Chapter 9: Friendly Unknown
Author's Note: And I'm back.
Review responses: Thank you all for your reviews. There was a question regarding immigration to the Combine. That's generally not particularly easy, with the exception of someone offering to colonize a difficult to terra/ranoform world. So several Volus clans are negotiating admission to the Combine in exchange for the right to colonize 'hothouse' worlds within the Combine's borders. One of the few mostly aquatic worlds is within their borders as well and home to a relatively large colony of dissident Hanar. Though repeated efforts have been made to reach out to the Elcor to see if they'd be willing to colonize high gravity worlds, they have been uniformly rejected for diplomatic, cultural and political reasons.
However, these species at present make up a tiny fraction of the Combine's population and are relatively rarely seen outside the bounds of the environments most comfortable to them.
There was a second question regarding the Citadel's reaction to a multi-racial nation given the way they're presented as racially distinct. I tend to think that presentation is oversold. We know the Volus are clients of the Turian Hierarchy and that there must be large populations of non-Asari within the Asari republics (given the discrimination against the 'purebloods'), the Batarians apparently had a relatively large number of non-Batarian slaves, the Hanar have the Drell, really only the Salarians and Elcor don't have much indication that they're multi-racial in nature, if not in title.
But, regardless, the Council is generally fairly pleased with it, though the component nations are somewhat more nervous. The Council looks at the Combine and sees a large, relatively balanced, multi-species state, which does exercise quite a bit of control over all its component powers and is attempting to use that as evidence that greater executive and legal authority should be vested in themselves.
There was a follow-up on the Geth, regarding the potential industrial capacity they have and when that might be activated. To that, I have no comment at this time.
Thanks for the reviews!
"Get that fucking thing on the shuttle before it does anything else crazy!" Lieutenant Ashley Williams yelled at Shalira, as she raced towards her downed commander. The beacon had dropped him and the civilian before the Asari's pull had worn off, so it was still floating there, disconcertingly, though it had stopped glowing. She stared at Shepard's crumpled form, unwilling to touch him until she knew she wasn't going to make things worse. She'd had the basic medical training like everyone else in the Sentinel Corps, but it didn't cover this, and the readings on his condition she could pull up on her HUD weren't making any sense.
Maale was the squad medic and he was still lying on top of Tali. A shouted command fixed that, though not fast enough for Ash's taste. A quick explanation to the medic of what happened had him triage the two patients, decide Liara wasn't his problem (as the Turians were carefully moving her towards their shuttle, under Saren's embarrassed eye) and try to examine Shepard as best he could, given his commander's body armor and the damage thereto.
To make matters worse, he was an expert in emergency treatment of Quarians, it was why he'd been assigned to a squad with a Quarian protectee. He could slap medi-gel on anyone, but if anything more elaborate than that was needed, it was expected to be needed by the protectee, not his own commander. A glance around the clearing landed on Miranda Lawson, CEO of Lawson Industries, traveling outside the Combine…she had to have a doctor on hand, right? The suggestion drew an indignant denial, then a startled order to one of her guards when Maale made it clear he wasn't qualified to handle Shepard's treatment. The man slid forward and demanded information regarding Shepard's heart rate, breathing, everything the system's in the sentinel's armor would give him if they were functional, then began trying to remove the crispy heavy armor to, as he put it, 'get at the creamy commander filling'.
This earned him blank stares from everyone else in the clearing, who lacked his sense of humor. Emergency medical treatment proceeded efficiently thereafter, with Miranda, her guards (and driver), their equipment (okay, weapons) and the beacon easily being added to the cargo shuttle's payload, along with the Sentinel Corps squad, Tali and as much of their equipment as they could easily retrieve (which wasn't that much).
With Liara unconscious aboard the Spectre's trim passenger shuttle, there were no objections to blowing the dig site, the only question was when. Ash, in a terrible mood, took the position that they should set them to go off when someone landed on the site, while Kohrvan argued for blowing them as soon as they lifted off, to ensure the raiders had no chance to disable them.
After a brief comms message from Operations Chief Ah-va-ni-in-po-la-vi-ma-am-wa-qi-ip-ep-no-to-av, reminding her that she was in charge, not the XO and she was in charge of a Sentinel Corps unit, not a Vanguard Corps unit, prompted her to agree with Kohrvan and pull the rest of the squad into the cargo shuttle. Three minutes later they were lifting off, leaving the ruins of the dig site and the shell of the Lawson Industries' aircar (as Miranda had triggered the system overload, burning it out, leaving no identifiable trace that she'd been there).
Alarms began to blare before they escaped the atmosphere when a Hegemony ship came out of jump launching a massive barrage of nuclear missiles from externally mounted racks at the massing ranks of the local defense fleet and everything else in space and on the ground near the dig site. The fleet and Saren's interstellar vessel generally escaped by using their jump drives in turn, but that left them out of position and needing to build up momentum to get back to the planet. It wouldn't take long, but it would be an opening. The few orbital defenses in the area were destroyed in a cloud of radiation and nuclear fire. Fortunately, the area around the dig site was relatively sparsely populated, but two small towns, a minor Lawson Industries botanical research station, a hydroelectric dam, an emergency airstrip and a ranger station were destroyed.
Codex: Orbital Defenses, Unlocked.
The orbital weapons did manage to get one shot off each and the laser blasts shattered the attacking ship. As it was a converted cargo-hauler, used to dump nukes, this was no great loss, though the fact that it was destroyed before it could launch the modified escape pods carrying its assault troops meant that the follow up craft arriving a moment later to secure the beachhead with only half their anticipated ground forces. The shuttles escaped the initial assault as they were rising from the site which the ships were attempting to capture. Saren's shuttle was heavily armed, highly maneuverable and piloted by one of the Turian Hierarchy's best pilots who he'd 'borrowed' from the Sabre Assault Wing, along with the expensive and high-end Sabre Assault Shuttle in which they were riding.
Codex: Sabre Assault Wing, Unlocked.
The landing assault pods were more converted escape pods and a few cargo shuttles all but unarmed. These two factors combined meant that the shuttle's weapons reaped a rich harvest of the descending pods and shuttles while easily avoiding the little counter fire coming from vehicle weapons which had been bolted on to the shuttles to provide a bit of air-support. They broke atmosphere about the time the rest of the invasion fleet arrived by more standard FTL.
The cargo shuttle's Silicoid pilot instantly pulsed its engines more powerfully, pushing the larger craft ahead of the Sabre and keeping it between the shuttle and as much of the decelerating fleet as possible (given its wide dispersal, even a cargo shuttle couldn't block them all off). The shuttles slid towards the upper solar north-east quadrant where the Spectre's ship had ended up and where it was currently maneuvering to rendezvous with them en route to the Mass Relay.
Codex: Combine Solar Cartographic Divisions, Unlocked.
They were outside GARDIAN range, as the ships were aimed at the planet and so had to come out far enough to decelerate, or risk falling into the gravity well and crashing onto the planet. However, they were well within range of railgun shots, plasma weapons, or any of the modern non-point-defense laser weapons. The ships did not fire at them, not at two shuttles rising from the dig site which was their target.
Instead two waves of fighters were launched from the two converted cargo ships nearest the shuttles and swept down towards them, with more dedicated assault shuttles following up to board the fleeing craft once they were crippled and slowed by the pursuing fighters. The shuttles responded by drawing closer together and preparing to maneuver to give the Sabre clear lines of fire without exposing it to too much fire from the main fleet. The fighters had more than enough thrust to overcome the momentum their carriers imparted to them and the shuttles' head start. The Spectre's ship diverted to rendezvous with the shuttles sooner.
"Geth, a little help, if you would," the Silicoid pilot announced to the air, their voices echoing slightly from the speakers scattered around their custom chassis as delicate mechanical hands danced over the controls, making the shuttle dance.
"Attempts are underway. However the enemies electronic warfare capacity is surprising. It appears to be being run from the superdreadnought. If that signal is disrupted, we will be able to assist with the fighters. As it is, keeping our own systems clear is requiring all available Geth and processing capability."
Ash had given the doctor and his patient a wide berth as he excavated Shepard from his armor and got to work stabilizing him. Miranda and her other guards hovered over him. Lawson was a psionic, but Tali and Shalira were back there too, more than capable of handling any physical, or psionic assault the Lawson Industries team might choose to launch, so Ash was free to join the pilot in the cockpit, which she did when he chose to place the cargo shuttle and its very valuable cargo between the enemy fleet and the Spectre. It took longer than she'd expected to get up there as his maneuvering was overloading the iffy civilian artificial grav, but she arrived in time to catch the end of Geth's comment.
A delicate finger activated a comm laser directed at the neighboring shuttle. "You have any EMP weaponry on that tub? Over," the pilot asked, voice echoing as if two dozen people were trying to all say the same thing at the same time, but not quite managing it.
"Came out on the last upgrade, what with the new shielding, over," the Sabre plot answered him casually.
"Understood, out."
"We pulled out a couple of the EMP mines we hadn't had a chance to deploy," Ash pointed out.
"Too short range. We'll have to see how well their system holds up in battle."
"Understood." Ash took a deep breath to steady herself. The Operations Chief, who doubled as their pilot, was more than three times her age and had served with the Sentinel Corps longer than she'd been alive. He was one of the most stable Silicoids around and vastly experienced. "Ops," she very deliberately didn't call him 'old man' as she usually would in casual conversation.
"Yes, Lieutenant?"
"You put this ship and the protectee in danger to protect others. That is against protocol."
"Yes, ma'am," he admitted.
"Obviously, you did this because without that ship's weapons, we're doomed and without their ship, we can't escape."
The senior NCO didn't answer, because that wasn't why he'd done it and they both knew that, but it was a reasonable explanation.
"And I certainly can't hold that against you. Just wanted to get that on the record," which it was, what with everything they were doing being recorded (and wasn't she just looking forward to a fun conversation with a shrink or a senior officer, or both, about her desire to use the dig site as a trap). "Now, do get on with the business of saving all our lives, if you please, old man."
"Yes, ma'am," this time the echoes were more distinct, as if some of the voices were irritated, some distracted and some vastly amused.
XXXXX
Saren Arterius was good at many things. You didn't get to be a Spectre if you weren't. One of the things he wasn't good at was piloting. That was fine, it wasn't required, he could find pilots, or hire them, or borrow them. So that was fine. The one thing that he needed to be good at, but wasn't (or so he'd been told) was staying out of the way when he wasn't good at something.
He could still hear his mentor, old Kila Yourus insisting that once you've got good people working a problem, you just need to get out of their way and let them work. Standing over them will just distract them. And piss them off. And mean you aren't doing what you could be doing. And…he'd eventually realized the old woman didn't actually know the meaning of the word 'just'. Well, either that, or after forty-two years as a Spectre, she just didn't give a shit and knew everyone would listen to everything she said. Or get shot in the face.
And he had. Listened.
He was good about it, when there were other things for him to do. But, at the moment, the Asari was being handed by the squad medic (and he could see the woman was doing as good a job as he could) and the Ghost was moving to intercept at the best available angle to snatch up the shuttles and flee the system without requiring length deceleration on the other end. There wasn't anything for him to do, except brass harass the pilot.
Well, that wasn't quite true. He forced himself to consider the other problem, the presence of the Batarian fleet. The force here was significant, but it couldn't have punched through the forces sitting on the Mass Relay into and out of Kite's Nest. Those forces were massive. Even if the Batarians managed to slug it out with the Humans and gain control of the Mass Relay, or slip through the three blockading fleets, there was no way they'd do that without significant damage, which wasn't present on any of their ships in the system (according to scans from the Ghost).
There were the various low possibility options, the Batarians having another set of fleets which had let this one slip away, the Batarians having come up with a new FTL drive of some sort, the intervention of unknown aliens, etc. His great grandfather would have called those impossible, but the history and emergence of the Combine had radically expanded the scope of the possible.
Still, more likely was the idea that they'd gone the long way around. It would be a rough ride. All of the ships would have to be modified for long running, but it could be done, at a cost of some combat capacity and some supply capacity. It might even explain the lack of pursuit by jump drive, if they'd overused their jump drives, either that or most of the fleet had had to make a jump recently…unless they wanted the Ghost to escape…
That thought led nowhere helpful. If they went the long way around it would take long weeks of travel, not a few days, more if they'd had to use their jump drives a great deal but it was possible. He began trying to trace their path and ignored the view from his omni-tool of the ships coming closer and closer together. Unfortunately, there were far too many paths which could be followed, otherwise the other paths would have been fortified as well. Still there should have been Combine and STG spies watching them all, or at least all the ones which wouldn't take forever using the short range jump drives…
But who knew how long this had been planned. It was tempting to believe it had to have all been done since the discovery of the Prothean beacon, but shifting a plan aimed at something else to target the beacon was a perfectly reasonable course of action. And, with their fleet bottled up, their admiralty wouldn't have much else to do except plan how to manage a breakout. For a moment his mind focused on the problem of how he'd get out of that trap himself.
The ship jerked so suddenly that Saren was grateful for the restraints which kept him in his seat and his eyes flicked back to the omni-tool. The shuttles were spinning around one another, imparting unusual and unpredictable spin at the cost of losing out on some additional forward thrust. It made targeting just the engines a bit tricky generally and impossible for any weapon which wasn't moving at light speed or fired from right on top of the craft. The turrets shook the shuttle as lasers sliced apart the lead fighter, while plasma and mass effect rounds spread out amongst the following craft. The Sabre's spin let each turret bear on the enemy, then cool, without losing too much in its rate of fire.
The pursuing craft were in reasonable shape, but the Sabre had forty years of design improvements on the Batarian weapons so their lasers outranged the pursuing crafts' weapons. The Batarians realized this and began to reform to enter laser range all as a single unit.
Coming in all at once meant that the Sabre couldn't pick them off one at a time with the lasers, but it also meant they were committed to predictable attack runs and evading would mean they didn't arrive in range at the same time as their fellows. This wasn't too helpful for the Sabre's plasma weapons whose range wasn't much better than the lasers and where it would take a sustained barrage to take down a ship. The mass effect cannon did better, though the ship was slowly beginning to heat up as the weapons fired continuously on the paths the enemy fighters would have to follow.
Liquid coolant kept the guns cool and firing, but the cabin itself was heating up as waste heat leaked in far faster than the heavily-armored shuttle could radiate it away. If necessary, they could dump the used coolant to lose its stored heat, even flood the cabin with a gaseous coolant to keep everyone functional, though that might kill the unsuited Asari…
Battles, especially space battles were all about numbers. Could they destroy the enemy fast enough to prevent them from closing to laser range? The analysis program he ran said no, they'd close the range while losing no more than 15% of their ships, unless (though the machine didn't say this) their nerve broke and individual pilots tried to save themselves at the expense of the general advance. No sign of that yet.
Would waste heat their own weapons cook them alive before the enemy could disable them? Not quite. Did the enemy shuttles hold enough troops to overwhelm his motley crew of survivors? It hardly mattered, the fleet certainly did and with the Sabre's engines crippled they would either just wait to be boarded by the superdreadnought or be dragged back to it by the other ships, even if they did manage to defend themselves. Well, unless the Batarians were stupid enough to hard-dock with the shuttle. Then he could lead a counter-attack, seize the enemy shuttle and escape in that. It wouldn't, couldn't, be far to the Ghost by then.
A routine alarm distracted him from this fantasy, routed to his omni-tool rather than the pilot who was focused on shooting the enemy and not shooting the wildly jinking cargo shuttle. The visual scanners (which was Navy speak for cameras with telescopic lenses hooked up to VIs) had picked up some motion coming in their general direction, but not intersecting their flight plan. A comet, or some such probably, but he flicked over to the cameras just to see.
There was nothing there. The system insisted that there was. He looked more closely and finally saw it, its black hull occasionally blocking a star and illuminating it just for a moment.
It was a ship. Small, crew of no more than five, with smooth, curving lines, as best he could tell. Not an Asari Ravager, though the size was right, those craft complimented their smooth curves with heavy laser turrets fore and aft. It might be some new Salarian STG ship, or just one he hadn't seen before, the frogs were always coming up with new tricks. The one thing he could be certain was that it wasn't a Turian or Human design, the one thing they had in common was a preference for straight lines in living quarters and ship design.
XXXXX
The XSV Pillowtalk moved towards the enemy at the maximum rate she could manage while sustaining stealth until she reached them. Well, that wasn't quite true, Flight Officer Joker admitted to himself as he retrieved a decidedly non-regulation energy drink from the, even more non-regulation, fridge he'd installed on the bridge. They were also keeping some of their heat capacity in reserve for the battle once they reached the enemy.
He'd been way out of position to respond effectively to this attack, but that hadn't been his mission. Observe and report on all traffic to and from Purasi, while acting as an initial response force should any Geth-Genocidal or Geth-Slaver show up in the outsystems. Then the Hegemony shows up! One report to the Commander by QEC and he was sent to help save some numbnuts regulars. He heaved a sigh, just like always, X-Com had to save the day.
Codex: Quantum Entanglement Communicator, Unlocked.
Joker cracked the drink, enjoying the refreshing hiss of a carbonated beverage released from its long confinement in metal in anticipation of a short confinement within him. He leaned back in his chair, pleased to note that the irritating squeak had finally been repaired, and tried to kick his feet up to rest on the nearby console.
The minor flare in the artificial gravity which turned what should have been a graceful, relaxing maneuver into an awkward, foreshortened jerk, was entirely explicable, but a little surprising. He thought she'd relaxed a little bit on the whole, putting his feet up thing. Should have known better.
Still, an indignant "PT!" escaped him.
The voice she used in response was her most acid, the one that, he was sure, no matter what PT said, had borrowed its voiceprint from his aunt Victoria in one of her moods. "I just got a drone up there, fixed your chair and gave the whole place a good polish. It's bad enough that you somehow manage to find dirt to mess up my floor, you don't need to muss up my consoles as well."
"Dirt? We're a million miles from the nearest planet and haven't touched down in three months. If there was any dirt anywhere on this ship, you and the repair drones you've coopted into your cleanliness crusade would have found it and flushed it, just like you did my supply of honey."
Her voice shifted to her more everyday one, based on some actress from the last century, specifically chosen to sound friendly and familiar without being identifiable. PT's tendency to switch voices rather than tones was one of the more disconcerting things about working with her. "If you could have gotten it all in your teacup more than one time in five, that wouldn't have been necessary," her voice shifted to another, harsher and more aggressive one, "And I didn't flush it. I incinerated it."
The relish she took in that should have been disturbing for someone who depended on her for every breath he took and bite he ate. It did not. "Wouldn't that just have made a mess in the incinerator?"
"Not after I used the plasma wash to clean it up."
"Is that why we're scheduled to replace the incinerator next time we're in dock?"
"No comment."
Before Joker could push on that, she sounded the action alarm, announcing loudly that they were one minute from engagement range. Joker brought his full attention to bear on the upcoming engagement, though he did mutter that it didn't count as being saved by the bell, if you were the one who set the bell off.
Most of the work had been done by his choice of the initial angle of approach. PT was built to hit and run, not stick around and slug it out and certainly not to even let the wisp of atmosphere touch her, void-born, hull. Two-thirds of her weapons were forward mounted and the remainder were point-defense guns. She could drop a trick or two to play havoc on anyone with the temerity to pursue her, but anything which got behind her and could keep up would be a nightmare.
So it was a good thing she was currently bearing down on the enemy.
The countdown reached its end and Joker flipped a switch, executing the pre-programmed firing sequence which, in addition to raining death down upon the light pursuit craft also opened his own ship to vent as much heat as possible. His hands moved swiftly over the controls, following patterns his mind had laid out since the Commander's orders came through. Thrusters flared, buying precious seconds for the weapons to bear on the enemy craft.
With PT suddenly radiating the heat of a cruiser and unleashing approximately the right firepower, but no real return on other sensors, the pursuit craft correctly scattered away. PT's momentum would carry her away from the engagement and the shuttles she sought to protect quickly and they would use their superior thrust to catch the other craft before PT could come around. The math worked out in their favor, if PT's weapons had the same range as theirs. It still would have worked out, if PT's weapons had the range of the Sabre's. It did not work out when PT's weapons had the range of an X-Com picket.
After passing through them, she flipped over (not messing with the artificial gravity this time) and continued to fire at the small craft as she decelerated. The remnants of shattered ships filled the space between the decelerating PT and the still accelerating, and now escaping, shuttles.
The Hegemony fleet had claimed the space above the dig site, but was engaged in a savage battle around the edges with the planetary defense fleet as it tried to nibble away at the Hegemony forces and interdict any attempt to land ground forces, or retrieve anything from the ground forces they'd already got down. It wasn't a stable situation, the attrition rates were in favor of the Asari, but enough Hegemony forces were going up and down that they had to have been able to secure the digsite.
You could see the moment that fleet got the news that the shuttle which had to contain the beacon they sought had escaped the fighters and shuttles sent after them.
You could see that moment, because the enemy admiral got really, excessively pissed off about it. The shot from the superdreadnought obliterated the dig site, his troops and the Asari troops who were trying to slip into the area, as well as everything else in the vicinity, then heeled his superdreadnought around and headed towards the rendezvousing ships at a speed which left behind rest of his fleet to the tender mercies of the planet's defenders whose mobile forces were moving forward as they'd finally managed to get their remaining orbital defenses moving in the right direction.
Joker eyeballed it, then rolled his light eyes towards the console PT most generally broadcast from. She answered the question before he had to ask it, in her most businesslike voice. "Based on the capabilities thus far revealed, it doesn't have the acceleration to catch up to them before the ships rendezvous. Unless some of their ships still have jump capability, or a lucky shot takes out that destroyer, they're getting away."
"Destroyer?"
"It's bigger than a frigate and smaller than a cruiser, what else would you call it?"
Joker gave a mental shrug and moved on. "Well, if it can't be after them, I don't suppose there's anything else out here but us?"
"Well, there's a quarter of the galaxy behind us, but if you mean in this system, nope, not unless the Hegemony has a sudden interest in destroyed fighters and dead fighter pilots."
"Wonderful. I don't suppose we'll be up to speed to run away to FTL before they get here?"
"Not unless you feel like getting out and pushing." The enemy admiral had waited until they were committed to the deceleration before beginning its own acceleration.
"Hmm…tempting, but I think we'll just jump over to that destroyer and hitch a ride out of here with the regulars."
"We'll need to build up the right momentum to do the rendezvous. But we can manage it. A couple of different ways."
She pulled the options up on the same console she always did and he swiveled to face it as she displayed all the option, even though she knew which one he was going to choose.
She was right. The unholy glee on his face as he ordered the course that had them on collision course with the super-dreadnought was unsurprising. It would actually let them get in one strike on the enemy ship, if from extreme range, before jumping to join the other ships. It would require serious skill on the part of the destroyer's pilot to match the velocity she'd still be carrying after the jump, as they'd be coming in at a very, very sub-optimal angle, but it would keep the super-dreadnought and the admiral distracted.
And it was fun.
PT didn't have a mouth and didn't smile. But when she agreed and shifted thrust, she used the voice she'd built by combining and altering his favorite actress's, singer's and pornstar's voices into something new, but beloved.
XXXXX
"Spectre. The small vessel has jumped. It is behind us and will intersect our flight plan after we recover you," the Ghost's Salarian temporary pilot explained.
"We can manage to pick it up as well, Spectre," the ship's Turian temporary commander volunteered.
"We haven't received any communication from the alien ship. We'll be within its weapon range in one minute," the pilot not-quite-argued.
Saren heaved a silent sigh of exasperation. With a crew from half the nations of the Council and no real command structure, except what he'd imposed by fiat when he took the ship, its internal functioning was a disaster. Everyone was individually competent, more than competent, but they were often pulling in different directions. He wished momentarily to be a psionic and able to just mind control them into working together. That wasn't how it worked, and he knew it, but it made a nice little power-fantasy.
Instead, he sent back a sharp command that they try to open communication with the alien ship, before firing on it. Honestly, Salarian imagination kept them seeing conspiracies in every corner. It took a Turian to point out that shooting at someone who was shooting at your enemy was a stupid thing to do. And they thought they were the smart ones!
XXXXX
Codex: Orbital Defenses:
Orbital defenses can be defined several ways. For the purpose of this entry it does not include either ships capable of independent travel, or ground-based weapon systems. This leaves two basic types of orbital defenses.
The first is a network of satellite weapons. They are usually little more than thrusters, an encrypted comm system, a basic targeting program, a power core and the biggest gun you can afford. As most of a planetary network can be constructed by deconstructing a frigate, this is fairly cheap, usually used by third or fourth rank powers looking to make pirate raids more costly, or give them some way to try to interdict refugees/smugglers.
The second is simply arming any orbital stations, or, more expensively, constructing a dedicated defensive station.
Given their minimal maneuverability and the high likelihood that any missed shot will hit the planet they're orbiting, orbital defenses are viewed as tools of amateurs by most professional militaries. And indeed, no station, except the Citadel, will stand up to a barrage from a dreadnought. However, properly maintained orbital defenses can handle anything short of an actual military assault with reasonable efficiency.
The key words are 'properly maintained'. Nations use orbital defenses because they either won't, or can't construct a proper fleet. Therefore maintenance is often lacking and the basic precaution of maneuvering the satellites/stations into different orbits at random times to ensure that no one can take out your defenses by firing from outside the system at where the defenses will be in a couple of weeks from the time the shots are fired are often ignored. These failures increase the disdain in which professionals hold orbital defenses, which makes it more difficult to get funding to properly operate and maintain such networks.
The only exception to the above rule is the Combine. Their history has resulted in an almost obsessive need for security. Every colony possesses a satellite defense system, every system is guarded by a system defense force and every relay has an orbiting military station. These have not been extensively tested, except by the Geth-Genocidal and Geth-Slaver and the results of those encounters are not widely released.
Codex: Sabre Assault Wing:
The Sabre Assault Wing takes its name from the Sabre Assault Shuttles flown by the unit. They specialize in covert infiltration, working with Cabals, Spectres or other Hierarchy Special Forces units. The Sabre Assault Wing has kept its name through two dozen technological advances producing new versions of the Sabre shuttle, ever since the first Sabres flew the Tuchanka Raid, during the Krogan Rebellions, successfully evading and outmaneuvering the massive fleet around the planet and assassinating half-a-dozen Overlords as they met in a Crush, destabilizing the Krogan and forcing redeployment of forces to defend the homeworld.
The modern Sabre usually carries ten soldiers, in addition to its pilot, however it has almost the same maneuverability as a gunship, or fighter, and is more heavily armed than most such craft and far more durable.
Each generation of Sabres produces the same joke amongst the Hierarchy. The Volus contractor goes to the general in charge of the project and says, 'You've got three goals, these guns, this armor and this budget. Pick two.' And for the first time ever, the Turian manages to convince the Volus to give him all three. Shame HQ decided to add in a maneuverability requirement.
It is not a funny joke, but it is certainly true that a Sabre is an incredibly expensive craft, costing as much as half a dozen Hammer Assault Shuttles, or about the same as fifty Slammer Planetary Assault Drop Pods. In turn, the Hierarchy entrusts them only to the very highest caliber of pilots. The actual size of the Sabre Assault Wing is classified, but it's estimated there's no more than a hundred of these craft throughout the Hierarchy and no more than three hundred pilots qualified to fly them.
Codex: Combine Solar Cartographic Divisions:
Without planetary poles as reference points, the question of how you designate relative position in space has been troublesome for centuries. Not because it's a difficult problem, but rather because every nation has their own solution to it and none of them feel any need to adopt anyone else's as none of them are naturally superior and most are adapted to the quirks of the creating nation's culture.
Like most, but not all of the systems, the Combine divides the system into eight sections (often incorrectly referred to as quadrants). Like the Asari, Salarian and Hanar systems, its center is set in the first inhabited planet in the system. The planet's equator provides the dividing line between the upper and lower portions of the system, dependent on which is the North and which is the South pole (though this is an arbitrary determination). System north is set by drawing a line from that equator towards the galactic center, with the other directions being set off that basis.
This divides the system into eight parts, Upper-North-East, Upper-North-West, Lower-North-East, Lower-North-West, Upper-South-East, Upper-South-West, Lower-South-East, Lower-South-West, often abbreviate UNE, UNW, etc. This is just in general parlance, of course, for more precise directions, a coordinate system is used with the planet as the zero, zero, zero point, east-west being the X-axis, upper-lower being the Y-Axis and north-south being the Z-Axis.
The shift to this planet based system from the networked, individual ship based system used by the Quarians was one of the major cultural and political conflicts in the Combine during the 2030s, especially as it got connected in the growing disagreements between the planet-bound Quarians and those remaining onboard ships. This was only resolved when the Combine Executive issued a regulation instructing the military to adopt the current system. All other ships had to be familiar with the military's methodology, at least if they wanted to avoid accidentally disobeying orders backed up by weapons fire.
They did. Therefore they adapted.
Codex: Quantum Entanglement Communicator:
The Quantum Entanglement Communicator ("QEC") is a theoretical technology which tech companies have been claiming is five years away for the last fifty years. Like the related (and equally theoretical) Quantum Teleportation, it relies upon the fact that quantum-entangled particles continue to effect one another, regardless of the distance between them. Theoretically it should be possible to use those changed to communicate.
In reality, the problem is in controlling the particles in a consistent manner. Any message is overwhelmed by random changes in state. Quantum entanglement 'technology' is most famous as the basis for a number of scams seeking funding to bring create a prototype and promising massive returns. This 'technology' is indeed being investigated by many corporations, however they are not seeking public funding and, by Combine Trade Ordinance, are not allowed to seek public investment funding for QEC technology.
If you should receive such an offer, please contact the nearest Combine Trade Office and request to speak to an anti-fraud officer.
Author's Note: I stole the term 'brass harass' from Bujold (one of the Vorkosigan books, can't recall which off the top of my head). I assumed it wasn't simply a Bujoldism, but my internet search turns up only references to other forms of harassment. Reviews are always welcome.