THE VERGE CONFLICT:
Second Verge War: Battle of the Kite's Nest (2178)
In September 2178, the battle between the Systems Alliance and the Batarian Hegemony, that which would end the Second Verge War and bring about an unbroken five year peace, finally began after two months of waiting. This was a battle unique thus far in the annals of galactic warfare. For the first time in history, the decisive factor would not be the dreadnought, but the carrier-borne FTL-capable fighter. Capital ships would never come into firing range of one another, and cruisers would fight a whirling hit and run battle as the batarians saw their strategic lines turned inside out. Whole squadrons would come under 'alpha strike' assaults, wherein the only defence was sheer weight of countermeasures.
For the Systems Alliance, it should have been a triumph totally eclipsing that of Elysium and Anhur, but circumstance was to prove a cruel mistress for the increasingly ambitious plans of the Taro Administration. For the batarian people, it was like ice water, awakening them to the reality of the war. Only the intervention of third parties saved the Hegemony from total and immediate collapse, but the battle would strike a fatal, slow bleeding wound, one that would eventually end in revolution and invasion some six years later.
The objective of humanity was clear. Bypass the defences of the mass relays at the Kite's Nest, destroy the Batarian Navy's capability to defend Khar'shan, and cut the head off the snake by laying siege to the Hegemony's capital. Of these objectives, the first two would be accomplished with stunning speed. The third fell just within humanity's grasp, but was snatched away at the last moment by political and military developments that arose as a symptom of her own success.
However, despite this, the battle would still mark the next phase of the Alliance's meteoric rise in stature. The path that had begun with First Contact would travel through the Kite's Nest. In the aftermath, humanity would be seriously considered for the greatest prize of all; a seat with the other major species as part of the Citadel Council itself. That other species had waited centuries for mere diplomatic recognition meant nothing before the ambition and energy of humankind, now made manifest by the great victory.
The Kite's Nest, the home cluster of the batarian species and seat of government of the Hegemony, lies against the Skyllian Verge, a bubble of star systems next to a great band of stars that stretch along the edge of the 'Terran' spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy. The batarians themselves long had an interest in the relatively nearby worlds, but had long been frustrated in their attempts to turn this interest into territorial gains. Before contact with the greater galaxy, their primary stumbling block was technological. The Prothean ruins that the batarians had access to were by far the most degraded of any major sites in the galaxy, and pre-contact batarian FTL drives and cores were deeply flawed designs. They simply could not move ships of sufficient size fast enough to explore and colonise the huge boons waiting just out of reach.
Once the batarians made contact with the Citadel via the relay system, this technological barrier was slowly but surely eliminated. What should have followed was a new golden age for the species, but this dream would be frustrated. The batarians were finally granted an embassy in 3 CE, which should have opened up colonisation of the entire Skyllian Verge from the Kite's Nest itself through to what was then turian-claimed territories and would later become the core of the Human Systems Alliance. However, the reason for the admittance of the batarians was that the Citadel desperately required new allies. Two years prior to gaining official recognition, the Rachni were encountered. A series of embarrassing and increasingly devastating defeats were inflicted upon Citadel forces. The batarians, the quarians and the hanar all gained their embassies during the Rachni Wars prior to contact with the krogan, as the Citadel determined to unite the galaxy against a threat that would have wiped away the diversity of sentient life. The later irony of this in light of the threat of the Reapers is not lost on humanity, though the asari, turians and salarians can rightfully claim that the Reapers were a more subtle threat at first.
The Rachni Wars brought another barrier to batarian expansion in the Verge; laws against exploration of uncharted clusters. This applied not only to sectors accessible by relay only, but also those theoretically accessible by regular FTL travel. It looked like the Verge would never become the great boon of the batarian people. The Hegemony's descent in mass slaving and ever increasing hierarchy can be traced from the disappointment of this time, as the supply of garden worlds dried up everywhere save for the lawless Terminus Systems. The centuries-long descent into tyranny was subtle; it needed to be in order for the batarians to retain their seat at the table of galactic politics. It happened nonetheless, the batarian ego incapable of grasping a situation whereby they would be subordinate rather than supreme.
Then, like a thunderbolt from the gods, humanity arrived. The turians were defeated at Shanxi, and forced into a humbling treaty. They ceded all the claims they had failed to act upon in the regions beyond the Verge, a huge number systems stretching from the Krogan DMZ to the Verge itself. Added to the clusters humanity had already claimed via previously unopened relays, the Systems Alliance became the fourth largest territorial entity in the galaxy overnight. Again, the batarians began to hope. The Skyllian Verge had been charted but not claimed during the First Contact War. Khar'shan dreamed of sharing in humanity's glory, and expanding its own colonies into the region. It was not to be.
Humans and batarians were to share the Verge, or so said the asari. Batarian suspicions arose almost immediately. The physiological similarities between asari and humans provoked vulgar accusations that the former saw the latter as valuable mating material. The asari were thinking with something other than their brains. What else could it be? They had granted yet another huge swath of territory to a set of aliens close enough to emulate asari themselves. The fantasy of asari-asari pairings that were largely taboo by this point due to the Ardat-Yakshi syndrome was indeed a heady one for many of Thessia's children.
All the worse that a great number of humans shared the enthusiasm, combined with a power lust that bordered on the fanatical. The batarians saw a grave threat, and hoped the other council races would agree. The salarians were nonchalant about the idea of humanity taking over, and informed the Hegemony that appropriate measures were being planned. The turians rejected the idea of an anti-human bloc outright, and not only due to asari pressure. Much respect had been bought by the humans through their innovative tactics and technologies, as well as the revelation that they were a sleeping giant, a mostly civilian society that had managed to hold off Palaven's wrath.
So the disputed territory increasingly became a battleground, truly so with the admission of humanity as a recognised Citadel species in 2165. Batarians widely felt they had no choice.
The Verge was visible from Khar'shan with only the most basic astronomical equipment, and at higher altitudes, even appeared as a band of light in the sky poking out of the Milky Way. Some historians theorise that its proximity combined with continuous frustration at possession drove batarian society to paranoia, even without the pernicious influence of the Reapers.
The dream of colonising the space would be more than two thousand years old when it was finally crushed by the Alliance Navy in 2178. That the Verge was so close to the heart of the Hegemony was ultimately to be their undoing.