DOMINATION SPACE COMMAND PLATFORM HYPERION
ARCTURUS SYSTEM
LOCAL CLUSTER
MARCH 20, 2003
Eric von Shrakenberg stood in front of the armorglass gazing out at the orange glow of Arcturus, the glass polarized to allow viewers to look straight at it, as well as the view of the hydrogen-helium gas-giant below that the as-of-yet unfinished battle station he was standing in was named after. His hands were clasped behind his back, his expression solemn as his face looked back at him, transparent against the black void beyond the edges of the red giant star.
Like a ghost, he thought. He had felt his age catching up with him more and more in recent months; he was nearly eighty-five years old, and his second term as Archon was due to end next year. The feeling only intensified as he turned around and took in the large room full of young aquiline faces in the dress blacks of the War Directorate. Every one of them, without exception, of the New Race.
They were all standing in lined formation across the room, used more regularly as a recreation center. It had dozens of linked public rooms with the usual facilities, palaestra and baths and bedrooms. There was a continuous low murmur as they chatted with one another. Lined against the walls were ghouloons, in surface suits and armor, but with faceguards swung back. They kept their eyes and muzzles facing front, but their pointed ears swiveled towards the multitudinous conversations. The tables that were usually near the edges of this main room were gone. Eric was standing on the stage that usually held musicians and singers in front of the armorglass window that allowed those at their ease to take in the view; he knew that if the station were ever attacked, there was a solid slab of armor plating that would slide closed over the structural weakness.
Behind the ghouloons were big murals on the walls, holograph copies. All of them scenes of the Domination's military victories: showing 'Drakian' soldiers dating from the time of the Land-Taking on horseback with the Ferguson rifle-muskets and double-barreled dragoon pistols of the eighteenth century, Bantu warriors kneeling before them in submission; battle scenes from the Crimean War and Indian Mutiny of the 1850s in which Draka expeditionary forces had assisted the beleaguered British; early Draka dirigibles destroying Odessa in an air raid during the Anglo-Russian War; a fleet of hundreds of dirigibles over Constantinople during the Great War, biplanes darting among them; a scene of gray shattered buildings under a gray sky, with a column of mid-Eurasian War model Hond III tanks going through, mud squelching up from under their treads, the Draka crews showing head-and-shoulders out of the turrets; Falcon VI-a scramjet fighters screeching over the Indian subcontinent during the conquest of the mid-1970s, the edges of their wing bodies glowing cherry-red with friction with the blue-white light bursts of radiation bombs on the ground below; and a scene from the Final War, of the familiar skyline of the old Federal Capital District of New York City being vaporized by the bursts of multiple fusion bombs.
A mix of the old and the new, Eric thought as he nodded fractionally to the nearby merarch. She strode onto the empty floor in front of the stage, face twisted into a scowl. "A-tten-shun!" she shouted.
The low murmur abruptly transformed into a sudden silence, a rippling snapping sound as the heels of military-standard boots crashed together as the new graduates drew to abrupt attention. They all stood completely motionless, eyes straight ahead with no involuntary movements – something Eric still found a bit eerie even now. The merarch did a smart about-face to face the Archon and threw a cracking salute, right fist to chest.
Eric nodded approvingly to the officer, then strode slowly forward to the wooden lectern with the Drakon carved in bas-relief on the front of it. His eyes swept over the crowd, his scored eagle face composed into a severe expression. After the cursory scan was complete he nodded abruptly and began to speak.
"I came here today to speak to the first class of recruits to complete they trainin' out here, beyond the Sol system. To remind y'all of our beloved Domination's hist'ry of grand military conquests." A hand swept out to gesture at the murals along the walls. "Maybe to stroke yo' egos by tellin' y'all how this is all the unfoldin' of Destiny, the sacred destiny of the Race."
A low murmur of chuckling among those assembled, until his glare cut it off. "Instead," he continued, "I'm heah to tell you that we received word just hours ago that one of our expedition fleets was attacked by an alien species, a patrol fleet we think. Only one of our frigates made it back."
The crowd remained silent in their discipline, their expressions barely changed. But Eric could see the momentary widening of their eyes, their only reaction.
"Y'all are facin' an unprecedented situation." He clasped his hands behind his back, nodded slightly at startled blinks that met the wording of his statement. "That's right, I said you face this situation. We, yo' human fo'fathers and mothers, we won our Old Domination because we were tough, and prepared... and because we were lucky enough to have enemies who'd fight an' argue with each other rather than us, or to have Prothean bunkers fall in our lap.
"But if you of the New Race, the Homo drakensis, plan to extend yo' Domination, you'll have to be twice as tough, twice as disciplined as we were. We could be on the verge of startin' a war that will culminate in the total annihilation of the Race; they could have a fleet a thousand times the size of ours. You can still lose it all. Never forget that, never. Every day you live, you live on the edge of oblivion. It's up to you, the young. Rule or die, kill or be killed, crush or be crushed. Always on guard fo' opportunity, takin' what you can, never relinquishin' an inch.
"Destiny is what we make it. Service to the State!"
"Glory to the Race!" It crashed out from the graduates like thunder, broke into a spontaneous chant that lasted for minutes as the ghouloon troopers threw back their heads and gave a barking howl.
VRITRA 2, VRITRA SYSTEM
LOCAL CLUSTER
MARCH 27, 2003
Lantam Scavris advanced slowly and cautiously across the broken ground, his Armax Arsenal assault rifle held at the ready in his three-fingered taloned hands. He and the rest of his squad were mostly bare-headed, the rigid metallic carapace of brown-gray cartilage and bone open to the air, their faces tattooed with the colors of their home colonies. None of them liked how their helmets restricted their vision; some still wore a pressurized cowl that covered most of their skull and their head fringe, leaving only their faces exposed.
Lantam kept his avian eyes moving, scanning back and forth for movement. His superiors hadn't told them much about the enemy they were facing, just that they were an ignorant species who were caught violating Council law. I wouldn't have minded a few more details, he thought without rancor. But he was still here, doing his duty for the Turian Hierarchy in obedient silence. That he could have done anything else never even occurred to him.
A larger turian fleet had been assembled and rapidly overran the defenses of the lone outpost on this planet. The defenders had scattered into the surrounding wilderness and had been harassing the garrison force with pinprick raids and long-range fire. Which is why we're out here among all this alien vegetation. It was all levo-amino acid-based, while his peoples' biology was based on dextro-amino acids; if he were to accidentally ingest any of it, there was the possibility that it would be fatal.
"Not the only things that can be fatal around here," he muttered to himself. "Keep sharp."
His vigilance was rewarded a few minutes later when his squad suddenly attracted a hail of automatic fire. Lantam quickly ran for cover as he felt an all too familiar shudder as his kinetic shields repulsed several shots that would have otherwise found their mark. He hit the ground and rolled behind a nearby rise in the ground as a line of bullets stitched into it. Instinctively, he checked the remaining power on his shields: twenty-five percent—not nearly enough to give him a fighting chance if he had to make another run through direct enemy fire.
A moment later he heard the squad leader shouting into the comm, calling for an orbital strike. Lantam let a low chuckle trickle out of his throat. Let's see how you like catching this.
About a minute later there was a rumble and a streak of light as the kinetic projectile slammed into the ground towards where the fire was coming from. Lantam huddled close to the ground, keeping his head down as the shockwave sent wind gusting over the rise he was hiding behind. As soon as it died down, he and the rest of his squad began to stand cautiously to check the damage.
He heard the beginnings of a growl amidst the breathing of exertion when he caught sight of a large dark shape approaching low to the ground out of the corner of his eye. Lantam turned his head in time to see a huge dark-furred shape leap into the air, letting out a deafening roar with large jaws lined with intimidating fangs opened to a nearly ninety degree angle, one hand clutching a huge curved knife.
Before he could even begin to raise his assault rifle, the thing stabbed the knife down into one of the turians'; the blade moved at subsonic velocities so the kinetic barriers never engaged. The force of it stabbed through the kinetic padding and fabric and into his carapace almost effortlessly, sending his squadmate to his knees with a scream of agony as blue blood soaked into the armor.
Lantam and the rest of the squad had their assault rifles leveled and firing in the next instant, firing in long-trained precise bursts to keep their weapons from overheating and throwing off their alignment and rate of fire. They advanced slowly as they shot, looking to quickly overwhelm its shields.
The creature's kinetic shields became a blue shimmer as they began to absorb the fire as it ripped the knife back out and began to charge two other turians, who backpedaled hurriedly as they maintained their continuous, disciplined fire. When the shields finally depleted, the alien recoiled as the turians' bullets began shredding into its armor and hands. The two turians it had been charging stopped their retreat and began advancing slowly again, pouring bursts of fire into it.
Eventually the thing gave off a low, deep moan and crumpled to the ground, spilling red blood onto the crushed vegetation. Lantam kept his assault rifle aimed at it as his mandibles sagged away from his mouth in shock. The alien was large, easily three times the weight of a turian, in unfamiliar armor but covered with dark fur otherwise. Its bronze-gold slit-pupilled gaze stared sightlessly out of a face dominated by a muzzle with a wet black nose on the end, with lips were peeled back from a carnivore's fangs. Red blood, four fingers and one opposable thumb on both... no, on all four hands, he thought, noticing that they were on the end of all four limbs of an otherwise bipedal-shaped creature. "What is that?" he blurted before he could stop himself.
"I have no idea," one of the others admitted. "But it charged like a krogan."
"I'm not a xenobiologist," another chimed in, "but I can tell you one thing." He nudged it with a foot. "It still bleeds, and it still dies. That's good enough for me."
There was a grim chuckle at the remark until they all heard a vwiiip sound and one turian fell bonelessly, dead before he hit the ground, as his shields – depleted from the previous ambush – gave way to the hypervelocity shot. Following on its heels they heard the report of the gunshot.
"Sniper!" They all hit the dirt and began making for cover as more bullets – more than could be accounted for than just one gunman – began methodically probing their position. There was a shriek as another bullet found its mark. The squad leader cursed as he began calling for more orbital strikes.
This time there were several streaks of light that poured down onto the snipers' position. Lantam curled up behind his cover as the ground shook beneath him, pummeling him inside his armor. His pressurized cowl automatically muffled the roar of the impacts to protect his hearing.
"Freya's tits," Senior Monitor Luther Tull swore, his voice drowned out by the roar of the orbital bombardment the aliens had called in on the snipers of his tetrarchy. These bastards sho' like to bomb things, he thought, feeling a cold rage building from the center of his chest. A deep breath through the nose and he consciously throttled back his body's building tension.
His entire merarchy and the ghouloon chiliarchy that had been stationed here had been ordered to scatter when the alien force had invaded through the system's mass relay a little under a week ago and begun bombarding the colonial outpost. The Directorates of Land Settlement, Agriculture, Conservancy, and Public Works had all had offices there – along with the usual forces from War and Security – and had been doing the long-term planning of settlement on this new planet. Long-term mainly because it was low priority – the New Territories on Earth and the habitable planet in Alpha Centauri had priority over trans-relay colonies.
They had been harassing the occupying force ever since; sniping their outer sentries, sabotaging the spaceport, etc. Each tetrarchy was operating largely independently of the others, with ghouloon runners providing their only means of communication to coordinate their activities. They had found out quickly that the invaders came down on transmissions hard.
Now they were sending out squads to try and winkle out the Draka holdouts, calling down bombardments on the least sign of military resistance. They got firepower, but they don't got no imagination. His tetrarch had sent he and his stick around towards the alien squad's rear, keeping their attention fixed towards one direction. So far it had worked, though they were losing the drakensis and ghouloon troopers providing distractions at an infuriating rate.
"Alright," he muttered in a low voice when the roar of the bombardment subsided enough for his stick's drakensis acute hearing to hear him. "Long-range ain't gonna work with those things. We got to get up close and personal like, y'hear? John, y'all run ovah to Monitor Torbogen's stick and tell her to go when we do. We'll all go togethah. Y'all got it? Alright, let's move it people, let's go."
Lantam slowly rose from behind his cover, looking towards the blasted craters where the snipers had been firing from. "I don't think they'll be getting up from that," he remarked idly to himself. He started to turn towards the rest of his squad and, in doing so, was the first to catch the rapid movement out of the corner of his eye – from behind their position!
"Ambush!" he shouted, and crouched low as he opened fire on the advancing aliens. They looked nothing like the brutish creature from before, more like the size of a turian. They wore black armor and clothing, and roundish helmets that flared from behind to cover their necks and a visor over the eyes, but had an opening below that exposed their pale-toned lower faces. They were sprinting forward, running full-tilt at an astonishing speed, bobbing and jinking and weaving as they advanced.
Seeing that their surprise attack had been foiled, they shouted out some sort of battle cry: "BuLala! BuLala!" Some of them threw themselves down into firing positions, returning fire with short, stubby-looking assault rifles while their comrades kept sprinting past them, eager to close with the turian squad before they could call in another orbital strike.
Lantam concentrated on one of the advancing aliens, firing controlled bursts that rapidly depleted its shields, shredded its armor, then tore through its flesh. It fell to the ground and, amazingly, still tried to bring its weapon to bear. The turian soldier fired another burst into it, and the enemy trooper fell bonelessly, twitched once and lay still.
Tough bastards, ran through his mind as he began concentrating on another of the rapidly approaching troopers after the first wave threw themselves into firing positions and began covering the others as they, in turn, got up and began running forward. Too many of them. Some of them are going to reach us.
The turian rolled as bullets began to make his kinetic shields shudder, and found one of the enemy soldiers practically on top of him as he got to his feet. "BuLala!" it shouted as it sliced the edge of its hand towards his neck. Lantam, calling upon his unarmed combat training, grabbed the wrist and arm of his enemy with his three-fingered hands, then turned as used its momentum against it as he threw it through the air to land on its back. Even then he noticed the wide-eyed look it had on its face as it went flying past the turian.
It quickly bounced back to its feet, the puffy lips of its mouth twisted into a scowl. Absurdly, he noted that it looked a little like an asari even as it circled him, falling into the unmistakable stance of its own sort of unarmed combat training as it said something in its own incomprehensible language: "You is one ugly muthafuckah."
Guessing that it wasn't a compliment, Lantam and his opponent slowly circled one another even as the sound of gunfire began to die around them. The alien darted forward with blinding speed, clamping a hand like a pneumatic press onto his wrist. The turian grimaced and broke the hold, then found himself desperately fending off a series of grabs and blows that moved with terrifying speed. Finally, it managed to get a hold on both hands and its mouth twisted into what he knew would have been a smug smirk on an asari.
Lantam stared at the expression with his unreadable avian eyes for a moment, then abruptly smashed the carapace of his head into the alien's face. His head rang with the impact, even as his opponent cursed as red blood began leaking from the nose jutting out of the middle of its face. He's got one hard head, ran dazedly through his mind. Then a shriek of pain as the alien broke his arm, then flipped him onto his back in turn.
He looked up to see himself surrounded by the alien soldiers. The rest of them stopped to watch. Another glance showed that no other turians were on their feet. They just stopped to watch their comrade fight instead of helping him? Lantam wondered. What kind of aliens are these?
"Looks like he got a lick in theah, Luther boy." Senior Monitor Torbogen was standing there with her arms folded across her chest, grinning cruelly.
Luther Tull took his hand away from his injured nose and glared at her, then turned his gaze down on the bird-like alien at his feet. He started taking his anger out on the luckless soldier, kicking and stomping him until he was curled into a fetal position and coughing up blood. A grunt as he noticed what color it was.
"Blue-blooded. Mus' be a von Shrakenberg or somethin'," he joked with a smirk as he grabbed his Holbars and put a round through the alien's head. "Come on, let's get back to cover befo' mo' of these things git here."