"Captain, localized shield failures! Starboard quarter, shield segments twelve and fourteen. Enemy fighters concentrating."

"Intensify starboard quarter firepower. Helm, bring us about!"

Captain Turla barked the last command, and the Bombard pivoted before the Oculi could drill home to board, flailing and dying under a wave of fire. She presented her port to the drones with its shields still up, and her stern to the enemy.

"Captain, we can't fire on the enemy effectively from this orientation," gunnery came on.

"Check fire." A pause. "Engines, ahead full. We've done enough."

Turla had already detached Rintonne's Flame and Itaska. Both ships were fast enough to escape from the Reapers and light enough to have been destroyed by now if he hadn't done so; the Bombard was not. On either count.

He looked at his orders and shook his head again. "Set course for the first planet, flank acceleration." He shifted comm lines. "Flank, and give me a little more if you can, engineering."

"Aye Aye, Captain..."

Turla grit his teeth. "Jamming to maximum, broad spectrum. We won't be getting more communications after this point. The fleet has its plan. Final orders for Rintonne's Flame and Itaska: Proceed First Planet, best possible speed."

"Understood, Captain."

With her ion drive tails lighting through Reapers as they manoeuvred to position themselves and overtake... The stern chase was the long chase, and it was hard for their beams to be effective through the concentrated ion cone ripped out of the drives at barely sublight velocity.

Turla was satisfied to see that the Reapers, at least, were as badly affected by the jamming as any fleet back home would be. Worse, even, as they had not directly encountered before it and had no chance for counters. Perhaps they'd eliminate its effectiveness with their hideous computational ability... Eventually.

For now, there was one more chance he had to keep his ship alive. With most of her batteries masked, she could devote all of her power to the shields and engines, too. Capacitors slowly charging allowed her to haul through a drum-tight salvo of turbolaser bolts when one of the Reapers managed to push alongside, in more than a few cases, lucky hits outright crippling the monstrous bio-ship.

He had destroyed more than a dozen of them, plus another twenty eliminated on the ground. It was a good score for a single ship, considering each a dreadnought much larger than his Bombard. The damage, though, was starting to tell. His secondary engines were at full power, for the VSD had lost one of its main engines as the pursuit wore on. Especially to starboard, where the Reapers had concentrated their first attack, the armour was blackened and scoured and several gun batteries disabled.

And the cryptic instruction from Commander Zorah: Bait the Reapers off the surface at all costs, for the sake of humanity and the Moff's better naturewas still governing his private operations. But his orders from the Moff that had followed were reassuring. There was no need to violate either directive.Bring the Reapers into the vicinity of the planet Mercury, and be confident that I am waiting to receive them.

"She must be bringing the ISDs out of lightspeed between Sol and Mercury while I jam against any leakage of the sensor trace... But why?"

"Captain?"

"Nothing, L'tenant. Carry on." He stood his ground as the Bombard rocked from a solid hit somewhere. "Report!"

"Number three power coupling knocked out. Our ventral surface is unprotected, Captain! Shall we prepare for the jump to lightspeed?"

Turla ground a heel. "Negative."

"Sir?"

"I said negative! Gunnery: Concentrate the tractor beams on maximum repulsion along the ventral aft vector, quickly! Those weapons have a physical component."

"Aye aye!"

Bombard tore through the inner solar system, connected to her pursuers by beams of light and compressed metal. Splash and spreading over the particle shields as the ray shields destroyed their coherency, a trail of perfectly formed vacuum dust was torn and spun by the ionized drivetails. The tractor beams light up, and suddenly the beams that had been boring into the armour around the reactor were bent from side to side, spinning away from the Bombard as the ship shuddered in her bones.

"Midpoint, Captain!"

"Kill the drives and bring us about!"

"Zero acceleration, bringing her bow around..."

"Transfer engine power to the weapons." Turla folded his hands behind his back. "L'tenant Alarron, you may fire when ready."

An Imperial ship could de-accelerate with thrust vectoring energy fields projected from the drive cone. It didn't have to. Turla had Bombard reorient... During the de-acceleration phase to Mercury, the Reapers were welcome to overshoot and continue straight into the Sun. If they didn't want to... The image before him swung into a vast horde of hundreds of Reapers that were still in pursuit, at least two hundred.

The main batteries locked on and opened fire. A torrent of green and orange, retina searing without the polarizing shields and the image-screen auto lockdown, ripped outwards and found ample targets. The forward shields were once again covering the hull from all angles. They lit up with redirected Reaper fire.

And the debris of the first Reaper to fall kept on going on the journey they had both begun, hurtling past the Bombard as she continued to deaccelerate, retaining their velocity until incineration within the heart of the Motherworld's Sun.

The thunder of the guns sounded through the deckplates.

-

Thunderflare, Stalker and twelve Class 2-equipped light ships, mostly corvettes, came flickering out of hyper in a small pseudomotion, the terminus of their deacceleration locked before the searing Sun-side surface of Mercury.

"Shields."

"Shields are up, Moff Pryl," Commander Scolus answered. "All is in readiness here."

The bridge windows had already automatically polarized. "System status?"

"Your Ladyship, they're lifting off reinforcements from the surface of the planet in number. Hyperwave scanners are resolving force strength. ...Bombardseems intact, and is on course. Pursued by one hundred and ninety-four Reaper dreadnoughts."

"Every other sensor, scanning and comms spectrum is gone under full spectrum jamming," Tali'Zorah added... "Exactly as ordered."

"Thank you. Commander Zorah, begin positioning the fleet to bring all guns to bear on Sol."

Tanda opened the hyperwave communications line that they could be confident would not give them away to the Reapers. "EDI, this is Thunderflare Actual. Report status."

"Understood." She started work... EDI replied; "Cerberus is attacking the Mars facility with commando teams. Doctor T'Soni and Jedi Tasiele are engaging them. We are moving to deploy Captain Shepard, Alliance personnel Lieutenant Commander Williams and Lieutenant Vega to assist."

"We're luring the Reapers into the inner system. You should have plenty of time." She cut the channel and raised her hand, turning to the side. "Tali, prepare the firing pattern."

"Yes, Moff," A few moments, Tali remaining reserved as she did something that was... Utterly terrifying, actually. "Transmit to the other ships when complete?"

"Yes. Follow it with the fire order at once. Keep updating the plot continuously now on Reaper force's position."

The resulting updates showed near to three hundred of the big dreadnaughts closing on them, perhaps the same still groundside, as a hundred reinforcements lifted off from the planet to complete the destruction of the Bombard, hopefully unaware of their presence... And if they weren't, well, at least unaware of their intent.

Tanda watched as the fire continued for the next five minutes. The time ticked down toward the necessary firing pattern completion... Anything after it was useful, but gratuitous. Finally, after a massive explosion erupted across the hull of the Bombard, she knew she could wait no longer.

"Start jamming them and bring us out from the shadow of Mercury." Power surged and two ISDs with their dozen of escorts appeared from behind the planet.

"Commence turbolaser fire on the Reaper fleet." The moment the order went out, the gunnery officers selected the targets which posed the greatest threat to the crippled Bombard and opened fire. The Reapers and the Imperials both knew action was joined with the main strength of their forces in the system, indeed, the Reapers must know by now that this was the main strength of the entire Empire here. Tempted with the prospect of decisive victory, they continued to close.

Bombard flickered and disappeared to lightspeed. A cheer was raised on the bridge by Scolus and his officers at her survival, but it was muted by duty, and the firing continued from two fresh ships of considerably greater power. The Reapers were hurting, now.

"Moff Pryl, I have multiple Reaper signatures at the Charon Relay!"

"Then we'll have to win quickly. Keep the jamming up to maximum." Tanda smiled thinly under her mask. "And don't turn the ray shields off by accident." Delivered in the characteristic accent of the core, well, it said everything it needed to.

"Reapers at the relay have gone FTL, inbound. Shaping a pincer manoeuvre on our jamming sources, Your Ladyship."

As they spoke, the first of the Reapers targeted by Thunderflare and Stalker started to explode. Tanda watched impassively, occasionally glancing to her chrono. The attack on Terra by the fighter wings was about to start, and she gave no overt indication of interest in the news of reinforcements for the Reapers, except to remark sotto voice to Tali: "Excellent, more charcoal for the bantha grill." Then she was all serious again. "Tali, how's the stellar surface reacting?"

"The corona is becoming unstable... I've... not seen anything like this before."

"Energy in, energy out. Time to arrival of the Reaper force?"

"Earth force... three minutes. Out-system force... seven minutes." came from one of the crew pits, as Tali started to pace a bit. "Why do I feel like bait?" she muttered to herself.

"Is Shala'Raan's force in position outside of the system?" Tanda asked, and then answered back to Tali: "We are sort of bait." The battle outside seemed so remote, acting as an Admiral instead of a Captain. Doubtless Scolus was incredibly busy ... And counting on her to execute it right.

"... Yay." Tali shook her head as she looked to the readouts again. "Yes, Moff Pryl, Admiral Shala'Raan reports in position, running silent." She took a breath, adding: "Just saying, five hundred big Reapers, sort of enough to smash any fleet in existence I knew of."

"We'll hold," Tanda answered with more confidence. "Thanix cannon are a step backwards against our shields-and they're the basis of Reaper technology."

"Can they push themselves through the particle shields?" Tali's voice mused, nervously, waiting for the hammer to fall.

"It should be impossible. Our particle barriers form a solid wall. Only by exceeding the local energy transfer rate can you punch through, and that requires the velocity of a suicide attack."

"Begin moving the fleet in toward the stellar corona. Keep firing on the Reapers..."

"..." Tali gave her wife a look, but did so... and then the first group of Reaper reinforcements burst out of FTL at painfully close range, opening fire near-instantly.

The group of Imperial ships shuddered under the fire, and their counter-fire converged and destroyed two Reapers in the opening five seconds. Main batteries hammering, two ISDs were worth a huge swathe of the enemies they were facing, and they confidently refused to yield, fighting under the unimaginable glare of the sun, three-fourths of the way from Mercury to Sol.

"... Additional ships are lifting from the third planet, Moff Pryl!"

"... I think you annoyed them..." Tali mumbled as they... started firing harder, fighters swarming them while they fired down at the star.

As the Reapers pulled away from Earth, more than two hundred and fifty QEQ starfighters erupted out of hyperspace and dived toward the atmosphere. The remaining Reapers on the ground were confronted with the risk of being knocked down and destroyed where they had landed or taking off again.

For the most part, they took off. This was real fighting now, a kind the Reapers had never encountered before, and each Reaper was, in a way, an individual. They started to make decisions considering their own survival in a way they never had to have considered before. It caused chaos, and the fighter squadrons, remaining concentrated, targeted the Reapers who had waited for clear orders before starting to lift off, dodging downward beams from those that had, and struck with their full torpedo and missile salvoes.

Back within the burning closeness of vast Sol at their backs, the two ISDs saw their advantage evaporating as the Reapers coordinated and concentrated. Space was filled with crossing beams and bolts, judicious use of ion cannon keeping enough hapless, tumbling Reapers in the front rank to have the added effect of severely complicated the targeting picture for such a dense pack of enemies.

"We'll probably have very little warning when it finally comes," Tali warned urgently. But even as she gave the warning, it happened. Oh, by the force...Solar light bathing the star destroyer and the rest of the system turned invisible in the glare at this range...

..."Moff, we've got a-" Tali cut off as the viewscreens automatically darkened as the fleet vanished into the fire.

Tanda spit out her order as if there was no ado about it. "All ships with tractor beams, lock on to Reapers and hold them in place! Concentrate maximum firepower to the ion cannon to disrupt their engines!"

Ships lurched as the giant dreadnoughts tried to flee the flames, tractors overloaded, everything shuddering around them and rumbles travelling deep through Thunderflare's keel as outside... hell erupted all around them.

"Shields holding," the report came crisply from the pits.

"Hold them in place until they've all slipped our grasp or are no longer registering on hyperwave scans... Stand by to move out of the stellar corona on my order."

... It took longer than it should have... minutes ticked by... The Reapers fought, struggling to survive, struggling to do everything they could to continue their individual existences, in the face of a mass death of Reapers that had never happened before.

And then, quietly and limply, not like combat but like the end of the throes of strangling a chicken, their tractors were either slack, or holding much smaller amounts of mass. The hyperwave sensors showed the rest: The Reapers were re-grouping over Earth. What was left was carbonized ash.

"Fleet to form up and move out of the stellar corona. Begin calculating a microjump to the Jovian mass limit and tell Admiral Shala'Raan to stand ready!"

"Additional mass transits at Charon Relay..." And then they jumped. The battle for Sol wasn't over yet.