Elevator doors slid open, and Star Marshal Angelica Planta strode out of the elevator and made her way towards the flag bridge. Shortly after the Space Force had received the written orders from the Secretary General to engage the batarian fleet, Marshal Planta had taken her shuttle to the flagship of the Space Force, the Olympus Mons. Alien observers would regard it as a dreadnought-class of ship, albeit a senselessly large one. She had the same basic design anatomy that most human warships did (though substantially fatter), a vaguely spindle shape, like two blunted cones of unequal size fused together at the base. Most of her weapons were on the front section of the ship, including her enormous spinal mount, while her engines and massive array of short, wide radiators lay in the back section of the ship, hiding behind the profile of the front section.

As Planta entered the flag bridge, her Quarian military observer Captain Tenza vas Lo-Rinte greeted her. "Good to see you, Star Marshal."

Planta smiled at him. "You as well, Captain." She had been impressed by the alien, she had to admit. He had been offered the chance to wait out this incredibly risky operation on Earth, but he had insisted on coming anyway.

Here's hoping he doesn't regret it.

"So, Captain, any thoughts on our odds?" she asked quietly.

The alien shrugged. "Better than some would think, worse than most would hope."

She raised her eyebrows. "Better? I suppose most people think our chances are zero, so any opinion that thinks it's at least possible could technically be considered 'better'. "

He nodded. "Fair enough. For the record, I think your odds are better than just 'possible.' I wouldn't be here if I didn't, if you'll pardon me for saying. I'm not that brave."

She gave him a lopsided grin. "I suppose that counts as a vote of confidence, after a fashion."

He nodded again sagely. "It's what I'm here for." She couldn't see his amused smile, but she could certainly hear it.

He turned to her. "I'm serious. You have legitimate advantages, that's not just wishful thinking. Almost every significant engagement in this war has been a total victory for your side. Which means few if any batarian officers have actually been beaten by a significant formation of human ships and been able to live to tell the tale. They have effectively zero experience fighting more than a handful of human ships at a time."

"And we have zero experience fighting anyone in a large scale fleet battle, batarian or otherwise." Plant countered. "This is the single largest assembling of ships in the history of human space flight. We've never fought at this scale before."

Tenza nodded. "Fair enough, but I'd argue that can be as much of an advantage as a disadvantage. On the one hand, you're understanding of how your enemy will fight has all been learned out of a book. On the other hand, you lack the biases and assumptions that come with two thousand years of galactic naval history to inform your decisions. Like I said, your odds are better than most would think."

Planta could only shrug. "I suppose we'll find out how true that is soon, one way or another."

She turned to her flag bride crew. "Tell Captain Hutton to bring this big tub of ours out of orbit. The fleet is moving out."

The exhilaration that came with anticipating the coming fight mixed with the crushing anvil of dread that came with imagining what would happen if she failed.


March 11th, 2090

Star Marshal Planta stared at her tactical display. Thirty-three hundred heat signatures, roughly three thousand of which had warship-grade emissions. It seems, for once, Space Force intelligence had been right on the money. Yet, Planta couldn't find it in herself to be grateful. She'd wanted them to be wrong, badly. But the wants of Angelica Planta were not something the universe felt the need to take into consideration, it seemed. The star system was a puny white dwarf system, orbited by nothing except asteroids, dwarf planets, and a batarian war fleet.

Planta looked at the rapidly expanding sphere on the tactical display, a simulation by Olympus Mons' computer depicting the advance of the fleet's light emissions. When the enemy detected the light, the human fleet would be committed. Effectively every ship in the Space Force was here. If they lost, humanity was finished, there was nothing left to fight with. Planta eyed the timer as it ticked down. When it reached zero, it was do or die. A small, treacherous part of her mind was tempted to order a retreat. There was still time to try and make an escape. Not much, but enough that the losses wouldn't be unmanageable.

Planta ruthlessly suppressed the pointless fantasy, and watched the seconds tick by.


When the batarians detected the human fleet, they scrambled into action, burning hard on an intercept course towards the oncoming humans. Before long, the two fleets were maneuvering into battle formations. While moderate by historical standards, this was still a large fleet action with over four thousand ships engaged in it. Fleet actions on this scale had to be a carefully coordinated affair. If things devolved into a disorganized melee fight, it would mean unsustainable casualties, even for the victor. So, the slaughter would remain a relatively orderly one, at least until one side had a decisive enough advantage to full-commit to a headlong charge that would shatter the enemy's formation and scatter them in a route. By all conventional metrics, the fleet which was mostly likely to do that was the batarians'.

It was Planta's job to make sure that didn't happen.

"Empty all authorized silos, missiles are to loiter." Planta ordered.

Almost one thousand ships opened their silos thousands of missiles were spat out into the void. Out of pods along her dorsal and ventral spine, Olympus Mons launched missiles of her own that joined the rest. They maneuvered and burned, grouping together into flights, then they burned as far away from the fleet as their tactical officers had dared to send them, before cutting their engines and drifting. Waiting.

"All ships are to prepare to receive the enemy." Planta ordered.


Lord-Admiral Hetfaj Lemikettziy observed his foe with an experienced eye. To say the human fleet's appearance hadn't surprised him would be a lie. He had most certainly not expected them to try and jump him at his staging ground, though he had taken precautions against it, which put him a cut above the rest. Most of his peers seemed to have convinced themselves that the humans would simply roll over and die against their obviously superior enemy. The Lord Admiral believed that was possible, certainly, but he was humble enough (by batarian aristocrat standards) to admit that he was capable of being wrong. And here was proof of that, drifting before him.

His gaze travelled over the human formation. Not a single ship heavier than a standard cruiser could be found there, to his astonishment. With the obvious exception of their massive command ship.

I suppose we can see where all of the money that would have gone into dreadnoughts went instead.

Its existence annoyed him. Both because it was such a pointless monument to frivolous waste (who needs a dreadnought that big, after all?) and because he couldn't figure out what the humans knew that he didn't. Either they were as reckless and stupid as his less cautious peers believed, or their was more to the huge ship than could be seen at first glance.

What gave him less pause was the swarm of missiles drifting a good distance from their host ships. While committing to it at such a scale was far from common, long range guided missiles were hardly a complete unknown to him. It was a very foreign and very expensive way to fight, but considering how many small scouting and raiding formations he had lost, it did the job well enough.

His gaze travelled over the whole of the enemy forces, taking them in. Simple observation of the enemy fleet provided the clues necessary to form the obvious conclusion that any seasoned combatant would make. His enemy was outnumbered three to one and outgunned by an even worse margin. In a gunnery battle, Hetfaj would win. So, his enemy would seek to avoid a sustained exchange of kinetic fire at any cost. Their plan was obvious. Lure him in, disrupt his formation, and defeat him in detail. The obvious counter would be to maintain his formation for as long as possible.

The missiles were the wrench in the works. The more he looked at them, the more annoyed he got. Even if his fleet did everything right, casualties would not be negligible. That was just the nature of the weapons. He was hardly concerned with the losses themselves, of course. His men were batarian. They knew victory did not come without sacrifice. What irked him was the fact that so many brave men would die not because of the enemy's tactics and valor, but because they'd brought more expensive toys.

He took some small solace in the no doubt enormous logistical burden the weapons placed on his enemy. Even leaving aside the obvious factor of cost, the simple fact was that, even if by some miracle they won, his enemy would be forced to fall back and rearm. Meanwhile, when his own fleet was victorious, they would simply press on to the enemy's home world and bring it to its knees, their smaller logistical profiling enabled it. The Lord-Admiral spared the enemy fleet a final glance, then gave his order.

"All ships are to advance upon the enemy."


The Lord-Admiral cursed as one of his cruisers was bisected by a well-placed shot from the human superdreadnought. The enormous ship's spinal mount was a terror. His own dreadnought wasn't even in range yet. That level of muzzle velocity was obscene.

The accursed thing must at least run three quarters the length of the ship's length, if not more!

He made a considerable effort to calm himself and think rationally. It was a terror weapon, nothing more. It was frightening for the lesser ships, to be so totally helpless against the terrible weapon. But, rationally speaking, it was only one gun. One gun with far less advanced heat management than its foes, judging by the way it laboriously radiated its waste heat away as it primed another shot.

Four shots, maybe five. Six at the absolute most. If every one of them hits, that's effectively six guaranteed kills. Against three thousand total. A terror weapon, but also a wasteful one.

He grinned with a row of brutal teeth. Soon it would be the humans facing terror. Because his ships would get in range first.


Star Marshal Planta watched the enemy formation. Tight, (by the standards of space) with overlapping point defense engagement envelopes. The ideal formation to take for defending against guided munitions attacks. Captain Tenza shrugged.

"I suppose hoping the enemy would be blind would be a bit too much to ask on our part."

Planta gave her best attempt at a smile, and returned her attention to the battle. Her heart sank as the vastly superior Batarian gun battery came into range. A horrifying wall of iron came sailing into the human formation, who did their best to dodge. The human formation was loose, with plenty of room to dodge, but still tight enough that coordinated fire would be useful. The batarians loitered at range, content to let their superior firepower win the day.

"All ships will make a fighting advance in formation towards the enemy." It simply wasn't possible to win a gunnery duel with the enemy at range, so she had to advance and get her own ships in range.

The human fleet advanced, firing from outside optimal range to cover themselves. The batarians stood their ground, but made no significant advances. Planta grimaced. So many lives would be lost, for a ruse.

All throughout the human fleet, the price was being paid. The batarian gunnery was not volley fire. They focused down enemy ships, their lighter ships' weapons helped to bring the shields down, while the heavier ships' spinal mounts landed the killing blow. Planta watched as a cruiser blinked out on the tactical display. Hundreds of lives vaporized, or sucked out into vacuum. Thousands more lives devastated by loss, when the fallen astronauts' families and friends. The cycle repeated throughout the fleet, each light blinking out representing hundreds of deaths and a wave of sorrow that would one day soon crash into their loved ones. Planta knew it was necessary, of course. Intellectually, at least. Emotionally, she also knew that a part of her was going to die here. Even if she survived, that part would be left behind with the other sacrifices.

She composed herself, laboriously. "Transmit the signal."

A wordless signal was transmitted throughout the fleet from the command ship, and the human ships began a ragged and uncoordinated retreat.


The Lord-Admiral almost laughed out loud.

Yes, humans, it certainly looks like the beginnings of a route, doesn't it? Ah, well, I suppose there's no point not playing along.

"All ships save for the flag squadron are to give chase while maintaining the current formation." His dreadnought command ship and heavy cruisers hung back while the rest of the fleet pressed forward.

The Lord-Admiral grinned again. The poor fools were finished.

That's right, you arrogant alien filth. You're not fighting idiotic pirates or undisciplined nobles now. This is the Hegemony Navy, and you will pay the price for underestimating us.


Planta watched the display. Tenza swore in Kheelish. He looked at Planta.

"He isn't falling for it."

Planta nodded. "No, he isn't. But we're committed now. Send the second signal." She ordered the comms officer.

The human fleet maneuvered, morphing from a battle line into a fist, a spear that burned hard to stab into the enemy. It was blunted by the wall of the batarian fleet. Planta could only watch. This part of the plan was up to the generals in command of her formations. They pressed the attack, barely disrupting the batarian's formation.


Won't be long now. The Lord-Admiral thought, eyeing the missiles. Eventually, the enemy commander would be forced to - there it is.

The human ship's surprisingly robust (even for her size) sensors suite began sweeping the forward batarian formation. Feeding targeting data to her waiting missiles, no doubt. He grimaced as another shot from its spinal mount vaporized a destroyer. It was one gun, but what a gun it was. Were he a more foolishly brave sort of man, he might have engaged it in a spinal mount duel with his own dreadnought, but he had eyes. He'd be ripped apart from superior range in minutes.

"Lord-Admiral, the enemy guided weapons are on the move!" His sensors officer shouted.

The Lord-Admiral nodded. "We will absorb the best they have, and when it inevitably proves insufficient, we will bury them in iron."

His officers shouted an approving war cry.


The swarm of missiles fell upon the batarian fleet. Against the overwhelming and overlapping point defenses, they fell by the score. But not all of them. The King-class missiles, surrounded by the protective formation of the far lesser Prince-class missiles, began to detonate. Photons from blinding flashes were sent through the void as scores of bomb-pumped lasers pierced through their target like nuclear spears. Where Kings proved insufficient to fell an enemy, the lances of fire from the nuclear shape charge warheads of the Princes finished the job.

Batarian ships were destroyed and crippled in large numbers...but not large enough.


The Lord-Admiral frowned as he watched the missiles hit their targets. These losses were...not insubstantial. Were it not for his friends in High Command, he might even start getting worried. The human missiles tore through his formations, singling out the ships of his commodores and flight leaders, focusing down the heavier ships of the formation. It extracted a terrible toll, to be sure. Perhaps he'd been too hasty to judge the logic of the human flagship. It was still obscenely large and expensive, but if its robust sensor suit could boost the performance of its assets to this degree, he may very well find himself recommending a ship of its type be considered by the Naval Procurement Board. At a more sensible size, of course

The price in batarian blood had returned tremendous value. The humans had given the batarian fleet a nasty cut...but they were totally at their enemy's mercy, now. The human ships had tried to hastily regroup and press the advantage their missiles had given them, but they just couldn't regain cohesion fast enough. They began to crumble once again.

Time for the killing blow.

"The flag squadron is to advance and engage the enemy. All wings are to deploy and engage at their commanders' discretion."

The heavy cruisers and dreadnought command ship of the flag squadron fired their thrusters and charged. From their hanger bays several formations of fighters scrambled out and hurdled towards the crumbling lines of the enemy.


Between the incoming fighters, the heavy ships moving into firing range, and the still very numerous remaining lighter elements of the batarian fleet, it was hard to decide which disaster warranted the most attention. Captain Tenza looked at Star Marshal Planta. The humans had no fighters of their own, he had been surprised to learn when he first started this job, but they had been working on an answer to enemy fighters. The question was when Planta would use it. The answer would turn out to be "immediately".

"Inform Colonel Li that he is free to engage incoming parasite craft at his discretion."

Almost every interceptor class ship in the Space Force had been rounded up into a squadron and placed under the tactical command of Colonel Li (much to his chagrin). Like Olympus Mons and her eight escorting support ships, they had lingered in the back of the formation in reserve. Colonel Li relayed his orders, and the interceptors broke off into flights of two, moving to engage the oncoming fighters. Strikecraft, they were not, but they were the fastest and most maneuverable ships at the Space Force's disposal, and they had generous point defenses.

The main formation of human ships, crumbling for some time now, began to buckle. It looked as though it may very well turn into a full route. Captain Tenza eyed the Star Marshal again, whose face might as well have been carved into stone.

"Inform Colonel Nadar that he is to bring Olympus Mons and her escorts forward."

Her orders were relayed, and the huge ship surged forward, her support ships close behind.


The Lord-Admiral snarled in triumph. "Look, the enemy's desperation is apparent. They've committed their command ship. One final effort. Break them."

The heavy ships poured out a terrible fusillade of heavy spinal mount rounds that tore into the enemy formation. The enemy command ship's barrier absorbed them, its no doubt enormous reactor giving it tremendously sturdy barriers. Even the presence of their command ship didn't seem to bolster the humans' morale, and they continued retreating.

"Pursue! This is their last gasp." The Lord-Admiral ordered.


"Inform Colonel Nadar that he is free to engage at his discretion." Star Marshal Planta ordered.

The ordered was relayed down to the command bridge, and Colonel Nadar grinned. "Now you're speaking my language, ma'am! Major?" He said two his XO, Major Greene.

They went over to a console neither of them had ever used in a real battle.

"CO is ready. XO?" Colonel Nadar said.

"XO is ready." Major Greene said.

They both input their authorization codes, then withdrew the almost comically antiquated metal keys from their persons and placed them into the console's triggers.

"Begin countdown." Colonel Nadar ordered.


The Lord-Admiral narrowed his eyes at the human command ship. It had stopped cold behind its retreating lines. He couldn't decipher its purpose. It hadn't fired its spinal mount in a suspiciously long time. His eyes narrowed even further as the ship did a sensors sweep of his entire fleet.

One last trick up their sleeve?

It had an awful lot of mass for such a relatively lightly-armed ship. It's secondary cannon battery was unimpressive, but the (by usual dreadnought standards) excessive GARDIAN laser bank had seemed to make its purpose clear: A heavily protected command and control ship, with a super heavy mass driver for supportive long range fire. The point defenses were still somewhat confusing, now that he thought of them again. Humans had no fighters, had never encountered them before first contact.

So what did they imagine they'd need such heavy defenses to protect themselves from when they had designed this ship?

"Sir, enemy ship is expanding its barriers." His sensors officer informed him.

Well, a shield ship, eh? That's a new one. ...No, that can't be right. If its goal was to serve as a mobile shield generator, then it would have activated before they were on the cusp of total defeat.

"How far are they extending them?" he asked.

"Not especially far. One or two kilometers." The sensors officer sounded as perplexed as he was. Then, his expression abruptly changed.

"Sir, it's..."

"What, what is it?"

"...It's opening up."

"Visual feed, maximum magnification." he ordered.

It appeared onscreen. At the large crease where the two unequal haves of the sip met and created the armored profile that protected its engine section, the huge command ship began to come apart. In four immense sections, its armored plating began to fold out. To an observer looking at the sight from the rear section of its ship, facing its engine, it would look almost like a flower blooming.

On the sensors display, dozens of contacts began appearing, then scores, then hundreds, all of them rapidly shooting out from the now exposed internals of the enormous craft. The escorting supports ships around the command ship abruptly jettisoned their bulkheads and began spitting out thousands of contacts of their own.

A missile swarm, nearly the size of the one launched by the entire fleet before. The Lord-Admirals fleets were overextended in their pursuit, his heavy ships had moved into engagement range, his fighters were all dueling with the strange hyper-maneuverable patrol frigates.

The enemy had been waiting for this moment from the start.


Alien observers, the Lord-Admiral included, would call the Olympus Mons a dreadnought, or perhaps a "superdreadnought" if they felt its size put it into a class of its own. However, the United Nations Space Force does not call its class of warship a dreadnought. The ship's administrative designation was "AS-01".

"AS", of course, standing for "Arsenal Ship"

Out of its cavernous internal silo, hundreds of King-class missiles were spat out. It had been armed for this exact moment, forgoing any lighter missiles in favor of packing in more of the heavier classes, relying on the eight converted freighters it had brought with to provide Prince-class support. After it had been emptied of kings, it spat out twelve enormous (by missile standards) Emperor-class missiles. It was a rare missile, as they were ruinously expensive, and there was precisely one class of ship in the Space Force big enough to carry them in any meaningful numbers. They were effectively the less cost-effective but far, far more powerful versions of their relatives, the King-class. They were, arguably, the most powerful weapons system deployed by the Space Force. If they reached their engagement range, the target would die. Regardless of what class of ship it was. And they were very good at reaching their engagement range.

They demonstrated this when they activated their onboard mass effect field generators and fired their fusion drives. They streaked streaked out from the main missile formation, loitering well beyond the accuracy of enemy weapons, waiting for the order. The swarm of kings and princes rapidly danced into formations and sped out towards their targets in the primary enemy formation. A detachment of prince missiles broke off, burning hard for the batarian fleet's flag squadron.


"Tell all wings to disengage and move to intercept the incoming missiles!" The Lord-Admiral roared.

He was effectively ordering most of his fighters to their deaths, as disengaging like that came at a price, but it was a price that must be payed. The flag squadron. If he could save the flag squadron, then total disaster might be diverted. The humans had taken a beating, they had no true answer for his heavy cruisers, save for their command ship's spinal mount. If he could salvage them, then...

He watched as the flight of missiles closed in on the sensors display. Behind them, a dozen larger contacts flew in as well. His formation of heavy cruisers fired every gun and laser at the oncoming swarm, but it simply wasn't enough. The Emperors reached their detonation range, well beyond any GARDIAN system's engagement envelope. The growing wreckage field was illuminated by a small sun for a brief few seconds as the Emperors detonated in quick succession. The terrible bomb-pumped lasers melted through the hulls like butter. The raw energy of the lasers was so oppressive that almost everyone aboard each ship died near instantaneously, the pressurized internal environment rapidly being cooked from the inside out by the beams.

The command dreadnought was no exception, though its sheer size allowed for some heavily irradiated survivors at the fringes of the ship, the Lord-Admiral was not one of them. In a flash, he had become part of the core of molten slag that now made up the internal section of the dreadnought.

Throughout the battle space, hundreds more batarian ships were meeting similar fates, while the regrouped (if they'd ever truly been routing at all) humans fell upon them like predators.


The interceptors returned to the formation of survivors clustering near the debris field the battle had created. They had pursued the fleeing enemy survivors, expending their missiles, but Marshal Planta had stopped them short after that. It wouldn't do for the enemy to be reminded that, even after their devastating losses, they still outnumber the human fleet. Better to let them hightail it out of the system.

The Star Marshal sat in her quarters, Captain Tenza joining her for a "drink" which consisted of him sucking at his fluids straw while she sipped disinterestedly at a seltzer from the cafeteria.

"You should be commended. You pulled it off. This is the greatest military victory in centuries, if not millennia." Captain Tenza said.

The Star Marshal sipped at her seltzer, grunting noncommittally.

Tenza raised an eyebrow, not that his companion would notice, and decided to probe further. "You disagree, I take it."

The Star Marshal shook her head. "No, we won. No one could deny that. The immediate threat to Earth has been neutralized. But it cost us a third of our fleet and a quarter of the Space Force's total personnel to do it. One more "victory" like this, and we're finished."

She looked at the Captain, and for the first time since he'd met her, she had genuine fear in her eyes. "We're going to lose, Tenza."

It was the elephant in the room, that humanity didn't want to address. They had as much fighting spirit as any of the other so-called "martial races" liked to believe they had, of that Tenza was certain. But, at the end of the day, they were outnumbered 20 to 1 at the strategic level. The only thing holding the Batarians back is the threat of Council intervention, which only recedes more and more by the day.

"We can't do it alone Tenza, it's just not possible. The math doesn't work."

He sighed. "I know, believe me. But you've accomplished more than defending yourself with this battle. You've shown the galaxy that you can win battles. And if you can do that, then that means, with enough resources, you can win the war, too."

Planta shook her head. "Who's going to give them to us? Your people?"

Tenza winced beneath his mask. "There are very strong supporters of your people in the fleet, I'm one of them, but...we are so few. To commit ourselves totally to an alien war, especially one with odds like these...it's-"

Planta raised her hands. "No, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have taken it out on you."

Tenza looked at his hands. "I can't promise you that we'll help, but I can promise you that this victory will be plastered all over the extranet by the end of the week, or I'm going to start rupturing suits at the fleet until it is."

Planta smiled.

Tenaza put his hand on her shoulder. "I don't know who, but someone is going to see this victory for the oppurtunity it presents. The Batarians have been the boogeymen since they left the Citadel. No one bothered to stand up to them, so they just kept winning. This is the first time they've been truly, utterly, beaten since they left. Not embarrased, like in your Spartacus operation. Beaten. That's going to mean a lot, to some people. People with far more influence than me."

Planta looked down at the table. She hoped he was right, she really did. But until the cavalry came to the rescue, humanity was on its own.