Chapter 12
=location: White Comet, December 15, 2179=
Emperor Zwordar has been looking at the latest information about this new galaxy. Although he knew the journey through space between the Galaxies would be long, a few years of cryosleep made the process much easier. Over the past year, he has begun a scouting effort into this galaxy and its satellite galaxies. Although they encountered some resistance, it ultimately turned out to be only a minor obstacle before the great prize of the nearly undefended host galaxy, the Milky Way, if he remembers correctly as the locals call it.
His quarter-million fleet should be enough to conquer them. Most of these races don't even have decent energy weapons on their ships and rely on antiquated magnetic boosters with what they call MassEffect.
"My Lord." - said one of his subordinates - "Governor-general, Goran Dagam requests permission to report his progress via communicator."
"He has my permission." - Zwordar said, and seconds later screen come out of the ceiling with an image of Goran.
"Glory is to you, Emperor." - Goran began - "My fleet and ground forces are ready to attack the planet known as Dekuuna. Our special divisions are ready to operate in their gravitational field. I only ask permission to go, and within 6 days I will come to their system to bring you a word of victory the next day."
"Very good." - the Emperor said with a smile on his face - "You can start. For the glory of Gatlantis."
"For the Glory of Gatlantis!" - answered Goran and the communication ended.
Finally, the actual invasion will begin.
=location: Custodian system=
"Is this information reliable?" - asked General Elk Domel.
"Yes, sir." - said Fommt Berger - "We have confirmation that the equivalent of 5 of our fleets is heading towards the home planet of the Elcor. We don't know the composition, but from previous data, we believe that at least half of the ships are support vehicles."
"It's still an unprecedented number of enemy ships." - Domel said, "Given our previous engagements, sending such a fleet to attack at first seems unexpected, especially since the Gatlanteans can't have information on the races of this galaxy, unless."
"Unless what?" - asked Fommt, slightly surprised by the sudden nervousness of his commander.
"Unless they have many more ships than we initially thought." - Dozel said, then quickly began issuing orders - "It's worrying, but we must use every opportunity to weaken Gatlantis. I'll take the 6th and 15th fleets for a flank attack on the advancing Gatlantean forces. If the given figures are accurate, we should arrive about an hour after them. Elcor ships are very tough, and like any homeworld, they have a large number of defense satellites and stuff like that. They should hold out until our arrival. But to achieve this, we must immediately mobilize all ships."
"Yes, sir." - said Fommt, saluting and walking away.
=location: Arcturus station=
With his command staff, Admiral Grissom planned another major attack on the Batarians. In the new year, another batch of ships from the yard would arrive, with the successful ground conquests and the securing of the fleet's supply lines, the 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th were able to launch another attack while the 4th and 9th held the lines and served as a crisis reserve. It had many objectives on which the armed forces could focus.
First, they can launch another attack that penetrates deep into the Hegemony's territory and deals damage to their main shipyards and other strategic facilities. But if the attack fails, the SA navy won't recover for at least a few years due to losses. Not only that, failure in such an operation may well mean losing the war. Especially with the Hegemony still outnumbering them.
The next option was to liberate Travers. Many of the independent states were allied with the SA after the attack on their territory, and together with Admiral Okita's fleet, temporarily named the 10th Fleet, they made great progress. But the lack of infrastructure on these planets meant an extraordinary strain on supply lines, especially given the high volumes of missiles and other smart weapons. This lack of infrastructure is the reason why an offensive in that direction becomes unprofitable. The batarians, who didn't rely on missiles as much but relied on Mass Accelerators, had much less of an obstacle in this area. Additionally, the small infrastructure there is much more compatible with Citadel standards than System Alliance.
Option number 3 is to support the Batarian Free States and their operations against the Batarians. But politicians were still unsure of trust in this new state, so for now the aid was limited to sending older weapons for support. Unfortunately, politicians also looked a lot at the potential end of this war, at the cost of giving up many conquered territories. And that meant that the more they decided to help the BFS, the harder it would be to sign a peace treaty.
Another option is to continue their slow conquests along the border. It was the most tempting option so far. Given the Hegemony's stretched-out forces, resistance would be relatively light, and close to the border so supply lines would be safer, expanding the buffer zone, all of which made for an easy profit with minimal risk. However, if the Hegemony could mobilize its fleets and launch a counter-attack, it would be the SA fleets that would find themselves stretched out and vulnerable to their attack. Still, such an attack could be easily detected and countered before it happened, especially with the help of BFS spies.
All four options have been prepared and will be presented to the President's war cabinet tomorrow. Until the operation is approved and the fleets ready, all they need to do is hold the lines against Hegemony attacks.
=location: Khar'shan=
The leaders and representatives of the castes that ruled the Batarian Hegemony gathered in a great council. Despite the extremely totalitarian/authoritarian nature of the government, the supreme leader still had to have the support of many important families, lest someone stab him in the back and replace him with the next supreme leader. This council was the last chance for Feterk Oko'ka, the current supreme leader, to keep his power and his life, as the war was not going well.
"We must gather our ships and reclaim our territories immediately!" -shouted the leader of the 'defensive party', Prey Khef'gahan. Although unofficially, humans and asari called them parties, such as the human Terra Firma, in reality, they were groupings of like-minded people at a given time and only minding their own interests. They didn't present any particular financial plans or general political direction, and in truth, Feterk would rather have these asari or human political parties. At least you most of the time knew what they wanted.
"Just reclaiming our lands is not enough, we must destroy Arcturus and Earth itself!" - shouted the leader of the 'aggressive party', Ofagrom Gher'betor.
"We don't have the military power for that." - said Supreme Admiral Sathan Pom'barok, one of the opponents of this war, not for idealistic reasons, but because his businesses on the Council worlds and Terminus suffered. Although his ability to command couldn't be denied. And since his two predecessors were relegated to the disaster of the Elysium Raid, Frontier Defense, Terminus Offensive, Rebel Outburst, and the loss of a large amount of their mothball fleet, he stayed to clean up the mess - "Maybe you forgot, but we're not just fighting Humans, but also with a large number of independent colonies that have organized themselves into the Travers Free Colony Alliance (TFCA) and a large number of rebellions on dozens of planets."
"So what do you propose, Supreme Admiral?" - he asked from Oko'k - "You don't want to just give in to those two-eyed bastards and their minions, do you?"
Oko'ka did well not to interfere with the choice of Admiral Pom'barok. Although he disliked him greatly, mainly because he was one of his political rivals, his position as supreme admiral gave him the ability to blame him in the event of defeat and retain his position. Although he would much prefer his son, the 26th Admiral Kramo Oko'k, in this position, if only to have more control over the navy.
"We have to play the long game, and that means some immediate concessions to Humans." - Sathan said. He immediately heard great indignation and rage in the courtroom, with a number shouting for him to be hanged immediately. After the crowd had calmed down a bit, which took a good fifteen minutes, Sathan continued - "After getting a temporary peace with the humans, we will carry out our old Befgebar[1] plan and destroy the rebels. Then we will rebuild our fleet and launch a renewed attack on the System Alliance. But this time it's up to us to decide where and when. Because it won't be a raid, but a full invasion. We survived the Rachnii, the Krogan, the uprisings of the 5th and 8th centuries, and they were also destroyed by us. Listen to me, Humans may have defeated us temporarily, but in the end the Hegemony will emerge victorious as always!"
And there were voices of approval in the hall, which slowly turned to applause, and then to a full shout of support for the Pom'barok plan. Feterk Oko'ka joined in as well, so as not to appear to be standing out from the group and against the plan most of the major houses of the Hegemony had agreed to. But Feterk could have sworn he saw Sathan tilt his head slightly to the right of him for a second.
=place: Amare Fleet HQ=
"Enemy fleet is approaching Sector H15."
"Piresia's 14th Fleet is in position in Sector K19 awaiting orders."
"Defence stations X01 through X18 report combat readiness."
"All Mazanu forces have taken up position in the defensive line."
"Geth units confirming firing arrangements on enemy fleet and awaiting permission to open fire."
There was controlled chaos at HQ as hundreds of officers and operators relayed information to every squadron, ship, and station throughout the system. Defensive positions were quickly taken and the Allied fleets prepared for the final engagement. Morale was high and even Queen Iriya was in HQ watching the battle to see if she had given a clear signal to the rest of the allies and armed forces. They are to stay here, fight and win, or all is lost.
"An enemy fleet has entered Sector G15 and is closing in on range of missile weapons and Geth ships!" - one of the officers shouted.
"Queen Iriya, the soldiers await orders." - said the commander from Etos with a bow.
"So now or never." - Queen Iriya said - "Open fire."
And so the decisive battle of this war began.