2228-2230: The Attican Invasion
After the utterly disastrous raid on the Geth conducted by the most deluded of the Terminus warlords, many believed that with the deaths of so many warlords that the pirate and slaver raids on Citadel colonies would cease for some time, as lieutenants to the deceased tyrants and smaller, unimportant criminals began the age old ritual of fighting over who could get to the top of the food chain now that they had a chance to do so. This was a process that usually took years, sometimes decades to resolve, and during this time attacks on frontier colonies in the Attican Traverse shrunk to almost nothing, as everyone from petty dictators to pickpockets rushed to fill the gap.
However, to the great consternation of the galaxy, this is not what happened. Almost as soon as the geth announced the annihilation of the Terminus "armada", new warlords and criminal cartels moved in to fill the gap, with a minimum of fuss. Where there should have been chaos, power in the Terminus changed as quickly and as easily as the Alliance would its Prime Minister at elections. This alarmed many in Council Space, as the Spectres, the Salarian STG, and Cerberus, among other intelligence groups, began frantically searching for the underlying causes of this unprecedented event. There were many pieces of evidence found; massive credit transfers from mysterious sources, some opponents to the more powerful competitors murdered in ways to seem accidental, and other such things.
Almost everyone involved in the investigation, on every level, was convinced that there could only be one person responsible for this; the Shadow Broker. Only that being, it was believed, could have moved so many assets into place with such secrecy. However, there was absolutely no evidence to support this theory, nor could anyone guess at what would motivate the Broker to do such a thing. Not even Cerberus, who had managed to beat the Broker at his own game once during the Verge War, had not managed to get any dirt on the illusive information dealer.
As the months passed, the Terminus remained quiet. Raids on Council colonies began again, but they were piecemeal and infrequent. Most assumed that the new Terminus warlords were building up for another big attack, though the location of this hypothesized main force, as well as its target, was unknown.
Some believed that the Terminus was beginning to form a unified government, and would petition to join Council Space at last.
Everyone else, even almost all humans, a people very well known for their unyielding idealism, believed this to be ludicrously naive.
A full year and a half passed before the purpose of this strange event became apparent, and by then it was nearly too late; in the years since the Verge War ended, the Alliance had begun to settle and protect the Verge with a reasonable amount of success, as well as helping build up the army and navy of their vassal, the Free Batarian Coalition. The protection was nowhere near the level provided before the Alliance began colonizing beyond the 314 relay, but pirates and slavers could no longer operate in either area without serious risk. But in 2229, by means that could only have been possible with an extremely wealthy and extremely powerful benefactor, a second pirate armada entered the Attican Traverse, and made a beeline for the Alliance Verge colonies.
The alarm was sounded throughout human and batarian space of what was coming, and the armies, garrisons and navies of both species rallied, but it was too late to mount a serious defense for the colonies closest to the traverse, or evacuate them. The sparse patrols in this sector of space quickly fled to predetermined relay clusters, while the colonists fled to the bunkers which in the aftermath of the Verge War had become mandatory for all Alliance colonies, and waited for reinforcements.
For many, however, the warning came to late, as the pirates washed across the new colonies like a malevolent flood; those closest to the Traverse, four sizable colonies, all suffered some level of attack, with one completely depopulated by slavers. After this, the armada moved on to three other colonies, deeper into the Verge, and more heavily populated and developed. By then, most colonists had managed to reach the emergency bunkers, but there was still plenty to loot to be found, and the majority of the armada remained in orbit over these planets, stripping them of anything valuable as quickly as possible before the Alliance attacked again.
However, not all of pirates, slavers, and other assorted criminals partaking of this attack thought this way, and at least a quarter of the new Terminus fleet, under the command of Elanos Haliat, broke off from the main force and assaulted the Alliance's greatest Verge colony; Elysium.
An Alliance colony since the time just before the Verge War had broken out, Elysium had, in the years following the conflict, become the jewel of new colonies in the region. Locally surpassed in population and economy only by the larger, preexisting batarian worlds that had been annexed from the defunct Batarian Hegemony, the planet showed every sign of one day becoming as large and prosperous as any of the colonies past the 314 relay. Elanos knew that raiding this planet succesfully would greatly increase his prestige, as well as pad his own grotesquely large, and wholly unwarranted, ego.
By that point, however, the Alliance had gathered a large enough force to counter attack. Just as Elanos's lackeys and other followers landed on the planet and began assaulting the capital city's garrison, the Alliance eighth fleet, newly formed, and with its factory-fresh dreadnought flagship, the SSV Vinson Massif, arrived in system. Caught off guard, the pirate fleet was shot to pieces; barely one in twenty ships managed to escape the eighth fleet's onslaught, fleeing pell-mell for the system's relay, leaving their comrades on the planet behind.
Elanos Haliat, who was on Elysium's surface when the eighth began its attack, was said to have flown into a rage, killing the vorcha who had brought him the message and swearing he would hunt down and torture every being on the retreating ships. This threat, of course, meant little as the Alliance moved to reinforce the planet and doom the pirates now trapped there.
In a desperate attempt at survival, Elanos gathered his ground forces together and launched a massive assault on Elysium's capital, in an attempt to gain cover from the Alliance orbiting ships; this was a vain hope, but the only one that gave the criminals any chance at survival, as the Eighth fleet would never fire orbital strikes on their own populous.
Knowing that this was their opponents' only real option, the Marine garrison and the Elysium militia dug in around the colony's capital and braced themselves for the attack. The battle lasted unabated for two hours; the first half was mostly a holding action as the garrison and militia stonewalled the attacking pirate hordes, and the second consisted of an encircling counter attack as the marine divisions accompanying the Eighth Fleet landed in and around the capital, reinforcing the defensive line and squeezing the pirate invaders into a smaller and smaller pocket.
Elanos had, in true criminal cartel form, had not actually taken part in the attack, and had remained well behind the frontlines. However, by this point, the entire area held by Terminus war band was the frontline. Enraged and terrified, the turian ordered every surviving heavy weapon brought to the main entrance to the capital, one of the key points in the city's defense, and had every one of them open fire. The resulting barrage destroyed or badly damaged all of the defenses before the entrance, blasted a sizable hole in the solid metal gate in the massive wall encircling the city, and every marine and militiaman there had been killed or too badly injured to fight. Gathering all the pirates and other criminals in the area, Elanos personally led the charge toward the perceived safety of the city. Haliat had of course claimed that as the leader of the expedition, it was his duty to lead the attack.
Absolutely everyone present knew it was because he wanted to get into the safety of the city first, and it would now be safest to be at the front now that all of the defenders in that sector were dead.
However, the reports of the casualties in that sector had overlooked a single soldier; one N7 marine, latter dubbed "The Lion of Elysium", had survived the overwhelming barrage, and now took up position in front of the damaged gate with as many weapons as the soldier could carry. As the Terminus war band came into range, the marine opened fire, switching from position to position, and weapon to weapon, all the while calling in air, mortar, and ground artillery strikes. The marine killed dozens of pirates personally, and several hundred more with the aforementioned strikes. This sent the assault into total confusion
Haliat, now at the point where his rage finally overpowered his cowardice, charged the marine with a pair of long, talon-shaped daggers that the turian's favored. The N7 was forced to stop firing, and engage in a one-on-one duel with the pirate. Numerous camera drones, in service to the city's new networks, captured the duel from every angle as Haliat and the Lion stabbed, slashed, blocked, and dodged, giving and receiving wounds before the vary gates of the city, like two medieval knights of old.
Finally, just before Alliance reinforcements arrived, Elanos managed to break through the marine's guard, delivering a blow to the abdomen that broke through the armor and cut open the Lion's abdomen. The N7 fell down at Elanos's knees, apparently beaten. But, just as Elanos was about to deliver a killing blow to the N7's neck, the marine's hand shot up, caught the turian's arm by the wrist, pulled the crime lord down, and driving the sword into the turian's chest and out his back, twisting the blade, and ripping it back out again. Both collapsed on the ground, Elanos Haliat dead, the marine passed out from pain and blood loss.
Over the next hour, the Alliance Marine divisions gradually wiped out the pirate forces. Few prisoners were taken; given the Alliance's usual method of dealing with pirates and slavers in their territory, most of those who had followed Elanos chose to fight to the death rather than risk surrender, and the Alliance divisions that attempted to explain that they would take non-slavers prisoner were generally not believed.
After Elysium was secure, and more Alliance fleets had arrived, humanity launched its counterattack to reclaim the ransacked colonies. The Eighth, Sixth, and Fourth Fleets launched at two of the inner colonies; the third was intended to be liberated by the Second and Third Fleets of the Free Batarian Coalition. This was the first time that these forces had ever been in such a battle, and many worried that they may not yet be up to the challenge. It was soon apparent that these concerns were unfounded; the Free Batarian forces performed admirably in space and on the ground, and the colony was cleared in only slightly less time than those liberated by Alliance forces.
With a third of the invading fleet destroyed, and the rest scattered and panicked, the remnants of the Terminus Fleet limped back across the Attican Traverse and gathered at a predetermined point in the outer area of the Terminus. As scouting from Unterseeboote soon revealed, the ships, though they had made off with a significant amount of loot and material, had not taken as much as they had hoped, and had endured more casualties then they expected. Hacking into their communications, the crews learned that the mysterious benefactor that had led them thus far had now abandoned them; they were told to come to this point to wait for more instructions, but these instructions never came. Now, they were milling about, unsure of who was in command or what they were to do.
Alliance command seized this knowledge and gathered the vast majority of its naval arsenal for a final, crushing blow of this pirate armada; The Alliance First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Fleets, as well as Second, Third, and Fourth fleets of the Free Batarian Coalition. The slavers, pirates and other scum of the galaxy had once again struck at the innocent populous they were charged to protect. The cries of "Remember Amaterasu", which had faded somewhat in the 25 years since the atrocity had been committed, returned with a vengeance after this attack, with the names of many other colonies beside it. By gathering and striking with this overwhelmingly large and powerful force, in the Terminus Warlords' own territory, the Alliance intended to make a statement to all of the criminals and warlords in the galaxy that if they attacked their people, then they would be found and destroyed, no matter where they hid or how many of them there were.
But such a statement was not to be made.
In a move that stunned everyone in the Alliance, but few outside of it, the Citadel Council held an emergency session on the matter of the Terminus invasion as it was occurring. Given humanity's usual response to such things, the Council had, correctly, guessed that the Alliance would likely enter the Terminus Systems in pursuit of the criminals. So, the great trio unanimously agreed, and handed down their decision; the Citadel Council forbade the Alliance from launching an attack into the Terminus Systems, on the grounds that it would unite the other minor powers of the sector that had not partaken in the invasion and spark the Terminus-Council War that was so feared by them.
The Alliance military and populous reacted with shock, betrayal and rage; how could the Council races possibly allow this atrocity to go unchallenged? When the reason for the demand was given, trying to avoid all out war with the Terminus, many humans were quick to point out that the Terminus warlords were likely at their weakest point in centuries; they had, within a space of two years, been culled and broken twice. The Alliance and the rest of the Council races struck now, and did so quickly, they could destroy nearly half the petty dictators in the sector, and the rest would fall in line with any demands the Council would make of them; as strong as they were, the surviving half of the Terminus could never hope to challenge the forces a united Citadel Space could bring to bear.
Although the Salarian representative expressed fondness for humanity's plan of striking where their enemies were weakest, the Council remained adamant in their decision; the Alliance and the Coalition were to halt their advance at the edges of their territory in the Traverse, and that was final. If this directive was ignored, than the Batarians and the Humans risked expulsion from Citadel Space, as well as the intervention of other Council forces, particularly the Turians.
Frustrated and helpless, the Alliance was forced to scuttle their planned offensive and settle for hunting down any Terminus invaders that had been stranded on their planets or in their space, then return to their ports to address their losses. Very few ships had suffered severe damage, much less been destroyed, compared to the enormous casualties they had inflicted on the raiders, but few called the fight a victory. Overnight, Alliance relations with the Citadel soured. The depth of humanity's disgust with their allies was fully captured by the actions of ambassador Udina; he had moved out of the apartment he had been sharing with Councilor Tevos back into his original quarters at the Alliance Citadel Embassy, and refused to speak to her outside diplomatic events for nearly six months.
Eventually, by the following year, things within the Alliance began to return to a semblance of normalcy; the damage had been repaired, the colonies repopulated, and military patrols tightened. However, all was not as it once was. This was the second time an atrocity comparable to the Amaterasu Massacre had occurred with Alliance borders, and all knew that this new attack, the Attican Invasion as it was being called, eclipsed the Massacre in every area. By unanimous vote, and with near perfect popular approval, the Alliance Parliament greatly increased its military budget, calling for two more fleets on top of the twelve already in service, 4 more dreadnoughts, which would bring them up to the absolute maximum allowed by the revised Treaty of Farixen, and an additional 200,000,000 personnel.
Humanity had subconsciously, but unanimously, agreed on what their goal for the future was.
The Terminus would be brought to civilization. One day, the Council Species armies would enter that lawless sector of space, and wipe it clean of the filth that infested every corner of it.
And the Systems Alliance would lead the charge.
A.N. Well, Follower38? Have I injected a sufficient amount of action for you? :D
Well, here is one big conflict to deal with going forward; you guys all know about that horrible Terminus- Citadel War the Council is always so worried about? The one that would the biggest since the Krogan Rebellions, and would lay waste to entire sectors of the galaxy and consume billions of lives on either side? Well, from here on out, The Alliance is going to not only not avoid this war, they are actively preparing for and trying to START it. The petty tyrants, cartel leaders, and slave bands escaped them this time; the Navy and Marines of the batarian and human forces will not let them escape the next time they meet.
Although, technically speaking, the leaders of this attack didn't actually escape; the Spectres and the STG were quite busy hunting down the surviving leaders of the Invasion and handing their proverbial heads to humanity on proverbial platters. That, just as much as the ultimatum, was what got the Alliance to stay its hand.