2213: New Fronts

Now that they had suffered the most utterly humiliating military defeat since the Krogan Rebellions, the leaders of the Hegemony finally acknowledged that the human System's Alliance was a dangerous and highly effective force. Far from achieving their goal of a quick, decisive victory of subjugation, forced vassalization, and enslavement of humanity, their military had been torn to pieces and the territory they had hoped to colonize had been wrested from them by a supposed inferior people, often with the assistance of their own traitorous subjects. Their plan of long, attritional land battles had been proven useless, as the Alliance would simply bypass them and starve them out, even valuable garden worlds. On top of all of this, they had lost 9 of their 11 dreadnoughts, 4 of them before they ever even saw combat.

However, the iron-fisted rulers of the Batarians were quick to spin this information in as positive a light as possible. Utilizing their vast propaganda infrastructure, they spoke of the defeats they had suffered as "cowardly acts by a lesser species that could not fight a real battle." Appealing to the notion of the Batarian's perceived superiority, they began to rally the citizens of the Hegemony to rise up and put the humans and their alien pets in their place. Given that these were the planets that held so many Hegemony supporters, most responded to the call as the core regions of Batarian space were whipped into a frenzy of hatred. Defensive emplacements throughout the sector of space were strengthened, military recruitment rose to the point where any casualties suffered in the previous years were easily made right, and warship production rose to unprecedented levels for the nation. They also began to construct 5 new dreadnoughts to replace those they had lost, though this time the various parts of the ship were constructed in shipyards across Hegemony space; that way if the Alliance attacked, they would only destroy a handful of the parts under construction.

It was not just in the orders of magnitude that they were building, though; so thoroughly incensed was the Batarian government that they even began designing their own destroyers, battlecruisers, and carriers, their desire for victory outweighing their disgust for humanity's innovation. The first Batarian carrier, the Vengeance, was on active duty before the year was out, and provided an upset by defeating an Alliance task force, destroying 4 destroyers and a cruiser, due to overwhelming numbers of strike craft, which the Alliance had long believed to be an advantage it would always hold.

Finally, the Hegemony adopted the Alliance commerce and supply line raiding strategies, and began sending flotillas of its own frigates to hunt down and destroy human supply ships and lone military craft. However, they were not nearly as effective at the practice as the Alliance was, for two major reasons. First, the Batarian frigates lacked stealth drives, and were easily detected before they got within fighting range; thus, the Hegemony ships were forced to retreat far earlier in a battle before reinforcements arrived and they were overwhelmed. Second, they simply lacked experience in that manner of fighting. Human frigate crews had trained in supply raiding doctrine for decades, and now had two years combat experience under their belts, and so were far more effective. And it was not long before the Alliance organized its supply ships into conveys with Unterseeboots for protection; very quickly, the Hegemony raiders found that they themselves were the prey as they were blown out of space before they could do significant damage.

Frustrated at the stubbornness and, to them, surprising ability of the Alliance's war making skills, the Hegemony began to settle in for a long siege until they were again strong enough to go on the offensive.

On the other side of the equation, the human-run government that had just inflicted an unprecedented upset on a seemingly superior power was at a loss as to how to proceed. They knew that the relay defenses at the edge of the Hegemony core area were powerful, and that was just the tip of the iceberg. Raiding by battlecruisers and stealth frigates was doing some damage, but it was quickly being made right by the massive increase in production the Hegemony had instigated. It soon became clear to the men and women of the Alliance navy that the "death by a thousand cuts" strategy was no longer going to produce the wanted results. The only way forward was to attack directly, and this guaranteed massive casualties they could ill afford.

Still, the Alliance position was not completely untenable. With the "2nd Stalingrad" victory at the 314 relay, and the following Blitz of the Verge, the two nations' navies were on equal footing in terms of numbers. In addition, their lanes of supply and support in the Skyllian Verge were surprisingly strong, due mainly to the numerous rebellions occurring on Hegemony fringe colonies in the sector. These same colonies were devoting any and all of their resources to the Systems Alliance's war effort, and with good reason; they knew that if the humans lost, they would suffer a fate arguably worse than death.

As the war entered this new faze, where the roles of the combatants were reversed, the galaxy looked on with bated breath, wondering which of the two combatants would emerge victorious, and which would strike the first major blow of this phase of the conflict.

Ultimately, the Alliance beat the Hegemony to the punch.

A.N.

"What are the relations like between the humans and the quarians?"

"How are the krogan and quarians getting along with the new Paragon humans?"

"Where are the quarian and krogan relations chapters?"

"Hey MB, are you ever going to talk about the quarians and krogan in this fic?"

I WILL GET TO THEM EVENTUALLY, PEOPLE! CALM DOWN!

Sorry, I've just gotten tons of reviews and PMs lately regarding that point. It is starting to get on my nerves. I haven't done the quarians and krogan in this story because they, for the most part, are considered outside Citadel society, and often outside of Citadel Space entirely. And because the humans at this point have such a strong sense of inadequacy, they don't much venture outside of the space of their new friends, so contact with quarians and krogan for the Alliance has been limited to the occasional mercenary and underage quarian on pilgrimage. Not much for Parliament to go off of.

Also, this has nothing to do with anything, but this fic now bears the "Octo8 Seal of Approval". For those that don't know, Octo8 is, so far as I know, the definitive word on Paragoness on this site. So, if he says that I have captured the essence of being a Paragon, believe it.

Which is to say, I was nice to biotics.

I really hope he doesn't play the Dragon Age games. He would FREAK if he saw the Circle of Magi, the Templar Order and the Chantry.