At the opening of the Reaper War, the Alliance Tenth Fleet responds to a distress call from the isolated colony of Valhalla. There, they encounter a single Reaper sent to harvest the colony's population.
mivpus presents -
RAGE OF A GOD (Excerpt from Careful what you Wish For)
2186 - Battle of Valhalla
As the first ship of the tenth fleet exited the relay, it could be seen as but a small blur of blue that suddenly became an Alliance Cruiser. Then another blur, and another and another. Before long, more than two-hundred Alliance vessels exited the relay's transit system.
Right next to the first cruiser, the Dreadnought SSV Hong Kong came into view, being almost double the length of the relative small eight-hundred meter cruiser. At the bridge of the Hong Kong, Admiral Anna Fisher of the Systems Alliance stood from her command-chair, observing how her crew sprang into action without her even needing to give them orders.
Pings, LADAR and active scans were carried out and returned, massive walls of data appearing before her on a holographic screen. With a small growl, she scrolled through the, to her, useless data and text, ending up with a scan and image of the system. Valhalla was only the third of five planets in the Midgard system, but it was the only one within the 'Goldilocks zone' of the system, meaning it was the only one capable of supporting human life.
In orbit around the planet of Valhalla, the active scans had painted two targets. Just two, and one of them wasn't even that big. She estimated it to be around the one hundred and fifty meters in length that the scans indicated. That one she wrote off as a major threat, in her mind already dividing up her forces to deal with the smaller target first. The rest of her forces, including the 'Spirit of Fire' Carrier, would deal with the bigger threat. And no shit it was bigger. The other vessel easily measured at the four kilometers at least, resembling a giant... cuttlefish? That couldn't be right, but nevertheless, it really did look like a big-ass squid.
Wait a moment... what had the brass said? That these 'Reapers' that the Council had told them about looked like giant squids? Anna could feel a dreading chill run down her spine as she watched the image of the biggest spaceship she had ever seen. Fuck, it was even bigger than the Hammer of Vengeance would be when finished. This wasn't good... actually this could potentially be a royal fuck-soup. Still, she had more than two hundred ships, and even if the small vessel was a threat too, she felt confident she had more than enough to kick their balls. If they had balls that was. Now she just needed to check if these really were these 'Reapers', and if they were, she would claim fucking FIRST BLOOD by towing back the battered hull of the big one.
Unless of course it managed to escape her wrath.
"Techs, open a transmission to the ships in orbit around Valhalla. I wanna know who we are dealing with here." She didn't get a verbal reply, instead she just watched as the people scattered at the consoles went to work. The large map of the galaxy in the middle of the room changed, becoming a projection of one of the ships: The big one.
"This is Systems Alliance Admiral Fisher. You are in Alliance space and your crafts are not displaying IFF's. Identify yourselves." She said, standing to her full height in front of the projection. That was odd, usually the projection would be green or just in regular colors. Now though, it was pure red. It was a little creepy actually.
"Organics. You tread where you are not needed. Your demands for the action of your orders are pathetic, irrelevant in the grander scheme of things. We are not bound by what you view as the rules of law in this galaxy. We are unbound by time and age. We are Supreme . You touch my mind, fumbling in the darkness that will soon envelop your worlds in ascending shadow and fire." that thing... it sounded as ominous as something or someone possibly could. That was also what helped Anna decide that whatever these ships were, they were hostile, or at least being very rude while not being allowed in Alliance Space.
"I take it you are not friendlies then?" She asked, gesturing for the bridge to power up the weapons and shields. they were still outside of effective range of weapons, but she knew they would have to pummel the enemy ships into submission, then maybe board and capture the commander.
"Friend... a term invented to give name to those you seek to exploit for aid, or risk non-functionality by aiding. We are neither. You come before us, seeking your own destruction yet claiming to seek ours. We are eternal, you are mere bacteria. We will ascend you to a higher level of existence." At this, Anna hovered her finger above the 'terminate' option.
"And I'm going to jam my foot up your snatch! Get ready to suck my ass!" She shouted, ending the call. when she did, she could see the worried and wondering faces of the crew nearby. With a grim smile, she smashed her fist into the consoles near the map, causing the artificial wooden construction to creak.
"Well? That Sea prawn just badmouthed us. What the fuck are we going to do about that, huh!" She called out, feeling a different, far more enjoyable tingling go down her spine as she shouted out. Anna had always been known for having a, at times, very bass voice. It was one of the effects of the surgery she had received as a ten-year old. Taking a kick to the throat had wrecked havoc on her voice-box, making it necessary to implant a small module that would compensate for the lifted voices. Now? now she felt like ripping someone's spine out and using it as a necklace.
A resounding Hooraa! sounded from the entirety of the bridge, as well as from the intercoms. The entire crew had listened in on the conversation with the unidentified vessels, and had listened to her responses as well. It pleased her to no end to see Jefferson stand at his position, fist raised as he shouted with the others. Anna, standing at the podium with the galaxy-map, held her hands up to instill silence. The entire ship instantly complied, only the cockpit continuing their vector. Anna switched the intercom on again, linking her up to the entire tenth fleet.
"Alright, ladies and gentlemen, girl- and boy scouts. I suspect that despite it being a supposed secret, some of you might have hear rumors about some new threat entering our galaxy. Well, I am here today, as are you, to witness that thát is sadly true. Valhalla is under attack by unknown entities with a ship spanning more than four kilometers in length. But hey, we are Humanity, fuck it all! We have never been the first or even the last to lie down and whimper. We have NEVER laid down to whimper. and you know why? Because we are the baddest motherfuckers in this entire galaxy! Now, this guy who thinks he and his friends can just attack our colonies and get away with it, just called us bacteria. US! I don't know about you people, but I say we take our collective firepower and shove it up their asses! This is the time where we show the galaxy that if this is indeed the new threat, Humanity will be the ones to draw first blood! We will be the ones to send these bitches screaming back to their momma, and we will dog them until we have towed their ships past the Citadel with the other races looking in awe. Because we are Humanity, and this... this is our land!" She almost screamed the last part, punching the air as she did. Did she ever love to give those speeches. Especially since they certified her to kick ass.
"Fuck yeah!" A collective cry came out from the intercom. It paid well to get up close and personal with your fleet, or at least make yourself a name in it. There wasn't a man or woman in the tenth fleet who didn't know that when Fisher gave a speech like that, they were going to get some scratches in their paint.
"Alright! Shanghai, I want you and battle group Zeta to engage the smaller of the two crafts. when you are done, rejoin efforts to scuttle the big one. All aside from the Shanghai and Zeta are to follow my lead. Let's do this!" She ordered, and the ships shot forward through space, the engines having been boosted by the down powering of all non-essential equipment.
As they neared the planet of Valhalla, Anna saw how the two vessels started breaking away from the planet, heading straight for her group instead. Despite what she had yelled and proclaimed in the speech, Anna was cautious to a certain degree. She didn't know just what these ships were capable off, especially since she remembered a defense fleet of at least twenty cruisers being stationed around the planet.
"Full power to forward shields. Ready torpedoes and spin up the main gun. I want every single weapon, every gun, cannon, fighter and pistol pointed at that thing. When we get in range I want the engines powered down and thrusters readied." She bellowed, watching the bridge explode into activity. She then brought up the data for maximum weapons range. Just ten seconds at this speed...
She wanted to slow down as soon as her own ships could fire, and then keep maximum distance for as long as possible. Still, this should be easy.
The seconds went by until the counter reached zero and flashed green.
"Gunnery, confirm target lock." She demanded.
"Lock confirmed"
"Send that little diaper-stain back to its momma. FIRE!"
And fire away they did.
The first volley to streak towards their still visually invisible targets was the plasma torpedoes. the Mark-IV torpedoes had proven their worth above Elysium from what the reports said, and now it was her turn to field-test them. The blue spheres of plasma contained within a magnetosphere soared through space, creating pretty tails of lost mass as they went. The mass and thereby kinetic energy lost was minimal at best though, and wasn't really of any concern to her.
As the torpedoes, hundreds in total, raced each other towards the targets, the ships soon followed it up with a barrage of heavy slugs from spinal mounted MAC's, and each and every turret capable of dishing out ship-grade damage towards the approaching vessels. Each of the hundreds of cruisers fired a fourteen kilo slug each seventh second from their main weapons. The slug, if impacting the armor of an unshielded ship, would cause the same destruction as if someone had planted two times the bombs that fell on Hiroshima. The frigates were more of a screening force, meant to decimate any fighter-crafts launched by the enemy. They were also effective at fast strikes that would let them hunt in wolf packs and surround the enemy. Still, when more than seventy frigates fired off a payload of ten kiloton bombs towards their enemy, it amounted to something bigger.
And then there was the Dreadnoughts. While Anna had the only Dreadnought in the fleet, it packed enough of a punch to catch up with the rest. Each fifth second, the main gun of the Hong Kong fired a twenty-five kilos slug that would create the same amount of destruction as eight times the Hiroshima bomb. Anna had no actual idea of how much that was, but it always seemed to be the pride of the drill sergeants that only the Destiny Ascension had more firepower than an Alliance Dreadnought. The days of the Turians as second best were past. Now humanity held that position.
"Let's see that over-sized squid take this." She muttered, keeping her eyes on the screens for the three seconds it took the first projectiles to impact on the surface of the hostile vessel, currently a quarter of the system away from them.
As the slugs and torpedoes impacted, Anna watched with glee as the vessel was bathed in fire and discharged plasma. Each of the torpedoes fired could break the hull of a cruiser in one go, capable of ignoring the shields while inflicting nuclear-like havoc on the ship.
"Yeah! Take that you... you... what the fuck?" Anna's smile dissipated as she watched the ship emerge from the radiated clouds of gas and debris, the apocalyptic destruction seemingly had had no effect at all. To make matters worse, it was traveling at speeds her own dreadnought couldn't rival. It was almost the same speed as a projectile fired from a frigate's main gun. Instead of turning to shoot from where she had suspected the weapons to be, the squid-like creature sailed through the barrages of fire and tungsten, seemingly oblivious to the amount of destruction being poured at it from two-hundred ships.
"Keep shooting! I want that fucker down in flames!"
As the ship closed what she suspected to be the maximum range, it spread out its tentacle-like appendixes, each the size of a frigate. Dark and blue lights could be seen decorating the hull on both sides, the underside looking like skeletal parts on some freaky creature. Then a sharp red light started shining in the underbelly of the ship, pointing straight at the ship next to Anna's.
"Full power to bow shields!" She yelled. Instantly her orders were followed, the kinetic barriers rising to 140%, making them actually visible despite the lack of incoming fire. The signatures of the other ships told her they did the same thing. And then the vessel fired.
A crimson beam. It was a crimson red beam and not a projectile as Anna had expected. It shot out from the underbelly of the ship, spearing the hull of the closest ship. It was the Cruiser SSV Copenhagen. Instead of the barriers and shields managing to take the blow, the kinetic barriers briefly flickered to life before dying in a glint of azure light. The Copenhagen had not been among the ships to be outfitted with the Mithril-shielding. There simply hadn't been enough time after the test above Elysium. And now the six-hundred men and women aboard the cruiser would pay for it.
She could only watch in dread as the ship was simply carved in two before exploding. That was no weapon she knew of. Not even the Cutter-beams could cause that kind of destruction, and definitely not at that range. The dread she felt when the cruiser was destroyed slowly changed into rage. Rage, for the lives lost to the commander of the enemy ship. Rage that this shit-stain had attacked humanity and had the impunity and audacity to kill her men.
"Keep shooting! Focus on any weak spots you can find, then relay the info to the rest of the fleet!"
Despite their best efforts, Anna could only watch with mounting dread and agony as her ships were removed from the SITREP, sometimes with only seconds between each destruction. She could follow perfectly well what happened through the screens connected to the exterior sensors and cameras.
A cruiser, the SSV Deutschland moved closer to the enemy vessel, pouring everything from the main gun to the GARDIAN-lasers at it. The lasers carved across the hull of the gigantic squid-like ship. As they did, the blue barrier that had stopped all other attacks ignored the lasers, instead letting them pass straight through. At first, Anna thought the golden lights she could see on the hull where the laser touched was where the infra-red laser carved through the hull. Instead, as she zoomed in with the camera, she felt her stomach revolt.
A bright gold barrier was layered beneath the kinetic barrier. It stopped the lasers from carving up the hull of the ship, instead simply absorbing the shots. What on Earth was this thing? Anna could only watch in horror as the enemy didn't think it sufficient to just shoot the cruiser. It landed on the hull of the Deutschland, shrugging off the pounding turret as they spewed enough fire at it each moment to deface most of Europe. Due to the size of the turrets, they were inefficient if equipped with mass accelerators. Instead, they were operating on the most simple and efficient form of gun: Gunpowder. Each projectile was an anti-hull shell packed with depleted uranium or explosive powder meant to penetrate or overload the barriers of hostile ships in knife-fights.
As the turrets, as well as the rest of the fleet kept up the fire, the squid dug its appendixes into the hull of the Deutschland, producing a screeching sound over the intercom as the ship was torn apart with simple brute force. It didn't even acknowledge the swarms of fighters, gunships and drones as they performed strafing run after strafing run, peppering the thing with shells, slugs, grains and plasma from the LA/AT 'Wasps'. It was pure luck that the vessel didn't seem interested in the gunships, as they would have been too slow to out-maneuver its fire. And with that one instant, the Deutschland, the first and biggest cruiser to ever be built at the Berlin Space Port, was reduced to floating debris as the core exploded from the damage sustained, spreading outwards in a ring of radioactive energy and radiation.
Not content with the deaths of the hundreds of servicemen and women aboard the cruiser, the gigantic ship lifted an 'arm', and simply pointed at one of the screening frigates. At first, it almost seemed like it was gesturing 'I'm coming for you next', but at that moment, a thinner beam shot from its tentacle. Anna's eyes widened in horror, realizing that the ship had only fired one of its weapons until that point.
The frigate, being meant for screening and raids, fighting light-weight pirates and the like, had no real chance against the destructive power of its enemy. As the frigate gunned the propulsion to escape the fiery death, the beam impacted on its shields, being deterred for only a few moments. As the shields were being burned away, the smaller ship turned to face the giant who willed its death.
The SSV Cataluña, having only moments left before destruction, took a course that the remainder of the fleet would remember always. With the laser-like weapon burning away the hull, only prevented from cutting the ship in two by the swerving of the pilot. It did not prevent the dismemberment of the right front of the ship though, hundreds of tons of metal being cut clean off by the beam.
"This is captain Josef Amado. It has been an honor serving with you all. Dios bendiga España!" And with that the line died to the frigate, and from the screens, Anna watched in unusual silence as the frigate diverted all power to engines and shields. It was painfully obvious what they were going to attempt.
With the speed of a bullet, the frigate used itself as a projectile as it powered into the underbelly of the gigantic vessel. The enormous ship shot at it, clipping off the front of the frigate, the mouth of the gun as well as the CIC being effectively evaporated and sucked into a vacuum. Anna, as well as most people on the bridge averted their eyes from the organic components traced to slip out from the openings in the hull. Then the frigate impacted, the hull crushing itself against the superior armor of the gigantic squid-like ship. At first, only the sight of the debris floating away was visible over the constant fireballs dotting the enemy's hull as the remaining hundred and eighty ships kept up the fire.
Then, a flicker of light, like a small spark that slowly grew in intensity as the drive core of the Cataluña was improvised and suffered a meltdown, effectively turning it into a nuclear bomb upon the hull of the enemy ship. A kamikaze attack, just like the Quarians had done it over Elysium. Had Valhalla belonged to the Quarians, it would have been poetic justice. Safe for just one thing.
It didn't work.
To the dread of every single person in the Tenth fleet, the super-ship kept up its slaughter, seemingly undeterred by the sacrifice of the frigate. As it landed upon the hull of another cruiser, Anna felt like screaming. Instead she just grit her teeth, her fist clenched. this wasn't a battle. It never had been it seemed. It was just slow slaughter, many before the invulnerable killer, the 'reaper' in their midst.
"Ma'am! The Zeta group just took down the smaller ship. They report fifty percent casualties, but the remaining vessels are on their way to help us out." Jefferson called out. Anna, to her credit, swallowed the rising lump in her throat and turned to face her second in command.
"Alright... have... have all remaining vessels focus fire on the enemy main weapon. If we can diminish its capacity to kill us, we can whittle it down." She said, feeling her voice strained from the stress. This was harrowing, watching her entire force lose more than fifty ships in less than as many minutes. The enemy ship just didn't fit logic. No ship, not even the armor and shields of the Arcturus station would have been able to withstand the punishment they had poured at it.
"Roger that. All vessels, transmitting new firing coordinates. Fire when locked on to new target area!" For not the first time, Anna was glad Jefferson was on her ship, directly under her command. He was invaluable, proving his worth when things got hairy.
The chimes of acknowledgements came in swiftly, marking the rest of the fleet ready to fire again. The moment the Hong Kong was locked on as well, Anna nodded at her second in command. The officer turned to face the gunnery stations, located along the walls of the CIC.
"All weapons, fire on my command." He said, waiting as the main gun took the final second to reload. Noting that the weapons were green across all boards, he gave the order.
"Fire!"
Once more, the entire fleet fired in unison, this time the target being the small ocular point from where the most destructive of the ship's weapons was fired from. Hundreds of massive streaks of blue soared through the void, followed by missiles and regular shells fired by the turrets, in appearance similar to long snakes of yellow glints waving as they followed their counterparts towards the enemy ships. All the while the squid-like enemy just kept its killing-spree up, carving through the hulls of cruisers no matter the strength of their shields.
When the projectiles impacted, the lightshow was awesome in all senses of the words. The first volleys of projectiles only impacted on the barriers, putting strain on what had simply shrugged off the murderous assaults of hundreds of ships. Still, the united fire seemed to be more than the kinetic barriers could handle, and with a wave of blue light swimming across the hull, the first line of barriers died, leaving the golden barrier beneath to absorb the remainder of the shots while the ship itself seemed more focused on spitting red death through the hull of a heavy cruiser.
As the projectiles began hitting the golden barrier, the commander of the squid-like vessel seemed to realize that his enemies had started thinking out a different strategy for bringing him down. As the destroyed hull of the cruiser started floating apart, the enemy vessel began a course that would take it to the relay of the system.
And straight through the ranks of the fleet.
"Keep shooting! The asshole is trying to flee!" Anna bellowed, making a few of the nearby techs wince at the anger and rage in her voice. What they also saw was that the enemy ship seemed adamant that his course had to go through Anna's ship, the Hong Kong being right between it and the relay.
Anna saw it as the enemy commander playing 'chicken' with her. Unfortunately, the bastard wouldn't need to back out, his ship being big enough to simply destroy hers upon impact.
"Evasive maneuvers! Keep us clear of that thing! But DON'T. STOP. SHOOTING!" On her orders, the Hong Kong took a relative nosedive, making it beneath the hulking monster as it sped towards them. It ended up being uncomfortably close, the monster's arms being close to scraping the hull of her ship. Even if 'close' was measured in the tens of kilometers, it was still close enough that a visual from the exterior screens showed her the sparkling red light emitted from the assumed firing chamber beneath the arms. It crackled and glinted with the dreaded red energy, but no fiery death came for them. The weapon apparently had stopped working. As well as the rest of the fleet, not wanting to risk hitting the admiral.
"I never said to stop shooting! Just kill the critter before it runs away!" She shouted into the fleet-com, getting only a few affirmatives in return. It wasn't really all that necessary either, as the rest of the fleet simply reopened their guns, letting continued fire pour down over the enemy ship, now starting to show cracks in the armor, the golden barrier sparkling angrily with each impact. As she brought up the feeds from the other ships, Anna smirked as each hit caused the strained barrier to strain even further. Soon, it would have to give up. Her smirk was diminished though, as the enemy crashed through first one frigate not having gotten out of the way, then a cruiser unloading a full barrage directly into the waiting maw of the approaching ship. The barrage was effective in the sense that it caused the final barriers to sparkle and die in a burst of gold and crimson fire, a sparkling light briefly bathing the vessel before it sailed through the cruiser, crushing the smaller ship underfoot with sheer size, the armor not suffering under the same strain that brought the cruiser to its destruction.
But that was what sealed the fight, the banishment of the shields and barriers that had so far protected the vessel from incoming fire. Now that it was wiped out, each slug and missile impacted directly against the hull of the giant amongst ships. The slugs from cruisers and frigates making the armored hull crack and dent with each megaton impact of raw kinetic energy. As the Hong Kong was finally pointed at the enemy vessel, the dreadnought unleashed every single weapon in its arsenal, crimson and ultraviolet GARDIAN-lasers cutting at the hull while slugs from both main and secondary guns impacted on the belly of the ship, closely followed by the remaining torpedoes, as well as the few rockets still in their pods. Everything was launched at once, aiming to utterly disembowel the ship that singlehandedly had cost Anna more men than any fleet ever before.
As the first torpedo hit, the already cracked and dented plating of the ship was punched through, the plasma melting through the now unprotected armor and hull of the enemy ship. With each Mk-IV torpedo hitting its mark, a blob of the hull was simply melted away, the super-heated gas having eaten and burned away at the super-dense metal. Even so, it took the combined force of everything the Tenth Fleet could throw at the monstrous giant ship to cause it to finally buckle under the whittling fire. With what would have been a thunderous crack of grinding noise and explosions if the vacuum hadn't chocked out sound, an arm was shot clean off the super dreadnought, sent tumbling through space as the ship attempted to smash its way through the fleet to the safety of the relay.
The Hong Kong had a clear shot at the now ripped open insides of the ship. With what could have been taken for the very ship growling in grim satisfaction and bloodlust, the main gun was fired, two shots flying out at the interval of dangerous three seconds between each. As they impacted, the first shot exploded inside the ship, causing plumes of fire to pour from every opening that had been made so far in its hull. The second slug dealt the final blow, ripping through the entire ship before exiting on the opposite side of the now burning hull, continuing its course into deep space.
It was over.
Anna turned to look at her XO before talking. It wasn't the cheery victory-speech she had imagined when she had thrown her fleet at only two ships. Instead, it was a more somber question:
"What are our casualties Commander?" She asked. She could see the vast fields of debris floating around in the void, the occasional flame still burning the remainder of what air was in the wrecks.
"Ninety-six ships... ma'am... we... We lost almost half the fleet against that thing."