A/N: There is a nod to X-COM in the design of the Shieldbreaker battlesuits, but only a nod. The salarian military is not numerous, so it must by nature hit harder than other militaries.
The Cerberus Files: Historical Analysis of Citadel and Terminus Space
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HERA-SIX-NINE-NINE
ACKNOWLEDGMENT HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED
Beloved Jack, brilliant Richard, and deadly Rachel,
The Black Rim colonies are so much more interesting – and less hazardous – than the dense, stifling jungles of Sur'kesh or the boring plains of Mannovai. Miss Lawson is finally coming along in the areas of infiltration and seduction, although she takes a distressingly businesslike stance in regards to the latter.
You people seriously need to have more fun. I fail to understand the point of being some sort of dangerous rebel group if you must do so by hiding in barren, infested hellholes plotting instead of getting out and enjoying yourself. But I digress, and Miss Lawson is giving me her "I despise aliens" look...
The salarian military is, both on paper and in practice, no match for the asari. Truthfully, in terms of numbers it isn't even a match for the Systems Alliance military. That does not mean it is harmless. It is extremely dangerous, in a way that the average salarian thug or mercenary is not.
Take a moment to remember what I said of salarian focus, then consider that for salarians in the military, excellence is the only way to prove their worth to their families. Every single salarian soldier is a perfectionist, driven by biological imperative to be as ruthless and precise as possible. They have even less mercy than krogan or batarians and are, when properly motivated, almost impossible to break.
Cerberus Thought for the Day: Service in the furtherance of humanity is it's own immortality. Fear not death, only betrayal.
Salarian Military Generalities and Mindset
The salarian military is, much like the asari military, an afterthought. I am sure this amuses or infuriates you, seeing how powerful the asari military is, but I assure you that it is true. Just because a military is required in a dangerous galaxy does not mean it is wanted, or that pursuit of a career in the military is glamorous. Humanity idolizes violence – the salarians and asari do not.
In particular, the salarian mindset towards violence and war can be summed up in the same way a professional exterminator goes after pests. They rarely like their jobs, so they go about it in an a calm, efficient way than ensures they do not have to repeat the task.
Salarian military action cannot be disentangled from salarian intelligence services. The very word they use for war is roughly translated to mean armed conflict after spying, and the very idea of 'declared' war is utterly alien to them. Combat is only brought about after the target has been identified, scouted for weakness, scanned for alternative approaches, and indirect sabotage has already been performed.
Given that salarians have powerful reflexes, incredibly high reaction times, and can outperform most other races on all physical levels except sheer strength and durability, it should come as no surprise that their military emphasis is in three main areas. Precision targeting, forward recon, and defense against attack.
The number of the military forces is smaller than the armies and navies of other races. Part of this is due to the fact that the only people who usually enter the military are the War Clans, the Solus Family, and a few eccentric types from the Black Rim colonies. Additionally, most salarians do not have the mindset for combat – they are too easy to break and run when startled or frightened. Only hardened salarians grown in environments to prepare them can even handle the stress of combat.
Additionally, the military is not a glamorous position, as I have alluded to. While it is important, even necessary, salarians prefer someone else to get dirty with the fighting while they stand back and snipe or provide intelligence information. Dying messily does not appeal to them any longer, unlike in their tribal period. In this, perhaps, the meddling of the dalatrasses to suppress male aggression has worked too well.
Well, except for the Solus, who would pick a fight with a yahg and then study it for evolutionary data after taunting it and killing it with some appalling weapon, like a sword made of grenades or other such nonsense.
Salarian Military Doctrine – Ground
The salarian ground forces are typified by four traits – extremely tough defenses,accurate weapons, rapid medical support, and heavy use of combined arms tactics.
All salarian military units are designed for one and only one task. While this makes them inflexible in chaotic battle situations, it gives them an edge when they are being used as designed. It makes the salarians very strong on offense and weak on defense – but that is the purpose of the Shieldbreakers (see military forces below).
Unlike the measured approach of the asari echelon, which has no weakness, or even the combination of symmetric heavy and asymmetric light assaults of humanity, the salarian military fights offensively yet reactively. Remember that they plan every attack out after intense scouting and intelligence gathering, and will craft responses as far down as platoon levels before actually attacking.
Salarians specialize in the destruction of symmetric forces, using their so-called antisymmetric stances. These are similar in practice to your own SA's op tempos, but unlike those these preset conditions are trained into every soldier rather than announced by commanders.
It is eerie to see entire salarian units nearly automatically react to flanking or other situations in unison, like some distributed intelligence guided them to do so. It is why salarians are so dangerous in small groups where such tactics can turn an ambush into a wild shooting melee – the kind of fight salarians can easily win.
Salarian ground forces are extremely mobile, eschewing fixed defenses. They are worthless in a straight "stand-up" defensive fight, as they cannot absorb damage well and their morale tends to collapse when not on the offense. Conversely, in rapid reaction strike assaults or sabotage, they are unmatched in both elan and efficiency.
Salarian Military Doctrine – Space
Salarians dislike space combat almost as much as they dislike ground combat. The salarian mindset grasps at efficiency and simplicity of form, and the chaos of a battle beyond the opening salvos is appallingly distasteful for them as it cannot be planned and modeled. At least ground battles have to conform to physical terrain, gravity, supply lines and line of sight – space, being three dimensional and with limitless maneuver room, is really only bound by heat endurance, range, and damage control.
In a move that should surprise none of you, salarians focus heavily on those three elements in their space combat strategy. Deciding that if they can't have their calm battle, that the battle should thus descend into a complete mess, salarian planning thus reduces each battle to positioning the enemy in a place from which they can be shot to pieces. Thus, they control the range, they mitigate damage, and they ensure that if anyone has to withdraw due to heat failure it is not them.
Salarian technology, with the exception of armor, torpedoes and mass drives, is well advanced beyond other races. They use x-ray lasers in their GARDIAN systems, which are linked into a pseudo-neural net of reactive VI's, optoelectronic sensors, and cybernetic links to salarian gunners, allowing them to weather missiles better than other races.
Salarian focus on heat endurance is legendary. Rather than the droplet / dump heat sink method employed by most races, salarian heat sinks are multiphase ceramic liquids that go through energy phase shifts when properly energized. This consumes a great deal of heat energy, and excess heat is vented through the array of radial vents cleverly hidden in the 'wings' of salarian ships. They also maintain droplet heat sinks as a backup, as well as some kind of liquid nitrogen dispersal system for emergency cooling. Salarians have not replicated your IES stealth system yet, but are looking into other methods, including visual cloaking devices that operate using chameleon skins adjusted by VI.
The salarian fixation on range and speed is also well-known, as salarians have the fastest ships. While the asari mass effect core is superior, the salarian conventional FTL drive is far beyond any other race's design, allowing it to perform at two to three light years beyond that of other drives. In-system thrusters are also superior, including multipoint vectored thrust systems that use liquid polyalloys to shape their thrust in precise manners or even vent in multiple directions. This gives salarian ships not just powerful evasive abilities, but the speed to control range in battle.
The salarians hate symmetrical space formations as much as they do ground formations, and their answer to the space version can be likened to a straight out brawl, performed by acrobats against spastic quadriplegics. In this case, the cripples are the alien vessels, outperformed in all ways by the slender salarian warships around them. To watch them in space combat is to see a slow, lethal dance, not one entirely alien to anyone who has hunted down game.
In lighter battle, the salarians pair up multiple assault frigates with their fierce corvettes in hunting packs, with scout elements leading the way. Once the target is sighted, the scouts lock up targeting and scanning fields while the corvettes and assault frigates dive in. As the battle is joined, and elements of the enemy are contending with those lighter units, heavier units begin sniping from the sidelines.
Inevitably the enemy will have to break open their battle formations to deal with these sniper cruisers, at which point the frigate/corvette combos in their midst will tear out the guts of the fleet, while the assault cruisers pound down the ships seeking to stop the long range fire. When the fleet has been tenderized and broken up enough, only then will the dreadnaughts show up, crushing any last resistance.
In those rare situations where salarians face dreadnaughts themselves, the pattern is much the same, except that initial charge of corvettes and frigates now includes dreadnaughts and assault cruisers, and the scouts and snipers now spray untold masses of disruptor torpedoes and mines.
Salarian Military Doctrine – Ship Design
Salarian ships are, to my eye, quite beautiful. Sculpted in long, elegant lines that come to a broad crown in the front and spreading to wings in the rear, they are designed for quick strikes and direct assaults, not heavy battle – and yet weather such heavy battle quite well when the time comes for it.
They are spartan on the inside, with simple but comfortable spaces for the crew. Damage control equipment and medical treatment facilities are built into every single space and often replicated two or three times, and there is heavy use of VI automation and mechs to cut down on the salarians required to crew the ships. They are not built for boarding actions and rely solely on security stations to stop boarding parties.
Salarians build their ships to withstand very long patrols, a frigate having the endurance of a heavy cruiser. They do not carry much in the way of food-stocks aside from nutritious pastes and vitamin supplements, although port stops often end up in them buying additional food for variety.
Every salarian ship, much like the SA, has at least a science lab with mainframes, sensors, spectroscopes and the like for physics and chemical analysis. They also feature intelligence labs, with compilations of intelligence related to their mission and secure data communications with the STG.
Salarian Military Organization : Antisymmetric Stances
The salarians despise symmetric warfare, for reasons both psychological (they hate inflexibility) and practical (salarians in a line of battle are soon dead salarians). Their greatest heroes are those who misled and tricked their enemies into positions where they could be obliterated with little risk, or those who stopped wars before they began with intelligence and sabotage.
Nearly every salarian military leader will remind his troops of this, in one form or another, before going into battle. This is not merely to inspire their troops, but to remind them that to fight as other races do is to die.
To counter the blocky ranks of turians or krogans, or the echelon of the asari, the salarians invented stances that their soldiers drill in almost constantly. The stances are part reflex, part meditative, part reactionary based on intelligence. They are designed first to enhance salarian survivability, second to disrupt enemy formations, and last to ensure that if salarians have to die fighting, they will not die alone.
There are dozens of these stances – a few include shifting sniper units to higher ground while assault units rush forward with suppressive fire when heavy infantry are sighted, and then for snipers to take out unit leaders and the front lines to fling grenades and cover smoke grenades for retreat. What is interesting about the stances is that salarians are trained to engage them upon certain conditions becoming true, without orders from above.
This allows salarian officers to focus solely on how to defeat the enemy instead of reacting to the changing battlefield. It is also extremely effective and most stances are designed to disrupt formation tactics.
When I was a mere maiden, I enlisted in the Republic Guard, and was engaged in war games with a salarian unit from Sur'kesh that used these stances. When our echelon attempted to pin them down, so that the hunters could flank them, they reacted in unison. Snipers began targeting our very front ranks, making us stumble over our sisters and flinch back from the fire, while their front line kept throwing grenades off to our flanks. Eventually we bunched up, and that's when their front split open and Shieldbreakers charged us directly, using flamethrowers and heavy machine guns.
At the same time their biotics threw their heaviest attacks at the huntress units trying to flank. The rear of the echelon was thus divided – they could either protect us, and the huntress units would be decimated, or protect the huntress units, and then Shieldbreakers would crash through us and enter their own ranks. They tried splitting their efforts – which failed when the snipers suddenly shifted focus to taking out the war priestess, demoralizing us all.
It was a masterful, frightening performance. True, many of the salarians 'died' – sixty percent of the force. But their attack broke ours, and allowed the loss of a war priestess, most of our huntress units, and shattered our front lines. In a real battle, we would have broken and ran, I think.
Do not underestimate the salarians simply because their soldiers cannot handle damage well, as they will happily fling their lives away if it means victory.
Salarian Military Ranks
Salarians have a very old rank structure that hails back to their tribal periods, which they have not updated out of nostalgia, and due to the fact that it is very flexible.
Salarians in the military hail from the War Clans, primarily, although some others (particularly the Solus Family) make up large portions of the military as well. Soldiers – both officer and enlisted – start out as a single rank, that of Aspirant. The eldest male of family Solus down to the poor scion of a family from some Black Rim colony are ranked equally until they experience at least one real battle. This is called the Blooding, and is usually practiced against pirate forces. No salarian can hold any military position – command or not – without going through the Blooding. Salarians who panic or break during this event are disbarred from further service.
At that point, those who will become officers are sent off to officer training facilities, to train for three years, while enlisted begin service immediately.
Enlisted ranks start at Dragoon, which is a basic recruit. From there, there are Senior Dragoon, Spearman, and Senior Spearmen, as junior enlisted. These are roughly equivalent to your privates and corporals.
Those with the knack for leadership are made into non-commissioned officers, the Shieldbearers, which are akin to your sergeants. Others are promoted into the ranks of shield or storm dragoons if they show the proper aptitude.
Officers ranks translate roughly to Lieutenant, Commander, Captain, Submajor, Major, and General.
Severely wounded salarians, as well as volunteers, form the corps of the Shieldbreakers.
Salarian Military Units : Ground Forces
Dragoons: The basic military force are the Dragoons, in the same way that the basic force of the SA is the Marines. Dragoons are classed as light infantry, and serve from between two and ten years. Conscripted based on arcane formulas from each War Clan, different units have different names, but most are organized based on their relationship to one of the Six Families. They are trained as attrition and suppressive troops.
Shield Dragoons : The salarian version of garrison soldiers (which I have told you they are bad at), Shield Dragoon units are rare. They are given the very heaviest of armor, and nearly 35% of the force is medical personnel. Almost all of the front-line fighters are heavily cybernetically modified or have myomer muscle replacements.
Storm Dragoons: These are Family military units, raised from their own numbers and supplied by the Family itself. Without a doubt the best equipped soldiers in the Union, but their mostly ceremonial and anti-infiltration duties leave them with questionable battle skills. They are solely intended for indirect combat, despite their equipment, and are not trained for main-line battle.
Seekers: Much as we asari rely on our priestesses to lead us into battle, there are the occasional groups of Wheel Mystics who take up violence. These 'seekers' are organized around one to three such mystics, protected by a rag-tag militia of followers and mercenaries. On paper, this should be a laughable threat. In practice, the Wheel Mystics guiding them are terrifyingly accurate at predicting battles and ambushes, and they carry a mysterious aura in their presence I can only describe as unnerving. Unlike most salarians, they fight in complete and utter silence, the Mystics calmly pointing out targets of note and watching as snipers decimate them.
Transcendentals: Biotic units not attached to the STG are sometimes organized into mixed-arms small units to provide biotic support to the military.
The Shieldbreaker Corps: When one talks about professional military forces, the two premier forces that immediately spring to mind are the Turian Final Line and the Salarian Shieldbreakers. The grudging salarian answer to the need for super-heavy infantry, Shieldbreakers are heavy conversion cyborgs – arms and legs removed, chest and head reinforced, and slammed into battle suits through cyberlinks. Their sacrifice of their bodies is honored by all salarians, and the Shieldbreakers are perhaps the only truly apolitical force in the entire race. They fight extremely hard, and are renowned for breaking through the toughest defensive lines.
Salarian Military Classes:
Dragoon: the basic dragoon is a straight infantry soldier. Equipped with heavy armor, they carry a bandolier of several grenade types as well as two weapons – typically a marksman rifle and a shotgun. The marksman rifle (see below) is a cross between sniper and assault rifle, performing both tasks tolerably well.
Dragoon Sniper: With the exception of replacing the marksman rifle with a sniper rifle, and undergoing additional sniper training, these are functionally identical to basic dragoons.
Shieldbearer: A more senior soldier, the armor is upgraded to very heavy, with three or more shielding units, as well as onboard medical assistance. They prefer closer-ranged weapons, such as dual heavy pistols and combat shotguns,which their reflexes allow them to fire with devastating speed and accuracy. Their armor includes a minor array of info-war tools, including a combat drone, and a built in grenade launcher.
Officer: Officers wear lighter armor but very heavy shields, and usually carry a sniper rifle and a submachine gun for close in work. They have large info-war suites on their omni-tools, and can deploy multiple turrets, drones, and the like. Most have at least one mech slaved to their omni, sometimes more.
Shield Dragoon: The armor of the shield dragoon rivals the thickness of krogan armor, and is layered with honeycombed damage traps, backstopped by omni-gel armor paks that stiffen on impact. The shields are equally heavy, and the shield dragoon carries a light hydraulic harness to allow him to wield light machine guns and plasma throwers. Supported with additional plates of 'tech' armor and wearing an omni-shield on the right arm, these heavy infantry units live up to their name.
Seeker Acolyte: Usually wearing only clothing or a ballistic vest, these wandering soldiers do have shield units. They carry civilian rifles, mostly, but will use a dizzying array of melee weapons as well, taking advantage of their speed and agility to close in and gut an enemy. This is very … un-salarian to say the least, and most 'normal' salarians see these types as dangerous fanatics.
Shieldbreaker: The Shieldbreaker battlesuit is a self-contained machine, with multiple armor layers, mnemetic poly-alloy repair capability, projected hard-shields over vulnerable points, with two separate shield generators. The right arm is a multifunction weapon incorporating a grenade launcher, flamethrower, and six-barrel light mass accelerator. It also can generate an omni-shield to block incoming fire. The left arm is a three-fingered hand, allowing it to grasp it's BRKR particle railgun. The back of the unit contains four breakaway turret drones, a comm relay, and tactical detonation charges that can be placed for demolitions work. The legs end in sharp, curving monomolecular blades for kicking aside and killing infantry, while the shoulders are surmounted by a light GTS missile array. This is a terrifying war machine, very rarely fielded unless something vital is threatened. In power, only the asari Royal Paladin battlesuit can match it – in a fight, it's a toss up who would win, and the winner will certainly be in poor condition. It will destroy JOTUN mechs and provide a very difficult fight for a turian SkyTalon battlesuit pilot.
STG War Specialist: Very rarely, soldiers will enter the STG, usually coming back out to advise military forces. On rare occasions, however, the STG will train and task cell members with military duties, which requires additional training. Functionally identical in equipment with a Shield Dragoon, War Specialists also have nasty info-war capabilities and light cloaking tech.
Assault Adept: Biotics are rarely fielded among the salarian forces, but these biotic specialists are like living artillery units. They can only perform one or two attacks before requiring days of recovery, but the abilities they can bring to bear are often spectacular – multiple singularities, which I have only seen the High Solarch able to perform, or even several flares in a row. These biotics are usually guarded by STG forces and only called out when absolutely required.
Salarian Support Units:
Salarians field a wide array of armored air cars, gravbikes, and armored vehicles. Humans love wheeled vehicles, turians are still stuck on treads, asari favor hover vehicles. The cutting edge salarians only use anti-grav floater vehicles powered by mass effect fields, much like air-cars without flight capabilities. A few of the more common include.
Eyesight Light Assault Vehicle: the salarian APC relies more on shielding than armor. The top is open except for heavy defensive fields of tech armor, between which armored cupolas with turrets seat six defensive gunners. An armored pod acts as the cockpit, with no windows – all views are computer generated from small cameras. It can carry up to ten soldiers, plus the six gunners.
Inquisitor Light Grav Tank : A mass-effect supported tank, this vehicle moves very quickly, spraying fire from three linked 10 cm mass cannons on the front of the turret. Holding only a driver and gunner, the tank can hit speeds upwards of three hundred kilometers an hour, and it's guns are pinpoint accurate.
Grand Shield Main Battle Tank: The largest MBT in Citadel space, this is almost twice the length of the SA's HAMRHEAD, and are even larger than asari Storm platforms. Fifty seven feet long, half that wide, they are mobile GTS batteries combined with thick armor around dual 210 mm railguns firing magnetically stabilized flecks of antimatter. The sides of the tank are open-topped fighting turrets, each boasting a light machine gun, and the sides of the vehicle each have a six-pack GARDIAN laser array. The Grand Shield tank has been updated for centuries, ever since it crushed krogan forces during the Rebellions, but there are very few left now.
Salarian Warship Classes:
Salarians prefer fast, light ships to lumbering behemoths, and value the ability to mitigate damage and control range over sheer firepower. They tend to disdain dreadnaughts – they have never built up to their allowed limit, to the best of my knowledge. They prize midsize ships, somewhere between cruisers and frigates, known as corvettes to your kind.
I was able to gain very, very detailed information on the armaments of these ships from a disaffected Solus working in one of the Black Rim shipyards, who thought I was looking to buy light ships for 'pirate hunting'. Given the certitude of the dockworker, who was bitter because his family had deemed his contributions worthless after rewarding another for nearly identical contributions, his information must be taken with a grain of salt. Miss Lawson is in the process of confirming the information...which I might point out, with no smugness, is more detailed than that provided by Dr. Minsta.
Ah, but I must not challenge human superiority, after all...so on to the ships.
Frigates: The standard salarian frigate is half the size of the SA version, and very lightly armed. Carrying two external missile packs and a center-line mass accelerator, the ship is extremely fast and nimble, although the shields are light and the armor completely substandard. They do have four GARDIAN defense arrays, making them very good at stopping missiles. These are primarily used strictly for patrol, anti-pirate and other light combat duties, and it is in no way a ship of the line. They are named after base elements.
Recon Frigate: Three times the length of the stock frigate, the recon frigate is loaded with comms equipment, sensor drones, advanced scanning packages, long-range laser designator groups, and dozens of remote scanning drones. Lightly armored and shielded, with little more than a pair of mass cannons and a single bay of missiles, these frigates are used for scouting enemy positions and gathering forward intelligence. The STG uses many of them, but they are key players in any salarian naval assault force. They are named after rivers on Sur'kesh.
Assault Frigate: A 'proper' frigate, with heavier armor and much better shielding than it's smaller cousins, the assault frigate is literally armed to the teeth. Packing four disruptor torpedo tubes, two mass cannons on swivel turrets in the wings and two more larger ones center-line, and backing it up with six GARDIAN defense array strips, this frigate outguns the destroyers of every other race. As usual with salarian over-engineering, these ships are just as expensive as they are cutting edge. They are named after famous salarian warriors from ancient history.
Destroyer: Compared to the nightmare that is the salarian assault frigate, the destroyer seems out of place. While it has armor and shields slightly stronger than that of the assault frigate, the weapons load is actually lighter. The difference is that each destroyer hosts a pack of six automated fighters, flown by VI and cybernetic links to pilots on board, and that it carries a host of defensive weapons, including mines, jamming drones, and heat-flash bombs to confuse thermal imaging sensors. Destroyers boast powerful ECM suites and very strong cyberwarfare capabilities, and are used in that manner, not in open battle where avoidable. They are named for constellations in the Sur'kesh skies.
Corvette: The corvette is one of the most feared ship designs in the galaxy, the epitome of salarian engineering genius and their refusal to accept anything but the bleeding edge in technology. The hull is composed of multiple layers of semi-rigid polyalloys, floating on a supporting layer of reactive omni-gel and heavy shock absorbing, head dissipating plates. Under this is a layer of mass effect repulsors keeping the floating hull a foot away from the inner, heavily reinforced hull. The shields are actually a double set, the back half fitted within the front half by way of shaped shield emitters and hard fields. The weapons load is also formidable: triple rapid-fire missile packs in each wing, alongside two heavy mass cannons. The center-line gun is what is normally carried on heavy cruisers, and is supported by multiple GARDIAN arrays. There are also detachable missile drones on the exterior of the craft, adding additional firepower. The corvette boasts ECM and cyberwarfare capabilities, strong sensor and scanning suites, and even carries a minifacturing lab aboard. The ship is also fast and nimble, capable of high-power evasive maneuvers using double mass effect cores for greater ability at high-speed movements. The Union Naval Forces consist primarily of packs of these ships, which are paired with assault frigates. They are named for ancient salarian melee weapons.
STG Corvette: Nearly a carbon copy of the stock corvette, with the minfacturing lab and center-line guns removed to make room for a troop bay and two Eyesight APC's. Capable of carrying sixteen soldiers each, the APCs are what the STG use for ground assaults. The corvette also carries smaller missile loads to allow for a heavier sensor/scanner package and more cyberwarfare labs. Each one carries a numeric designation and that is all – they do not have formal 'names' nor a permanent crew.
Saturation Cruiser: A specialist ship deployed only in larger fights against heavy units, saturation cruisers are bulky ships, thick with armor and GARDIAN batteries. They are festooned with torpedo and missile tubes (the salarians actually contracted volus engineers for the designs, then improved them) and the ship is visibly segmented to aid in damage control. The only role of the ship is to launch dozens of missiles, torpedoes, drones, and jamming devices into combat, to turn it into a complete chaotic mess. Watching these ships vomit forth salvo after salvo of missiles in the dozens is nerve-wracking enough, watching fifteen send up clouds of death that rival what a volus dreadnaught could throw is terrifying. They are named after cities on Sur'kesh.
Assault Cruiser: The much bigger, uglier brother of his brute of a little prodigy, the assault cruiser was built along the same lines as the assault frigate, writ large. Salarians buy a decent amount of Silaris armor from the Asari Republic each year to armor these ships, and the shielding systems they have could shame some dreadnaughts of lesser navies. Despite their size and bulk they retain speed on par with most light cruisers, and agility surpassing most light cruisers, despite being a heavy cruiser type. The armament is heavy – two large-bore mass accelerators on each wing, two more under the belly, and five of them center-line to the ship. This is backed up with a devastating little innovation : long armored racks of missile launchers, that can retract into the ship after ripple launching and be reloaded. Rather than be limited to the number of tubes and large launch bays, these 'flash racks' allow them to saturate an area with missiles rapidly. The lower belly of the ship opens up to display twenty small VI piloted fighters and over fifty gun and missile drones, aiding in the ships firepower. Powerful sensors and decent (if a bit weak by salarian standards) ECM suite complete the package. The ships charge in alongside dreadnaughts, covering their weak spots, but can also be used in heavier combat patrols solo or with corvettes. These are named after famous battles in history (most of them ancient).
Gun Cruiser: The weakest salarian ships, these are basically space sniping platforms. With a low-observable hull, massive heat dissipation systems, strong jamming and ECM units, and lots of GARDIAN lasers, the ship boasts a pair of cut-down dreadnaught main guns that it is literally built around. The ship stays at extreme long-range, planting shots at will and relying on its stockier sister ships to keep enemies off of it. Often paired with a recon frigate as a spotter, much like a conventional sniper, some gun cruisers also have an escort of corvettes to keep them safe. In a fight out of long-range they are nearly helpless. They are named after famous salarian snipers.
Dreadnaught: The salarian dreadnaught is a model of sleek power and cutting edge technology. Rumors have long persisted that the real reason salarians have never built up to the limit is that they have a secret 'super-dreadnaught' ship that takes up their remaining seven slots.
Given the power of the dreadnaughts they do field, we should all pray this is false. The salarian dreadnaught is built around four center-line guns well over 300cm in diameter, hurling slugs of 300kg or more. These massive guns are only designed for blasting other dreadnaughts and possibly heavy cruisers, and are useless for smaller fare. Instead, the ship is blistered by twenty armored turrets, each one consisting of two GARDIAN arrays, a pop-up missile rack with fifteen missiles, three heavy mass accelerators, and a pair of disruptor torpedoes. These turrets cover the front, back, sides, top, and bottom, four to a facing.
Additionally, shields are generated in four 'bands' along the dreadnaught – front, middle, rear, and back. Dropping one shield segment does nothing to the others. How the salarians achieved this is still a secret, as multiple shield generators usually have harmonics issues and can only be performed in pairs. The hull is armored with layers of the same materials as the assault frigate, on top of a good two inches of Silaris armor. The crew is augmented by thousands of repair drones and security mechs, as well as VI-driven repair systems. They are named after dalatrasses of some fame, and the flagship is named Shego's Wrath.
These monsters are very nearly unkillable. I have seen only one in combat, and that was centuries ago, when a dreadnaught was ambushed by daringly stupid pirates trying to capture it. The ships were incredible back then, able of taking an entire spray of disruptor torpedoes, barreling through the enemy as if they were flyfish before a pratha shark. The ship, I recall, was damaged and burning, but still firing away, crushing it's pirate foes.
Salarian Military Equipment:
The salarians have a love affair with the grenade that borders on the indecent. As humans prefer ballistic uses of mass accelerators, turians energized bits of matter, and asari plasma, salarians like firing grenades. They have grenade pistols, grenade rifles, grenade shotguns, and a dizzying array of thrown grenades.
Grenades enable them to magnify the force with which their units hit, and break up defensive formations. And in any contest in open ground between a supremely agile salarian and a lumbering alien, the salarian will win. Do not rely on cover or fortifications when fighting their soldiers on the ground.
Aoegr Light Pistol: The Aoegr is the standard military sidearm – a heavy mass accelerator pistol, with a small under-barrel grenade launcher capable of throwing flash grenades or light EMP bursts to drop shields. The EMP burst, in particular, is very dangerous.
Scorpion Blast Pistol: The stock STG pistol, this weapon fires explosive grenades that can detonate on contact or bounce around corners and over cover. The blasts are not that strong, given the small size of the weapon, but they are damaging and disorienting. Most are used to drive enemies into the sights of STG snipers.
Rapier Laser Shotgun: An ugly weapon the salarians flat-out stole from the sometimes clever volus, the laser shotgun is more akin to a minigun, with six flash-burst laser barrels that cycle every six-tenths of a second. The result is a spray of laser fire in the UV band, invisible to the naked eye but searingly damaging. This is an assassination weapon – it makes no noise, leaves no residue, cannot be seen, and is very compact. STG uses them for just that purpose, but also as a holdout weapon – catching a face full of UV laser is a good way to lose your head. Literally.
Venom Shotgun: Another insane weapon from the STG. This grenade … shotgun (ridiculous!) fires either strong explosive blasts or a spray of delayed-detonation proximity grenades. Used to give STG units space and clearance when retreating, the weapon also wreaks untold havoc on tightly packed, lightly armored troops.
Like your SA marines. Be warned.
Serration Marksman Assault Rifle: Eventually, salarians realized that grenades could not solve everything. They built a finely tuned marksman rifle, known as the Serration. The SMAR straddles the line between assault rifle and sniper rifle, including a built-in swing down bipod, laser targeting, armor sensors, and extended clips. It can be shifted from fully automatic to single shot with one switch and can load two different kinds of ammo blocks, one armor piercing, the other high explosive. And there is, of course, an under-barrel grenade launcher.
Cobra Blast Rifle: The Cobra is a heavy assault weapon, that fires bursts of high explosive grenades in a single package. The bomblet 'splashes' these grenades everywhere, and they explode in a globular shape or a spray shape, depending on the settings of the rifle. Used mostly by Shield Dragoons, they are very ugly to run into for light infantry.
Manur Sniper Rifle: One of the finest non-turian sniper rifles, this elegant weapon is simple to break down and reliable in all situations. Using barrel-aligned laser sights and hydraulic shock adjustment, the Manur nearly aims itself, with the aid of a VI recon drone that links to the weapon. The drone is tiny and nearly transparent, and contains both a laser rangefinder and armor sensors to find weak points. The ammo is a narrow bolt of semi-liquid metal, accelerated much like a mass slug, that on impact hardens explosively, sending needles of razor sharp metal in a cone through the target. This tears armor into strips that are driven into the victim, and unarmored targets are just liquified.
Burst Resonance Kinetic Railgun: The BRKR railgun is two pieces. The first component is a burst resonance particle generator, which uses a mass effect field to compact particles from the air into an excited, energetic state. When completed, this 'ball' is flash wrapped in a narrow magnetic film of metal and hurled by the railgun out at a target at supersonic speeds. Upon impact, the metal film shreds and the particle ball destabilizes into a massive explosion of plasma and hard radiation. This is a monstrous weapon that Citadel authorities have tried and failed to outlaw for the hundred and fifty years since it was deployed.
It was designed to take out other battle suits, armored vehicles, and gunships – it's effects on armored infantry are gruesome, and against unarmored units disgusting. If you must have an image, have a human shot out of a dreadnaughts' main gun against a moon.
The weapon is slow to fire and takes time to prepare a shot. It is also loud – not as loud as the Adept Rail Cannon used by asari Royal Paladins, but loud enough to attract a lot of attention. As I said, a fight between a Shieldbreaker and a Royal Paladin would be very, very ugly.
Snapflak Grenade: This grenade uses a distributed EMP burst to take down armor, along with heated fragments of metal to tear through armor.
Flashpak Grenade: A super-flash bang, using subsonics to confuse and confound the inner ear of humans, asari, and batarians.
Gamma Grenade: A tiny version of the BRKR particle round, with lesser plasma effects but spattering hard radiation contaminate over a wide area. Used for area denial or to waste enemy medical supplies, the radiation burns it creates usually also end up affecting the thrower.