I'd like to start of by setting a few things. the way I get this battle group over too the mass effect universe won't affect the story much other than giving a cool story to why the group has its cuts and bruises and maybe letting in some iconic characters
second Mac canons will scale up from the frigate figure given as ships get bigger and more powerful. the punic's guns being a super mac cannons are incredibly powerful but not as much so as the infinity I think I will make it use lighter projectiles
also the ships will get an arbitrary slip space upgrade to let them do 200ly a day still way below covenant or post war human FTL but reasonable. I always though the massive instant jump in ftl speed post Human-Covenant war was a tad weird and this can in a way be a stop gap
the last main thing is that this story will have no Spartans in it
Admiral Jenson was sitting in her CIC waiting for hell to come to her. She had been ordered to go to reach with her recently upgraded battlegroup to give support to UNSC forces, but she was honestly scared and concerned as she stopped receiving updates from the planet roughly 12hrs ago.
[how do we lose contact with a whole planet much less reach. There had to be 100's of millions of active troops on the planet.] Jenson thought as she used her neural link to do a quick recheck on her battlegroup.
her CO James seemed to notice her distress and tried to calm her. "hey Emily try to stay with us we all are right behind you, we will have to deal with the problems as they arise." James whispered to her.
" I know I just don't feel ready for what we will see at reach." Emily responded
No-one responded to that as even though no-one wanted to admit it it was a shared concern of everyone there.
" we will be exiting slip-space in t minus 5 minutes" the ships smart AI Gorgo
"tell all pilots and flight crews to go to full alert and prepare to launch." Emily ordered the ai
"already done the pilots have been itching to go out" Gorgo says
The ship shortly there after exited the portal into real space. Even before the admiral could start giving orders the bridge of the Trafalgar was alight with activity. The rest of the ships in the group had gone into a similar state.
"charge up the MACs and give me a full system scan" Emily ordered
" what about our flight groups" The main flight coordinator asked
" don't launch them till we have a better grasp of the situation " Emily responded
Emily looked to one of her sensors operators and could see the fear and shock in her face
"What do you see crewman" she virtually demanded
"uh...I.. I think reach is lost." the crewman studdered out.
"Just me tell what is going on crewman" the admiral repeated with more authority
"I am still seeing 70 ships in the General area of the planet and it seems to be in the process of being glassed... their are hundreds of ship corpses in vicinity of the planet and None of the orbital defenses are still up and running." the sensors officer responded with clear pain in her voice and tears beginning to form in her eyes
" can you detect any friendly IFF's in the AO." Jenson said with a voice that was no longer held emotion in any meaningful sense as she tapped her fingers on the holographic table showing reach and the nearby planetoids
The sensors op looked through all the channels and put out a all hail. "we have multiple pings all across the planet... And a faint signal coming from some debris and asteroid field 100,000kms from reach."
"Can we realistically launch a rescue op to try and pick up some of the survivors" Jenson asked
Gorgo martialized in a corner of the holo-table " we can begin to rescue our men if we send a diversion element for the 70 ships that are glassing the planet and giving orbital support."
"do we have the range advantage on the ships that the covenant have." Jenson asked
" we do except for the two CAS assault carriers that are currently in atmosphere... hold on We are getting a comms request from that debris and asteroid field from before." Gorgo informed
" put them through maybe they have information on the covenant fleet and the battle here." jenson said
the holo-table replaced the system map with a hologram of a large middle aged man with clear scarring on his hands and face in captains uniform and An Ai that was dressed like an American football player. "hello admiral its great to see you my name is Jacob Hayes and I am in control of the Halbert class destroyer hell's obituary, as well as he remnants of some battlegroups that were defending reach."
"Been a while Jacob, what do you currently have control over " she asked with a weak smile as her CO in the back round ordered two marathon class heavy cruisers and a valiant class super cruiser to got to the small fleet remnants
the large mans shoulders slumped clearly as he let out a slightly defeated sigh. "currently I have control over a heavily damaged Orion class assault carrier a Charon class frigate and 3 Stalwart class frigates one of which is virtually held together with weld and duct-tape."
" Be straight with me how badly damaged is the carrier and frigate not to mention your own ship which went unmentioned."
Jacob virtually snarled though Emily knew it was not at her." the Orion class is limited to roughly 80% power but is completely slip-space capable the frigate is not slip space capable the engines and reactor is too damaged though luckily the slip-space drive is completely fine. The smallest grin grasped his dark lips as he mentioned his own ships status." as far as my destroyer she is venting on a few decks and has some slight armor degradation but as a whole she is still 100% ready for a fight"
Jenson's Green eyes were alight with humor " I see that ole Hell's obituary is still as tough as ever." Jacob responded with a simple nod
"so what is the plan now mam" Jacob said as his face went back to stone cold professionalism
"I plan to save as many as I can on the ground Then we make a plan from there"
" I agree with the plan the Orion is full of troops from the surface as are my frigates "
Emily rubbed her chin as she thought " I want you to have all troops on the frigates on my ship in 20 as well as the damaged frigate in the ventral hanger in case we have to quickly take off"
"understood" Jacob said as he leaned back and told his communications officer to tell the hell hound to limp its sorry ass to the Trafalgar for repairs.
"good Because I want you to lead our wolf packs on a distraction mission so our other ships can retrieve groundside troops"
"it would be my pleasure" the notoriously aggressive captain said with a mischievous grin as he disconnected the link
" gorgo tell our frigates to go to Captain Hayes and follow his orders" The ai put the order through and the 8 Paris class frigates left to join the quickly organizing wolf-pack surrounding Hayes's destroyer all while the Orion class and Hell's hound limped to the main fleet.
A new link popped up for Jenson and she used her neural lace to answer it as she worked on a console nearby " the is commander Josh Chen of the assault carrier 'all the way'. Captain Hayes said to join your battlegroup to provide support."
" sync your flight groups with the two epoch class carriers in my group and get into contact with Baron to further streamline the process."
"Understood" Chen said as he nodded to the admiral and disconnected.
"Hayes says his wolf-pack is ready as soon as you are" Gorgo told the admiral
"tell him to begin the fireworks." Jenson said as she zoned in for her job
Jenson began to order the fleet into positions in the planets gravity well so that they could begin pulling up troops. She would periodically check the holo-tables to see how Hayes was doing. as she had suspected he was giving the covenant hell, and lighting up space with the sheer amount of missiles he was launching. She watched as hundreds of transports covered by fighters, bombers and drones began to deposit hundreds of thousand's of marines and army personnel across her battlegroup
Jenson decided to check on he distraction force so she opened a holo-communications line with the obituary. the first thing that she saw was flickering red lights and some wires hanging down from the ceiling. she heard Jacob bellowing about trying to intercept plasma torpedoes with archer barrages and Dodging into debris fields " sorry Jen but I'm Kind of busy ... fucking hit that fucker with both MACs keep him away from us, and prepare the shiva while your at it." the captain cleared his throat before addressing the admiral again. " we can't hold them too much longer. we don't have the numbers to get into a legit fight and they are beginning to wizen up to my tricks Please tell me evacuations are going well."
Gorgo decided to respond for the admiral. "The majority of the evacuations will be completed in the hour. sadly some may be left behind even still"
"ya I know that. I... just wanna save as many as I can. we'll hold em till your done but we'll need more support preferably long range support."
"we understand captain ill send the 'come find out' and 'right of way' as long range support" Jenson said
" thanks admiral now I'm sad to say I have to focus on keeping the wolves on the hunt Hayes out" the captain said as he disconnected
"How many troops have been evacuated so far Gorgo." Jenson ask as she rubs her forehead to deal with the head ache and stress from the short time she has been in system. [I cant believe I've only been here for 8 hours]
"so far over 600,000 have been taken off the planet."
15 minutes later a sun engulfed a portion of the covenant fleet knocking out all their shields and outright killing any ship lighter than a CCS class. overall of the 70 ships originally in the covenant fleet only 30 ever left atmosphere and of those 11 had been destroyed 9 by the nuke and another 6 damaged. All of the wolf pack had been badly damaged and 5 of the Paris classes had been destroyed as had a strident class. while the loses greatly saddened the admiral she couldn't argue that the covenant hadn't been left worst off for once.
she got a priority holo-link from the obituary. " okay J- admiral we really kicked the hornet nest with that one we need to regroup and prepare to possibly leave"
"understood regroup with the fleet we are going to prepare to retreat" Jen said as she began to give order across the whole fleet. "baron begin recalling all the flight groups." she told the ai that dealt with most of the carrier based operations. The ai heeded the order and flight groups began to do a staggered and controlled retreat back to their carriers.
"baron how are the losses within flight groups."
" quite good admiral only 22% losses and 55% damages. that's a good trade for 1 Cas 2CCS 3Dav's 3cpv's and 2crs's" Baron said clearly excited and proud of the flight groups he had commanded "make that 4 Dav's"
the battle group reformed up. the 2 Valiants now Had gouges from plasma hits and pock-marks from laser batteries while all the frigates had marks every where from the same laser batteries. through great luck and a screen of archers the obituary had also managed to survive a glancing blow from a plasma torpedo with the gouge to match.
Jenson Had a bad feeling about something " prepare one of the nova's for launch"
Her weapons officer at first began to follow the order before doing a double take and looking at her with questioning eyes. " are you sure w-"
"yes I'm sure I don't know what it is but I feel that something is coming"
she would soon see how right she was as a massive covenant fleet that had comeback after having dropped some of the useful parts off from the super carrier to high charity had come back for guard duty
Jen looked at the holo-map and saw 300 covenant ships mostly capital class right before a holo-link 'request' from the Lead ship of the covenant fleet was sent to her.
"shoot the nova kinetically toward that fleet" Jen whispered to the ships ai as she opened the link
" my name is varro Kareemee I am the master of this fleet and I sentence you to oblivion for the sin of sending my brothers to he same. Make your peace." The large sangheli said in a growling tone just before cutting the link
The massive carrier launched a missile the size of a light frigate at the battle group that rocketed at unforeseen speeds toward the group.
"put on the point defense and warm up the archer pods" Jen ordered the ai
"done and done but that missile is giving off massive slip-space fluctuations" the ai responded
as the missile closed into 30,000Kms the point defense began to nail it finding it to be shielded and quite heavily at that. at 10,000Kms the missile was destroyed by a mix of point defense and barrages of archer missiles. When the missile was destroyed it formed a black hole that began to draw in the fleet
" the fuck is that What happened" Jen virtually screeched
" it seems that they mad the slip space engine from the long night of solace into a massive slip space bomb. when we hit it with ordinance it gave the regular slip space portal the mass to turn into a pseudo black hole"
"Can we escape the event horizon of the blackhole" the ai shook its head no.
" and even if we can the Black hole is unstable and will explode outward soon anyway."
Jen opened and comm link to everyone under her command " I would like to start off with an apology. I am sad to say that none of use are making it back to UNSC controlled space. And I would also like to let you know that despite that I have no regrets having served all of you here."
"Gorgo set the nuke to go off in 5 mins. Also send a message to High-com that reach as well as battlegroup retrieval was lost" Jen whispered
"sir"
the entire battlegroup was dragged through the blackhole but it didn't have the effects they thought.
"what's going on gorgo why are we not dead" Jen said not understanding the exact situation
"that wasn't a blackhole... I guess the slip-space portal was just so massive and so destabilized that it drew in any mass near it." the ai said utterly flabbergasted and lost for words.
" men and women of battle group retrieval I am not 100% percent sure of what s going on but it seems that we will live to see another day
the entire battlegroup went through the portal traveling for 2hours before any hints of the portal collapsing came in. " the slip stream is closing in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1." Gorgo announces across the whole fleet.
"do you have any idea where we are or how close we are to UNSC space." Jen asked
" Ya... and your not going to like it." the ai replied
"just tell me the truth Gorgo"
"we are 100,000,000 LYs from UNSC space...And in a whole new galaxy"
Now I hope this was an enjoyable chapter it was a bit odd at the end but I couldn't think of any other real way to bring a UNSC Covenant war era fleet to the mass effect universe.
now as far as when is this story placed in the mass effect time line its in the area of mass effect 2
Also to any who are following my other sorry plasma hero I didn't give up on it it just feels like every time a begin to work on it again another issue pops up so I decided to put out one this story I had a small back log on