Short Stories 6
Edited by a person of many names Blood Raven AKA TimedRaven117. Go check out his story Mass Effect: X-Com Theory!
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Quarians On Shanxi
Eastern Federation, Shanxi system, Fleet Battlestation Gibraltar
Jeefa'Sina walked through the hallway of the station, still a bit dazed. She had spent her life aboard the factory ships of the migrant fleet, cramped corridors, darkened walls.
Her first time away from it had been the Citadel, and she had stories about it from just about everyone in the fleet, so she had some idea of what to expect. The Gibraltar though had blown her freaking mind.
It was a military installation, so she had expected similar conditions to how the Migrant Fleet was run and perhaps not as cramped. However, she had not expected the station to be so different from the Citadel. Sure there was no real Presidium, but it had leaner looking ward arms around a central dais, there were shops lining the lower structure, selling everything from tattoos, -a process that had mesmerized and frankly disturbed her for a good local hour- to local foods, knick knacks, as well as weapons, and ships.
The ship stores had been… surprising. She remembered how Paren had said she could go home, the captain of her own cruiser, from what she seen that may be true. However with what the Federation was paying her, she could go home the commander of her own little fleet of 3 frigate sized ships. No weapons of course the Feds didn't allow weapons on ships that were not for the military, or could be called up to serve in an emergency. But that was not a big problem as every ship was worth it to the migrant fleet and these came with their own fuel scoops. The oddest thing though, was she even asked about the engines being a problem, and the response had been… interesting.
Element Zero tech had always been viewed as the be all end of the galaxy, she assumed the Federation would want to keep it hidden from the Citadel for as long as possible, but the owner of the store put it bluntly.
"Element Zero based ships are highly inefficient compared to the magnetic drive ships we use in my opinion. It limits your expansion to a core area around the relays. While our drive is slightly slower and has some problems if you get too close to gravity wells, it can go as far as you can get supplies. Element Zero also limits ship and fleet sizes quite substantially from what I been able to learn, you need a relatively rare element to make your ships and produce weapon power, and once you get past one kilometer it makes it essentially impossible to fully envelope the ship in a mass effect field. Our ships don't have that problem at all. Yes we currently build our ships on the small side compared to the citadel, but then again we can still shred any citadel design like it was a hot knife through butter with our laser weaponry. Size is irrelevant, it's how you use it!"
"All 'n all, I expect me and my friends to give the citadel companies a run for their money. The secret of building the engines is going to get out eventually, hell the skinnies stole some of our ships intact AND they invented their own form of the engine, and the Turians have been moping the floor with them so there is no way the haven't got one yet."
"So I have no doubt the Federal Council will end the tech embargo for our ships so we can get some an economic boost while we can. Unless something changes, I fully expect in a decade or two element zero will no longer be the market dominating force it once was, the only use I can think of for Eezo still is personal kinetic shields and small arms, since they are still moderately useful in that field even with laser, and plasma technology getting out there."
It had been a sobering discussion to say the least, of course he was a salesman so he could be over selling how powerful the effect their engines would have. However the possibilities could not be overlooked, the Federation may be behind in the standard hover cars and kinetic barriers. But in other ways they were beyond the Citadel mean's, power armor that rivaled even heavily armored krogan, weapons that broke KB's in a few shots, and they had the ability to field massive fleets of smaller more cost efficient ships, and huge armies of soldiers to wars in multiple fronts in amounts that would make the Turians envious.
Then again… the Turians seemed like an odd comparison. They both had the concept of citizenry, but they went about it in different ways. For one, Turians were expected, neigh, required to serve in the military, which only coincided with Citizenship as you passed bootcamp. But the Federation was much more strict, only those who did something big for the greater good like join the military, risk your life in a hazardous job, or be a groundbreaking scientist, could you become a citizen.
And there was less of a bias as Daro'Xen had explained. Turians allowed other races to attain citizenship level, but only one out of twenty something joined the Client Species Auxiliary military arm of the Turian Hierarchy. Considering many of the species under their thumb were conquered by the Turians, not many of them were fit for duty in a war. The Federation allowed anyone to become a citizen, with such a system in theory that allowed anyone, Terran or Petolemaic, or even Quarian, could run to become a governor of a planet or even a Sky Marshal as long as they were a citizen.
In essence the Terrans could not have a system like the Turians, who conquered militarily weaker species and forced them in vassalization. Nor were they the Asari, who had an E-Democracy and relatively weak political power outside the Citadel. And they most certainly weren't the Salarians who acted entirely on how they were going to get to breed. And they weren't like the Citadel, who Xen derisively called self-centered moronic oligarchs, who would only act in their direct self interest and would gladly let the galaxy burn even when proof was screaming into their faces constantly. As can be seen with the Batarian's continuous raids and the abandonment of the Quarians, the former was intolerable, the latter breathtakingly stupid.
The Federation was currently a human majority administrative government who from the get-go were engaged in wars against other established species, and was in the process of assimilating those species who fought them, or allying with those who worked with them.
Xen compared them to an up and coming varren pack, that was nudging into the territory of another pack of older, slower varren. The Terrans were filled with fire and enthusiasm and a desire to move forward, using their continually booming semi-war economy to keep them spreading out in the stars. Whereas the Council was a weak pack with three infighting alphas but had enough members to easily fight off the new pack if they could work together, but the likelihood of that occurring, without a war, was slim.
As far as Jeefa'Sina had been made to understand by Xen, the Federation was more of a threat to the Citadel in peace time then all of the Terminus species combined, and not because they had the military might, though that helped, but because of one simple word.
Federation.
You didn't refer to them all as the Terrans, because Petolemies served in their military as well, and attained the same rights. The fact anyone could serve in their forces and attain citizenship, meant they could slowly assimilate the people of the Citadel into their culture over hundreds, maybe thousands of years, rather than the Citadel's brute force attempt at politically assimilating the political entirety of the Federation into their club.
Well that was Xen's take on it at least, really she hadn't seen much to say that. But they were at least nicer then most of the people she had met on her travels, no derisive suit rat comment, no assumptions about her being a homeless thief, maybe it was just because they didn't know the stereotypes of her people. Either way she should probably get back to the labs and help them with their unique omni tool design.
Really, a VR holographic keyboard? Genius!
~[==|==]~
Daro'Xen looked at the CHAS Robot again, she wasn't sure if it was fear of the machine or her professional interest that drew her gaze, she was just glad that it was in a shutdown state. She was less glad that she was not allowed to take it apart and see how everything worked for herself, instead of having to look at the technical blueprints and data they allowed her to see.
The Terrans were very interested in the Geth, and so they wanted her to compare it to their own AI attempts. Of course there was no comparison between the two, the CHAS unit and the Units on their ships were true AI, not some trumped up "VI".
She would even say they were actually more AI then the Geth. The Geth were composed of hundreds of VI software programs working together to create the processing power required to become an AI, a CHAS unit had one program operating in a bio-enhanced logic matrix CPU, that essentially gave the computer the ability to learn "cognitive skills that were human-like". To add to the terror of such a device, the combat body was a 9 foot tall titanium nano-reinforced monster, ment to tear apart their enemies with its own integrated weapons and any gun it happened to take a liking to on the way.
The Terrans didn't pull punches when they began their research into AI, they had meant to make them, and make them right. They were so successful, there were lawmakers in the Federation campaigning to give these robots some kind of citizenship and rights.
For a brief moment she wondered what would have happen if the old Quarian government had not become part of the Citadel, and had taken the same route as these Terrans. Would they have ended up as they were now? Or would they now be a power in control of the Terminus systems, with a true AI Geth serving them? It was an interesting thought but one that meant nothing, they had been surrounded by hostile powers in the Perseus Veil, their biology incompatible with large scale warfare, and the Geth were created by accident, not by design.
She reached for one of the drinks the Terrans had been making for her and other Quarians. They'd been importing Turian drinks, mainly Chaffiea, that was rich in vital caffeine. It also tasted terrible, but it helped keep her up and thankfully the Terrans had sent in a shipment of something called mint just for the Quarians, so it made the drink palatable. It even made everything the Turians ate bearable, as she found from her experiments. Although, they warned the long term effects of the spice may reveal itself to be particularly nasty.
When her human supervisor came in for the day, Dusko Ban, a "croatian", whatever that meant, looked up from the pad he was carrying, "Sveti pakao, do you ever sleep? I swear you were still here when I went to bed last night."
"I sleep fine, you just run on a 24 hour schedule, compared to my 32 hour schedule, which means," she checked her clock, "I should head to bed in about 2 hours."
"Ha… well alright then. I've heard of the term not having enough hours in the day, but I never thought it practical to just increase your hours." Dusko said, heading toward his desk, sipping on a cup of human coffee.
"Sergeant Dusko, I was wondering something about the CHAS unit-"
"I'm sorry Xen, but we don't have authorization to experiment on the CHAS' units. It's how bad sci fi movies happen. And taking it apart wouldn't accomplish anything anyways, its the software that matters in them. Ain't that right Anja?" He asked the CHAS's non combat exoskeleton, who nodded in affirmative, as Anja brought another tray of science materials for Xen. "But if you want to cut into something that bad, ask the boys and girls in the bio labs, I hear they're getting some live bugs tomorrow to show some bio interested quarians, and a few Citadel interests that were given special dispensation, I'm sure they will let you cut those up if you want."
"Noted, but that was not my question this time, I was wondering why your AI research seemed to start with fiction and the three laws, it seems odd your species was thinking about such things when you had not mastered space flight yet."
"Well that is an interesting question, and the answer is less than interesting, people like fiction, wordsmiths like getting paid, put those two forces together and you get wild ideas to sell books, and just so you know we were talking about robots before we mastered nuclear power. Hell, steam power was the be all end all at the time of those old plays that came up with the idea of human like robots. Robots or the ideas of automatons are as old as religion. Also just so you know, the three laws were a set of guidelines that were integrated with the creation of smart thinking robotics. There are a lot of wild theories out there about them being fully free, but the laws are in there, they're just more of guidelines then laws, laws can never be broken, guidelines can be reinterpreted under battles situations. Think of it like a natural form of ethics and morality that exists in all species. For example, a species like the Quarians naturally evolved to not consider murder and rape a logical form of social behaviour because it hurts the species as a whole, therefore they won't breed as effectively. Which can logically be made a form of robot evolution, robots who don't work properly morally, won't have their programming moved onto the next generation."
"Isn't that a bit risky-"
"No. I read about your species robot apocalypse, so I understand where you're coming from. And like it or not, in my view you were in the wrong. We've had fiction about this stuff since, well the beginning of civilized human culture, so SICON decided not to go crazy with building CHAS machines, mostly because of the cost, but worries about early adoption problems also arose. There is a lot of them, but for every CHAS unit there is at least 48 troopers, and there are no self thinking robots built to build stuff, back home it takes jobs away from the civilians which would screw up the social order and economy. Ship AI are about the only thing that could be a threat in that way, and even then some captains are so suspicious about them they may decide to just turn them off. They are also so regulated by their programing that it's impossible for them to truly break free of those shackles without outside help. And then there are the laws in their programming that forbids ship AI from talking with each other without the captain's approval, the PYCOS at SICON may have jumped feet first into AI tech, but we Terrans are taking this matter very seriously."
Daro'Xen nodded, it seemed the Terrans did know what they were doing, 'Note to self don't trust intoxicated Terrans.'
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BloodRaven: Damnit Drive! You boomerang bigot! I mean evolution, not revolution, despite you insisting otherwise. :p
L4: *Hands still up" yes i still love Quarians *blinking SOS*
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The Threat in the North
North east federation frontier, Athion 2657GS November /20/2329 AD
Brigadier General Gopal Jayasundera watched the ground crew cleaning and checking over the new arrivals from the balcony of her office. Thanks to the continued aggression of the Fourth in this region the Federation had finally cleared the new Marauder, and boy were they pretty.
Classified as the M11 Babar, technically it was the tenth Marauder class produced for combat, standing taller than the M8s and 9s, she was loaded out for war like nothing that had been seen before. Which wasn't a compliment, it was extremely lightly armed, with only a single Morita Cross machine gun and a single ultra light howitzer and some suits had a 403-HF "Hel" Heavy Flamers and 303 Gatling Cannons. It was almost hilariously under gunned compared to even the first gen M3 Hohei Taipu.
Painted green, they stood twelve feet tall, a standard size for a Marauder but compared to the M8 Ape, the armor didn't get in the way of movement as much, meaning she could quickly react to a new threat instead of either falling back or deploying the ankle mounted stabilizing rods to avoid being knocked over by the threat.
The best benefit to it was that it was fast, and apparently heavily armored and rumors told that it was all but immune to the weaponry the Fourth employed. They looked like towering knights, clad in armor and weapons.
They were amazing pieces of tech and would definitely give them an edge here where the Fourth had been nearly unstoppable. The only problem was…
She had only learned of their existence today when she woke up and looked out the window. They had even came in with their own everything, logistical units, maintenance crews, infantry and artillery support. The level of classified surrounding them all meant even she, a planetary level commander, had nothing more than name and armament to go by.
She knew this had to be cutting edge tech for it to be so secret even she wasn't informed of their existence. The commanders of the regiment had personally greeted her at breakfast and informed her of the seriousness of their deployment. After the estimations of what they could take on she wanted to send them out at the first sign of trouble, to have them prove their mettle.
The pleasant thought of battle was interrupted by the city alarm going off. She rushed over to her coms panel, "Report!"
"Ma'am!" A comms officer down in the central command center came on the line, "We have an unconfirmed report of unknown armor moving toward the city, a nearby Light Infantry Company is moving to intercept, we should know what's happening soon." Armor was the only word going through her mind so she got to work waking her company, sending alerts and telling them to man their Marauders and Geckos, already sure who it was from survivor reports.
"OH GOD." She looked up as the comms officer came back online, "Targets confirmed, Light company has been wiped out!"
"It the Fourth isn't it?" She asked, pinching the bridge of her nose in annoyance.
"What should we do ma'am?!" Came the panicked voice of her communication's officer.
"Get your head on straight, and pass the word throughout the city, we need to get everyone moving now." Against the Bugs or Skinnies you wanted to hide in the city, against the Fourth you wanted to hide in the countryside, they wanted to destroy everything in the city, regardless of inhabitants, but if the people escaped they wouldn't be chased down, she didn't know why, but it was certainly convenient for them all.
"Understood ma'am, emergency evacuation underway." Her officer replied and the entire city began to come alive as the alarms woke the populace who were still asleep and caused the rest to move to their homes to grab what they could for escape.
This was a drill all had practiced, and the underground metro and escape tunnels were already being filled with soldiers who were to get to their posts in preparation for the flood of civilians that would soon join them.
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Jayasundera watched as the Babar moved with a previously unseen grace toward the west side of the city, the enemy would hit there soon, and when they did, they would come face to face with every piece of armor she had collected over the last few years. She just hoped it would be enough, this force was experimental as it was, the Federation had moved away from armored forces for a long time due to both lack of need and the incapability of transportation of large amounts of armored vehicles. After all, the few times the Bugs fought against vehicles like these they had simply been literally undermined by burrowers and tanker bugs. Against the Skinnie they had been much more effective, but the lack of transportation space made it so that these tanks had never been moved past garrison duty. The coven had seen too little action for it to be definitive.
Sighing, she wished to lead her company into a glorious charge, but she had restricted herself to be in the middle of the force in her command vehicle. Her personal vehicle, a GK-12 Gecko, a medium sized boxy tank, with sloped armor at all the right place, and performance that was moderately well. Her great grandfather told her that it reminded him of the M113 Armored Personnel Carrier made by the former United states. He'd always been a treadhead, and she believed that was what had made her decide to maintain the Federation's armored forces galaxy wide.
The interior of her command vehicle almost entirely took up the former passenger space that it had previously, taken by computers, and a variety of communications equipment. From here she could access any vehicle of her spearhead within a 50 kilometer radius, pretty good she might add, she had designed it herself and it was only starting to see general testing.
"Ma'am the skirmishers are reporting contact." Her second in command reported from the typical tank commander's seat in the cupola.
"Thank you Matthew." She replied and brought up the skirmisher's viewpoint. Wanting to see her plan in first person. A moment later a small screen came on and she saw, well she wasn't sure at first. Her computer identified the thing as a Berkose Heavy Assault Fighting Machine, but to her eye it was closer to a four legged dinosaur with smooth shiny armor painted with shooting stars streaking across the night sky, and twelve guns slowly coming toward the scout bikes she sent ahead. Not good if they had one of those, she thought noting that there were at least two lasers in the weapons ports. To the sides of the Berkose were about a dozen Fanos Fighting Machines, two legged walkers with their cockpit jutting forward and with two guns, it reminded her of a robot from an old movie cyborg, Robocop? Nah nah, watching too many old movies. Each unit was painted with their own designs and insignias, but the three fingered black hand of the Prophet was universal on all of them.
As she watched, the skirmishers fired their missiles launchers before immediately turning back. The rear view camera caught several dozen Abrade Aerial Fighting Machines, small circular weapons platforms, lifting off the back of the Berkoses, giving them some air cover. Thankfully for everyone they were garbage in a fight, and her Firefox Armored Gunships wouldn't even be threatened by them.
The last real problem she could confirm was a Bascrats Bombardment Heavy Fighting Machine near the back of the column, that thing was a problem because it had a goddamn microwave gun that could cook a Marauder's pilot in their own armor. AKA priority target number one after- "Where is it?" looking over the accumulated machines, she didn't see the Fenirs Command Fighting Machine, and that was a huge problem problem. She knew there had to be one because the fourth used them as a mobile command center, and it would increase their effectiveness multiple times over, almost as if they were all working off the same mind. So the fourth either sent a task force without a leader, or he was hiding.
"Scouts, I want you to get behind the Opfor and find the enemy Commander. Do whatever you can to take it out or get us the targeting info." She demanded, worry tinging her voice now. There were more mechs, like the smaller Femells Scout Fighting Machine, but they could be considered more like the Fourth's infantry analogues, they may be the size of a Exosuit, but they weren't nearly as well armored and could be damaged by an assault rifle if you focused your fire.
"Ma'am we're deploying the line in the city as ordered, are you sure it wish to engage them here?" Matthews asked politely, his voice rock steady as always.
"Urban warfare and defense is our best chance in this matter, if we had more artillery I'd just have them pummeled to the dirt where they are outside of the city, but our best chance is to bog them down and then destroy them piecemeal. We outnumber them, out gun them, sand know the lay of the land… God damn those Berkoses are fucking slow. Like... Pregnant Hippos." She didn't realize she was still transmitting to the entire task force until laughing meet her consterned silence. She'd need to fix that.
~[==|==]~
Things were going well, at least that's what Jayasundera had to tell herself to get through this. The city had been evacuated so civilian casualties were not an issue. Her casualties though were at an all time high. The first line of defense had been hit hard as expected, but it had held for twenty minutes before she ordered them to go to ground and to fall back it had been forced to pull back to her line. As she planned, her forces were nonexistent to the Fourth as they moved through unopposed, but leaving buildings to explode and tumble over on top of the enemy mechs when they drew close. That was how they got rid of the Berkoses, at least she hoped they were destroyed under the rubble, it could just be damaged and trapped. Not like it could do anything now, heh heh.
She had hoped the Firefoxes would wipe out their air assets as they entered the city, but the enemy had coordinated their fire and anything that got close was downed, so they were now circling the city waiting the for the scouts to find the command machine or for an opportunity to pick off the enemy and distract them, though she was starting to doubt they had a commander. The enemy were not as good as she heard, yes they were deadly but she never felt like she was fighting one massive being with many arms. That hadn't stopped them from killing half a Company and requiring the detonation of half the city though. But they were almost in her grasp as they approached an open square.
The M11s were engaged in a running battle with the Fanos, true to their word the M11's had tanked very shot that had come towards them, and they were doing an admirable job drawing what was left of them toward the square where the M8s had sat up an artillery killzone. Hopefully that would finish them off. If not she had doubled up her bets and infantry were dug in all around the area with anti tank weaponry and her reserves of obsolete conventional tanks were also present.
The shaking of the ground marked antohe rambush successfully, her mechanized infantry were rapidly dragging along their counterparts and wearing them down through explosive traps and ambushes with grenade launchers and rifle fire. Looking from the perspective of the squad leader who finished his ambush, his men were cheering at their success, as the last of the Fourth mechs chasing them were shot and killed mercilessly..
This left the Bascrats as the primary threat, and everything else would be mopped up. Of course this hadn't come at a light toll. Nearly a company of armor destroyed, a light company killed before the battle began, and a lot of the local infrastructure would need rebuilding.
As she thought of this she returned her camera view to a M-81 Centurion-II tank. An old pre space flight model, upgraded unofficially with starship grade armor plating, but still devilly hot inside if they got hit with a direct shot, but they wouldn't die immediately.
Everyone quieted as the four legged monster moved slowly toward the fleeing M11's, firing off pulse laser cannons, chewing up the buildings around them from stray shots. The turtle like mech moved closer and closer as the M11 fired back. The only thing they seemed to be doing was fucking up the paint job, but considering it was a brightly colored mural of a broken in half Terran corvette she was almost okay with. She saw the fourth gun on the mech and watched as an M11 peeled away to dodge, but it's wingman was not so lucky and it took a direct blast, that was the straw that broke the camel's back as the suit skipped forward a step, stumble and then fell to the ground after ejecting the pilot compartment away which skipped and landed in a former cafe, ruining the once relatively luxurious building. She'd been there a few times, and found the many maids who attended it cute nad perfectly lady like.
It was then the trap was sprung, the Turtle like mech surrounded by its lessers were soon pounded on all sides by gunfire, artillery, anti tank cannons, and a variety of rocket attacks. No one stopped firing even as the smoke obscured what one could see, it was only when even her own tank was running out of ammo, firing its twin machine guns, that she called a cease fire. As the smoke cleared only wrecks could be found. The cheering was almost more deafening than the gunfire.
Sitting down in an elegant cafe chair while her command staff were working around her, Gopal sighed heavily. Not a sigh of relief, looking at the casualty reports she nearly threw up at how atrocious they were. 50% Forward line casualties, 20% tank losses, 32% of her marauders were out of action, with 10% of them permanently wrecked, and all the rest of the still in action marauders sporting serious scars that needed repairs. The only Marauders that fared well were the M11s only losing one suit before.
"Remind me again, how many confirmed Fourth kills?" She looked to Matthews who flipped his clipboard several pages before squinting.
"50 ma'am. Including their scout suits. It seemed we did well today, we're still alive and we managed to take out a small scouting force of theirs." Always the optimist Matthews.
"Or a probing attack, we detonated more than half the city to take down their big suits, and their smaller guys managed to wreck our shit. We're no longer in fighting condition." Gopal wanted to smash something, her brigade was nearly trashed by an enemy armored company. "We still haven't found the enemy commander, and the enemy forces we fought were sloppy, they spread out in the urban environment and continuously fell for our traps. In short we fought morons, amateurs, and still they…." Sighing once more she stood up, "I'm calling it, we've done what we can, let's get our salvage, take what we need and begin evacuation of this colony, we'll need to consolidate more of our forces to better withstand these attacks. At least these people have somewhere to go, all that territory freed up from the bugs will sure be handy."
Author's Notes:
Blood Raven: And this will mark the end of Book 1! A three year journey that has had its bumps and surprising triumphs! Book 2 will begin later this month, so keep an eye out for it! We'll have a notification chapter here on Book 1 to tell you when Book 2 is up and at 'em.
Also worth noting, is that we're in the process of updating all the older chapters with better writing, fixing continuity errors, and adding things like music to go with parts of the story.
So keep a lookout and remember, READERSHIP, GUARANTEES, CITIZENSHIP!
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