Chapter 3: Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!
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It had been a routine patrol for one General Desolas Arterius, who commanded this Turian patrol group of some 200 vessels. It had been boring for the Turians in this patrol group for some time. It would be easy, just go along this way then come back and see if you can capture some pirates or other lawbreakers. Yes, things were peaceful for awhile until they came across a group of pirates near Relay 314.
The Batarian pirate group had a fleet of about 100 ships including one dreadnought sized ship. The Turians saw the pirates and slavers, who saw the Turians in turn and started opening fire on them. The Turians fired back and the space was crossed by kinetic rounds and torpedoes. The pirates were outnumbered two to one and they started losing more ships. The pirates desperately wanted to escape so they started to flee the fight.
However, the Turian patrol group quickly cornered them and only a few pirate vessels escaped to call for reinforcements before the Turians encircled them. Desolas Arterius was smiling as he thought that victory was coming soon for him and his patrol group, which lost only 6 ships. The pirates grew even more desperate in trying to evade capture by the Turians. Thus in the end, the remaining pirate group of about 80 ships chose to escape by doing something forbidden by Citadel Council Law, opening an inactive relay.
The pirates activated Relay 314 then quickly jumped away into an unknown part of space. "Spirits curse those damned fools! They activated Relay 314. Order one of our ships to send word to Hierarchy about this while the rest of us will go in after the bastards." yelled Desolas.
The Turian patrol gathered near the Relay, which snatched them up and move them to its connected relay. When the Turians arrived at their destination, looks of shock and confusion showed on the looks of the crews. "By the Spirits! What are those things!'' yelled Desolas looking at the strange scene before him.
It appeared as if the pirates were being attacked by gigantic hideous monsters. "Ensign, can you get a scan on those things." ordered Desolas. "General, those things are fully organic! There are ten of them which are 10 km long, and 20 of them which are four km long!" the Ensign spoke in a voice of disbelief to his superior. "Those monster are bigger than that Destiny Ascension dreadnought," thought Desolas. "Anything else about them?" Desolas asked the Ensign. "Sir, the creatures are firing some sort of organic projectiles! What the- Sir, did you see that! That pirate frigate just got chomped down by one of those ten km long beasts!" screeched the Ensign.
The Turian patrol group stood still observing this scene of violence as some of the pirates ship were getting shot to bits while others were brutally rammed and bitten by the large ships. Eventually all that was left of the pirates was a cloud of floating debris. Then the creatures turned to look at the Turians. The turians were wary of the beasts observing them. They shifted their formations to bring their ships closer to each other. Suddenly, something happened.
"Sir, it seems we are receiving a message from the creatures!" the Communications officer said to Desolas, who quickly turned toward her. "Put it on screen now!" he ordered. The message was now showing on their viewing screen in their command deck. The screen showed the face of some terrifying alien that had many glowing green orbs for eyes and a mouth full of fangs. Then if by some miracle, the creature spoke in understandable words to the quite turians.
The thing spoke, "Hello to you who entered into our domain. I am Admiral Sevten Chekat of this 4th fleet of the Amorphous Navy of the Shoggoth Empire. Here is our First Contact package to explain things to you newcomers. Hopefully you are not like those slavers we have fought." The Turians read the FCP, seeing what species they were dealing with right now. The FCP showed them images of a species which called themselves as Shoggoths, their culture, and some of their history. Turians looked uneasy as they read the information.
"This is nearly unbelievable! Shapeshifting and magic! Who believes in such things? There also quite hideous as well! Hmm, it seems in their history they were once slaves under these Elder Things, probably why they reacted so badly to the slavers." thought General Desolas. His thinking was cut short when his Communications Officer messaged him. "Sir, we've got some bad news. It seems the pirates were able to call for reinforcements before they fled here! Sensors indicate a massive enemy fleet will be coming from the relay soon. Our own reinforcements will be here a few days later due to a few issues they're experiencing." said the Communications Officer.
"Spirits damn it! We have to tell those Shoggoths here about the news then." Desolas replied. The Turians sent a message to the Shoggoths, informing them of the incoming attack. The Shoggoths received the message, then they told the Turians that they can land their troops on the planet and be brought to their military bases for protection. The Shoggoth had sent a call for reinforcements back to the rest of the empire via transmitted thought.
Saren Arterius and his unit of Turian soldiers were staring with wide eyes at the place they were supposed to be, one of the military bases of those Shoggoths. To say it was strange looking would be an understatement. The base was inside a mountain and the architecture of the place was a mind boggling non-euclidean maze of buildings of bizzare angles and curves. Bluish light was given off by glowing orbs hanging in different places all over the base.
The Turians were wondering where they should go when four of the locals came nearby. This was the first time the Turians met the Shoggoths up close and personal and to them honestly, they were very intimidating. They were black masses of sharp clawed limbs and tentacles, green eyes, and fanged mouths with their body size ranging from four to eight meters long. It seemed they had omnitools on some of their limbs. They looked like something that crawled out of a pit full of nightmares.
The four shoggoths stopped near Saren and his companions and greeted them politely. "Hello Turians, you can call me Private Greta and these are my companions:Private Izsha, Private Trads, and Private Lazlo. We were ordered to help you Turians find your accommodations here at this base." the foremost Shoggoth said, pointing to herself then the three others. "Oh, thank you for your help. But how will we go there?" said Saren. "Oh, it is easy. You will all ride on our backs and we will crawl to there." said Greta before she quickly changed her body. She became flatter and segmented with insectoid legs, with what looked like organic seats on her back. The other shoggoths changed into forms just like hers.
Saren and his unit stood there gawking, mandibles wide at the display of shapeshifting for a few moments before they gathered their wits and got onboard their ride. When all of the Turian unit were seated on top of the shoggoths, fleshy straps grew around the turians to act as seatbelts. "Okay, all on board, prepare yourselves for a fun trip." said Greta who quickly started crawling at speeds as fast as an aircar in the Citadel. The air was filled with the sounds of laughter from the four shoggoths and the shrieks of Turians.
All across Zanxir, the most of the citizens evacuated to the underground areas or to the underwater cities via enchanted gates which served as magical teleportation sites. Next, the anti-orbital defences were raised up for the upcoming battle. They looked liked ten meter tall, black obelisks that were inscribed in various magical runes and adorned with green gems at its top. These things were controlled by the sorcerers working in their basement. The sorcerer of each obelisk would channel his/her magic into the structure which would then fire beams of purple arcane energy at enemy targets.
The defenders both in space and on land were ready and waiting when the enemy fleet arrived from the relay. The enemy fleet of Batarian pirates and Eclipse mercenaries numbered around 420 vessels, including four dreadnought class vessels. The defending fleet had 30 ships of the Amorphous Navy along with 194 ships of the Turian patrol group. The Shoggoths told the Turian patrol group to form up behind their larger bioships. The bioships will serve as meatshields while the Turian ships will use their spinal guns for long range support. The turians reluctantly agreed to this plan. The reinforcements from the Amorphous Navy would arrive within a two days while the reinforcements from the Turian Navy would come in four days. The defenders would have to stand their ground against the foe until relief came.
The enemy fleet stood still as they were staring at the monstrous creatures in front of them. The defenders wasted no time as they instantly started firing at their foes with both kinetic and biological weaponry. The giant eyes of the bioships glowed red for a moment, then laser beams shot out from them! "Those Shoggoths can shoot lasers from their eyes?!" thought Desolas in stunned surprise as both allied and enemy fleets were shocked by this development. The laser volley from the bioships scored dozens of kills including three of the enemy dreadnoughts.
The enemy got over its shock and started concentrating fire upon the bioships. The larger bioships in turn released thousands of leathery winged, four meter long, carapaced eyeless monstrosities. These beasts shot sacs of corrosive acid from their bodies while clawed tentacles lashed out at defence turrets and engine thrusters. Even with this new attack from the bioships, the enemy became even more determined in fighting and they kept dodging as much as they could from the biological attacks.
The smaller bioships were starting warp out when they had received too much damage to continue fighting. In the defending fleet, seven Turian ships had unfortunately been killed by overwhelming enemy firepower, while all twenty of the escort bioships warped out. In the enemy fleet, 276 ships remained. The Shoggoths told the Turians to go hide behind the gas giant in the Zanxir system to conserve their forces while they would let the enemy try to land on the planet. The Turians quickly fled to the shadow of the gas giant when the remaining bioships let out blinding flash of light before they warped out of the conflict.
The pirates and mercenaries thought they had destroyed the defense fleet so they turned to look at the garden world of Zanxir. They had lost a lot of ships in the battle and they needed to get something to make up for their loses. They would go and perform a slave raid on this world to perhaps get slaves from this new species and make some money out of this venture.
As the slavers tried to land their troops, the dark obelisks began their work of blasting apart the incoming enemy forces. The sky flashed with beams of light, dropships and low orbiting space ships were exploding in the air. Still, the enemy forces were too much and almost all of the dark obelisks were knocked out by retaliatory enemy orbital strikes.
The pirates soon were able to land thousands of their troops on the planet. They captured some of the seemingly abandoned cities as their landing points. As they day was drawing to a close and the darkness of the night was spreading out over the land, the Batarian pirates and the Eclipse mercenaries in their camps heard a strange sound. The sound they heard was like musical piping was odd words being spoken, words that sounded like "Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!."