Mass Effect is the property of Bioware. 20th Century Fox owns the Alien/Predator franchise.
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Shanxi, command bunker
"Here they come!"
General Williams studied the displays. They had been anticipating this moment ever since the alien fleet had arrived in the Shanxi system. Now he would see if the predictions they had made were correct.
"Looks like two groups sir. The larger one is going for the city; the other... looks like they plan to land directly at the spaceport."
Williams nodded. "Good." At least these turians seemd to be rather predictable. Shanx-city, the colony's capital, was of course the logical target as it was by far the largest population centre, holding more than half the current population of the entire planet. The spaceport had been a bit more of a guess. It was a major facility, certainly, built on a large scale in anticipation of the expected growth of the colonial population and economy. Still, with the aliens in control of the planetary orbit and the orbital station destroyed, it wasn't much use to anyone and if he had had to plan an invasion he would have been tempted to ignore it and let the defender waste his resources in garrisoning it. Still, the spaceport was a fairly obvious target, easily recognizable even for someone who had never seen human buildings before and he had stationed a considerable defensive force in and around the facility, hoping to draw the aliens in. So far that plan seemed to be succeeding.
"Sir, shall we attempt to intercept them?"
"No. Let them land." With the departure of the naval forces from Shanxi space, Williams' only offensive air asset was the squadron of Super-Cheyenne dropships, attached to his brigade group. However, they would be hopelessly outnumbered and, while they were capable of air-to-air combat, they wouldn't be a match for dedicated fighter craft. For the moment they were scattered around the countryside, carefully hidden from any prying eyes, and Williams didn't intend to throw them away in a futile attempt to shoot down a few shuttles. The aliens held the planetary orbits and would have air-supremacy, no matter what he did. Any resistance would have to occur on the ground.
Shanxi, spaceport.
Sergeant Kuros was nervous as the assault shuttle descended to the landing point. Of course he would never have admitted that to his soldiers, but deep inside, there was something about this situation that made him very uneasy. Sure, it wasn't his first combat mission, but until now his combat experience had been limited mainly to dealing with pirates and smugglers and cleaning out the occasional illegal quarian settlement. Large scale planetary invasion was something else entirely. Unfortunately, it was not something that any turian currently alive had much experience with. For that matter, even among the long-lived asari it was increasingly rare to find an individual with first hand experience of operations on this scale. It had simply been too long since citadel space had seen a major conflict. Normally, Kuros was happy enough to live in a galaxy were interplanetary war was the exception, rather than the rule, but right now it would have been good to have some people around who had done this sort of thing before and he couldn't help but wonder if this new species, these humans, might not have some more recent experience in these matters. That would not be a good thing.
The shuttle braked sharply and settled down on the ground. On both sides the doors opened and the soldiers jumped out, weapons at the ready. Kuros looked around, taking in the strange world, even as he looked for potential danger. The facility they had been tasked to occupy was a large spaceport, built near the colony's major city. It was an important strategic target and the invasion plan called for it to be seized as soon as possible. The shuttles had taken him and the rest of the platoon to the edge of a landing platform. It as not an ideal spot, because it would require them to cross a larg stretch of open space in order to reach the nearby hangars. Fortunately, whoever had designed this facility had apparently been extremely safety-conscious. The landing platform contained two concentric rings of vertical blast shields. Anything that could contain the engine wash of an spaceship as it took off could presumably stop small arms fire and they would serve as cover as the soldiers advanced. From behind him he could hear the whine of engines as the assault shuttle took off again. They would return to orbit and load up with the next wave of soldiers.
For a moment all was quiet, then Kuros heard the characteristic rattling sound of Phaeston assault rifles(*) as a turian soldiers nearby opened fire on some unseen target. From somewhere further ahead came another sound, different yet similar. They had found the enemy.
-o-o-o-
The lieutenant commanding this platoon had landed with the shuttle next to Kuros' and took charge. Their immediate mission was to clear out the hangars adjacent to the landing platform. Once this was done they would link up with nearby units to sweep the entire spaceport. A quick talon signal from the lieutenant and the soldiers, including Kuros, swarmed over the platform.
Half a kilometre away, hidden inside one of the observation towers, a marine sniper peered through her scope. The invaders were weird looking, sort of a cross between a bird and a dinosaur. Still, some things never changed and the chain of command was one of them. One of the aliens lifted a hand, claw, whatever. The others obeyed instantly, fanning out over the landing platform. Thank you, good to know who is in charge. There was no need to check the distance, she already knew. Now, if birdface would just stand still...
Sergeant Kuros saw the lieutenant lift a talon, signalling the platoon to freeze where they were as he scanned the nearby buildings for possible danger. Crrrack! The distinctive sound of a supersonic projectile passing through the air was heard and the lieutenant's head vanished in a spray of blood and tissue.
"Sniper!"
The soldiers reacted instantly, diving for cover behind the raised blastshields.
Inside the a nearby hangar captain Joseph Denning, Shanxi militia, observed what happened. He too had identified the alien officer. As the turian went down, and the rest of the unit sought cover, he realized that he had an opportunity. A quick command and one of his soldiers threw a switch. On the platform, the blast shields, which had been fully raised when the invaders landed, started to move. The soldier flipped a second switch and the massive doors of the hangar building opened.
Kuros flinched as the shield that he had been hiding behind started to fold away from him. It was a clever trap. If the shield had been lowered from the beginning, the platoon would not have attempted to cross the landing platform. Now they were caught in the open, with no further cover.
Before he could shout an order, large doors on the nearby building started to rise. From inside the building several vehicles rolled forward on massive wheels.
-o-o-o-
Of all the weapon systems that the Colonial Marines had brought with them when they merged into the United Systems military, the M577 Armoured Personnel Carrier was probably the least popular. It had been designed by Weyland-Yutani as a package deal together with their UD-4 Cheyenne dropships, which were designed to carry one of the APCs internally as they entered the atmosphere. It was a concept that looked great on paper and was demonstrated to a properly awed audience with a flight of dropships swooping down on the landing site, only to take off again within seconds while the APCs raced towards the target, guns blazing. Weyland-Yutani had made a fortune from the sale; the opinion of the Colonial Marines was never asked. Reality set in from the moment that the pair was put to actual use. While the Cheyenne functioned as advertised and proved itself time and again as a rugged, reliable, vehicle for inserting troops from orbit and supporting them once they were on the ground, the M577 was a disaster on wheels.
In order to fit an APC inside the cargo-hold of the dropship, the designers had been faced with some pretty severe size restrictions, in particular in terms of height. The result was a low vehicle that had approximately the ground clearance of a sports car. When deployed on anything but the smoothest of surfaces, the M577 would inevitably get stuck, often damaging its drive-train in the process. A famous photograph, widely distributed over the net, had shown one of the APCs caught on a speedbump in an urban area, its four massive wheels spinning helplessly, while the marines tried to push it off the obstacle. While often derided as a fake, it had not helped the vehicle's reputation one bit. In addition to its abysmal terrain performance, the same size restrictions greatly impaired its combat abilities. The M577 carried two weapon turrets, both of them remotely controlled. The first sat on top, at the rear of the vehicle, but, because of the height limit. the turret was so low that the weapons could not be depressed. This resulted in a complicated, maintenance-intensive, and failure-prone design that allowed the entire turret to be raised if necessary. The second, a small turret carrying two gatling-style autocannon was mounted at the front and, while it could at least engage infantry close to the vehicle, it had a limited arc of fire, leaving the flanks and rear of the M577 unprotected. In addition, the APC was equipped with a small mortar, which, though useful against dug-in enemies, was an indirect-fire weapon and would be of no use if hostile infantry attacked at close range.
As long as major corporations such as Weyland-Yutani and their stooges in the government controlled procurement, the marines had been stuck with this rolling death-trap. As soon as the political situation changed, they had gleefully rid themselves of it in favour of a new design. Of course, nothing was ever perfect and many considered its successor, the M29 Grizzly, to be a mistake in the opposite direction. Large and bulky, the six-wheeled Grizzly had excellent terrain performance and combat capabilities, but was too heavy to be carried to the surface by either a Cheyenne or the larger Viking dropships that the USM had recently adopted. Instead it required a cargo shuttle to get down to the planet. Plans for a second vehicle, the M35 Mako, which would once again be capable of quick insertion, had been pushed by military planners for a while, but had so far not yielded a working prototype. In anticipation of the Mako's eventual introduction the marines had offloaded most of their old M577s on the planetary militias, who, according to the marines, would never use them for anything but parades anyway. Now, after years of inactivity, the M577s would see action one more time, operating on what was arguably the only surface for which they were truly suited: a landing field.
-o-o-o-
For one moment sergeant Kuros wondered if they had accidentally stumbled across a krogan settlement. Then he realized that the approaching vehicles lacked the size of the Tuchanka-built Tomkahs and would be hard-pressed to accommodate krogan infantry. Then he stopped thinking altogether as a hail of bullets swept across the landing platform and cut him in half.
Each M577 carried two Republic Electric RE700 20mm Gatling cannons in its bow-turret. Each of these was fed from a 1700 round magazine carrying a mix of high explosive armoured piercing (HEAP) and anti-personnel flechette (APF) rounds. Uncertain as to the precise nature of their targets the gunners on each vehicle simply set one gun to the HEAP rounds and another to the flechettes, then opened fire and hoped for the best.
The best was spectacular. Although the two rounds had vastly different ballistic properties, that was largely irrelevant at a range of less than a hundred meters. For that matter, so was the ammunition selection. Turian body armour and shields were good, but neither was capable of withstanding the onslaught that was unleashed on them. One moment a full platoon of turian soldiers was advancing across the landing platform, the next there were only fragments of flesh, bone and equipment lying in pools of blue blood.
The vehicles stopped for a moment, as the crews looked for additional targets. One spotted a turian shuttle, still sitting on a landing platform nearly a kilometre away. The top mounted turret swivelled around; its twin-barrelled cannon tracked the target and fired. This time the result was less impressive. Turian assault shuttles had been designed to deploy troops while under fire and could take a lot of damage. Still, the effect of two high explosive shells slamming into the hull was definitely sub-optimal. The pilot activated his engines and took off, nearly incinerating half a dozen soldiers nearby. The M577's gunner tried to track the shuttle, but his onboard fire-control system had been designed for use against vehicles on the ground, not fast-moving aircraft, and he was forced to watch as the shuttle disappeared over the horizon, trailing smoke while its pilot sought desperately for a safe place to land his damaged craft. Spotting no further enemies, the APCs retreated into the buildings, doors closing behind them.
The turian ground commander in charge of the assault observed the carnage from a distance and cursed viciously. By now he had lost nearly a company worth of soldiers to no real gain and it was clear that his troops lacked the necessary firepower to fight their way through. In such situations turian doctrine called for airpower to be applied, and a fighter wing was standing by to do just that. Half a dozen fighters swooped down on the hangars, pouring mass-accelerator fire into the doors. These had, for safety reasons, been designed to withstand the force of a nearby explosion. One door, which had either some defect in its structure or had not closed properly, broke under the barrage. The next salvo penetrated into the hangar and tore the lightly armoured APC inside to shreds. The other two doors withstood the turian fire.
The commander observed the result of the airstrike. Clearly, using fighters to break open the human defences was going to be inefficient. The best he could hope for was that the fighters would keep the human vehicles contained in the buildings, but to do that they would have to hover over the battlefield, an extremely vulnerable position for which they had not been designed. He considered the alternatives. A frigate could certainly level the buildings and everything inside, but the fleet had already lost several frigates, which had been either destroyed completely or damaged to the point of ineffectiveness. Risking the remaining ships inside the atmosphere seemed like a bad idea at this point, especially since they had no knowledge of the ground-to-air defences. That left only one option. The commander activated his long-distance communicator and placed a call.
-o-o-o-
The turian military operated as a single entity. There was none of the inter-service rivalry that had plagued humanity for much of its history and if a turian had ever been told of a fiasco like the so-called `revolt of the admirals'(**), he would certainly have pronounced the people involved to be utterly insane. It made for a very efficient fighting machine, with little internal bickering, that never felt the need to have multiple weapon systems fulfilling the same purpose. When a ground force commander required heavy firepower, he didn't need specialized vehicles; instead, he called for naval support. This could be handled directly between the turian on the ground and the captain of the ship, without having to pass through a chain of command. Furthermore, it was something that was anticipated as a matter of standard doctrine and the naval gunners had trained extensively to achieve the necessary accuracy. As soon as the ground force commander had made his request, he withdrew his troops to the minimal safe distance, sure in the knowledge that it would be sufficient to keep his soldiers safe. Several hundred kilometres up, a turian cruiser adjusted its position in orbit and aimed its broadside guns at the requested target coordinates. A few seconds passed as both crew and computers double-checked their firing solution, then the first salvo tore down through the atmosphere, followed by another, and another, each levelling a particular building.
The defenders were spread out across the spaceport, having expected some form of orbital bombardment. Still, for many of them, militia and marine alike, death was instantaneous. Conventional wisdom held that dug-in troops could survive heavy bombardment with relatively light losses, but that had been before the days of orbital bombardment and mass accelerators. The buildings, which had sheltered them from hand weapons and the turian fighters, simply couldn't withstand this sort of firepower and the shockwaves from the impact alone were enough to kill anyone nearby. Only those who had so far stayed in hiding and had therefore not drawn any fire remained untouched. Unfortunately, the buildings weren't the only thing that failed to stand up to the bombardment.
Deep underneath the spaceport lay an extensive network of pipelines, connected to massive fuel tanks. These pipelines had been designed according to the latest safety regulations, which took into account the possibility that an orbital cargo shuttle would crash into the ground at high speed, rupturing one or more pipes. Therefore, the pipes were interrupted at regular intervals by safety valves that would ensure that any fuel leak would be limited to the amount that was currently in that segment of the pipe. It would also prevent a fire from spreading through the pipelines. If necessary the pipes could even be flooded with fire-retardant foam. It was a very good system. However, it was a civilian system, operated by civilians. It was designed to protect against accidents, or perhaps acts of sabotage, not against bombardment. The automated fire suppression system was something that only activated in case there was an actual fire and when the civilian operators evacuated the control room, they had not thought to pre-emptively fill the fuel pipes with foam.
The first salvo of mass accelerator slugs tore into the spaceport, each round penetrating deep into the ground. It was inevitable that some of the fuel pipes would be damaged by the resulting shockwaves. That in itself was not a problem. The automated systems noted the damage and closed the nearest valves. The second salvo did the same, again the system took the appropriate measures, containing the damage. However, by now there was a small, but not insignificant, amount of fuel spreading out over the surface, spilled from the damaged pipes. When the third salvo slammed home, the inevitable happened. When a moving projectile hits a solid object part of its kinetic energy is converted into heat, and for relativistic projectiles the heat is considerable, in this case large enough to ignite the fuel that had spread out over one of the landing platforms. The local fire suppression system was no longer operative, in fact it no longer even existed, so the fire spread unchecked. Still the control system was able to take the necessary action, shutting down all nearby fuel lines.
That was when the fourth salvo hit the ground. Again, fuel pipes ruptured and more fuel leaked out, allowing the fire to spread further over the surface, reaching yet other pools of fuel. The system that monitored the pipes was not designed to handle this. It should have been dealt with by human firefighters on the scene and the local fire-suppression system on the surface, but the former were absent and the latter had taken too much damage. Within seconds, multiple landing platforms were ablaze. Now the system went into emergency mode and opened the releases valves for the foam, an action that would normally have required a command from a human operator; but the foam distribution systems had suffered damage too.
As turians and humans alike looked on in horror, a fifth salvo slammed into the ground. This time rupturing one of the main fuel tanks. A geyser of highly flammable material burst into the air, filling the nearby atmosphere with a fine mist of fuel droplets. For a few seconds nothing happened while the turian groundforce commander screamed into his communicator to stop the bombardment. Then the fuel mist reached the fire.
So-called fuel air explosives had been developed on earth during the second half of the twentieth century as a means to generate massive explosions without resorting to politically unacceptable nuclear weapons. Their popularity had not lasted very long as military focus changed toward low-intensity conflict where that sort of large-scale destruction was not desirable. Still, until the advent of mass effect powered weaponry, they had held the record for being the most destructive conventional weapons mankind had ever produced. The mist of fuel droplets detonated with a force that put the orbital bombardment to shame, levelling several of the still standing buildings and sending a sheet of flame up into the air. It also ruptured those fuel tanks that had not yet been breached, releasing yet more fuel into the air, only to be detonated in turn.
In and around the spaceport itself, no-one, neither human nor turian, survived. The lucky ones had been killed instantly by the shockwaves, or were crushed to death by falling debris. The less fortunate ones died more slowly as burning fuel covered the area. The material damage was enormous too, as an area of several square kilometres was instantly reduced to rubble. It was fortunate that the spaceport had been built far away from the nearest population centre, but, even so, buildings in the capital city of Shanxi shook as the blast of the explosion reached them and soldiers on both sides, who had only just come into contact, stopped fighting and looked in astonishment at the towering mushroom cloud that rose up at the horizon.
Inside his command bunker general Williams stared white-faced at his subordinates as he received the news. While he had always known the spaceport could not be held indefinitely against a determined attack, he had hoped to pin down significant enemy forces in a protracted fight. To achieve that result Williams had committed a significant force in and around the spaceport. Now they were gone, destroyed in an instant, and the fact that a significant number of the enemy soldiers had undoubtedly perished with them was cold comfort compared to the loss of three marine companies and two battalions of militia. Moreover, with the spaceport utterly destroyed, the enemy would no longer need to waste time and resources to occupy that area and would be able to redirect any reinforcements to other parts of the combat theatre.
From the bridge of his dreadnought, the HNV Righteous Fury, general Arterius too looked in horror at the massive explosion that was clearly on his ship's optical sensors. More than five hundred turian soldiers had perished in the blast. That was bad enough, but there was more. He needed this planet as a bargaining chip at the negotiation table. Large scale destruction of groundbased installations would reduce its value and lead to demands for reparations.
"No more!" He snarled. "Send a massage to all troops. From now on, they are limited to frigate support. Any request for orbital bombardment has to be approved by me, personally!"
Geneva, Earth
"This is John McReily, for Westerlund News. We have just received word that Patricia Hammerstein, chairwoman of the United Systems Assembly and secretary general of the United Nations, has been found dead in her apartment. While the authorities have so far refused to release any further information, inside sources tell us that ms. Hammerstein has taken her own life. So far we can only speculate as to what could have driven ms. Hammerstein to take such a drastic step, but it seems likely that both the shocking news from our colony on Shanxi, as well as USM chief of staff, general Spears, calling for her resignation must have weighed heavily on her during these difficult times. One can only imagine the amount of pressure-"
"Damn!" General Spears felt a strong urge to throw his glass at the screen as the reporter went into tragedy mode, producing one platitude after another. "Why don't they just elevate her to saint-hood while they're at it? This is not good, Harper. We needed Hammerstein as a scapegoat."
Harper glanced at the irate general.
"So? One doesn't have to be alive to be a scapegoat, general. While this is, of course, a tragedy, it also means that ms Hammerstein can no longer interfere in our plans. On top of that, it will throw her allies into confusion, at least for a little while. Meanwhile, you are still well positioned to take control of the situation."
"And what if the public opinion turns against me? Already they're suggesting that I was the one who drove her to suicide. If Hammerstein becomes a martyr to the cause of peace-"
"Ah, yes," Harper said softly. "the threat that has kept both governments and rebels alike from doing what they needed to do: the fear of creating a martyr. Let me tell you something, general: there is a big advantage to turning your enemies into martyrs. They are, by definition, dead." He shrugged. "In any case, you have no need for concern. All the evidence is in place. We just need to wait for local authorities to stumble upon it. Once they do, well, let's just say that ms Hammerstein's sanctification will most likely be put on permanent hold. Don't worry general, everything is going according to plan."
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A/N: I recently watched a marathon session of 'Seconds from disaster' episodes and decided to incorporate some of that stuff. It makes for a nice earth-shattering Kaboom.
(*) Strictly speaking, the Phaeston assault rifle is a design with thermal clip and shouldn't exist yet. However, I've kept the name. Here the turians have Phaestons, but they still use internal heat-sinks. My assumption is that the hierarchy would simply adapt an existing design to use clips at some time between ME1 and ME2, rather than designing a new weapon.
(**) The 'revolt of the admirals' occurred shortly before the war in Korea. Details can be found on the wikipedia page. It makes for interesting reading.
About the M577: The prop vehicle for the movie was actually designed around an aircraft tractor, so a spaceport would seem like the one place where it might be effective. Honestly, it looks cool, but an APC with the ground clearance of a Lamborghini...? I've replaced the top mounted plasma guns with something like the cannon found on the MAKO. Same firepower, different method. We never see any plasma guns in actual use in the Alien films (they only get mentioned in the wiki), so it doesn't matter much, and plasma weapons seem a bit out of place among the generally rugged, simple weapon designs that the Alien franchise favours. Besides, I want to keep plasma weapons as something unique for the Predators. Otherwise I copied the technical details from the AvP wiki.