittering of subspace comms back to her home space... Download the probot reports, and any information from the constantly roving hyperspace patrols. The Quarians started mining the system, and Tanda kept Thunderflare there, waiting for a reply. But the response, given that they were Quarians... was not a communication for more negotiations or even to accept the terms. It was when light ships started appearing at the system mass relay.
Then medium ships.
That was all, for a while... and then the heavier ships started arriving.
Tanda rocked back on her heels. It could only mean one thing, and she sucked in her breath. "The last survivors of a great race and storied civilisation, undone by hubris as grand as that of the Contispex Chancellors." Tanda regaled her crew. Thunderflare held position. "This is the migrant fleet, gentlemen. A real fleet, worthy of the fleets of home."
The ships kept coming.
"And since they've come, it means only one thing. It's our fleet now, too, and with it, the Empire here can't be cracked."