October 2nd, 2089
The incomprehensibly gargantuan void that exists between the proportionally miniscule specks of light called stars is typically referred to as "Interstellar Space" (or its linguistic equivalent) by the denizens of the known galaxy. It contains distances so vast that light, the fastest substance in existence, (minus the starships that cheat with the mass effect) takes years to cross from one star to the next. This incredible distance means that it is the only place in the known galaxy where a sapient can hide from its enemies for any significant length of time. Starships are effectively flashing neon signs to any intelligence with even the most basic of electronic detection technology, and space is, as previously mentioned, almost entirely empty. This means that the closest thing to true "cover" that a thinking entity might hide within is spacetime itself.
The relatively small human fleet that had been marauding its way through the batarian hegemony was currently doing just that. It loitered on the far end of the space between two stars, only a little less than one light year away from their destination. A fairly trivial journey for most starships in known space, with a length measured in hours. For light, it was a grand odyssey that would take months to complete. While the fleet was, certainly, emitting an incredible amount of light that could be detected with minimal difficulty by any space faring civilization, it would be months before that light would actually reach anyone. It was a tactic that the rangers had borrowed from the...less reputable individuals among the community of human spacefarers, commonly referred to as "hiding in the light" or, "hiding behind time".
Or at least, that's what the rangers had told Onatheer. He smiled as he walked down the halls of the great make-shift passenger liner that was the centerpiece of the flotilla. Humans seemed to feel the need to give a trendy nickname to everything. The tactic was, of course, known to batarians (and every other space faring species), but they usually just called it "hiding in Interstellar Space". No nickname needed. He smiled again.
However, it faded as the pain of the task ahead of him slipped its way into his mind once again. He steeled himself as he reached the room that was his destination and opened the door. A few small heads whirled to look at him, though most remained focused on their play. He coughed, and the elderly woman across the room looked away from the playing children for a moment and glanced at him.
"Ah, Mr. Onatheer. Come right in." she said. Onatheer made his way over.
Most denizens of the galaxy think of the asari as ageless goddesses who are graceful and perfect even on their death beds. Of course, most denizens of the galaxy don't realize that they are viewing the asari species at its best, at a point in its existence where it benefits from space age medical technology and cosmetics.
For most sapient species who reach the space age, the most common cause of death is diseases of the brain and nervous system. This is not because such diseases somehow become more common, but rather because other causes of death become much more rare. Organs can be replaced, blood vessels can be mended, cancer can be excised. Even cellular decay can be slowed. But the one thing that can't be reliably replaced is the brain. Diseases and decay of the brain can be slowed, or even stopped outright, but what is lost can never be completely recovered. So, neuron by neuron, a sapient is claimed by the utterly unstoppable tide of entropy.
Because of this the "true" lifespan of a species is measured by the maximum lifespan of its brain. Asari, with their incredibly robust element zero-enhanced nervous system, possess brains whose longevity is rivalled only by that of the biologically immortal krogan and their multiple redundant nervous systems. However, like most species of the current era, the amount of time the asari have spent as star farers is dwarfed by the amount of time they spent bound to their planet, as part of the food chain. Thessia has an almost mystical reputation amongst the other species of the galaxy, but the reality is that it is still a biosphere (albeit one drenched in an unusual amount of element zero), and is just as hostile and unforgiving as any other. For the overwhelming majority of asari throughout the species' history, expecting to live to one's matriarch stage was akin to a human expecting to live to be one hundred. Not...impossible, per se, but very unlikely.
In the pre-industrial world, where sapient life is worthless, where wild animals and ravaging armies are not villains in a storybook but very real dangers, where famine is one bad season away, where the nightmarish specter of disease and plague kill more people than every war ever fought combined, living long enough to produce offspring is a tall order for any being, never mind reaching old age. This is where the reverence for Matriarchs comes in asari culture. They are ancient and wise, so healthy of body and disciplined of mind that they have survived where countless others die. Every trial a young Maiden might face, they have faced a dozen times over, and emerged triumphant.
Even if reaching Matriarch status isn't quite as challenging as it once was, that reverence is still there. However, the Matriarchs of the pre-space Asari were not the ageless demi-goddesses the other species of the galaxy imagine today. Longevity or not, time ravages an asari body too, though modern medicine and cosmetics hide it well. However, when deprived of technology, like the woman across from Onatheer was, the markings of age are easy to see.
The woman was quite possibly the oldest person in the entire flotilla. The backwater she had been held as a slave on (for an amount of time so lengthy it makes shorter-lived heads spin) was very remote and incredibly impoverished. Getting basic medical care was hard enough, preventative and cosmetic medicine was out of the question. So, as the years passed, the woman aged far less gracefully than an asari might hope to under normal circumstances. To an asari, she looks ancient, decrepit. A living monument to the mortality of their species, a terrifying reminder that the greedy wealth of years allotted to an asari are still a pittance compared to the impossible scale of the universe.
To a human, well...
She looks like someone's blue grandma.
"Hello, Miss T'jiv." Onatheer said as he approached.
"I take it you're here to see a certain young lady?" she asked with her usual warm smile.
"I am." Onatheer said.
She looked him up and down. "Goodness. You look like someone just ran over your dog."
"Ran over my...what?"
"Oh, one of those charmingly crass expressions my rescuers are so fond of uttering. It's how they express concern without actually expressing concern."
"...concern?"
"We might have different faces, but I've been around batarians for eight hundred years. I think I can figure out when one of you is sad."
The all-too-familiar weight of the sins of his people pressed him down. "Eight...hundred...?"
She peered at him over her glasses (astonishingly, medical technology had degraded on her colony to such a degree that spectacles were being used), and spoke again.
"My dear boy, your grandfather's grandfather's grandfather's grandfather had yet to be born when I was captured. I have been deprived of a great many things over the course of my life, but no one's ever taken my common sense. I have no interest in holding you to blame for a crime you had absolutely nothing to do with. Now, I believe we were talking about something else before you dodged the topic?"
"...We're going to have to fight our way out of Hegemony space."
"Indeed."
"I'm going to have to be a part of that fight."
"Of course."
"Kynree is going to be very upset by this."
"Naturally."
"I don't know what to say to her."
"Say that you love her, and that you will be back."
"...What if I don't come back?"
"Then she has to grow up without a father."
Onatheer gave her a horrified look.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I thought we were still stating the obvious."
Onatheer gave her a withering look.
"She survived her mother being murdered. She survived having her father taken away from her. She survived being locked up alone in a cell for far, far too long. She'll survive you not coming back, if she has to."
"This is really not reassuring me."
The elderly asari gestured around herself. "These are good people. You've met them. She'll be in good hands."
Onatheer stewed on that for a while. Then he spoke again. "So...what do you think of them?"
"Procrastination? I didn't think you were the sort."
Onatheer gave another withering look.
She rolled her eyes. "I think that our new friends have many good qualities. Barring unusual situations or divergent cultures, they seem to default to a sort of cautious curiosity and friendliness when faced with something unknown. Very empathetic. They have a tendency to personify other animals and even inanimate objects. Overall, a pleasant enough people, and a good lot to have on your side, all things considered."
Onatheer was surprised. "That was..."
She smiled. "More than you expected? I studied a mix of history, sociology, and xenobiology when I was in university a very, very long time ago. I could talk about this sort of thing all day. But I won't do that, because you have to speak to Kynree, you might recall?"
Onatheer gave her another look, though he couldn't quite summon enough resolve to make it particularly withering.
She rolled her eyes again. "Fine, let's waste more time. They're very passionate, more so than any species I've ever studied, past or present. It is their greatest virtue, and their most terrible curse. I've been reading, to pass the time. Their histories, cultures, religions, philosophies. All very fascinating, and quite terrifying."
"...terrifying?"
"Yes. I don't think I've ever studied any species with such an incredible capacity for cruelty. The sorts of crimes that would be studied for generations were they committed by one of my people are just one drop in an ocean of atrocities for them. Things so repulsive it made me ill to read of them."
Onatheer was a little...chilled at that. "What sorts of atrocities? I hardly think I'm in much of a position to judge."
"The sort that aren't mentioned in polite company." she said, annoyed. "I wasn't finished. I also don't think I've ever studied a species with a greater capacity for kindness and compassion. I've read of feats of compassion, courage, and generosity so unbelievable that they'd be done by legendary or religious figures had they been of another species. Instead, they were just ordinary people. People who, bafflingly, infuriatingly, just seem to fade away from collective memory. If they're remembered at all." she smiled sadly.
"Incredible good. Indescribable evil. From the same source. It's quite a fascinating dichotomy, really. It eats them alive, I think. I never would have conceived of a species that loathes itself as much as this one does. It's quite something. Almost every complex religion, philosophy, and ideology they practice seems predicated around the idea that there is something thoroughly, deeply, wrong with them. The explanations and solutions they offer differ wildly, of course, but at their core they're terrified of themselves."
Onatheer stared for a few more moments, then he smiled weakly. "That's a little...dramatic, don't you think?"
She snorted. "Of course it's dramatic. I'm dramatic. Even if you think I'm being fantastical, there's some practical results of this hypothesis."
"Dare I ask?"
"Apparently so. Smartass. Anyway, look at how easily they interact with us. Ask them to launch the single most dangerous and daring raid in recorded galactic history to rescue a bunch of aliens they met a few months ago to help win a war they have no chance of winning by any reasonable metric, and they say "Sure thing!' But, ask them to come to a peaceful compromise over some plot of land on their home planet nobody lives on that's been in dispute for six centuries, and they say 'No way! They can't be trusted! They're scheming, conniving bastards, the lot of them!' or something to that effect. You see, they 'know' that they suck. They assume the worst about their fellow humans. Us, we're an...unknown quantity. They want to give us the benefit of the doubt. I think we've disappointed them, to be honest."
"I couldn't possibly imagine why. Couldn't have anything to do with us attacking them unprovoked, or completely abandoning them to the worst villains in the galaxy, could it?"
"Yes, very funny. Listen, I've read some of their fiction. Aliens are almost always either terrifying monsters or perfect angels in their imaginations. Now, they finally meet us and we're...just people. Weird looking people, but people nonetheless. As much as I've waxed philosophical about how unique they are, at the end of the day they're also just people. They live, they love, they die. They've got lives, families. Children. Daughters, for example."
The batarian sighed.
"You're going to have to talk to her eventually."
"I...still don't know what to say." he stuttered out.
"Look, all that big talk about good, evil, whatever? That doesn't matter. She's what matters." she pointed out at the other children. "They're what matters. It wasn't some superior philosophy or something that freed them, or me. It was decent people, doing what's right. Very well armed decent people, specifically. People like you, if you're willing to believe that's what you are. Just tell her why you have to do what you're about to do, and tell her you love her."
"Alright. Please bring her out."
"Of course, Mr. Onatheer." she said.
She disappeared behind a door into the playroom in the back. When she returned, the small batarian girl holding her hand shot out ahead of her and slammed into her father, wrapping him in a hug.
He reached down and lifted her into his arms. He found a chair and sat down with her in his lap. Father and daughter shared a private conversation as he told her what he needed to tell her. A few seconds later, they shared a significantly less private conversation as daughter told father in no uncertain terms exactly what she thought about being left behind. Again.
Miss T'Jiv smiled at the pair, and went back to her reading.
A small fleet of human and batarian warships appeared at the edge of blue giant star system. Orbiting a gas giant was an unassuming-looking mass relay. Or, at least, it was as unassuming as an ancient piece of eldritch alien technology that defied the laws of physics could be. Of far greater concern, however, was the small fleet of batarian warships that sat in orbit above it. Tim cursed as he saw it. Someone in the Hegemony leadership used their brain.
The relay was a secondary relay, the most remote of its particular node in the relay network. The only thing of note about it is that it is close enough to another relay in a different node to enable one to exit the node without using the primary relay. This was a fairly common occurrence throughout the relay network, but it wasn't something regarded as particularly important by those who used the relay network. After all, the primary relay connecting to the node in question would almost always get you there with a significantly shorter trip. However, if one couldn't use the primary relay (say, because your enemy had a large fleet guarding it to prevent your escape) then secondary relays like this one could become a useful "back door" of sorts. Unfortunately, it seems that someone in the Hegemony navy had noticed this particular relay, and had redirected several ships to guard it.
Tim looked at his tactical display with growing distress as he counted the ships. One heavy cruiser, four light cruisers, eight destroyers, thirty frigates. On the human side, thirty six of the original fifty interceptors had survived the journey, and they were accompanied by the escort fleet, consisting of one light cruiser (the very cruiser that Samar had faced off with some months back), four human destroyers, one elderly batarian destroyer, and eight second-line frigates that had been taken as prize ships and crewed by a mix of excess ranger crewmen, rescued slaves with the necessary qualifications, and a handful of defecting Hegemony naval personnel encountered along the way.
Tim sat in virtual council with the other ship COs and the commander of the operation, Brigadier General Diaz. He spoke from the renamed light cruiser Liberty, his flagship.
"We've got a good while until our light reaches them. I'm ordering all ships to advance at best speed while we're still undetected. While we do that, I'd like options and discussion, please." the general said.
Colonel Hakimi, commander of the interceptor forces, spoke first. "We need to go in hard and fast with the interceptors. We dump our full payload on the cruisers, then the rest of the fleet crashes in and we finish off the escorts."
"As simple as that?" the general said.
"No, it'll be a hell of a job to pull off. But what's our alternative? If we try and take them on in a gunfight, they'll rip us apart. The Liberty is the only ship in the fleet that could hope to take a hit from that heavy cruiser. Combine that with the four light cruisers backing it up and we're completely outgunned in terms of caliber. Our best bet is to get in close and gut the heavy ships. After that, we've got the numbers to mop the floor with their light ships."
"I think most of us have similar thoughts to your own on the matter. Any dissenting opinions?" the general said.
There were none. The Colonel spoke the truth. The best counterargument anyone might come up with would be to cut their losses and retreat, but there were no better exits from Hegemony space than this one. There was also not guarantee that they would be any less guarded than this one, either.
"Alright, we have our plan of attack, let's discuss formations and deployment." the general said after listening for a moment.
The flight of thirty six interceptors soared at a blistering acceleration towards their foe. The many thousands of kilometers dividing the two groups shrunk rapidly. The interceptor took evasive maneuvers as sporadic mass driver fire came towards them from the Hegemony fleet. They were still well out of mass driver range, so the rounds were still easily dodged. However, at such incredible velocities, even one lucky hit could completely destroy a ship. And that was just the secondary cannons.
The spinal mount rounds were a little more accurate thanks to their superior muzzle velocity. Tim watched on his tactical display as the icon for a nearby interceptor, Tornado, completely vanished. She'd been struck by a lucky shot from the heavy cruiser's spinal mount. At such high velocities, the round hit with incredible power. Tornado wasn't so much destroyed as it was completely vaporized. The kinetic explosion resulting from the strike looked like someone had set off a nuclear weapon.
Tim held a white knuckled grip on his armrests. The order had better come soon, or we're-
"Deploy stage one!" Colonel Hakimi ordered over the comm network.
The computers of the ships in the formation complied with his orders instantly. Silo doors opened, and missiles poured out. Their maneuvering thrusters fired to get them pointed in the right direction, but otherwise they didn't accelerate. The interceptors shot ahead of their payload.
A few seconds later, Colonel Hakimi gave a second order. "Deploy stage two!"
Even more silos opened, and an even larger swarm of missiles poured out again, inert for the moment
The interceptors shot ahead. By now they moved so fast that the batarian targeting systems struggled to calculate firing solutions, their targets operating well outside of the parameters they had been programmed with. The human fleet shot "over" the heads of the batarian fleet, who had remained essentially stationary. The few brief seconds they were in close contact with the enemy fleet extracted a toll. Three interceptors were completely destroyed by lucky hits from secondary cannons. A further dozen were scorched to varying degrees by GARDIAN laser banks, Samar among them.
"Damage reports later, just paint those targets!" Tim ordered.
Samar and the other interceptors still functional enough to maneuver painted the batarian ships as targets for the oncoming missiles, even as they engaged in a heavy deceleration burn. The k-bombs drifted in, taking point defense fire from GARDIAN lasers and a squad of fighters deployed from the heavy cruiser. They extracted a toll, but it didn't matter, because the real goal of the k-bombs was to provide a screen for the following torpedoes. For this reason, they mostly targeted the escorts instead of the cruisers. Because of this, the escort's lasers were too occupied defending themselves to assist their heavy ships in shooting down the torpedoes.
After drifting for some time, the torpedoes had fired their thrusters and were burning hard for the batarian cruisers. Were they powerful disrupter torpedoes, they'd be forced to slow down as they increased their mass to bypass kinetic barriers, making them vulnerable to point defenses.
But these were not disrupter torpedoes.
The missiles came in at incredible velocity. Most of them shot towards the heavy cruiser, with a few squadrons veering off towards the light cruisers. It all happened so fast that an organic eye could follow it. In one instant, the missiles reached GARDIAN range, and many were destroyed. But not all of them. In the next instant, the missiles detonated their warheads. For the briefest instant, tiny lances of pure heat cast a blinding light over the batarian fleet before instantly falling silent.
From the interceptors overshooting the batarian fleet to the warheads detonating, the whole affair had taken barely twenty seconds.
The toll extracted was a heavy one, three of the four light cruisers were smoldering ruins. They were sent careening away from the fleet by the hits, their mass effect stabilizers failing. One light cruiser had escaped with only two hits. It had cost it an entire laser bank and disabled its main gun, but it was still flying.
However, the true purpose of warship hulls in Citadel (and adjacent) space was made clear at the sight of the heavy cruiser. Six hits it had taken, and yet it was still in one piece, crippled though it might be. While heavy bulky armor that would be effective against kinetic damage was shunned for the most part by citadel space in favor of barriers, the hulls of warships were still designed to take hits from weapons very similar to the ones just used against the cruiser. They weren't as thick or bulky as the armor donned by human vessels, but they were sturdy and built with resistance to heat and light based weapons in mind. Barriers stopped kinetic threats, hulls stopped energy threats (and nothing could stop disrupters). That was the way of things in Citadel-derived space war.
"Sir, all critical systems are giving the green light. We got cooked pretty bad, but we're still flying." Lieutenant Fahri, Samar's chief engineer, told Tim over the ship's internal communications.
"I see no reason to keep us out of the fight then." he raised his voice to be heard by his CIC officers and crew. "We're maintaining course with the rest of the formation. Get ready for round two, people."
The rest of the human fleet came in after the interceptors. It was times as close as possible. General Diaz wanted the batarians to have as little recovery time as possible between the striking of the missiles and the attack of Liberty and her escorts. Whereas the interceptors had spent their entire advance accelerating, the Liberty's group had spent it decelerating. By the time they approached the engagement envelope of the batarian fleet, they were drifting lazily in at safe and slow combat velocity.
The human and allied ships were in a dense (by the standards of space) formation arrayed around the Liberty, taking on a vaguely elliptical formation as they drifted in. They opened fire, several coordinated spinal mount volleys hitting the still disorganized batarians. The batarians raggedly counter-charged, trying to get "under" the main guns of their enemies and force an engagement with secondary cannons, where they would be on a more even playing field. While the combined human fleet was equal in number to the remaining batarian ships, the interceptors were still burning their way back towards the fight. The batarians used their local advantage in numbers to break the allied formation up. The battle became the "close" quarters melee that the batarians had desired. Chaos reigned for a few moments. Then the interceptors came crashing into the melee, and it went from a one-sided defense to a proper battle.
Despite casualties taken on both sides, the two fleets were still roughly equal in numbers, though not in firepower. The batarian destroyers outgunned most of the human ships, but the Liberty was heavily armed and managed to even the scales of the fight to a degree. In exchange for some generous compensation, the quarians-masters of aftermarket ship modification-had taken an aging batarian light cruiser and turned it into a ravenous war machine that ate light escorts for breakfast. She was over-gunned, over-shielded, and filled to the brim with home-brewed quarian disrupter torpedoes. Such modifications were prohibitively expensive for a mass produced ship, but for a single ship going on a covert operation the UN was happy to write the check. After all, they hadn't even had to pay for the initial hull.
Liberty and her human destroyer escorts carved a bloody path through the quagmire.
From the bridge of his twice-refurbished (and newly renamed after her most recent escapade) destroyer, Hell's Bane, Onatheer led the irregular fleet in support of Liberty. He kept a close eye on the squad of enemy fighters as they loitered at the edge of the melee. Humans seemed to have little experience against such craft, but Onatheer had once seen a cruiser gutted by a half squadron of ramshackle pirate fighters earlier in his military career. He'd learned to never underestimate the craft then. No matter how insignificant or suicidal they might seem, all it took was one fighter getting lucky for disaster to strike.
A ragged and seemingly impromptu formation of destroyers and frigates charged at Liberty and her escorts. Onatheer ordered his ships in to back up the flagship, but something in his instincts made him order Hell's Bane and one of his frigates to loiter away from the skirmish. His instincts payed off, and he watched as the squadron of fighters broke off to make an attack run on Liberty. Simultaneously, the surviving light cruiser, which had been staying at the edge of the battle until now, opened its silos and launched every one of its torpedoes. The guided weapons burned straight for Liberty.
Onatheer had to act quickly. Liberty could likely take on each threat individually, but all three at once would destroy it. If Liberty went down, the whole battle was lost. All of Onatheer's training and experience told him this was the enemy's final gambit. If they didn't take down Liberty here, they were finished. He just needed to ensure that Liberty survived at all costs. He made his decision.
"Order the frigates to go help intercept those torpedoes. The Hell will handle the fighters."
It was a dangerous prospect, but it had to be done. Even if he just forced the fighters to launch their torpedoes early, it would be a victory. Hell's Bane burned and maneuvered itself between the fighters and Liberty. The elderly destroyer let loose a full broadside into the oncoming fighter squadron. It was unlikely to score any kills, but it would serve as cover for the real defense. Hell's Bane was a destroyer. Destroyers were built to protect the big, expensive ships from the myriad of small, dirt cheap threats that would seek to make a cost-effective meal of them in modern battle. Whether it's running down frigates and gunboats (or, indeed, other destroyers), swatting aside torpedo salvos, or hunting fighters, destroyers make sure that the smaller inhabitants of the void remember their place.
The fighters came on, and Onatheer gripped his captain's chair with a lightgreen-knuckled grip. Battles between escorts and fighters were harrowing things. Once they entered combat range, the fate of both sides was decided in a matter of seconds. He watched as they approached the Hell's Bane's GARDIAN engagement envelope. The icons on his tactical display representing the fighters flashed red, and Onatheer gripped his chair even harder. The fighter icons vanished one by one, but a few managed to get torpodoes away. Onatheer felt a private thrill at that. At least I forced them off of their attack run on Liberty. Here's hoping I live long enough to enjoy it.
All of the Hegemony pilots paid with their lives for their torpedo launch. Onatheer began whispering a prayer as the GARDIAN rushed to reacquire the torpedoes. Slowly, lazily, the mass-increased projectiles made their way towards the Hell's Bane. A single torpedo that had survived the GARDIAN's onslaught passed through the destroyers barriers as the GARDIAN recycled...only to be destroyed less than one hundred meters from the hull. The onboard computer of the torpedo detonated the warhead early in response to it being struck, and Hell's Bane shook violently in the resulting space-warping explosion. Onatheer was thrown against his seatbelt as the entire ship shook. Just as quickly, it was over. Alarms blared throughout the ship...but at least there still was a ship.
Onatheer gathered himself and looked at his tactical display again, watching the Liberty advance through her attackers and engage the damaged enemy light cruiser that had launched a torpedo salvo to apparently minimal effect. He watched the carnage on his video feed. He smiled as he saw the enemy lines buckle.
Then a massive heat signature shot out from the enemy heavy cruiser that had been thought to be crippled. It streaked towards the Liberty.
Earlier
The still-functional among the interceptor flight burned hard for the melee unfolding before their eyes. They crashed into the enemy, joining the fray. In the CIC of the Samar, Tim frantically shouted orders in a desperate attempt to bring some semblance of order to the chaos. Over his squadron's comm network, the static-heavy voice of Lieutenant Colonel Foswell, Tim's squad leader, tried to do the same for his unit. Tim watched the Salamis blink out on the tactical display, and saw the video feed as she went up in a series of explosions. Colonel Foswell's voice was cut short as his ship died. Salamis' partner Wildfire charged at the frigate that had killed her sister, ripping it to shreds with a deluge of kinetic firepower typical of a Lightning class. She was bisected by a destroyer's spinal mount as she finished off her foe.
Tim sprang into action. "Cyclone, you still with me?"
"Always, sir!" Major Iwasaki's voice came out over the ship-to-ship communications.
"I'm making a run on that destroyer, you're herding cats with me!" Tim shouted through the static.
"On it!"
Tim shouted his orders to the CIC. "Take us in on that destroyer!"
"All power to forward emitters, weapons hot! We're herding cats, let's go, people!" Lisa shouted out.
Crewmen scrambled and tapped away at their terminals. The destroyer was lit up as a target on the tactical display.
"Pour it on him, we hit high, Cyclone hits low." Tim ordered.
Cyclone burned hard, shooting ahead of her sister in a downward arc. Samar charged straight ahead and poured all of her fire into a vector aiming directly above the destroyer, seemingly firing at nothing. At the same time, Cyclone came up hard towards its belly, shooting straight at her target. Her surprising firepower forced the destroyer to back off, moving up, up, up...straight into Samar's cone of fire. The destroyer's barriers sputtered under the barrage of secondary gunfire, and three good hits in quick succession from the spinal mount barrage struck it. The first two dropped its barriers, the last struck it dead on.
Cyclone drifted on her forward vector beyond the destroyer. Samar burned up and over her prey, drifting laterally, her spinal mount facing down towards her prey. Tim watched on his video feed as the destroyer's engine's struggled to reactivate.
"Put one through her engine block, just to be sure." he ordered.
The round streaked out and burst clear through the rearmost section of the ship, silencing its engines. She wouldn't be following anyone now.
The sensors tech suddenly called out. "Sir? I've got some weird heat signatures coming from that heavy cruiser."
"Put it on my screen." he said. He examined it, then spoke again. "What exactly am I looking at, Astronaut?"
"Lot's of heat buildup. I figured it's just leftovers from the nukes or something, but it's all centered around the main gun." the tech said.
Tim looked closer at the readings, then he began shouting orders. "Burn for that Heavy cruiser, now!"
Samar's engines burned as brightly as they could, and the ever-faithful ship charged. Perhaps some spirit of the USS Johnston and USS Samuel B. Roberts had been carried over with her from the battle that was her namesake, as she found herself doing exactly what those faithful escorts had done over a century ago: making a headlong charge at an enemy that outclassed her in every way, all to protect her charges.
"Sir, what's going on?" Lisa asked with concern.
"Later." Tim said as he keyed the ship-to-ship comm. "Cyclone, the heavy cruiser's gonna make an overcharge shot on the Liberty! Samar will stop her, just keep everything else off of us."
Iwasaki's unquestioning answer was a credit to her professionalism. "Understood, sir." Cyclone maneuvered to face down the flotilla of straggling enemy ships that had seen Samar shoot out towards their flagship and moved to assist. Within her own CIC, Major Iwasaki looked at her tactical display. They've got my baby outnumbered four to one. She took a few moments to look around at her ship, and the people on it. She placed a hand on her armrest. Alright girl, one last party. She sat up straight and cracked her knuckles.
"Alright people, all power to forward emitters. Let's drop some iron on these sons of bitches!"
A ragged cheer went out through the CIC, and Cyclone unleashed a deluge of fire and iron on her enemies.
Samar burned at maximum acceleration towards the heavy cruiser, ducking and weaving through the barrage of its secondary cannons. Slowly, ponderously, it burned its few still functioning maneuvering thrusters as it tried to keep its main gun on target while it charged. Tim cursed under his breath as he watched the heat buildup on the Heavy Cruiser's signature. Crazy bastard's gonna kill his whole crew! He thought with disgust. An overcharge shot from the main gun was a known, if rarely used tactic. It involved, essentially, dumping every ounce of power into the main gun and then shooting it with a muzzle velocity far beyond its specifications. On a ship the size of the heavy cruiser, a shot like that would hit harder than a dreadnought round, though it would likely completely total the ship. A shot like that would completely destroy the Liberty, and likely swing the battle back in favor of the batarians. Every rescued slave, every life lost, it would all be for nothing if that heavy cruiser landed the shot.
The Samar came on, and secondary cannon rounds slammed against its barriers. At this velocity, they hit hard.
"It's ripping us apart! We don't have anything that can cut through its shields and kill it quick enough." Lisa shouted out to Tim.
"We don't need to kill it, we just need to make it miss!" Tim shouted back. He pressed a few buttons on his terminal, and a control display appeared. The pilot turned to look at him.
"Sir?" he asked with concern.
"Not enough time to explain! Sound brace!"
"Oh, you've gotta be-" Lisa started in frustration. She cut herself off and keyed the intercom. "BRACE! BRACE! BRACE!"
Tim maneuvered the ship. He was not prodigy pilot, but he could steer a ship. This was the dumbest, most hair-brained idea he'd ever had. And coming from him, that said a lot. The distance to the heavy cruiser shrunk alarmingly fast. He flipped Samar on her side, then angled her up. She came on perpendicular to the cruiser. He spent a few more moments adjusting his aim, then he flicked on auto-pilot and started praying.
The Samar came in hard, her barriers failing and her hull being scorched by a cruiser-grade GARDIAN array. She came for the cruiser...and missed. Well, mostly. Tim wasn't one for Kamikazes. Samar's port radiator wing slammed into the frontal section of the ship, instantly shattering into a million pieces. The cruiser's main gun fired its overcharged shot at the same instant Samar struck, the force of an energy release far in excess of anything it was designed for sent cascading explosions through the cruiser, turning it into a burned out husk. Samar went spinning end over end away.
Onatheer watched for the split second it took the massively overcharged hunk of metal to reach the Liberty...and then miss by less then a kilometer. After a stunned moment that produced a brief lull in the battle, General Diaz regained his senses.
"Rip them to shreds!" he roared over the entire fleet's battlenet. The allied fleet attack with a renewed vigor.
Cyclone weaved and danced its way through its foes, an ocean of metal flying through the air, one that only the stunted little ship seemed to know how to navigate. Her four attackers struggled to keep a bead on her even as they ducked and weaved through the onslaught. Another barrage of batarian rounds battered against Cyclone's exhausted barriers, and they fell for the third time this fight. Unusually heavy armor kept her in one piece as secondary cannon rounds tore ugly gashes in her hull. She danced around the spinal mount rounds, far too agile to be struck by the weapons' poor traversability. She danced through the iron hail, and glowed bluish purple as her barriers came back up once again.
In the Cyclone's CIC, Major Iwasaki was in her element. Orders came from her lips almost without her input and astronauts rushed to follow them. She was born to command a starship, she'd always believed that. Here, in the midst of combat, she proved it, as her well-honed instincts guided the faithful ship through the barrage. The ship had been maneuvering in a rough circle, almost like its namesake. However, the small battle had drifted its way back towards the main fight. When the renewed allied offensive began, a trio of interceptors rushed to join Cyclone. The brave ship joined the charge and the batarian frigates were outmaneuvered and taken down. Cyclone charged headlong towards one of them during the fight, destroying it in a fireball. The ship's scarred, battered hull made clanking and clattering noises as debris bounced off of it.
The Major sagged into her chair and breathed normally for the first time in what felt like hours.
She reached out and patted the bulkhead. "You did good, girl. You kept us all safe."
The stricken Samar's computer desperately burned its few remaining maneuvering thrusters in an effort to halt the ship's spin. Tim, like most of the crew, had blacked out from the G-forces. He came to with a pounding headache. Blearily, he looked at the tactical display and breathed a little steadier as he saw Liberty's IFF broadcasting loud and clear. Tim laid his head back in his chair and closed his eyes.
By God, we've actually done it. It's over, we pulled it off. Somehow.
With the backbone of their fleet broken, the remaining batarians quickly surrendered. Hours later, the civilian fleet had shown up and begun assisting in rescue efforts. Tim laid in a hospital bed, waiting for a clean bill of health from the medical staff. He had a sort of melancholy feeling about him. Samar could not be salvaged. The ship's back had been broken from the impact. Yet, she'd still held together in one piece, saving her crew in her final act.
Tim mourned his lost crew and his lost ship, but he took some grim satisfaction in what their deaths had brought. Thirty thousand. Give or take. That's how many people there were who would walk free because of this operation. He didn't know what, if anything, this mission had actually accomplished from a strategic point of view. But for thirty thousand people, it was the most important mission of the war.
Hey all! That's the end of the "Spartacus" arc. It was a little delayed due to me working on finishing my original sci-fi story ("To Fight the Dark" is the name. Look it up on royal road if you're interested!), so apologies for that. The next phase of this story will be bringing the focus back to the war itself rather than one specific operation. I look forward to showing you everything I have in store!
