(holy beep blood raven is an awesome beta and AT this point co author, full credit to reworking of chapter 3)
Chapter 3
THS Hierarchy's Fist, Relay 314 system, 2657GS, April/22/2329 AD
Admiral Albirus Varlikam, commander of the expedition into unknown space waited for his fleet to assemble fully. As a career Naval officer, he found it rather hard to believe the energy weapons story, but the Terran prisoners were indisputable proof that something lay on the other side of the active relay and they needed to know what in case they had to fight it. Varlikam looked to his communication officer and ordered a fleet wide communique with the captains of the vessels under his command.
"Sailors and Soldiers of the Hierarchy, today we venture into territories unknown, I cannot begin to speculate what we are going to encounter on the other side of this relay, but if what we encountered earlier is any indication it will it may be nothing like we have seen before, so prepare yourselves for anything and be ready to make history, all ships ahead full."
With that said, he ended the transmission and had the fleet plot course toward the relay to discover what may lay hidden on the other side.
TFS FF-400 John D. Sloat, Shanxi system, April/22/2329AD
Erica skidded to a stop in the bridge, greeting the chaos of her staff trying to figure out what was happening, something she wanted to know just as much. She looked to her communication's officer for answers.
"What's happening lieutenant Connor?"
"Ma'am, the Argonaut is reporting a fleet of forty ships are appearing in system."
"What!?" Erica asked as she took her seat stunned by the number she was hearing. "Did – did they come from the structure?" fearing that fate had decided to be cruel to her again she prepared for the worst.
"No ma'am, Argonaut is reporting that the ships came from the galactic south alignment"
"Get the Argonaut to send us a visual now! I want to know what they're fighting."
Connor nodded and turned to his communication station asking for the required info and a few moment later, "They're sending an audio file over and requesting support."
Erica spied the map, "The destroyer Waterloo is close to her position. Send her to provide support and have the Argonaut withdraw towards us. The rest of the fleet will regroup near the gas giant, the rings, asteroids, and moons should provide enough cover and line of sight breaking debris." Connor affirmed, and began sending out orders while Erica picked up the nearby pad and brought up the file; she pressed play and something she couldn't understand came up, "Could have translated it first." She complained, not recognizing the language at all, she hit the auto translation key, and gave it a few moment to compute.
"This is Lord Tel'rock, Master of the Kingdom of Lockhet, and council elected commander of the Ptolemaic Hegemony Forces inside this system. I will say this once and only once; this planet, its resources, and all her people now belong to the Ptolemaic Hegemony, if your leaders surrender now they will be allowed to keep their post only serving in our interest. If you refuse this kind offer, I will sell your leaders into the gladiatorial pit myself and watch as you fight each other to the death. If you're thinking this is another raid and all you have to do is wait us out, you are fools who has become complacent. This force represents only a small portion of the attacks being taken out on Terran territory. The time of Terran superiority and treaty breaking is over, a new age is dawning, one where might makes right and the Hegemony rules space unopposed."
Erica was stunned, if the blasted Skinnies had really come to Shanxi to conquer and enslave, that meant they were facing an unprecedented situation. She looked over to Connor, "Send a message to General Williams tell him to prepare for an extended siege… and where is my visual!?"
"We're receiving visual now ma'am" Connor replied as the main screen came to life showing them a delayed feed of a fleet firing gold lasers at the camera and crimson lasers returning fire. Erica looked over the fleet and recognized twenty Skinnie raider craft which were 150 meters long, dart like with green painted hulls and gold decals on their sides. There was also 15 Tribe Transports, they were about the size of destroyers and almost looked like space faring blades. All of this was not particular worrying, but The four ships near the front of the fleet and the one near the back drove up the lethality of the fleet by a large amount. In the front of the fleet were four Roger Young class corvettes painted the green and gold of the skinnie fleet, they were mostly likely captured transports that had been modified and upgraded with skinnie lasers to make them frigates meaning they had four frigates to her one. To add to their troubles Erica could see that the ship at the back was well over 600 meters and bristling with guns, a skinnie dreadnought painted gold with green and red markings along the hull. The ship looked massive compared to all the others.
The front of the ship was pointed with a blunt noise that ran 350 meters back and had horizontal towers that rose out of her hull at the fifty meter mark and then swept back withdrawing back into the main body which widened near the aft to bring more guns to bear and provide lodging for her crew.
"Fuck.." Was the only thing Erica could say.
Erica watched the screen showing no fear to her crew, though in truth she really wanted to order her fleet to withdraw. She couldn't though, her force was the only thing standing between Shanxi and the Skinnie threat. Looking out of her bridge window she saw the fleet moving slowly toward their position with Argonaut and Waterloo putting up a brave fight as they retreated back to the fleet, but she could tell they weren't going to make it in any fighting condition.
The Argonaut was already burning, her hull plating broken open in several places and her engines had been blown off by a lucky shot or the dreadnaught's guns had sheared them off. The Waterloo had apparently rigged a tow cable and was trying to pull her but they were slower than the skinnie fleet and would soon be overtaken by them. There was very little chances they would make it back to the fleet and she couldn't risk leaving the safety of the gas giant's asteroid belt and moons.
The gas giant and her moons were going to be the big draw of the colonist some day, each having trillions of tons of minerals, but right now they were giving them an edge. The magnetic fields in this area created a sensor dead zone, paired with her silent running orders, and as far as the skinnies knew there was no one else here. They just had to wait until they were close enough and they could spring the trap and send every nuke they had at them point blank range. It was their only chance to knock out the majority of their force out and right now that was the only thing they could do.
"Ma'am the Waterloo-" He didn't get to finish the sentence, as the Waterloo and Argonaut vaporized themselves in a sacrificial nuclear blast.
"Damn." Erica muttered, she had hoped they would either turn back to face the enemy or take a few of the enemy with a stunt like that, but those brave men and woman had just spited the enemy by preventing them from being captured along with their ships.
It was simple to realize that her fleet stood no chance at defeating the enemy forces. Even without the dreadnought she was outnumbered nearly ten to one, even as the defender those odds would see her crushed in a few minutes, maybe a few hours at most. So she scrapped the frontal assault plan, despite the advantage of the Skinnie's momentarily blind sensors from the nuclear explosions.
Than she smiled a horrible terrible grin, as she remembered what this Lord Tel'Rock had said. Invasion. They were going to invade with those fifteen Tribe transports. Tribe transports like any transport built by someone sane was built to withstand atmospheric entry, and heavily armored, to keep their cargo alive in case of an unexpectedly bumpy ride. But they would be hard pressed to survive a dedicated assault against them. And if they had any hull breaches, they wouldn't be able to land due to the risk of having the entire ship incinerate. If she did this right, she could delay the invasion by days, possibly even a week. Hell if she got REALLY lucky she may avert the invasion altogether despite her tiny defense force.
The best moment to strike would be when they are about to land, when the entire attack fleet is starting their orbital bombardment to soften up any garrisons they detect. That attack would be inevitable and she knew that General Williams would have prepared for it by now.
With her remaining two destroyers, two escorts, and her own frigate with a fuel tender she felt she could do some serious boom and zoom damage. Hit them fast, hit them where it hurt, and then get out of the system and report to command with fresh intel and that they need a liberation fleet. It would be hard, and a bit risky if those Skinnie raiders could turn around fast enough to catch her fleet in the ass. But it was all she could do.
"Conner, open up a channel to the other officers, and link our tactical maps." She ordered, moving to her command chair and pulling up the primary screen and setting up her plan quickly.
"Aye aye ma'am."
THS Hierarchy's Fist, unknown system,
As the Hierarchy fleet decelerated and arrived in the unknown space Admiral Varlikam was looking closely over the information from the Terran interrogations. There was no new intel, the Terrans had showed resistance to release even the most basic of details, and those were the cooperative ones. But he was putting together some ideas about how the Terrans would react to the Hierarchy fleet.
For instance they utilized several primary languages when speaking, mostly likely that meant they had only been united for 200 to 300 years as a species, combining this with an apparent and explosive fear of the unknown, or perhaps more likely Aliens in general, and he could conclude the worst; being shot on sight with no time to warn them he was of no threat.
Especially with a fleet meant to take on an entire star system anyways. If they simply rolled in and tried to assert their dominance it would end in a war, probably not a long war but any war with a new species would severely damage their reputation in Citadel space, and may even extend to the Citadel Council themselves.
They already had a reputation as bullies by the Quarians and some other minor races in Citadel space, they didn't need to add warmonger to that as well. If the conflict got bad enough their council seat itself could be in jeopardy, and they could even end up like the Krogan if it got THAT bad.
He skimmed over of the last few intelligence files as his bridge crew busied themselves over data they accumulated from the sensors or just manning their stations in preparation for the worst. He felt pride in his species discipline working at their task with diligent talons. He was about to order a report when his sensor officer preempted him.
"Sir preliminary intelligence has just come in from the recon corvette. There is six notable planetary objects in this system; of these we have four planets, only the fourth planet appears to be a garden world, with a gas giant and a planetoid as the furthest object-" He stopped as he looked over something with evident confusion, "Sir! The Corvette is reporting a fleet that does not match Terran specifications! Its bombarding the Garden World! The Lieutenant thinks they are using Nuclear weapons!"
"Well this seems convenient for us." Varlikam intrigued, worry sketched upon his features.
"Sir! New signatures! A frigate flotilla is coming from the Gas Giant-! By the Spirits, they're firing nuclear weapons on the enemy support ships and cruiser! Bombarding fleet is turning around to engage!" His communications officer looked like he was having fit as he kept trying to relay the situation, which was simply too far for their sensors to depict an accurate picture of.
"Helmsmen! Take us is in, I want to know what is going on." The situation was possibly useful to their reputation, if there was some sort of disaster in progress and the Hierarchy came to their rescue, well they would be the Terran's heroes.
"Aye sir."
TFS FF-400 John D. Sloat
Erica's plan paid off. She and her flotilla of ships used the Gas Giant's gravity well to sling-shot around, keeping low as long as possible before jumping to FTL in the empty space between planets and coming out within firing range of the Skinnie's exposed rears.
She had prepped all of her nuclear payload, and when they were within the enemy's defensive fire launched all eight 1 teraton M-999A2 Atomic Ajax Munitions nuclear weapons plus the last nuclear warhead she salvaged from her fuel tender. Even before they fired their laser cannons, they purposefully waited until the nuclear explosions weakened the enemy's hull. If they got lucky, the pair of nukes fired at the dreadnought would weaken its shields and armor enough that they may actually be able to seriously disable it. But their primary targets were the Tribe Transports.
Already she had ordered her Destroyers to make best speed to Shanxi's biggest cities to provide fire support, and give those Raiders a good mauling on the way down and keep them off the rest of her fleet. The best course to the planet was actually the course that the Transports were taking for descent into the atmosphere, meaning they would easily give a good report of themselves as they made their way through the MIDDLE of the enemy's formation, likely interrupting their organization and causing extra chaos.
So it was when the first nuke encountered the unsuspecting Transport, exploding five kilometers away, it had lost its entire port side, meters of compartments, armor, and bulkheads just melted off, revealing a pretty good cross section of the ship and forming a massive hole in their hull. She marked it for Laser Turret broadsides and priority target for her two dozen fighters her escorts had.
The next Nuclear weapon was pulled off its mark by seven kilometers, exploding against the transports hull, frying its cameras and electronics, but managing to at least blind the vessel and cause it to pull up out of formation in fear that it would climb down too steep and rip itself apart against Shanxi's atmosphere. It was soon out of the fighting zone and considered a non target.
The third nuke made up for the second's unsatisfying effects. Impacting directly amidship, the teraton bomb literally vaporized the transport and reduced it to a billion tiny pieces, nothing bigger than a human head. When it started to go into the planet's atmosphere it produced a beautiful and rare shooting star storm, awing both sides of fighters in the next night.
The fourth showed how the element of surprise is an overwhelming force. The ship captain, worried that his vessel's fate will share his third comrade's, ordered panicked evasive maneuvers making emergency evasive maneuvers, managing to evade the nuclear missile intended for him allowing it to explode and impact one of the escorting Raider class ships, disabling it and dooming it to a fate of orbital decay if it wasn't saved. All of this was for naught as another nuclear missile, having missed its intended target adjusted course for a secondary target, the Tribe transport ship now out of formation from its panicked maneuvers, missing by a mere 3 kilometers, its proximity sensor deemed it within the kill radius and detonated. It proceeded to obliterate the panicked captain and his bridge crew, exploding off the aft flank, reducing the engines to melted slag and destroying the associated compartments, which included the Bridge and engineering deck. The rear echelon soldiers inside were saved by the redundant life support systems, and the emergency thrusters pushing the crippled ship out of the intended planetary descent, saving its passengers a slower death by suffocation and hunger if they weren't recovered by a rescue ship.
The fourth nuclear weapon never got a chance to detonate, from the flying debris and defensive gun fire from all the Hegemony ships, it never reached its destination, instead it never met its intended use even, its engine destroyed, the warhead damaged beyond self detonation, and its course destined to space unknown, likely to never meet another living soul as it becomes more space debris and dust.
The fifth's detonation was much like the second, blinding the sensors of its intended target and forcing it to disengage from its intended course. Likely giving the defenders hours before it could readjust and land its troops, eagerly awaiting to feel earth between their feet and death.
The last nuke intended for the Transports exploded a trio of kilometers from its target. The physical force pushing against the dropship, and melting through tens of meters of Skinnie Steel armor before being stopped by the innermost bulkheads, well and truly crippling the ship and killing a good chunk of the occupants.
The final two nukes ordered to hurt the enemy dreadnought had much more disappointing effects, with the Dreadnought having been much more prepared and obviously more experienced than the lesser vessels. The first nuclear weapon was shot out by defensive laser fire. The second atomic weapon exploded several kilometers out, something triggering it before it reached its target. Resulting in nothing more than blinded sensors for the meantime.
While the supposed finale was disappointing that wasn't the grand finale just yet. The Fleet's fuel tender, Potomac had after topping off everyone's fuel tanks and giving them more than recommended in their fuel bunker's, proceeded to prepare itself for scuttling. For the Terran's that meant a huge explosion, preferably within range of an enemy ship to kill the offending alien bastard who caused it.
Its target was one of the Rodger Young Class ships, captured by the Skinnies. Formerly known as TFS Jean Pierre now renamed PHS Turncoat, the Potomac finished what the previous crew failed to do. From a launched escape pod, destined for Shanxi's surface, the bridge crew guided their enormous rocket towards the turning turncoat. When it impacted, it was moving at over 100,000 kilometers per second, in an uncontrolled descent towards the planet below, in its path the Turncoat never stood the chance to even evade. Its impact very nearly smashed the vessel in half, it was then that the self destruct nuclear charge planted on the Potomac's, reactor went off. The fuel tender, filled with hundreds of thousands of tons of fuel, initiated its self destruct fully. In a civilian incident it would have been known as the most devastating industrial accident involving a fuel tender ever. The two ships detonated in a 9 megaton explosion, incinerating both ships and turning the Turncoat and its loyal crew to ash.
It was then that a fleet of never before encountered ships arrived 65,000 kilometers above the battlefield, arrayed diligently to ensure that no stray shot shall impact the planet.
THS Hierarchy's Fist
"Sir there appears to be a skirmish happening." Admiral Varlikam did nothing, as he watched three grey ships, a cruiser and two frigates, by council standards, desperately struggle against a much larger force with a green hull and gold trim, while two more frigates were zooming in the middle of the enemy formation towards the planet's surface. Two of the ships looked like the grey cruisers, just re-colored but many of the other ships had their own style.
"Sir I'm detecting radiological readings! By the Spirits, it's like they detonated suns here!" It was then an explosion of fuel and nuclear radiation came when one ship rammed the other and his sensors reported, "That was a 9 megaton explosion sir! I think they purposely rammed!"
Well it seemed to have the desired effect as many of the opposing ships were sent into further disarray as the descending greys fired their broadside lasers into anything within range, causing significant damage as surprise and confusion reigned among all the ranks. Varlikam knew the importance of surprise. It was the first thing drilled into every soldier, it could even be boiled down to a mathematical formula, when true surprise was achieved, you had 30 seconds to three minutes of a three to three hundred times to your force strength. And here the greys were demonstrating that effortlessly against the greens, almost getting away scot free. It was why raids deep inside an opponent's lines were so devastating if they weren't detected earlier, soldiers get frozen with surprise and commanders get shocked.
"Comms. open channel, attention all forces in system, hold your fire and stop any aggressive operations immediately, this is Admiral Albirus Varlikam to the forces above the fourth planet of this system, we request that-" He never got to finish his plea for a cease fire as one of his frigates was ripped in half by one of the green and gold ships lasers.
"Sir the Green cruiser has fired upon the frigate Sky Castle! They used a DEW! Nothing left of Castle."
Filled with anger, the Admiral collected himself as he felt his helm turian take evasive maneuvers and watched as the rest of his fleet did likewise, "All ships concentrate fire on the green cruiser, destroy it."
As his Dreadnought began to orient its main cannon all of his ships fired on the skinnie dreadnought.
TFS FF-400 John D. Sloat
"FIRE EVERYTHING!" Erica yelled as her ship rocked again as a yellow laser hit the side of her vessel, the heat dispersing for the most part, but leaving black scars and opening up a weakened section of hull. Her element of surprise had expired and now the enemy crews were getting organized.
Their first broadside was devastating, the fighters finished off the first Tribe transport, destroying it, her two destroyers had managed to core two of the Raiders reducing them to floating hunks launching escape pods.
She was just fortunate the Skinnie dreadnought had decided to busy itself with the new fleet that arrived in system and spoke gibberish.
"Ma'am, The Black Prince's engines are going critical!" Her sensor operator reported.
"God damn skinnies." She cursed as the Black Prince, a destroyer, went up in flames out the port window, shuttles, escape boats, and pods launching from their dockings. That meant only one destroyer was left to support the ground engagement. Which was not really enough to combat all the skinnie raiders and tribe transports with the first wave already landed and attacking the forces on Shanxi.
"Time to pull out, recall all fighters, tell the escorts to give cover fire and focus fire on those raiders, and weapons, fire all laser cannons against that Rodger Young, aim for the weak section!" It was the best she could do for the troopers down on planet taking out a significant portion of the enemy forces, and requiring them to waste resources saving their trapped soldiers in orbit, she only had the two escorts left under her command, Chauvin and Isabella and she needed them with her ship to draw the attention of the enemy big guns. Thanks to the new fleet the enemy dreadnought was preoccupied allowing her forces to escape.
THS Hierarchy's Fist
Surprisingly their mass effect accelerated rounds were more effective than if it had been any old pirate ship, tearing large chunks from the green vessels.
Varlikam watched as the enemy fleet began to engage his own, in such disorder that if the fleet had been smaller victory would have been assured. However their numbers were greater and they swarmed over his two forward frigates, seemingly identifying his force as the much more dangerous group. The small dart like ships, using their yellow laser to quickly carve up the frigates like a holiday meal before any of their other craft could get a good lock on with their primary guns, resorting to their weaker broadsides.
"This is a disaster in the making, signal a withdrawal." He ordered as the largest of the alien ships came into view and fired a yellow beam at his ship barely missing it, "But first have one last volley at that ship, let's make it clear they are out of their league." The gunnery officer fired, and within moments more rounds were sent at the enemy cruiser, but something weird happen, when many of the rounds got too close to the ship they seemed turn up, down, and to the sides going around the vessel in some cases.
"Damn." Varlikam commented as the enemy cruiser opened up again this time hitting one his cruisers doing enough damage to it that it nearly began a direct dive at the planet, he saw it start to pull up once it hit the atmosphere. The cruiser moved to get a better fire radius when several ground to space DEWs pierced the atmosphere and took the ship unaware, hitting something vital and causing massive secondary explosions to ripple throughout the cruiser.
The green and gold cruiser was then torn in half in a quarter minute of bombardment, but not before it sliced one of the Turian frigates up the spin as a last act of spite.
"Sir the grey ships are following us!"
"Let them, they may be able to fill us in on what the hell is going on." Varlikam said, trying to figure out what he could have possibly have said to cause the green ships to attack them.
TFS FF-400 John D. Sloat
Erica thanked god and all his unwashed saints for Skinnie stupidity, "Fucking idiots." Erica said out loud with a smirk as what was left of her flotilla chased after the aliens. The skinnie had attacked the aliens because they had used a mix of terran languages to communicate, ending up sounding like gibberish, which did mean the Ragnar was involved, but from what she had deciphered they had tried to stop the fighting which is why she was willing to run after them. Sure for all she knew the aliens she was chasing were worse than the Skinnies, but the Skinnie tomfoolery had assured a peace with the aliens until the aliens got revenge which made them her allies. Well they would want revenge if there were like every other race in space; she doubted she would be unlucky enough to find the mythical space hippies.
THS Vanker on Shanxi
Canus Albiraka fell to the floor of the bridge as his ship crashed landed on to the planet almost regretting taking the hit for Hierarchy's Fist.
Almost.
He quickly pulled himself back up and took stock of the situation as his bridge crew went about finding out how the rest of ship had fared. Things were not good, he and his crew were trapped on an unknown planet, at war with an unknown force, and if what he was hearing was true he had no way of get off the planet. All he could do was prepare to defend the ship and hope help arrived soon before fate decided to fuck him over again this month.
Petolemaic Transport Sunrise on Shanxi
Lord Tel'rock looked up at the sky, watching the debris of one the few great dreadnoughts fall and burn, "DAMN THE TERRANS…" He yelled as his command staff worked in the ship behind him to get the fleet communication up and running again. He turned to the human standing next to him, "General Projak, I thank you for your insight, if we had not moved the command staff to one of the smaller vassals like you suggested we would have died up there with the dreadnought."
General James Projak cleaned some dust off his glasses and nodded, "I'm simply doing what I can for the Hegemony my lord, no thanks is needed." He commented in accented Petolemaic.
TFS FF-400 John D. Sloat
"Sir I have opened Dr. Selvo's files and have begun the calculations to use the device." One of the bridge crew reported.
"Good, once we're through, send over the standard first contact info, hopefully they will be smart enough to use it so we can understand them." She said as the ship came into line with the relay and was catapulted forward. She didn't have time to take in the grandeur of the event so she focused on calculating what they would need to do. Shanxi was on the edge of Terran space and even making good time, at best the people there would need to hold out for 21 days for reinforcements, it could be done but by the time the fleet got there maybe half the population of the planet would already be on their way into slavery in the Hegemony. The Skinnies would then most likely abandon the planet and head back into their home space and then finding out what happened to the prisoners would be near impossible. At worst, the Skinnies would succeed in their claim, capture the planet, and then possibly fortify it. She needed to get these aliens on her side fast so they could mount a counter attack and save the people of Shanxi.
As the ship rumbled and came to a stop in some unknown space, she took a deep breath and prepared herself to make the best impression she could.
"First contact information away."
"Good, open a channel to the biggest ship." The comms officer did as asked and Erica began, "I am Commodore Erica Chavez, Citizen of the Terran Federation, Commander of the Shanxi Defense Fleet and Captain of the TFS FF-400 John D. Sloat. I am sorry our two species must meet like this, and more so for the loss of life in your own forces. I am sure you're wondering what you walked in on and I shall tell you, that was a slave raid by the bastard species known as the Skinnies. The people left on that planet are doomed to a lifetime of horror, this includes your people who were on board that ship that went down on that planet, and they will steal as much of your tech as they can from that downed ship, that is simply their way. I will not ask for your help in taking the planet back, it's your choice if you want revenge or not, but I will ask for a safe port for my ships until we can return home." With that she ended the message and sat back in the chair waiting for a response.
To be continued.
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