Smoke on the Water
by P.H. Wise
A Mass Effect/XCOM Crossover Fanfic
Interlude 01: First Shanxi
Disclaimer: I own neither Mass Effect (EA) nor XCOM (God only knows).
Author's note: This interlude touches on the First Contact War. Anyone who finds such things tiresome or is otherwise not interested in reading yet another author's take on said conflict should feel free to skip it. The only thing you're missing is gratuitous space battles.
General Desolace Arterius didn't quite scowl at the holographic display in front of him. The Hierarchy knew very little about the species they were about to engage in battle, and he had never been the sort of soldier who liked going into a fight blind. Or almost blind. Relay 314 had seen an exchange of fire between a Turian patrol and the unknown alien fleet that had reactivated the dormant relay. The patrol had been initially successful, but had been ambushed and destroyed by a numerically superior force not long afterwards. He now commanded the fleet which had tracked the aliens back to their homeworld, where they were under orders to demonstrate to the primitives the error in killing soldiers of the Hierarchy. The Turian fleet had been decelerating for quite a while now, and were coasting along at just above the speed of light as they moved through the alien system. Another 10 minutes, and the Turian fleet would be dropping out of FTL entirely and arriving in orbit of the alien world to engage their fleet. They were clearly new to interstellar space: they had no ships larger than a cruiser. Frigates seemed to be the order of the day, with the alien fleet boasting a fully thirty of them supporting a six cruisers and a large number of fighter craft, though ten of those thirty were notably smaller the others. Warbook was tentatively classifying both the slightly-too-large frigate-sized vessels and the smaller vessels as frigates. The Turian fleet, by contrast, fielded a dozen cruisers, three dreadnoughts, and thirty two frigates.
He wished they knew more.
The plan, such as it was, was fairly simple: despite the ease with which one ship could avoid another in space, assaulting their planet had a wonderful way of forcing a fleet to stand and fight where it would ordinarily scatter. Scouting reports said that the aliens had deployed nearly half their frigates in outer-system pickets. The scouts had also showed a number of probes scattered throughout the system in a sensor net that probably covered every approach to the planet. And it was damned strange. No trace of eezo in any of the probes. No trace of the traditional miniature mass relay setup that allowed for FTL communication among the citadel races. Given that they'd be arriving at FTL speeds, albeit only the 1.2c at which the FTL operational modes of their engines engaged, why bother with a sensor net that would only tell them that an enemy had arrived long after they had already attacked your planet? The picket made more sense, but unless those ships had their FTL drives ready to engage on a moment's notice, they probably wouldn't arrive in time to help once they arrived in orbit.
'Don't complain when your enemy makes a strategic error,' Desolace reminded himself.
Eight minutes out. It bothered Desolace, knowing that enemy ships were out there and that he had no way of seeing how they responded to him because of speed of light limitations, but he pushed the worry out of his mind.
Five minutes out. Three. The pre-battle tension seemed to grow. "I want firing solutions on the alien ships as soon as we drop out of FTL," he ordered. It was unnecessary for him to say so. The crew knew their business. Briefings had already been held. Orders had already been given. One minute.
The sensation of emerging from FTL filled the room, a strange sinking feeling as the ship's mass increased. It was supposed to be almost imperceptible, but 'almost' was a far cry from 'completely.' The three dreadnoughts had made the transition in the space of a second, doing all of their deceleration while their mass was still negligible, dropping to conventional speeds 200,000 kilometers away from the planet. They'd arrived in perfect formation, each with four frigates screening it, the capital ships positioned to have ideal firing arcs on the orbital defenses that would avoid the chance of striking the planet itself. Less than half a second for light to cross the distance between the Turian fleet and the alien ships. Another half-second for VI-assisted fire control programs to acquire targets. Fighters began to launch.
The alien fleet was already in formation when they arrived. Already accelerating towards them at 50 gravities. That was going to cut into the time they'd allotted for long range bombardment of the immobile orbital defenses.
The Turian ships began to fire, his own among them. His ships had appeared with broadsides facing the enemy, allowing all sixty of its secondary mass accelerators to open fire. It was a risk to present one's broadside to the enemy, but he had felt that the greater volume of fire would be crucial in the opening stages of the engagement, and they should have more than enough time to bring their bows about before the alien fleet reached Extreme Range, even at the rate it was closing.
Several salvos of mass accelerator shot were fired at the defense satellites, all in rapid succession, and one large salvo of missiles a hundred anti-ship missiles was fired concurrently with the first salvo of mass accelerators. The alien ships were too agile for any hits at this range. It took nearly thirty seconds for the initial salvo to reach its target, but given that the target of each shot was an orbital defense station, thirty seconds was plenty of time. The kill rate wasn't what Desolace would have preferred: the aliens were filling space with ECM, and their defense satellites began maneuvering as soon as incoming fire was detected. Ten salvos were fired from each ship in the space of a minute, sending a total of 1,800 five kilogram slugs at 1.3% of C into the enemy orbital defenses. Only the one missile volley was fired, but it should have been more than enough. Despite this volume of fire, only 7 of the 50 defense satellites on the fleet-ward side of the planet were destroyed in the initial salvo. One shot would do the job if it connected, but connecting was proving harder than they'd anticipated when they'd planned this attack. The second salvo destroyed only three: the enemy was adapting to the speed of their projectiles. The third salvo took only one. The next seven managed another four. 15 of the 50 defense satellites had been destroyed by the time he could no longer afford to devote fire to the task. The enemy fleet was closing, and he needed to bring his ships about to face them bow-on, as proper Turian tactics dictated.
Desolace looked thoughtful as he considered the enemy ships on his holo-display. Their rate of acceleration was respectable. Turian ships could match - or do better if they wished - it if they dropped their mass low enough, but the constant acceleration would take its toll sooner or later, whether it was in terms of reaction mass or of heat; antiprotons were expensive. Alien ships weren't moving directly towards his dreadnoughts, though. It was damned odd: they were moving in at an angle that would put them in effective weapons range for all of one minute and thirty seconds, assuming they didn't change course. This wasn't accepted naval doctrine. Were they intending to loop around behind his fleet? But why would they...? "Are we picking up any eezo signatures from the enemy ships?" he asked.
His sensor operator had the answer a moment later, and her surprise was evident in her tone: "No, sir. Not a trace of eezo in any of their ships."
That brought even more confusion. Without eezo, how were they maintaining fifty gravities of acceleration without killing everyone on their ship? Had they developed some other way to deal with their own inertia?
"All dreadnoughts, bring the forward guns to bear on the enemy fleet and prepare to commence bombardment."
The three Turian dreadnoughts turned with far more grace than they had any right to, the combination of mass effect fields and directional thrust moving them effortlessly into position. The rest of the fleet adjusted accordingly, frigate wolf-packs in position, cruisers preparing for the enemy fleet to enter their own effective range.
"Enemy ships at forty thousand kilometers." the sensors operator reported.
One minute and thirty seconds until their speed and trajectory took them out of weapons range. Best make it count. "Dreadnought group, fire."
The ship shuddered faintly as its spinal mounted mass drivers spoke into the night. Bright streaks of gunfire flashed away from the three, and then a second salvo, a third, a fourth. The enemy ships returned fire, each of the six cruisers firing a single glowing orange torpedo; each of the larger alien frigates fired a salvo of four missiles, and then another four, and another four before there was a pause. He surmised that there were four missile tubes per overly-large frigate, each able to fire three missiles before reloading was required. Both the alien missiles and the alien torpedo weapons were faster than his own fleet's mass drivers. Their maneuverability defied belief: the missiles came in accelerating at over 600 gravities, and the strange torpedoes could and did completely alter their momentum almost at will. How the hell that was accomplished without the eezo, Desolace had no idea.
Two of the torpedoes got through the GARDIAN laser fire in the first salvo, and that only because of the sheer concentrated volume of fire put out by the fleet's deployment. One detonated in the midst of a frigate wolf-pack. The second struck the kinetic barriers of a cruiser. A ball of light flared into existence around the frigates, which then contracted to a single point as fleet sensors detected massive gravitational anomalies and a build up of energies that defied description. Less than a second later, the gravitic anomalies ceased, and the fusion reaction created within them had nowhere to go but out; not just the four frigates, but the two neighboring wolf-packs. Not just the cruiser, but the one in formation with it. Everything the light touched was consumed, flash-converted to plasma, added to the expanding blast wave. Desolace stared at the holographic sensor screen in a state of shock: that wasn't any nuclear weapon he'd ever heard of; their enemy had just attacked them with some kind of... miniature supernova torpedo? The very thought was absurd, and yet there it was, its energies fading, twelve frigates and two cruisers destroyed by two torpedoes.
The missiles were easier to shoot down only because their extreme acceleration made their maneuvers clumsy. GARDIAN lasers reached 90% capacity, and then 100, and three of the missiles got through: they did not detonate as they should have. Instead, sensors reported intense gravitational anomalies coming from all three missiles, each aligned with a Turian cruiser supporting his central dreadnought. Sensors registered fusion reactions directly behind the gravitic anomalies. Then each emitted a monstrously powerful x-ray laser blast into its respective cruiser. Their armor ablated as it was intended to, boiling away into a vaporized material that should scatter the beam. Only their armor had never been intended to face a beam of this magnitude: they burned through the cloud and kept right on going into the innards of the ship, scouring away every living thing they touched, melting decks, setting off secondary explosions, and decompressing internal compartments - and that was before the induced shockwave came into effect in the clouds of vaporized material and caused secondary plasma explosions. Of the three ships targeted, one was sheared completely in half, one had taken a hit directly to its Eezo core and was now dead in space. The third was lucky: they'd only been glanced, lost most of their starboard broadside, and had multiple compartments opened to space.
By this point, the fact that the enemy had attacked with fusion pumped laser missiles barely raised his incredulity.
Then the second volley of supernova torpedoes struck, each shot aimed at a single ship; the dreadnought ten kilometers distant from his own shook violently as one of those damnable torpedos detonated across its bow, scouring off the forward weapons of the vessel; it was saved from the fate of the cruisers only by virtue of its far stronger kinetic barriers and better armor, but the damage it had taken was still considerable. Two more Turian cruisers were converted to an expanding blast-wave which tore another several frigates to pieces as they passed.
His dreadnoughts' long range fire had a far less impressive showing: four of enemy oversized frigates destroyed, two more crippled along with a cruiser that was leaking some kind of glowing green material. Their barriers were far more powerful than they had any right to be.
One minute and thirty seconds, and then the enemy fleet was out of range again. The Turian fighters had never gotten close enough to act. As the enemy fleet turned on its axis and began a rapid deceleration to reverse their course and take them into his fleet from behind, Desolace found that he did not wish to see what the alien ships might do to his fleet at closer range.
"Sir, multiple contacts inbound from the planet! Warbook is classifying them as fighters. Acceleration rate is 100 gravities." There was a disbelieving note in the voice of his sensors operator. That was absurdly fast; assuming this was their maximum acceleration, the alien fighters had half again the acceleration rate of their Turian equivalents.
Desolace nodded. Fighter squadrons on one side, the fleet on the other? His mandibles twitched. Something was very, very wrong here. His instincts were screaming at him that something very, very bad was about to happen, and they had never led him wrong before. "Get us out," he instructed. "When that pincer closes, I don't want us anywhere near it." He opened a fleet-wide transmission. "All ships, prepare for FTL." Courses were plotted for every ship in the fleet. Each ship slid smoothly into formation.
The enemy fleet opened fire, spitting out a cloud of strange, fast moving green projectiles. Desolace had been about to ask what they were when explosions began to ripple across the hull of his ship - the dreadnought at the center of the Turian formation - as lasers invisible to the naked eye burned deep gouges into its armor and set off secondary plasma explosions as induced shockwaves ripped through the individual ablation clouds of vaporized material.
"General, we're taking damage on all decks! The enemy fleet is emitting extremely concentrated bursts of x-ray..."
"Ship to ship lasers! They're using ship to ship laser weapons!"
Then their mass dropped precipitously and faster than light acceleration was engaged, taking the Turian fleet out of the pincer before the green projectiles could strike home. An equally rapid deceleration, burning reaction mass they couldn't really spare dropped them out of FTL and back at conventional speeds less than second later, having positioned themselves above the pincer and out of the alien fleet's standard engagement range.
"Damage report," Desolace ordered.
It didn't look good. The alien fleet had concentrated its fire on his ship, and they'd nearly crippled it in the space of a few seconds. The main gun was still functional, but none of the turrets and none of the GARDIAN systems on the side of the hull that had been facing the alien fleet were still functional, and they had hull breaches on every deck. Nothing that couldn't be contained, but even so, it had been eye-opening.
"We have a firing solution," the weapons officer announced.
"Fire," Desolace commanded.
Once again, the main guns of the dreadnoughts spoke, this time targeting the theoretical spot at which the alien ships' acceleration would fully negate their 'backwards' momentum. "Why don't they go to FTL?" he wondered aloud. "They have to detect the incoming fire."
The alien ships didn't go FTL, and if Desolace hadn't known for a fact that ships from this planet had reached Shanxi, he would have assumed they were incapable of it. What they did instead was fire off four more of those damnable fusion torpedos in staggered intervals to shield their fleet from the incoming fire. A barrage that should have destroyed the majority of the alien fleet only destroyed one of the undersized frigates and crippled two of the over-large ones.
Damn. "Pull us back," Desolace ordered. This wasn't going to be the quick victory he'd thought. Better to play it safe. Pull back and wait for overwhelming numbers. If the aliens' FTL capabilities were limited somehow or otherwise difficult to use, then the Turians would have the advantage in a war of attrition, and that is surely what would be required to take this planet of disturbingly advanced, eezo-less aliens.
The Turian fleet accelerated to faster than light and blazed its way back to the mass relay.
So ended the First Battle of Shanxi.