THE BATTLE ENDS
The Consuls called an immediate cabinet meeting to decide on the appropriate response to the approaching Citadel forces closing in on the Verge. The Council had not yet issued any sort of statement on the matter, although none of the ministers seriously expected them to do so until the turian fleets in particular had arrived in position over Khar'shan. Given that the Citadel forces had opted to avoid Alliance space to make the journey, for political reasons, the arrival of the turians and the asari from the other side of the galaxy would take at least thirty hours. Some of the ministers pressed for waiting until that time before taking any action. DeBankole immediately killed the idea. Unlike the other two of the Big Three species' forces, the salarians shared a border with the the Traverse and as they were only a single relay jump from the Verge Wall itself, could intervene directly on their own.
For Consul Taro, she knew that matters would be resolved in principle long before the thirty hour window closed. Alliance WMD deterrence forces had already begun moving. If not intercepted, Alliance A62s would be in position to launch their thermonuclear warheads direct against the eastern and central turian colonies in four hours. An hour after that, the Hades Deterrence Fleet would arrive in Pranas, able to launch against Sur'Kesh. In twenty one hours, the A62s would reach asari space via the Terminus corridor. She related this information to the cabinet, and the meeting descended into chaos. Half the ministers, buoyed by the news, demanded that a warning be issued to the Citadel against intervention, making it clear what failure to comply would mean. A select few from the more pacifistic parts of the Consul's own Labour Party were running scared, demanding that Alliance forces withdraw from the Kite's Nest. The rest were at a loss.
Taro, extremely displeased at the display of both of these factions, snarled back at them. Any ultimatum sent to the Citadel would escalate the situation. Any retreat would be both cowardice and dismissing the sacrifice of millions of humans, a sacrifice that had been made to expand the Alliance's control and assure security from batarian attacks in the future. Still, the Cabinet had no ready alternative. Eventually, Minister Bankole, keeping track of Citadel commentaries on the new situation, came to a conclusion and proposed what would become the solution. Taro, much relieved, adopted it.
The A62s, being small craft, reached their launch positions in turian space without any trouble, but Taro refused to issue the Consular Authorisation for the Release of Nuclear Weapons. The bombers remained on stand by. This was not an unusual situation for the Army Air Forces; they trained for weapons-hold scenarios, for timed attacks in coordination with ground invasions. The Navy deterrence forces were a different story. The Hades Deterrence Fleet was intercepted by the salarians as they entered the Pranas System. All but one of the missile frigates immediately stood down, boxed in by large numbers of far larger vessels as they were. The exception was the Stalingrad, a Thermopylae-class missile frigate commanded by Captain Mari Stokke. Ignoring all orders from the salarians to power down her engines, she successfully navigated through the defences, dodging GARDIAN fire from three salarian cruisers and made it to FTL. The Stalingrad entered orbit over Sur'Kesh, opened all twenty of its missile doors and threatened independent launch if any salarian vessels approached it. Captain Stokke requested an order, either to withdraw or fire.
The news that the deterrence forces had successfully made it to the salarian homeworld was the moment that the Consul was waiting for. The point had been made. Human ships carrying WMDs could penetrate even to the homeworlds of the Big Three in a matter of hours, the strategic weapons doctrine of the Alliance had been proven entirely correct. She ordered Hades to withdraw, including the Stalingrad, and they began the return journey to Mars. There was still twenty five hours before the turians and asari would link up on the border of the Hegemony. More than enough time before the Alliance Navy would have no choice but to defend the gains won by blood.
Consul Taro opened negotiations with the Citadel Council via the asari embassy on Earth. She informed the councillors that she had ordered the withdrawal of her missile frigates as an act of good faith, but that the advance of the turian and asari fleets towards the Verge was unacceptable. Humanity could no longer tolerate the Hegemony having the capability and the seemingly endless desire to subjugate her, and the ownership of planets seized during the fighting had not been disputed before. She asked that the Citadel fleets be recalled, and that the Council allow the Hegemony to be conquered as there was no other alternative to secure peace. The whole region was to become a demilitarised zone under the administration of a new batarian government afterwards.
The salarian councillor reacted with rage to this. She complained about the Alliance incursion into her species' space and the threatened nuclear annihilation of her homeworld. The turians' representative joined the salarians in opposing the Consul's proposition. Records recovered from Thessia indicate that the asari would have been willing to accept the idea of human occupation of the Kite's Nest, provided there were safeguards similar to those imposed over the Krogan DMZ. However, with the opposition of the two other species made clear, the asari had no choice but to back the refusal. Consul Taro repeated her assertion that the batarians would never allow humanity to live in peace, and pointed out that they had initiated the war by attacking Elysium with the intention of annexing it.
The negotiations continued until an hour before the arrival of the Citadel fleets. At last, there was a breakthrough, about which no one but the asari were particularly pleased. Humanity would remain in the Kite's Nest and the Terminus systems it had conquered, but only until the Hegemony could be brought to the table to sign a formal peace treaty.
The Skyllian Verge, ex-batarian colonies in the Traverse and the Eagle Nebula would be permanently annexed to the Systems Alliance before such a treaty. In effect, humanity would be allowed to keep the vast majority of the useful worlds it had conquered in the war, something that greatly pleased Taro.
Batarian colonies as well as worlds formerly belonging to pirate lords in the Terminus would be abandoned immediately. This stipulation was to secure the Citadel's own political position and soothe the anger of the salarians; humanity's expansion by war was checked within the bounds of Citadel law, and notions of military expansionism put to rest for the moment. The Alliance government could live with this part of the agreement; the Terminus colonies required a great deal of protection and investment that the Alliance wasn't in a position to deliver effectively. The worlds had not been particularly troublesome to take in the first place, and so there would be no great outcry about them except from Terra Firma.
The Alliance would withdraw from the Kite's Nest, the Viper Nebula and the Theta Cluster once the batarians signed the treaty. In the mean time, the asari fleets would remain to keep the remains of the Hegemony's navy and the Alliance Navy apart, with broad authority to use force should either side attempt to engage with the other. In short, the Batarian Hegemony would survive as a political entity and as a state recognised by the Citadel Council. This stipulation was entirely unacceptable to Taro until the last hour, not least because if she had agreed to it, she would have been deposed by the Alliance Parliament as soon as she presented the agreement. However, it was absolutely essential from the Citadel perspective. Alliance occupation would have been unacceptable as it would have meant putting humanity on a permanent war footing, and it would have sparked galaxy-wide terrorism. A puppet government was viewed as an unreliable second option, particularly compared with keeping the existing elite cowed but in place to insure stability in the region.
The continued existence of the Hegemony was only accepted by Taro due to the last article of the agreement. Despite insistent turian resistance to the idea, and a great deal of salarian reluctance, an alternative to occupation to secure the Alliance's borders was found. Despite only being a member of the galactic community for decades, and ignoring the fact that it had taken the turians centuries to achieve the same status, humanity would begin the process to become the fourth race of the Citadel Council. The asari warned that it might take a human lifetime to achieve, but that the Alliance had already proven itself capable of defending itself to great effect and the batarians would take as long to recover. The Alliance had already proven its strength, a key necessity for Council membership, and its wealth grew rapidly too. All that remained was to prove that humanity could defend the other species' interests as effectively as it had defended itself. The first stage of this process was the induction of a human Spectre, to be followed by further such inductions and human participation in peacekeeping operations under turian command.
The offer was a good one. Taro knew that if humanity became the fourth race of the Citadel, the batarians could not attack human colonies without drawing the others into the conflict. The asari were right in saying that the operations in the Kite's Nest had broke the back of the Batarian Navy, who at that moment were still struggling to regroup to relieve the orbital blockade of Khar'shan. The prestige of cutting ahead of the volus, elcor and hanar was far from small either. Even Terra Firma would be pleased, as humanity would not have to wait for centuries as the hated turians had.
Taro accepted, and issued orders to implement the agreement.
The Citadel Fleets entered the Kite's Nest via the Theta relay, taking some minor damage from the minefields there but pressing on to Harsa with no real trouble. There, Battlefleets Trafalgar and Tsushima waited, made aware of the agreement and ready to receive the newcomers. The two huge fleets greeted each other as allies, and awaited the inevitable. The Hegemonic Navy, or what was left of it, dropped out of FTL ten hours later to find itself confronted by both Citadel and Alliance forces in overwhelming strength. The terms of the agreement were quickly transmitted to both the batarian flagship and the Arch-Hegemon. Admiral Ar'dra was ready to reject them, to go down fighting rather than give up a single scrap of land. His cousin the Arch-Hegemon overruled him however. There would be another opportunity to fight in the future. Holding onto power was his concern now.
The Battle of the Kite's Nest ended, as Alliance, Batarian and Asari Republics vessels took up positions around the Harsa System, and began the wait for the battle of politicians to end.
AFTER THE BATTLE
The negotiations for a permanent peace settlement were brief. Consul Taro received the full backing of the Alliance Parliament for the initial agreement with the Citadel, and went to the negotiations with domestic support firmly behind her. Arch-Hegemon Ar'dra on the other hand was fighting for his political life, as many of the Highborn supporting him wished to continue fighting. In his mind, the peace negotiations were the only shot at restoring some honour before rebuilding for the next war. The Citadel wanted a rubber stamp on the agreement they had already negotiated with Consul Taro, and nothing more.
The batarians' position was one of refusal. They accepted the annexation of the Skyllian Verge as a fait accompli, and applauded that the Alliance had been forced to give up the Terminus worlds. However, they put forth the idea that the conflict had been about the Verge in the first place, that their attack on Elysium was the start of a border war, not a total war. The Arch-Hegemon's diplomats placed blame on escalating the war on the shoulders of Taro, deBankole and the Alliance High Command. As such, they demanded the return of the Traverse worlds conquered by humanity and the independence of Anhur, Korlus and the rest of the Eagle Nebula from human occupation. The Traverse had never been the site of previous disagreements, and the Eagle Nebula had been attacked without provocation by an expansionist Consul who had stained her hands with blood.
The Alliance responded with intelligence recovered from Elanos Haliat's personal logs and comms records, laying out the grand plan for the offensive to follow from the fall of Elysium. These disproved any idea that the Hegemony had wanted a limited war over one or two colonial clusters, and outright stated that the final goal was the conquest and enslavement of humanity as a species. The Alliance negotiation team were outraged by the batarian demands, and in their anger, the chief negotiator Donnel Udina stated that humanity had ten thousand Torfans waiting should the batarians refuse to endorse the agreement already on the table.
The batarian team merely looked on in confusion. Both the political and military leadership of the Hegemony had not yet been informed of the events of Torfan, and the stunning example of soldiery undertaken by Jane Shepard on that world. The human delegation took great pleasure in describing how one Alliance soldier had fought and killed the very best the Hegemony had to offer, as well the events before and after. This broke the calm of the batarians entirely, but the asari had had enough. On behalf of the Citadel, they laid down an ultimatum of their own to the Arch-Hegemon: accept the treaty terms as stated, or face war with the Citadel. The batarian diplomats had no choice, they capitulated on the spot. They signed the Treaty of the Skyllian Verge on October 24th 2178.
Privately, the chief asari diplomat wrote in her journal that "Humans are both beautiful and terrifying;" a clear reference to both the physical similarities of the two species and the easy abandonment of diplomatic means by human politicians contrary to asari notions of government.
With the treaty signed, Battlefleets Trafalgar and Tsushima recovered all damaged and wrecked ships, leaving nothing behind for the batarians to study, and withdrew from the Kite's Nest. Tower Bridge was disassembled, station by station, and replaced with automatic listening posts throughout the entire route. The asari fleets remained, as the batarians repossessed the orbit of their motherworld and the relay jumpzones, their navy a ghost of its former self.
The Second Verge War was over, and humanity was victorious.
Having proven himself to be a cunning and relentless officer, Admiral Steven Hackett was promoted to the vacant position of Chief of Staff of the Alliance Navy in 2179, beating out Admiral Hunt in the process. Hunt himself conceded the position with grace, calling Hackett the greatest naval commander he had ever met after reading the full operational reports of the action in the Kite's Nest. With the entire service arm under his wing, Hackett would use the years between the end of the Second Verge War and the beginning of the Eden Prime War pushing a new reform agenda. While Alliance tactics and technology had been greatly superior to those of the Hegemony, the war had exposed certain needs that would need to be filled, most notably in stealth technology and ultra long-range weaponry. The limited success of the El Alemein-class frigates in the Kite's Nest, especially that ship's heat sink system, had great implications for the future. Hackett was the driving force behind the development of the Normandy-class and Churubusco-class stealth frigates, the Hero-class stealth guided missile destroyer, and the redevelopment of the Macha-class carriers into Apollo-class and Artemis-class guided missile-carrier hybrids.
Much like Cassandra DeRuyter, Hackett would remain at the very heart of human military affairs right into the beginning of the post-Reaper years, proving himself an essential part of the effort that went towards the survival of organic sentient life in the Milky Way galaxy.
Admiral Petra Hunt would remain in command of the Alliance Second Fleet through the Eden Prime War. He became a staunch supporter of both Hackett and the policies put forward by the new Chief of Staff. However, he largely disagreed with the decision to ally more closely with the quarians rather than consolidating ties with the Citadel species, seeing the former as less capable of helping humanity defend against the Reapers. This placed him under significant political pressure, until he retired in 2184 and was replaced by Admiral David Anderson. He spent his retirement on the Traverse colony of Horizon, until the Collector Crisis when he was kidnapped by the Collectors during the raid on that world in 2185. His body was never recovered, and he is presumed dead.
The body of Major-General Alexander Belmont was returned to Earth for burial, a hero of the war. His home country, the United States, gave him a full state funeral in Presque Ile, Maine, at the behest of Alliance Defence Minister deBankole. He was given military awards for distinguished service from the United States, the European Union, the African Union, the South American Federation, Australia, and the Alliance itself.
In the years afterwards, he became one of the legendary warriors of the Verge Wars, alongside de Santos, DeRuyter, Shepard, and Orzeski. Popular culture made a particular figure of him, all the more so as he was the only one of the legends to have died in combat, doing his duty. Although not quite on the level of Shepard, mostly due to turian and later asari interest in the N7, Belmont would feature as a character in many media entertainment features. He is remembered as an officer who always managed to balance the needs of the mission with the lives of those under his command.
Belmont's sons and daughters followed their father's example, and all five of them enlisted to serve in the Eden Prime War. All five would be killed in action during the course of that war. Two on Eden Prime itself during the second battle for that world, one at the Battle of Ket'osh, one on Rannoch, and one on the Citadel. They would be buried together with their father at the insistence of Alice Dennison.
Admiral Dhark Ar'dra continued as Supreme Commander of the Batarian Hegemonic Combined Forces, second only to the Arch-Hegemon himself. His power greatly increased in the years after the Second Verge War, as he possessed the rare combination of being both utterly loyal to his cousin and charged with the rebuilding of the Hegemony's strength. It was Dhark who pulled the batarians towards greater technological progress via use of a dead Reaper, although the Arch-Hegemon was the one who ordered that the remains be moved to a facility below his own residence in the Great Ziggurat.
Dhark Ar'dra was still in command when the Terra Nova Incident occurred, and had been unaware of the plan until Governor Sak'davran made a formal complaint about it. It is unknown to what extent the Admiral was exposed to Reaper indoctrination techniques, but the Alliance classified him as a top risk figure when the time came. The Third Verge War, known as the Great Upheaval in batarian historiography, would be Dhark's last stand, but by then, humanity had a seat on the Citadel Council and had created the Versailles Pact, and there was no amount of preparation the Admiral could have done that would have made a difference to the outcome.
Kesrak Ar'dra's position as Arch-Hegemon was greatly threatened by the peace treaty with the Alliance, at least at first. While the vast majority of the lowborn understood why he had signed it, and even whispered correctly that he was simply biding his time, much of the Highborn nobility that remained were incensed. Their honour had been greatly damaged as a result of the war, and the deliberate targeting of nobles by the Alliance in 2176 was neither forgotten nor forgiven. However, the ranks of the Highborn within the Hegemony itself were greatly depleted. Taking the nuclear attacks, the combat losses of officers, the destruction of the Firstborn on Torfan, and riots in the prison camps of Sidon, there were now more Highborn among the batarian dissidents and the warlords of the Terminus than there were in the Hegemony itself.
The Arch-Hegemon, ever mindful of an opportunity, rescinded the exile of many of the batarians in the Terminus. Some had never lived in the Hegemony at all, their ancestors having been exiled in the power struggles of the 2140s and 50s. Regardless, this had the effect of padding out Ar'dra's support among the Highborn, which in combination with the lowborn's fascination with their supreme leader, cemented his position for years to come. However, the act of allowing the children of exiles to return while keeping the batarian dissidents in the cold would also cement the Arch-Hegemon's demise, as they began to organise an alternative government on Shan'kharit with full Alliance support.
The years between 2178 and 2183 were spent building the Hegemony up again, and taking every opportunity to weaken the Alliance. Acts of terrorism against strategic targets were occasionally carried out by External Forces operatives, now free to roam Citadel space once again. When the opportunity to destroy Terra Nova by redirecting an asteroid arose, the Arch-Hegemon did not hesitate for a second. This was perhaps Kesrak Ar'dra's first act of complete indoctrinated madness. The Alliance was in the middle of the Eden Prime War, a potentially far more devastating conflict than the Second Verge War ever threatened to be, particularly as they had not planned for it. By 2183, Ar'dra had lived with a Reaper corpse beneath his formal residence for four years. Once the Eden Prime War concluded with the Battle of Tikkun and the Battle of the Citadel, the Alliance had once again placed the destruction of the Hegemony as a state at the top of their list of priorities. After they had been given evidence of the Reaper technology in the possession of the Arch-Hegemon, all objections from the other Citadel species about invading the Kite's Nest once again disappeared.
Nozomi Taro continued her second term of office with semi-divine status, delaying debate over war-time level military spending for four years after the victory. The public, while disappointed that the Hegemony still existed, were not in any mood to nitpick over details. Alliance territory had been greatly expanded, humanity's position in galactic affairs had been raised to the very highest levels, and the threat of batarian attacks like those on Mindoir and Elysium had been completely eliminated. Taro continued her policy of peacetime military build-up in the face of existing and future threats, the Terminus becoming the primary focus of Alliance threat assessments. She had Hackett's military innovations funded through 2183, before announcing at the start of 2182 that she would not be seeking re-election as Consul or to her seat in the Alliance Parliament representing southern Japan.
With the arrival of the deBankole-Dennison Administration in August 2182, Taro returned to Earth and was named the first female Grand-Chamberlain of Japan. She held this position until the end of 2183, when she announced her retirement and returned to her estate on Kyushu. She was regularly sought for comment on political matters throughout the Eden Prime War and the Collector Crisis, and was known to praise Consul Dennison in particular. The Reaper War saw her return to leadership once again, rallying the Japanese people against the Reapers after they destroyed the Imperial Palace in Tokyo and razed Kyoto to the ground. She spent the war coordinating supply and morale efforts for the soldiers defending her mother country, and survived despite no less than six targeted attempts on her life by Reaper ground forces sent specifically to kill her.
Nozomi Taro died in her sleep in 2188, ten years to the day of the end of the Battle of the Kite's Nest, a tiger's smile on her face.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: So that's it for the Second Verge War. As promised, work on the First Contact War will begin next, as I have not finished Battlefield 2183 yet and the Eden Prime War would spoil that story.
Also, I got this out early for you all, as ending one cliffhanger with another cliffhanger was a tad cruel.
I hope you've enjoyed the story so far.