THE WEAPONS
The Systems Alliance
The human fleets had no shortage of fine weapons of war, many of which were already battle tested and upgraded by the time of the Battle of the Kite's Nest. The Agincourt-class frigate and the A-62 Strategic Bomber would make significant contributions to the victory to come, both using the Mark 7 Disruptor Torpedo to full effect against a great range of targets. The new El-Alemein class would also fight in the battle in relatively small numbers, having only just been commissioned nine months previously as a frigate with stealth characteristics. The Thermopylae class deterrence frigate would play a notable role in the opening of the battle, but did not play the decisive part. The New York class cruisers, making up the bulk of Alliance cruiser strength, continued in their traditional role with great efficacy.
However, the contributions of other designs and those using them were at least the equal of these, and deserve greater mention. Together, these weapons would make up the most powerful fleet ever assembled by humanity until the Battle of Tikkun in 2183. Admiral Hackett and Admiral Hunt would have no shortage of firepower to throw at the Hegemony in the days to come.
Niké-class Fleet Carrier
In 2176, the Niké-class was the largest and most powerful class of vessel in service with any Citadel species except for the singular example of the Destiny Ascension-class superdreadnought, and it was the only class of its size of which there were multiple ships in service. Designed to rise to the challenges its predecessors had found difficult, it was the first complete product of human-quarian technical cooperation that had begun in the aftermath of the First Verge War. Unlike most Alliance designs, its huge size meant that it could not be built with existing modular construction techniques in mind. The costs of construction were proportionally higher than most human vessels, and so the Niké was and remains the only capital ship in service with civilian subclasses for commercial and colonial use. Built at the Luna Shipyards, both military and civilian versions were put together side-by-side. The Niké is used by the Systems Alliance and later the Quarian Navy, while its civilian subclasses, the Nile class and the Aphrodite class, are used by corporations and NGOs based in the jurisdictions of every major species.
Each ship is over two kilometres long and carries a crew of two thousand five hundred service personnel. This space and crew complement are the backbone for a truly awesome arsenal of weapons. In 2178, these included twenty-four torpedo tubes in the forward head of the ship, thirty six cruiser-grade mass-accelerators mounted broadside along the hull in turrets, thirty-four dual-barrel GARDIAN point defence lasers, two Medusa space-to-ground 'EMP' projectors, six missile tubes, two hundred fighters, fifty utility craft or tactical bombers, and eighty aircraft launchers. The defences are equally as formidable, consisting of triple overlapping kinetic barriers, ultra-dense and ablative armours, heat decoys, ECM and ECCM, as well as damage-control drones for internal and external automatic repairs. Furthermore, as it was expected to fight at extended distances from interior lines of supply, it is capable of manufacturing spare parts and ammunition on a limited scale from raw resources provided by support vessels.
The class had performed admirably in the course of the war. At Elysium, the SSV Morrigan had flown as part of Combined Battle Fleet Hiryu, where her squadrons, torpedoes and batteries all made their contributions to the victory. All five ships that had been commissioned by 2176 saw action in the blitz across the Verge, their squadrons destroying a number of batarian combat groups. At Anhur and during the 'March Around the Core', the SSV Victoria was Admiral Petra Hunt's flagship, fighting in a more than dozen fleet engagements against Terminus flotillas and operating far from Alliance space. Another six Niké-class ships were scheduled for completion by the end of 2178, but Tower Bridge was complete before these would be combat-ready, so only the original five would fight.
The Kite's Nest was to be where the reputation of the class was settled once and for all. After the Second Verge War, the design would be continually improved, eventually becoming the even more powerful Athena-subclass to which all Niké vessels would be upgraded by 2183. Forty of the fifty ships built of the civilian subclasses would be expropriated by the Alliance Navy in 2184 during the Third Verge War, in anticipation of the greater conflicts to come.
The ships of this class that fought in the Kite's Nest were Niké, Victoria, Morrigan, Valkyria, and Bellona.
Macha-class Fleet Carrier
Commissioned in time for the Systems Alliance's full recognition by the Citadel in 2165, the Macha was the first human capital ship of the post First Contact War era, and the first to take advantage of increasingly superior human understanding of mass effect physics. It was as much a political statement as a weapon of war; humanity had won its place through the introduction of carriers as the primary focus of navies, and the Macha-class dwarfed most dreadnought classes in size and firepower. Its service through the beginnings of the Verge conflict and the First Verge War was exemplary, but the wave of innovation that humanity had unleashed by her arrival had not stopped. The destruction of the SSV Amaterasu was the wake up call for the Alliance Navy, and by 2178, it was in the midst of being replaced by the far superior Niké-class.
At just over one thousand five hundred metres in length, the Macha was still the third largest ship class in service among any species in the galaxy in 2178. With a crew complement of one thousand seven hundred, the ship mounts twenty torpedo launchers in the bow, twenty cruiser-grade mass-accelerators in turrets along the hull, twenty dual-barrel GARDIAN laser batteries, two Medusa 'EMP' projectors, one hundred and fifty fighters, twenty utility craft or tactical bombers, and forty fighter launchers. This arrangement placed the Macha well above average for both ship firepower and fighter complement. The next largest carrier, the asari Armali-class drone carrier, was a distant second in all categories save for number of GARDIAN batteries. The Macha had all the same defences as the Niké-class, save for an older dual-overlapping kinetic barrier design, but it was its deficiencies in point defence would cost the Alliance dearly.
Batarian use of kamikaze tactics with their fighter aircraft had scored hits on human vessels before, usually in desperation but most notably as a thought-out tactic during the pre-war attack on the SSV Amaterasu. The Kite's Nest would see massed 'alpha-strike' attacks by batarian squadrons against Alliance fleet carriers, either as suicide runs or with deliberate intent to use the fighters themselves as torpedoes. While the Niké-class would prove absolutely impervious to such assaults, the Macha-class was to suffer. As a known problem, measures were taken against the weakness and as a result, many lives would be saved, and no ships would be lost.
By 2183, the end of the class' service looked imminent. Most Macha-class ships were transferred to the Alliance Merchant Marine, for use as colonial support and relief ships. Their names and battle honours were transferred to new Niké commissions. However, by the end of the Eden Prime War, humanity had been awakened to the existential threat of the Reapers. All twenty-one Macha-class carriers would be returned to Alliance service in 2184, refitted as hybrid guided missile carriers using QEC technology recovered from Sovereign to make up the new Artemis and Apollo classes.
The ships of this class that would fight in the Kite's Nest were Macha, Minerva, Amaterasu II, Pahket, Otrera, Athena, Nemain, Pele, Kali, Ishtar, Freya, Astarte, Andarta, Oya, Menhit, and Neith.
Belfast-class Heavy Cruiser/Escort Carrier
Yet another child of quarian and human technological cooperation, the Belfast-class was designed to do two things. The first was to provide a hull configuration that could be used as an escort carrier, planetary assault cruiser or combat cruiser. The second was to outperform the very capable batarian Hensa-class heavy cruiser in every respect. It would succeed in both regards, thanks to humanity's love for modular construction. First commissioned in 2175, it was to augment but not replace the venerable and reliable New York-class cruisers that had proved themselves time and again. Fully half the production run would be complete by the time of Elysium.
All Belfast-class cruisers are seven hundred and seven metres in length, though crew complement varied according to need. Like the New York, the ship consisted of an engineering section, triple spinal mass-accelerators, crew quarters, and bridge, all of which is attached to a central structure. Several different kinds of section are then mounted over this, using common and prefabricated parts. On combat cruisers, the sections mount varying numbers of broadside mass-accelerators. Planetary assault cruisers use turreted torpedo launchers and large cargo bays, to allow for maximum space for titans and shuttles. Escort carrier variants have flight pods, fighter hangers and extra point defences, carrying sixty-five to eighty fighters and a pair of utility craft or tactical bombers. All types mount at least eight GARDIAN batteries, rising to as many as fourteen on the largest escort carrier type. Defences consisted of triple overlapping kinetic barriers, ECM and ECCM, and heat decoy launchers.
Although the heavy cruiser and planetary assault variants would be heavily engaged during the battle, it was to be the escort carriers that scored the most hits on batarian vessels during the course of the fighting. Joining with the fighter squadrons of the Niké-class and Macha-class vessels, they would carry the bulk of the Alliance Navy's fighters into the battle.
F-61 Trident Strike Fighter
Called 'Old Reliable' among fighter jocks and naval theorists, the Trident Strike Fighter entered in 2161 to replace the pre-First Contact fighter and fighter-bomber designs used by the Alliance until that point. By 2166, it had replaced all other designs both with the Alliance Navy and the Alliance Army Airforces. It was not an innovative piece of machinery, and heavily borrowed from existing asari designs in terms of its hull structure and engine layout. It fought throughout the Verge Conflict, and would go on to serve through the Eden Prime War, the Collector Crisis, the Reaper War, right into the post-Reaper era. Designs for its replacement are being considered at present, but it is likely that the Trident will continue in service for decades to come due to resource prioritisation.
The fighter is a quad-engine, tri-hull, carrier-capable multirole combat spacecraft, capable of effective use in atmosphere and in vacuum, though it is in the latter which it is best utilised. Carrying either one or two crew members depending on the variant, the fighter mounts three EXALT torpedo launchers, dual mass-accelerators for interception duties, and either space-to-space missiles or a single GARDIAN laser. After the Eden Prime War, two of the torpedo launchers would be replaced on many examples with Thanix cannons, especially after the resolution of the Collector Crisis. The fighter's FTL core was the match of any other design's own, and it had enough range to make independent attack and reconnaissance missions even across relays if required, though it is and was rare for fighters to do so without support from larger vessels. For defence, it had ECM and ECCM, heat decoy launchers, and engine heat shrouds.
The Tridents deployed from the fleet and escort carriers were to cause about seventy percent of all ship combat losses to the batarians during the battle. Squadron casualty rates would be low, mostly due to the superior range of Alliance torpedoes, but also because of the combat doctrines instilled in every Wing Commander and the attitude of the batarians.
The Batarian Hegemony
The Batarian Hegemonic Navy brought only one new weapon of war to the fight for their home cluster, the Eyes of Khar'shan dreadnought subclass, derived from the Fang of Khar'shan class. As dreadnoughts go, the ship was an extremely impressive feat of engineering, easily matching the Alliance's Thor-class or the two more modern turian designs then in service. It was not based on any new technology, it did not incorporate any great leap forward in engineering terms, and the manner in which the ships were to be used remained completely obsolete for the sort of battle that was to come. Five such vessels would see action in the Kite's Nest; the Eyes, the Jaw, the Fist, the Glory, and the Revenge of Khar'shan. All five would be rendered essentially irrelevant once combat began due to the strategy of Admiral Hackett and the huge distances over which the battle would be fought.
The same can be said for the Hensa-class Heavy Cruisers that made up the backbone of the batarian fleets. The batarians had a small number of escort carriers based on the Hensa's hull configuration, but this was more of a paper classification than an actual attempt at creating a batarian carrier group. The Hensa did carry up to thirty fighters each, which combined with fighters launching from Khar'shan and the orbital defence stations, provided more than enough attack strength to take the fight to the Alliance. However, use of these assets in the correct manner was hampered, both by doctrine and technological barriers. Batarian torpedo technology, derived from older human EXALT designs, was not as advanced. No attempts to raise the rangeof batarian torpedoes were made, the batarian philosophy instead relying on massed attacks by fighters to overwhelm defences rather than trying to penetrate them.
The batarians had no less than five fighter designs in service in 2178, the oldest being nearly ninety years old and the newest having been introduced only just prior to the start of the Second Verge War. While they were all strongly derived from each other and shared many parts, this meant that the batarians had a much more variable set of performances from their squadrons. A squadron issued with the oldest design could not be expected to carry out the same 'bleeding-edge' mission as a squadron with the newest. The batarians were well aware of this problem, and had intended to replace all fighters with the newest design, the Ba-88. The Alliance blitz campaign after the defeat at Elysium captured the manufacturing facilities for batarian fighters on Dar'lokhan, and so every spare fighter was to be pressed into service. Manufacturing did resume on Khar'shan itself in 2177, but at a much reduced pace.
Overall, the Alliance had huge advantages over the Batarian Hegemony in weaponry by the time of the Battle of the Kite's Nest, both technologically and in doctrinal terms. This would be shown to devastating effect in due course, to the point that the greater powers of galactic politics would take immediate, terrified notice.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Yes, the Niké and Macha are basically battlestars. Given how space fights must play out in the Mass Effect universe due to the physics and available technology, the 'battlestar' concept makes a whole lot of sense. There are hints of a new paradigm post-Eden Prime in here, that I hope you find enticing.
The next chapter published by me will be a huge BF2183 one. I appreciate all your commentary on my previous note.
It looks increasingly likely that I will not finish 2183 before the end of this chapter, so the next one will be the First Contact War.