THE BATTLE CONTINUES
Phase 2: Tora Tora Tora
Once the batarian outpost on Planet Y-2Y had been taken, word was sent back through Tower Bridge. The news of the seizure of the outpost, the hiccup in doing so and the cost were received by the Alliance government. Consul Taro was at a loss for once. That the operation had gone smoothly was what she had hoped for. The possibility that Battlefleet Trafalgar had been discovered was not a welcome one, and she seriously considered changing her plan to announce the bypass of the batarian defences. Alexander deBankole convinced her otherwise. Regardless of whether or not the batarians had found out about Tower Bridge, it was too late now for them to do anything about it. Trafalgar possessed greatly superior forces, in theory. It was still a better outcome than having to force the relays. Besides that, the Minister argued that they had a martyr.
The greater galaxy learned of the ambitious operation and the daring mission taken to protect it the next day. Minister deBankole called a press conference, and announced that the forces of the Alliance had successfully outflanked the Verge Wall. Poised to strike at the very heart of the Hegemony, this had only been possible due to the bravery and sacrifice of Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Belmont. The Minister proclaimed Belmont's posthumous promotion to General, and described the mission for which he had died. After nearly half a year of no real news, with Torfan acting as a scrap over which media organisations had fought, the fifth estate was left utterly dumbfounded. Dumbfounded not only by the importance of the announcement itself, but at how skillfully the Alliance intelligence services had played them like a fiddle. There was an outpouring of admiration and anger both from the general public, the former from humans, asari maidens and matrons, the latter from the huge batarian population of the Terminus and the anti-human elements of the turian colonies. The Citadel's reaction was muted, officially. Behind closed doors, panicked questions were being asked about where the situation was going.
On the same day, Hackett began the second stage of operations in the Kite's Nest, his plans modified slightly to account for supposed batarian awareness of the presence of human fleets. Originally, Trafalgar was to spread out and take all inhabited systems in a single sweep, and regroup at the Harsa system itself to allow the WMD missile frigates to take out the defence stations on the relays. Now, the fleet would make the long journey to the nearest star system to Harsa almost entirely, with squadrons of planetary assault cruisers breaking off to take specific objectives. Harsa was a 'dual' system in that it had a close stellar neighbour only a half lightyear away, albeit one with only two planets, both gas giants. While useless for the batarians, they were perfect for Hackett's new plan.
Over the course of the next week, Battlefleet Trafalgar moved from the line of no return set by the Citadel against inter-regional exploration at Planet Y-2Y to Harsa's neighbour, designated Pearl in the Alliance plan. The fleet moved directly, not stopping to discharge at other systems, an action made possible only by the by-now well honed experience of the crews at such manoeuvres and the design of their ships. That isn't to say that the bypassed systems were ignored. Frigate wolfpacks and planetary assault squadrons were split off from the main force. On three minor garden worlds, Alliance cruisers dropped N5 marine divisions, seizing their capitals without much resistance after heavy but brief orbital bombardments. The defences of these worlds had been stripped to provide firepower for the Verge Wall and Khar'shan itself, but the Batarian Army and the colonial militias turned out in huge numbers to resist anyway. With major spaceports in Alliance hands, the marines played a defensive strategy and caused huge losses against the wave tactics employed to remove them.
The DID operatives back at the end of Tower Bridge successfully introduced a virus into the batarian FTL comms systems, one that looked like a more or less unintentional glitch. Ironically, batarian analysts caught immediately that it was deliberate sabotage, but thought the responsible party was a well-known cabal of mid-caste hackers opposed to the war. They had attempted downing the entire government network before and failed, and so the Hegemony thought the dissidents had gone for a more direct route instead. As a result, on September 20th 2178, Battlefleet Trafalgar reached Pearl undetected, mere hours ahead of batarian ships fleeing the orbital assaults in its wake.
Hackett wasted no time. His ships were in no state for a long fight, badly needing to discharge their drives. They entered orbit over the gas giants of Pearl to see to this, a truly precarious situation should the batarians discover them and move to attack. However, the fighters on the flight decks of the Alliance carriers and the pilots ready to fly them were entirely ready for action. This was Hackett's gambit. While his ships made themselves ready again, he would launch a huge attack on the Batarian Hegemonic Navy at their primary fleet base over Verush. It was to be an absolutely overwhelming attack. Sixteen thousand fighters and bombers were sent. Nearly two thirds of all Alliance attack pilots in Battlefleet Trafalgar were committed, the maximum number possible while leaving sufficient numbers to cover the fleet. The five attack groups were arranged according to the lead Niké-class carrier coordinating their assaults, and were named as such.
The fighters arrived in Harsa over Verush a mere half hour after the news of the attacks on the outer worlds of the cluster had. Admiral Ar'dra had arrived at the fleet base a mere five minutes before, as the Arch-Hegemon considered placing Khar'shan on full invasion defence alert. There was still a degree of disbelief that the Alliance had managed to get so close, but the reports and coincidental technical failures could no longer be ignored. The drive cores of the First Fleet's dreadnoughts were warmed up, along with the alert squadrons' own. The crews of the remaining ships were on leave. The space around Verush is a web of hundreds small moons and captured asteroids. It would have been very difficult to launch an attack against the fleet base for large vessels, but it was extremely advantageous for small fighters. The Tridents and A62s were able to drop out of FTL behind the moons, skim just above the surface to avoid easy tracking, and turn directly onto their attack vectors.
The first assault was utterly devastating, particularly as the Alliance pilots were trained to use their torpedoes just outside batarian GARDIAN range, increasing the chance that the weapons would impact while eliminating the possibility that the fighters themselves would be shot down.
Priority targets were dreadnoughts and the fleet base station itself. Group Niké successfully destroyed the three obsolete dreadnoughts anchored at the end of the main structure. Group Morrigan destroyed the Eye of Khar'shan and the Revenge of Khar'shan superdreadnoughts along with their moorings and the combined cruiser-frigate group docked alongside them. Group Victoria destroyed the Glory of Khar'shan and most of its accompanying squadrons, trapping Admiral Ar'dra on board in a sealed compartment and cutting him off from taking immediate command of the battle, but failed to destroy or even damage the Jaw of Khar'shan. Groups Valkyria and Bellona chalked up hundreds of cruiser hits, and managed to sever the long superstructure of the fleet base into two pieces near a secondary fuel dump. Alliance losses were minimal, limited to a half-dozen A62s that had strayed too close to a GARDIAN battery on the largest orbiting body. Batarian losses are hard to tally, but definitely stray into the five hundred mark in terms of ships put out of action, although many were not destroyed to the extent that they could not be salvaged later, save for the dreadnoughts.
However, by the time the fighters returned to Pearl, Battlefleet Trafalgar was still not ready. The cruisers, escort carriers and capital ships were still in the process of discharging their drives. Without the assistance of specialised stations like those that Tower Bridge had possessed, the process of dispersing the built up energy took longer. However, the frigates were now ready to fight. Rather than risk a full fleet engagement, Hackett ordered a second attack on Harsa, this time with a combination of fighter-bomber squadrons and frigate wolfpacks. The number of fighters committed was greatly reduced, down to six thousand, to allow the battlefleet to counterattack if the second wave failed. Unable to see a better opportunity arising any time soon, the Admiral also deployed the missile frigates, to clear the way for Battlefleet Tsushima to join the fight from the Verge.
The batarians were not idle either. Admiral Ar'dra was rescued from the wreck of the Glory of Khar'shan and made the Fist of Khar'shan his new flagship. With debris and ships moving without orders causing utter chaos around the heavily damaged fleet base, he issued a general order for all First Fleet vessels to rally over Khar'shan itself and ordered the Second and Third Fleets to send half their forces from the Viper Nebula and Yuki-Theta relays too. Fighters based on the inner planets were scrambled, and naval crews recalled from leave. The latter were able to get back to their ships in a matter of hours thanks to the First Fleet's move, meaning that those ships that did remain intact would now be at full fighting capacity. The batarians braced for the naval assault against their motherworld.
But it did not come. Battlefleet Trafalgar's second wave exited FTL above Verush, once again using the moons and asteroids as cover, only to find that the naval base had been abandoned. Within minutes, the scans of the system indicated that the batarians had moved into strong orbital defence formations and that their fighter cover was now very significant. Group-Captain Eva Gonzalez-O'Neill, the commanding officer of the second wave, scrubbed the primary mission. Khar'shan was simply too tough a nut to crack with her available forces. The secondary mission to escort the missile frigates to the relays was still a go, this time with hugely reinforced numbers.
The Hades Deterrence group, led by the SSV Thermopylae, moved towards the Verge relay defence stations with an escort of fighters. Once in optimal position to avoid GARDIAN fire, the frigates launched their Scylla missiles, set to maximum yield, at the targets. The batarian stations were essentially planetary defence cannons mounted onto asteroids that had been towed into place around the relay. Scylla missiles, designed for trans-relay and long range WMD attacks, were too fast to be shot down at any rate. The defence stations were sunk in nuclear fire, ground-penetrating warheads ignoring the facilities themselves and instead breaking apart the very rock they were built on. The combined force of the blasts managed to move the stations away from the jump zone as well, a factor planned for by the DID and the Alliance Navy. With the first relay open, the deterrence frigates used it and returned to the Verge where the Alliance First and Second Fleets, as well as the rest of the galaxy, awaited news.
Meanwhile, the Dis and Tartarus Deterrence groups moved towards the secondary relay, to travel to the Viper Nebula and destroy the batarian fixed defences around the relay guarding the way to the Traverse. With them went the bulk of the Alliance's second wave, including all of the fleet frigates and the bulk of the fighters. Group-Captain Gonzalez-O'Neill wanted to give the impression that their main target was the Viper Nebula relay, and pull the batarians away from attempting to stop the Group Hades. She succeeded, but not for the reasons she intended. Just as the entire attack group dropped out of FTL and approached the secondary relay at sublight speeds, the requested forces from the batarian Second Fleet jumped into the system. The admirals in charge of the batarian detachments and the Group-Captain were mutually surprised at each other's presence, and both ordered their ships to attack.
The Alliance fighters and frigates dealt significant damage to the incoming batarian cruisers, but the closeness of the engagement meant that the advantages the first wave had enjoyed were not present for the second. The Alliance vessels were forced to retreat, losing more than a hundred fighters and ten frigates in the action, although they traded those losses dearly. Furthermore, the deterrence frigates were not able to transit to the Viper Nebula. With the batarian First Fleet moving to join the fight, the Gonzalez-O'Neill ordered the withdrawal to Pearl and sent the report of the action to Hackett.
Phase 3: Ambushes
Admiral Hackett was surprised by the failure of his second wave. The primary objective of utterly crippling the batarian First Fleet had not been achieved, and the secondary objective of opening the relays for Battlefleet Tsushima had only been half-completed. Significant damage had been done, and his own forces now were now in an excellent position to take the fight to the enemy, but the primary problem of the batarian relay defences had not been overcome entirely. The batarians could camp on the Harsa primary relay and force a more favourable battle with fighter support from Khar'shan itself. Battlefleet Tsushima had orders to wait twenty four hours after confirmation of the downing of the relay defences before jumping into the Kite's Nest, and Admiral Hunt would no doubt waste no time in moving through regardless of the actual situation. Hackett refused to allow that, and put into motion one of his contingency plans.
Meanwhile, news of successful destruction of the fixed defences at Harsa was met with jubilation and outpourings of patriotic zeal among humans all over the galaxy. Business across Alliance space ground to a halt as news coverage of every new detail continued. The Citadel saw unrest as humans stormed into the Presidium to the shouts of TERRA VICTOR and the singing of the Alliance anthem. Citadel Council banners were torn down and replaced with Pale Blue Dot flags, and the celebrants eventually made camp around the Krogan monument to hold a street party. In the Terminus, riots erupted on Omega and Ilium between humans and batarians, with some asari backing the humans out of solidarity for kidnapped relatives. Both the Citadel and human governments remained silent that day, as the battle had yet to be won.
September 21st saw Admiral Hackett fighting a withdrawal from Pearl as the batarians finally discovered his fleet's position. However, rather than moving back towards Tower Bridge with his entire force, he split them up by attack group and sent each around Harsa to the nearest star system with a garden world, of which there were four. He held Group Niké at the Fenloup system, the first on the way back towards the systems already conquered.
This was a gamble. The batarians could have overwhelmed any one of the attack groups individually, even as badly mauled as they were. However, Hackett had good reasons to take the risk. The first was that the batarians now had to guard the relay into Harsa with ships, diverting much of their resources and attention. The second was that the obvious defence against his attack groups being taken on individually was that they would retreat in the face of a superior enemy, and that Admiral Ar'dra would assume the same and only use forces slightly superior to each group if possible in order to trap them. The third was that in attacking four batarian colonies around Khar'shan at once, it would make the decision about which one ought to be prioritised a difficult one.
Hackett was mostly correct in the first two assumptions, but wrong in the third. Admiral Ar'dra did indeed leave a significant force to guard the relay to the Verge, and he did indeed assume that the Alliance attack groups would retreat. However, he underestimated the ruthlessness of the Ar'dra dynasty as a whole. The Arch-Hegemon himself ordered that the two most valuable colonies, Shadran and Hak'ruun, be swept clean first. His cousin the Admiral agreed wholeheartedly, and was less interested in destroying the Alliance forces immediately than Hackett could have imagined. Rather, the batarians intended to use their local superiority of firepower to push the Alliance attack groups around until further reinforcements from the batarian Third Fleet could be mustered.
The fight over Shadran was a brutal one. Group Valkyria was in orbit over the world itself, when half of the forces Ar'dra had allocated for counterattacking dropped in with them, the Fist of Khar'shan leading them. The batarian fighters immediately began kamikaze attacks against the fleet carriers, and the cruisers began dueling. The Macha-class carriers Freya, Astarte, and Pahket suffered multiple direct hits to their port sides, putting their launchers out of commission and forcing them to withdraw. The Valkyria itself saw much attention from similar attacks, but its defences managed to hold them off with little trouble. The superiority of Alliance designs showed, and the batarians took heavy initial losses, but the humans were forced to withdraw fully within an hour as the weight of numbers began to tell. Admiral Ar'dra himself aboard the flagship declared it a great victory, and indeed it was. He had his fleet follow Group Valkyria to keep them off balance, smelling blood in the water.
Meanwhile, the battle on the other side of cluster to Harsa was not going well for the Hegemony. Group Victoria, having received word of the attack on Group Valkyria, lay in wait for a similar attack. When the batarian fleet arrived, the Jaw of Khar'shan at its head, it was immediately set upon by vengeful frigate wolfpacks and fighter squadrons as it approached Hak'ruun. The batarian commander, one Admiral Ta'lek, ordered his ships to reform to repel it, assuming that the Alliance ships had withdrawn to avoid battle and left the fighters behind to cause as much damage as possible. Unfortunately for the admiral and his fleet, the Alliance ships had done no such thing, and as soon as his formation was disrupted, hundreds of Belfast-class and New York-class cruisers jumped into firing positions. The Alliance ships had three minutes of free shooting before their counterparts could turn their main batteries, and by then, many were destroyed.
An interesting note is how the Jaw of Khar'shan itself was crippled. The eponymous SSV Belfast, fitted out as an escort carrier and commanded by Captain Hannah Shepard, seized a key opportunity. Its now-famous captain noted that the batarian superdreadnought was badly protected from fighter attack from the rear, a trait quite common among galactic designs at the time due to much derivation from older turian designs. She redirected her entire fighter complement, some eighty fighters, into a path that brought it through the bulk of the enemy screen and behind the Jaws. Although half the fighters were knocked out en route, at a loss of nineteen pilots, the dreadnought's engines and reactor were entirely disabled. Once this occurred, the rest of the batarian ships fled in all directions, and the Alliance claimed the victory.
Phase 4: Untergang
At 2100 hours Standard Earth Time, September 21st 2178, Admiral Hunt joined the battle with the majority of Battlefleet Tsushima. The batarian pickets were soon staring down the barrels of all five Thor-class dreadnoughts, as well as the heavy cruisers and cruisers of the Second and Third Alliance fleets. Hugely outnumbered and hugely outgunned, the batarian defence formation crumpled like paper. Tsushima jumped into orbit over Khar'shan itself and began bombardment of key military installations, and swatted the unsupported ground-based fighters out of the skies. Contact with Hackett was established soon after the Alliance had established complete spatial supremacy in Harsa, and Battlefleet Trafalgar stopped its operational manoeuvres to link up the two. This was accomplished by the early morning of September 22nd. Humanity now had the Hegemony's capital and the batarian motherworld in a chain of steel.
Worse, the batarians knew there was little they could do. The Arch-Hegemon desperately sent messages to his cousin Admiral Ar'dra to retake Harsa from the Alliance. The Admiral replied that he did not have the forces available to successfully do so, but that he would die trying regardless. He ordered all available ships, including those in the Viper Nebula, to rally for an offensive a day later. Hackett and Hunt knew that the end was nigh for the Batarian Navy too, and communicated the situation to Consul Taro and Minister Bankole. Caught in the patriotic fervour they had themselves unleashed, the Consul had the news that the final battle was about to begin released to the galactic media. Once again, humans across the galaxy revelled in their triumph, and the realisation that the war was almost over.
However, the news was the straw that broke the camel's back where the Citadel Council was concerned. The Council itself had been in secret session since the beginning of Hackett's offensive, and throughout the entire operation, there had been a deadlock. The asari, not wanting to stifle and thus isolate humanity, continually voted against intervention. The salarians, seeing what humanity was really capable of for the first time, continually pushed for the war to be stopped. The turians, torn between the obvious ambition of humanity and sheer begrudging admiration for its response to a clear threat, abstained until the last moment. The shock of Khar'shan being left completely vulnerable to invasion was an eventuality that not even the asari had seen coming, and when the vote came, it was unanimous.
Combined turian, asari and salarian fleets began moving, without any hint of secrecy, towards the Verge. The full measure of the Alliance's Black Forest Protocol went into effect automatically. Alliance Army Air Force A62s carrying Scylla missiles touched off from Earth, Elysium, Eden Prime and Terra Nova within twenty minutes of the news reaching the Alliance High Command. The Army's own trans-relay ballistic missiles were fuelled and put on quick launch mode. Deterrence Fleet Hades, rearmed mere hours before the news from the Kite's Nest had arrived on the Citadel, broke orbit over Eden Prime and began jumping into salarian space, its target sector. The trigger for a truly galactic war was now primed, and Consul Taro was the one with her finger upon it.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Since people were quite literally begging for me to end the cliffhanger last chapter, I got this together quickly. Not that it helps, because this one ends on a cliffhanger too, albeit one with a more obvious conclusion given that the Citadel and the Alliance did not go to war. Though how they came to that decision is obviously of interest.
Since BF2157 was delayed again due to this story, I threw in a reference.