One Month Earlier
Stargate Universe
"Impressive, isn't it."
The voice knocked Captain Burke out of his stupor. Admiral Elliot had snuck up behind him, the man of five-hundred plus years not making a single sound as he approached. The miracle of modern medical technology had kept the legend alive throughout his service in the US Air Force, later the US Space Force, and eventually the Terran Navy. Burke attempted to give a salute but was quickly waved away.
"The culmination of Alterran understanding of the universe. Millions of years of research leading to this very point," spoke Elliot. "You'll have to excuse my excitement, I've become quite the scholar over the years."
Burke wasn't that surprised. Gene-therapy and accelerated evolution meant that humans could learn the most complex subjects as easy as breathing, and retain the information eidetically. Nanotechnology and neural networks meant information could be dowloaded directly into the mind. Over the past several hundred years humanity had transitioned into a society where everybody could be a genius.
Burke had parked himself in the middle of the station's observation deck. A massive sculpted dome of translucent metals, allowing a breathtaking experience. It gave him a perfect view of the rest of the ring structured station, made of the typical milky white and clean grey Alterran alloys. Skyscraper like protrusion shot off from this main section, some even connecting to smaller satellite structures and docks. On the far side of the station he could see two Lantea-Class Cruisers maneuvering toward one such location.
"I have some interest in the subject myself. You'll have to excuse me, though, as I'm not too well read. What I don't understand is; the Alterrans were exploring alternate realities as early as their first settlement of the Milky Way. So, what makes this station special?" Asked Burke.
"A long time ago I was lucky enough to witness the recovery of an alternate-reality mirror. A thought experiment that turned out to be one of the Alterran's greatest scientific achievements. The idea was to build half of a gateway in this universe, and if there truly were infinite universes then one of them would have built the other half of the gateway," explained Elliot. "They were magnificent devices, by having connecting gates in both universes one could easily breach dimensional barriers."
Burke gazed back out of the viewing window, looking at the nearby nebula. A recent supernova, recent in terms of the universe, had ionized the outer edges of the gas cloud and produced the most alluring glowing patterns.
"But these devices are limited. They can only connect to alternate universes where alternate-Alterrans had built a connecting gateway. Infinite other universes out of reach! This station changed that," explained Elliot. "Universes where Alterrans never evolved could be explored. Can be explored, by us."
"Would humans even be on Earth without the Alterrans?" asked Burke.
"That's exactly the type of question we're going to answer."
Burke admired the view for some time more, the Admiral slipping away after a few brief conversations on the expeditionary force and what would be expected of himself and his ship. Finally, the Captain turned away from the sight when he received a ping from his ship's AI, telling him that it was almost time for departure. Minerva wasn't technically a true AI, considering she was an uploaded human, but human culture had long called any sentient intelligence not confined to a biological host an artificial intelligence.
He had his ship beam him into the Captain's Quarters. The room was spacious and well decorated, a pleasant area for him to relax. Captains didn't spend much time doing paperwork, anymore. All was electronic and easily filled out by the ship's assigned Intelligence, reviewed and signed off by the Captain over the neural network. He didn't spend much time reading reports either, they were quickly downloaded into his mind. He did spend time sitting down and contemplating, just because you could download information directly didn't mean you completely understood it. There were times he would sit down and review battles and ship details in his head, thinking over actions and making up new plans.
Walking out of his room he headed towards to the bridge, using a transporter to go two levels down in the process. First he had to walk through Command Information Center, CICs had been mostly rendered obsolete by the introduction of neural networks and virtual battle spaces. Command ships still had CICs to direct fleets, and so did stealth ships like Into the Night.
Stealth ships would be collecting terabytes of data per second while on mission. The data would be sent to dedicated off-ship analysis stations, but the CIC allowed for preliminary examination to direct the ship's sensors to anything of note. The CIC would work directly with the ships AI, which was also the normal CIC method of communication to the bridge.
As he entered the bridge, Burke received salutes from his subordinates, whom he quickly told to resume their posts. Sitting in the Captain's chair quickly initiated an authentication program, making sure not only of his identity but that he was of sure mind and not influenced in any way. These sorts of checks were necessary after decades of fighting subversive species that would do anything to obtain a Terran ship.
Burke triggered a display to bring up the fleet composition, making a last minute check of the situation. The center of the operation was the USRV DAVIES, a Amundsen-class explorer named after one of the scientists in the original 1945 stargate program. The two and a half kilometer vessel could do everything from research to colony fabrication. It housed some of the most powerful sensors of Terran make, with state of the art equipment for stellar mapping and information technology to monitor any form of communication.
It had enough energy production to run industrial sized construction forges. These technical marvels could create matter straight from energy; although, that took so much power that constant use would sap the ship dry. Thus, hundreds of mining probes were stored in the explorer to gather resources to feed the forges. Rearranging matter was a lot more energy efficient than creating matter from scratch, especially if the source material is close to the desired product. For example, turning mined naquadah into weapons grade liquid was relatively easy in terms of power requirements compared to trying to do the same with, say, limestone.
This same technique was used for creating Terran ships. Individual forges would create a modular section than would be beamed into place. Later, a larger scale forge would comb over the ship and connect the sections and add final touches.
The explorer had a primary escort in the form of Admiral Elliot's Pulsar-Class battleship the USS Bright Giant, continuing the trend of naming battleships after stellar objects. It was the lead in the expeditionary force consisting of two Lantea-class cruisers, named after the battle for the planet; and five Treadwell-class destroyers, named after the hero from SG-7.
The cruisers were of the missile variety, having thousands of the Alterran-based drone missiles and other more destruction oriented torpedoes. The destroyers were designed as anti-fighter and missile platforms for the cruisers and battleship, capable of doing really any screening assignment. All vessels had Asgard fighter screens, transporters that could deconstruct anything that got too close. But in case of shielded fighters or long range missiles or projectiles, the destroyers were there with plenty of rapid firing particle and energy weapons.
The destroyers could also be hunters, forming packs and picking off the enemy fleet. They could use Anglerfish torpedoes for long range duels, or make devastating alpha strikes with their plasma weapons; which were concentrated to the front for just such an attack.
The Pulsar-class battleship was a three an a half kilometer warship. It had a large main weapon running down the ship, based on Lantean defense satellites but with a traversable emitter, but also had enough broadside plasma beam weapons for a slugging fight.
Captain Burke's own vessel was a Naval Intelligence ship currently attached to the task force. It was an new vessel. Construction forges, matter transporters, and construction bots meant that building new ships was easy. Because of this, the Into the Night looked brand new.
There wasn't much of a mothball fleet, the retired ships being fed into the matter constructors for making the new ships. Or sold off to allies; their advanced systems removed of course.
The lack of a mothball fleet was made up for by the speed at which ships could be built and the mothball shipyards. This speed was only hampered by available energy; and with stellar scoops, zero point energy, and the plethora of other Alteran technology there was never a lack of it.
"Captain, the window is approaching," informed Minerva.
"Thank you, please tell the crew to prepare for transition."
Burke watched as the space station prepared to activate its portal. Behind the station was a black hole which the portal would be leaching energy from about now. Small little wormholes reaching into the event horizon to steal from the impenetrable sink.
The structure of the station detached from the inner ring, which began to spiral at a slow hypnotizing pace. Burke thought he could see something forming in the center of the ring, but just as he squinted at it there was an exploration of light.
An opaque veil of blue liquid settled in the ring. Burke knew he was looking at a containment field, to stop the two universes from rushing into each other in attempt to reach equilibrium.
This analysis didn't stop his gaze from admiring the other worldly flow of the veil. How it fluttered like a scarf caught in the wind, occasionally an unseen force would shake it tremendously before settling back down.
The unfortunate reality of a stealth ship was that you would be both in the safest most dangerous of situations. This was one such situation. Despite sending multiple probes through the gate before, Burke couldn't shake the nervousness of being the first ship through.
"Alright Minerva, bring us to condition two and go to silent running," ordered Burke, "Set a course to bring us through in two minutes."
"Go down the rabbit hole, aye captain," replied the cheeky woman.
The transition through the portal was as smooth as any super gate. There was this feeing, though. Burke just couldn't stop a shiver of wrongness from flowing though him. It was like being told he didn't belong.
"Background radiation readings match the earlier probes. This is the same alternate universe," informed the sensors officer.
"Anything else?" Asked Burke.
"Yes, sir. I've pinged the probes, they have mapped out the nearby systems. Nothing of note."
Burke looked at the screen he'd pulled up, showing the habitable planet in the system. It was a typical Alterra planet, a perfect fit for humans due to their mastery of terraforming. A paradise in every sense of the word.
"Any detailed scans on the planet?" Asked Burke. The probes had detected Alterran structures, but they were notorious for being impossible to scan. These even more so.
"No, sir. The interference is still up; we're lucky to see anything, and that it's not a full on cloak." Burke nodded at this, they would have to go down and turn it off the scrambling field manually, but it could've been worse. There had been Alterran stations in the Sol system not found until coordinates led directly to them.
"Very well, send the confirmation through," ordered Burke. Admiral Elliot's task force had been on hand in case there was a situation. Now, without anything of note, a cruiser and two destroyers would be sent with the explorer and Burke's own ship. The rest of the vessels would continue their sector patrol before heading to the nearby deep space port.
Present Time
Mass Effect Universe
Shanxi
"General, marines have encountered stiff resistance in a residential area south of Park Street, requesting clarification on ROE; they want to level the area ... General if the enemy pulls some of its frigates into atmosphere we're going to have to divert almost all our air assets from CAS in ... We've got good push in sectors 1-8 but 9-13 was much more concentrated than expected..."
The HQ had descended into organized chaos. General Williams was juggling multiple situation reports per minute while trying to use that information to make informed tactical decisions.
"Divert a company of Baskings to sector 11, we need to break through there. It's a direct route the the spaceport and the food storage nearby," ordered Williams.
Williams needed to capture as many aliens as possible in this offensive and to force the aliens to surrender or at least stalemate up in their ship. But none of that would matter if they couldn't first get food, and everyone starved to death. He'd been careful not to show this precarious position to the enemy. They'd just level every farm and warehouse on the planet to deny him the supplies. Causing thousand of civilians to die.
The initial attack had gone well. The first wave of marines had gotten a few minutes of surprise by crawling through utility pipes towards the enemy lines. Several minefields had caused disaster for the armored platoons attached to the infantry forces. But the fast alliance tanks cleared the explosives quickly and moved on, although losing many in the process.
Snipers were a tipping point, as they had been for the whole invasion. Combined with the inherent advantage of a defensive war, where you knew the land better than the enemy, the snipers were absolutely deadly. Furthermore, alliance force composition seemed to use more snipers than the enemy did; a huge advantage in the urban warfare.
"General! I've got Harper on the line, codes check out, he says the barriers over the enemy beachhead are offline!" Rushed over a radio operator.
"That tough SOB," Williams gave a low chuckle, "what's the closest asset in the area?"
"A flight of gunships are on CAS for the 1st Armored."
"Re-task them, those barriers could go back up anytime. And get Harper back here!" Ordered the General. He knew that his armor would take some serious casualties without the support, air power had been an integral part of their offensive plan. But, if he took out the beachhead and the rest of the aliens supplies with it; then he might be able to end the invasion.
"Overlord, Warpig Actual. What's the ETA of our air support?" Called out Commander Morris into the radio. The 1st and 2nd Batallions of the 1st Armored Brigade had pushed south out of Jinyang early in the morning. With the loss of the enemy command ship, and Alliance air defenses coming alive to shoot down recon planes, the hope was that the enemy would be slow on seeing them coming.
That was wishful thinking. The birds had definitely seen them, they just couldn't commit forces to counter the armored thrust with the offensive going on in Jinyang. The alien planes were being suppressed by their own, and no enemy ships had yet lined up for bombardment. The alien dreadnought had been the orbital bombardment ship, and the other ships were currently too busy scrambling around to perform the task.
The tanks had swung east to close onto the avian's flank and encountered a hastily developed defensive line. The first wave of air strikes had opened a hole that the fast Alliance tanks could easily exploit, pushing deep into the enemy lines. This was territory the aliens had only held for a few days, there were not significant defenses in place.
The plan at this point was to close a pocket onto the army sieging Jinyang. These could be used as a bargaining chip to stall fighting. Once that objective was complete, the alien reserves could be mopped up. Unfortunately, one alien armored reserve had been fairly close to the Alliance tanks. They were right between them and their objective of closing a pocket.
"Warpig this is Overlord. Be advised, all assets in your AO have been reassigned to a target of opportunity. ETA on retasking is 11 mikes."
This declaration brought several cusses out of the tank crew. Air support had been critical in the earlier stages of the fighting, now they would have to rely solely on a single battery of artillery for the entire division.
Unfortunately for Morris, his company was the tip of the spear into enemy territory. Already they had lost two tanks and three Infantry Fighting Vehicles. But now, without air support, he expected much worse casualties.
Morris looked out through the array of sights and sensors allowing him to see outside his tank. A glimmer on his IR scope was all that alerted him to danger.
"Reverse! Reverse! We're right on top of them!" Screamed out the tank commander. The alien armor was dug in at a reverse slope position, allowing them to shoot at tanks just as they peaked over a hill. Except the tanks were facing the wrong way! They must not have been told about the assault coming from their flank, the aliens disrupted command structure not yet getting orders to this unit.
Morris' driver struggled to maneuver the M32 Basking tank so that it's gun could depress onto the enemy. One of the others in Morris' platoon of 4 tanks got to the first shot, the mass accelerator delivering a point blank shot to the back of the enemy turret.
The kinetic barriers weren't as strong on the top or back of the tank, so the penetrator went straight through the vehicle. The shot must've gotten the tank in one of the small mass effect cores used to hover the tank, as its turret violently imploded like a tin can under pressure.
The enemy was quick to react, disciplined as they always were. The hover tanks popped straight up out of their dug-in emplacements and maneuvered to bring their thick frontal armor to bear.
But it was too late. The close engagement denied the aliens the advantage of their powerful guns, powerful armor, powerful shields, and the alliance tanks had a clear shot at the weak spots of the enemy. Considering the fast firing speed of alliance tanks, multiple alien vehicles were destroyed before they could even turn around. By then it was over.
"Sledgehammer, Warpig Actual. Thirty plus armored vehicles destroyed at grid reference Easting 74 Northing 92, continuing towards phase line gateway," reported Morris to his commanders, rather redundantly considering the same information was being sent over the battlefield network.
Morris could only hope the rest of the battle would go so well.
Into the Night
Burke had been treated to a complete view of the away team infiltrating the alien beachhead. The 3D holographic projection was highly detailed, and he watched his team drop into the building and quickly both secure the artifact and devastate the base defenses.
Burke also observed the two humans escaping from their prison cells. The powerful sensors of the ship providing perfect details on their every movement.
A frown marred his face as he watched one of the humans follow directly in the path of his away team. The human then stopped exactly where the device had been taken into the jumper.
"Minerva?"
"Pulling up sensor logs now, Captain." The virtual human always seemed to know what was on his mind. "The artifact was broadcasting to him in ultra-wideband and low intensity at a randomly shifting pattern, it was nearly indecipherable from the background."
"Try and put this together for me," grunted the Captain. What connection did this human have with the artifact? Just from a glance you could tell the tech didn't fit this human society. In fact, it almost looked like a piece of art you might find on a Lantean city ship.
"The CIC just got it. He's infected with the nanotechnology from the device, they were receiving the transmissions and directing him," informed Minerva. "Searching for more n- there! Some more in one of the aliens in the base. A massive amount in a dead human, the away team already took care of that, making up a significant amount of his total mass."
"So, not only does this device use EM fields for neural manipulation. But it also infects people with nanites?" Burke couldn't believe it. He wasn't very concerned by the weapon itself, UTS security systems could sniff out the nanites and contaminated brainwaves in seconds, the standard checkup when Burke sat down in his Captain's chair would do just that. And the UTS had encountered dozens of races experimenting and using various mind control and nano technologies, much more advanced ones.
Rather, Burke was concerned because the device was so improperly handled. What race just left this sort of technology laying around? What race would allow such a danger to possible harm a more primitive civilization like the humans below? More concerning was the possibility that this artifact was an attack on the human below. But why would such an obviously more advanced species go about an attack in such a subtle way as the artifact?
The Alterrans didn't make a habit of leaving their technology around, and the Lanteans tried to lock away the most dangerous items in Atlantis before losing their war. The few exception were all locked under DNA sensors. Burke just couldn't see something like this being accidentally left on the planet below.
"Minerva? What's the possibility that the device was beneficial for its makers, but just not attuned for other physiologies and thus harmful?"
"Minimal. For the device's EM radiation to affect human brains the way it does, it would need to be designed this way. And some of the things the nanites did to the dead human is clearly for creating a sort of soldier. Brain function manipulated for compliance, bones and muscles strengthened, redundant biology to take damage," listed off the Intelligence.
"The two infected, do we need to take action?" Burke didn't just want to leave some rouge, possibly hostile, nanites running around.
"Without contact with the artifact they've gone into dormancy. Performing simply healing and bone, muscle, and nerve improvement. But there aren't nearly as many in the two infected as the dead human, from what I can see there are not nearly enough to affect their brains. And I'm seeing minor immunological responses that should remove the nanites after some time; assuming they're not re-exposed to the artifact."
"Leave them then," decided Burke, "perhaps the humans might even discover the nanites and get some good out of it."
"But the alien?" Prompted Minerva.
This left Burke in a quandary. He wasn't xenophobic, the Terrans interacted with many species. The problem was that this race had waged a war of conquest on another species with no justification. In addition, their lack of regard for civilians gave him much pause.
Burke was still angry about the dropping of debris and bombardment on the capital city on the planet below. While the aliens hadn't dropped any more, and he would stop them if they did, they had still killed thousands when the Into the Night arrived in system.
The United Terran State wasn't one to jump to intervene in every conflict they saw. This was for a variety of reasons. You don't want to affect a developing culture. You don't want civilizations to become dependent on your help, expecting help that you might not always be able to give. And you don't want to gain resentment for sticking your nose where it didn't belong. And the biggest reason, UTS public opinion was against fighting wars all the time.
In practicality, the UTS couldn't be everywhere. Well actually, Burke thought, if the UTS increased ship production and manned them remotely they probably could. But that wasn't the point; it would be a massive overreach to try and police the entire universe.
There were exceptions, of course. Races committing blatant war crimes or pointless aggression could receive covert attention from stealth ships like the Into the Night. This was a direct result of UTS experience with the Goa'uld and Wraith. The UTS couldn't just sit by while one species imposed themselves on another.
Though, if there was a war resulting out of political, territorial, or ideological disputes; then the UTS tried to stay out of the way. Obviously though, ideologies calling for genocide were another matter.
But from experience, the UTS found many interstellar wars were just like Earth wars. Both side had valid grievances with the other and picking the bad guys and good guys wasn't as easy as looking at who started it. These situations came from long series of events that weren't easy to pick apart. So the UTS often had to stick with trying to negotiate treaties.
You could, in theory, bring in pacification fleets and disable all military equipment. The UTS was more than capable of doing this, using sensors and beaming to remove any arms from entire solar systems. You can't have an insurrection when the UTS knows the exact location of every bullet on the planet. But this only worked when there was a majority wanting peace. Otherwise, as soon as you try to pull out and allow a local government to take over a war of oppression is run by the government out of un-resolved conflicts of old.
However, when you find a race that shoots first off of first contact, that is an entirely separate matter. The UTS is perfectly happy maintaining blockades around the last Wraith and Goa'uld worlds, which contain no space technologies or the resources to make them.
So, when the Into the Night confirmed these aliens had attacked the human world without provocation and without even having a first contact; high command was all for discrete aid.
And now, Burke didn't want these aliens to have a chance of looking at their nanite filled soldier. Maybe in the distant future they would reverse engineering more of them for attacking other species.
"It looks like we won't have to make a choice," said Minerva. Burke looked at his battle space. A flight of gunships was shown outlined in red, a dotted line appearing in the constructed camera shot showing their trajectory to the enemy beachhead. The same location that the alien infected with nanites was at.
"CIC intercepted the comms from those escaped POWs. They're not gonna leave anything standing," Minerva informed him. The gunships approached low over the forest. The defense lasers did not have any line of sight, blocked by trees and by their own buildings.
The gunships first unleashed missiles to knock out the lasers, then came closer to strafe the area. After the explosions tore apart the lasers, the gunships flew over using their mass accelerators to destroy everything in sight. The destruction caused was memorizing. The mass accelerators didn't cause big explosions, just turned the entire area into rubble and debris. A building being hit with a few rounds would just shatter into pieces from the kinetic force.
The alien base became a graveyard. A field of rubble and craters piled with bodies. Fires began to spread, sparked from broken electrical systems. Very shortly after explosion ripped through the area, the stockpile of weapons catching fire.
The scene was devastating, a testament to what intelligent beings could do to each other. Would do to each other. It was beautiful. Mesmerizing. Terrible.
Codex
Historians studying the siege of Jinyang, and especially William's Offensive, will note the destruction of Turian tanks at the Battle of 74 Easting as a major turning point in the invasion. The Turian battalion had been setup as a lynchpin in any tactical withdraws from Jinyang into a defensive line a couple dozen miles outside the city. With the emplacements removed, any chance at an easy withdraw had been destroyed.
The battle took place right after mercenary Jack Harper's escaped from the Turian beachhead and temporary HQ, which was in use after the loss of power on the invading dreadnought. The escape coincided with a devastating cyber attack on the base's computers, of which the alliance remains silent on to this day.
Whatever the case, the HQ was out of action for several hours and unable to relay battlefield information to Turian troops. This led not only to one sided Battle of 74 Easting, where the Turian Battalions was not informed of the flanking human tanks, but a general lack of coordination and information throughout the theater.
This was a remarkable victory for a battalion that went on to take heavy casualties closing the West Jinyang pocket on the Turian invasion force. At the end of it all Lt Colonel Morris drove out with little under half his original fighting force. The Alliance tanks were not used to being so thoroughly vulnerable to enemy fire. The Basking tanks taking considerably more casualties than their Turian counterparts was the main reason for why the Alliance purchased not only the M35 Mako, but also the American M36 Megalodon heavy tank post defense of Shanxi.
Edited March 15