And now to see the council's reaction (Insert evil grin)
Disclaimer: If I owned Mass Effect, it would likely never have been finished, damnable writer's block!
Serpent Nebula, Citadel, Council chambers
Sparatus glared at his holo-pad as messages came in telling him of the situation and how the Hierarchy should explain this. He was under no circumstances to reveal more than absolutely necessary to the other council members.
Sighing, Sparatus deactivated the holo-pad and glanced around the chambers, readying himself for the task at hand.
"Councilors, I have news from the Hierarchy." Tevos and the current Salarian Counselor looked at him curiously, it was an important occasion when the Hierarchy deigned to give out information to the other races.
Valarn spoke first.
"Oh, and what would that be Sparatus, I am sure you will be forthcoming?" Sparatus glanced at Valarn, eyes narrowed slightly but he wouldn't speak on his suspicions.
"No, it is something very important. A couple days ago a Turian patrol group, a cruiser and six frigates, discovered a new species activating a Relay. Before they could stop them it had been activated, and the commander of the group, a Captain Agrius, ordered an attack on the law breakers." Sparatus looked upon the shocked faces of his alien colleagues.
"This does seem a bit sudden Sparatus, why were we not imformed earlier?" Scratching one of his plates, Sparatus deigned to ignore that question for now.
"After that contact was lost witht he patrol fleet, so it was decided to send forth a pacification fleet in case this first contact became violent, like the Rachni." Valarn's eyes narrowed but Tevos was visibly infused.
"Are you telling be that you didn't even attempt first contact before firing?!" Sparatus glowered at Tevos.
"They were activating a relay, the Captain followed standing orders and fired at the vessels that activated it. A situation like this was never thought of so no protocalls were ever made for it." Tevos made a sound a collapsed back into her chair.
"Typical mindless Turian drones, can't think for themselves." Sparatus growled at this lack of professionalism and resolutely turned back to his tablet.
"Anyway, the Pacification fleet approached what had appeared to be a recent colony, but it in fact doesn't follow our standards of colonization. It was, from the scans, primarily an automated mining camp with minimal organic intervention. But these scans were only tken during the battle." Valarn shot jup.
"Battle? Who would attempt to resist a Turian pacification fleet?!" Sparatus steeled himself.
"The aliens had gathered many of their ships together, most likely as a show of force, of around fifty military ships that were all the same size, at somewhere between frigate and cruiser sized. They were very thickly armored, but the advantage they had was very powerful... they had long range directed energy weapons." Both of his fellow councilers gave him looks of shock. That the turians had practically invaded a species so advanced.
"They do not appear to use element zero in their military ships, but strangely many civilian ships were detected with it. They have some kind of energy based sheilding, that has three noticeable layers so that they require at least four hits to take down no matter what, except for, say, if a dreadnought fired at on of the standard ships, then it would go through all the shields and do about half damage to the vessel itself, their shields don't seem to account for our rate of fire though, as the next shot taken can pierce through the ship, though notably most of the ships were intact after that, owing to some form of superior construction." Taking a breathe, he continued.
"Their weapons seem to be primarily three types from what we have observed. The mainstay are long range lasers, then a sort of electrical main weapon which resembles giant lightning bolts shaped in a sort of beam, and finally, nukes." Valarn raised a brow while Tevo's looked scandalized."
"Nukes Sparatus, surely this isn't that much of a problem other than more law breaking." Sparatus shook his head.
"No, it's the fact that each and every one of their nukes are fusion at around a hundred megatons, and each and every ship has at least one. So the aliens had fifty nukes available of that magnitude to fire at us, strangely they only used them in strategic points. Finally, there is one more thing." Tevos looked ready to kill, but Sparatus continued regardless.
"Near the end of the battle, in which we had managed to take out many of their ships but most of ours wrre removed also, what must be their flagship moved in. Scanners showed it to be 4.5 kilometers long." Shocked gasps rang throught he room and Sparatus again continued.
"It was primarily a disck shape like the smaller vessels but with those two armors extending an extra kilometer out. It appears to have many nukes in it's holds as it fired at least ten towards the final parts of the battle, but it's main weappns are what worries me." He sighed.
"A hundred meter thick beam of blue light, with what appears to be electricity riding along with it, can be fired out of the main chamber. It could only do this once in the battle, but it killed a dozen ships. It had two secondary one of similar built but much nmore economic, more like turrets."
Sparatus put his tablet away.
Silence reigned in the council chambers as the Asari and Salarian took this information in, Tevos was the first to recover as she glared at Sparatus.
"You've gotten us into a war that could destabilize the entire council! This could be worse than the Rachni wars!" Sparatus had his best stone cold face on as he relayed the next set of orders.
"The Hierarchy would like the full force of the ouncil to protect council space, for all we know they do not have a sense of different factions, and may go after your worlds as well as ours. The Hierarchy its already preparing several of the main fleets in preparation. If we can get some STG teams in we can get a real stance on the situation." Tevos glared but thought the information over.
"We could salvage this, but I would like to send a diplomatic team first." Sparatus grimaces.
"I don't kno-" His omnitool beeped and he brought it up, if he had skin it would be paling right now.
"They've just hit the blockade" Tevos and Valarn stood up, then Valarn nodded.
"I will send a team immediately." Tevos growled and held up her hand.
"I will send a team before you cause any more anger councilers. Now, wait until the team is done with their duties before making any hostile actions." Sparatus growled right back.
"They are already killing my people Tevos, I wont stop defensive military actions. I will have the leading admiral attempt to contact them though." Tevos nodded.
"That would be best."
Eleanor groaned as she finished up a new pile of paperwork, even in a warship she had to to this evil work. If only she had some awesome magic ability to make clones of herself with the same intelligence and make them do it instead.
Pushing the finished papers ands the strand random thoughts aside, she rubbed her temples before looking to her personal viewscreen. Dozens of Turian vessels lay in front of her ship, lifeless and gutted.
The large graveyard of Turian vessels was looked over for useful resources, and a few mega-freighters were brought in to carry away the salvage, anything is useful to a post apocalyptic society, plus it was all high quality materials that could be reused for better things.
The Imperial invasion fleet, consisting of everything not defending Earth or the colonies, was preparing to go through the Relay.
Right now she had almost a few hundred ships, includign the Charles Darwin. The Nikola Tesla had been made workable, but wasn't quite finished. From the outside it looked sufficiently epic but inside it was barely pushing itself through space, but still it stood in the void next to her flagship, hoping to inspire some fear into the aliens.
The Albert Einstein would only take a month or so to complete, and even then it was only to the same standards and the Nikola Tesla.
but she couldn't let the fleet lose it's momentum, she glared at the Relay, that which had helped save her society and could poitentially end it. Growling, she activated fleet-wide comms.
"All ships, enter relay jump in T minus 5... 4... 3... 2...1... Jump!"
Blue streaks shot across the galaxy.
And done, FINALLY! Do you know just how much writer's block I've had to deal wit'?! Huh?! DO YAH!?
And I cant even give you a long chapter cause I'm still stuck, I need ideas, for reactions of the council and empire, and how to get those talks rolling in the first place, or if their should even be any negotiations!
And even then, I am still going to be taking a bit of a hiatus on this story, I wont abandon it, but it might be til the end of summer or fall before I update again, so sorry guys :P
I've just got so many story ideas that I'm making good progress on, but I feel guilty for not at least telling you guy's I'm working on other stuff, so yah, bit of a bummer.
One final thing, good news even, when do start updating again, I'll have a good backlog of rough chapters and may be able to update twice a week until the end, haaaaaaa, good times :D