Chapter 15

Guilherme Cavalcanti stood at the front of the large rectangular, two-story room, his hands gripping the edge of the podium in front of him so no one could see his shaking hands. In front of him were over a thousand occupied desks on a tiered platform that was semicircular in shape and faced the raised rostrum where he stood. On all four sides of the room's second level, a visitor's gallery, packed with onlookers, overlooked the floor.

"I stand before you all today, on what should have been a day of celebration for the Systems Alliance. A week ago, across every world and every nation that is a part of the Alliance, the people cast their votes and for the first time in Systems Alliance history there are elected representatives. The Members of Parliament, chosen by the people, sit within this room for their first meeting and I, also elected by the people on that same day, stand here in my first official act as President to welcome you, and to welcome whom you select as the new Prime Minister. Except there is no joy to be had today because for the second time in nineteen months, one of our worlds is being attacked by an alien species."

Murmurs broke out amongst the room. Up in the gallery were members of the press, government officials from member nations, and the ninety-four newly appointed Senators. On the floor sat the recently elected Members of Parliament, who sat together based on their political parties, with the 22.3% of the MPs who represented the Social Labor Alliance sitting front and center. To the front left were the 18.8% who represented the Free People's Party, and to the front right were the 14.9% who represented the Lords of Sol.

The fourth largest party, who sat behind the Lords of Sol, was surprisingly the Federalist Movement at 11.2%. They were a party of law and order who believed in a strong police force with harsh sentencing. They felt that if the Systems Alliance was to have any say in the galactic community they found themselves in they would need a strong military with a robust defense budget. They believed in supply-side economics - lowering taxes on all, decreasing regulation, and allowing free trade. The Federalist Movement believed that social issues should be up to the member states to decide and that the SA should only handle things like international trade, the military, and foreign policy.

The fifth largest party, another surprise who sat behind the Free People's Party, was the Bull Moose at 9.7%. They were big proponents of a form of direct democracy; recall elections for citizens to remove an elected official before the end of their term, referendums so citizens may decide on a law by popular vote, and initiatives so citizens may propose a law by petition. They felt that like the MPs, the Senators should be elected by popular vote of the nations they represent and not selected by the governments of those nations. The Bull Moose believed the government should offer limited social protections in education, healthcare, welfare, and worker rights. They believed in a progressive tax system on individuals and businesses, and a strong military to defend its people.

The Quaestus Party, that polls had shown as the fourth ranked party before the election, was the ninth most represented party in Parliament and, outside of the top 5, also found themselves behind the Colonial Coalition, the Sol Socialist, and Terra Firma. Controversy surrounded the party when rumors came out that some of the powerful corporations that supported the Quaestus Party had tried to lean on their workers to vote for the party, which might have worked during polling but failed in the elections themselves.

"Even as we are gathered here today, our military rushes to Terra Nova, but this won't be the end. We were introduced to the galactic community by our ships being blown up and Shanxi being occupied, and though we have strived to find our place in this community with friendship, it appears not all greet us with the same."

His party, the Social Labor Alliance, had been elected on a platform of a moderate military budget with heavy oversight. It wasn't that they didn't want the Systems Alliance to have a strong and powerful military, they just didn't trust the defense contractors not to be taking advantage of their contracts to skim money by overpaying for parts and material from sister companies, and giving huge bonuses to executives. By limiting how much the contractors took advantage of the contracts, more money given to them by the government and earmarked for new ships and weapons would actually go towards that goal, but that also meant that without so much being skimmed off the top, less needed to be given to begin with.

But things had changed in the past 24 hours, and he, along with the other leaders of the party, realized that if humanity was going to survive, they couldn't do so without a large and powerful military force and they needed it to get there as soon as possible. He just hoped those who voted for them didn't see such a major change in policy as a betrayal.

"That is why I stand up here, in this speech meant to welcome you all here today, instead imploring that in some of your first acts you give the Systems Alliance the ability to defend humanity - money, ships, marines, weapons. We need it all and we need it soon because we were foolish enough to need to learn this lesson a second time, that the galaxy is not a friendly place."

"Another missile incoming!"

"Jackson, take it down!"

Private First Class Jackson hefted the Pilum man-portable surface-to-air launcher on his shoulder, checked to make sure no one was behind him, and leaned slightly backwards, careful not to lean too far so the seventy-five pounds of weaponry didn't send him toppling onto his ass. At first he couldn't see the missile that was coming down on them from high orbit but as the seconds ticked by it became a speck in the sky that grew larger every millisecond. The targeting system of the MANPAD recognized the missile and clicked a few times to indicate it was attempting to get a lock, before giving a positive beep. He pulled the trigger and the Pilum missile rocketed from the launcher and streaked up to intercept the missile aimed at them.

The few hours of the invasion had been a fucking nightmare. After dozens of the batarian transports and gunships had been shot out of the air, a barrage of missiles had been fired from the enemy ships in orbit. The GTS and AA batteries had been directed to shoot down the incoming missiles, but there were too many and despite shooting down hundreds of missiles, soon all of the planet's air defense systems were slag.

Thousands of batarians had landed, and the defenders did their best to draw them to their fixed locations. They had used the vehicles, the cougars, rhinos, and grizzlies, to act as bait to the forces that had landed outside of the city and lure them to the government buildings they had dug in at. Last thing they needed was lage forces of invaders exploring the areas outside the city and stumbling upon the mine shaft half of the planet's population was hiding in.

It had worked, maybe a little too well, as they found themselves under assault by thousands of heavily armored batarians. The ambush teams had all been eliminated, and the snipers had been taken out by enemy gunships. Missile attacks from orbit had blown up most of the defenses, and the defenders.

Colonel Mosbey didn't know about the defenses of the south pole but for the north pole there were only thirty left of the few hundred he had started with.

The incoming missile exploded after being intercepted.

"I've got one Pilum left," Jackson stated. "They send two more shots at us, and we're dead."

"Son, we've been dead since they entered the system," Colonel Mosbey answered, running a hand down his face in exhaustion. "All we can do is keep delaying their forces as long as possible to keep them from finding the civilians."

The faces that stared back at him matched his exhaustion, but they all had a look of resolve too. They all understood their lives wee going to end today, but they were fighting for a reason.

Even though all their ground vehicles and airships had been destroyed within the first hour of the fight, after their defensive position had been blown to shit, they had tried to stay mobile. They moved from rubble pile to rubble pile, using their diminishing ammo to put up as fierce of a resistance as they could.

"Contacts!"

Bullets ripped through the air, and one of the men was riddled with holes before he could duck behind cover. Colonel Mosbey fired over the piece of concrete he had taken cover behind as another man belly crawled to grab the ammo off the fallen man. They needed to scrounge whatever ammo they could, and some of the men were wielding batarian weapons due to lack of enough human made ammo.

The batarian soldiers came at them in a slowly advancing wave, the flanks spreading out and curving in to try to trap them in a pincer movement. They had escaped such maneuvers before, but they were running out of space and running out of men. This might very well be the end for the defenders of Terra Nova.

"This can't be right," Alec Ryder muttered, staring at the empty space around Arcturus Station.

"Where's the fleet?" Master Sergeant Raul da Silva asked.

"Kirill, is there anything we should be concerned about?"

"Communications are open Lieutenant Commander, let me see what I can find out."

Alec's grip tightened on the controls in front of him. They were still slowing down their speed after entering the system, and every second brought them that much closer to the station. If there was something wrong and they needed to get the hell out of the system, the preference would be sooner rather than later. Especially because he'd need to coordinate with Staff Lieutenant Farran who piloted the SSV Leo Tolstoy.

It only took a minute, which was hours for an AI, before Kirill came back. "The 2nd Fleet is en route to the Asgard System, and half of the 1st Fleet should be arriving shortly to take up position here. Terra Nova is under attack by batarians."

"Holy fuck."

"We're gone for a few weeks and everything goes to shit."

"Alright, let's open up communication with docking and see what they say."

"Arcturus docking command, this is Lieutenant Commander Alec Ryder approaching on vector three-six-point-two-eight-niner. I am piloting a civilian freighter of batarian make and am being escorted by the SSV Leo Tolstoy, do you copy?"

"We read you Lieutenant Commander, bad time to be flying on batarian made ships."

"So I've heard. I need docking for the two ships, and would also request medical personnel as we have seventeen recently freed slaves, including three salarians."

"That can be arranged LC, can you transmit over your military ID and docking code for verification?"

"Kirill, please transmit over the data and let Farran know once we have docking coordinates. Raul, take over real quick, I want to go talk with the rest of the team."

Alec stood from the pilot chair and allowed Raul to take his place. Raul didn't have the training to do more than fly it straight, so Alec would have to take back over before they brought the ship in to dock.

Alec moved back to the cargo area of the ship where he found Sergeant Mira Benedetto, Sergeant Josh Schultz, and Staff Sergeant Henrik Tofvesson all sitting on knocked over crates. They had given the crew quarters over to the slaves to rest in during their journey back to human occupied space.

"I don't like the look on your face LC," Mira said.

"We just got word that Terra Nova is under attack by batarians," Alec explained.

Eyes widened and jaws dropped.

"Fucking hell," Josh muttered.

"2nd Fleet is on their way to lift the siege on the planet but it looks like we're at war with some aliens again."

"Christ man, are we the punching bag of the galaxy?"

"Once we're docked, I'm setting 24 hour liberty but keep the comms open. If we're truly at war, we could get called in at any moment."

Two hours later found Alec in the SAIS comm room that took passing though six checkpoints, where he had to verify his identification at each one; eye scan, voice match, fingerprint scan, and DNA match. He was the only one physically in the room, but he was connected to the Directors of Division 3, who were present in the room as holograms. The five people that stood in front of him were nothing more than silhouettes. The only thing he could tell was that two of them were women and three of them were men.

He didn't understand the shadowy games the Directors played, and why they hid their identities like this. He was sure they had their reasons but he didn't really understand them. The higher ups in most nations' intelligence services were publicly known, and the new Minister of Intelligence for the Systems Alliance, whomever that was, was going to be publicly known as well.

"Were you successful?"

Looked like they were skipping the formalities and getting straight to the meat of the conversation. Didn't matter to Alec since most of the formalities were bullshit anyway.

"Partially. We received the location of three batarian slaver bases nearest to human space. We also intercepted a freighter used by slavers to ship slaves between systems, rescuing fourteen humans and three salarians in the process."

"As you can imagine, things have drastically changed in the past few days. We'll take the information to Alliance Command and see what they would like to do with it."

Fleet Admiral Jon Grissom had wanted to retire shortly after the First Contact War had ended. He had his paperwork ready to go with every I dotted and every T crossed, but when he had gone to hand it in, they had refused to accept it.

Give them some time, they had pleaded. Let them get the political situation with the new galactic community sorted before depriving them of their best military commander. Then th request had been to wait until the partnership with the quarians was hammered out. Until batarian slavers had started raiding human outposts and capturing humans as slaves, and now they might be at war with the Batarian Hegemony. Jon should have realized there would always be something new preventing him from retiring.

And how could he step down in the face of war with a larger and more powerful alien species? What kind of human would he be to abandon his people in their hour of need. So here he found himself, commanding the 2nd Fleet on its way to the Asgard System to kick the batarians' ass.

When word of the batarian fleet in the Asgard System had reached him, he hadn't waited for the approval of Alliance Command. He had volunteered to be the first to lead a ship through the Charon Relay. When the turians had occupied Shanxi, he hadn't waited for approval to lead his fleet to relieve the planet. And now that a similar opportunity had arisen, he wasn't going to wait for approval this time either. Any attempts by command to recall his fleet to its position around Arcturus Station had been ignored. Who knew maybe after this was all over they'd finally let him retire, unless they didn't have the balls to dishonorably discharge him, that is; it would be quite the hit to the military propaganda if they dishonorably discharged their biggest military hero after all.

It hadn't even taken an hour to gather the ships under his command, rearrange the task forces, transfer marines to a handful of specific ships, and have them traveling through the Arcturus Relay to the Exodus Relay in the Utopia System; and doing so right at the start of the first official meeting of the newly elected House of Parliament, literally minutes before the first President in Systems Alliance history gave his speech. The Utopia System was already well guarded by the Migrant Fleet, who had over a thousand ships in the system to make sure their first colony in three hundred years lasted. It was hard enough growing dextro based foods on a levo based world, last thing they needed was some upstart slavers coming in system and fucking everything up.

As they had increased thrust, jumping past the speed of light as they exited Utopia to begin the journey in dark space to Asgard, he had looked over the new organization of the task forces that made up his fleet.

The 4th Task Force now compromised three light cruisers, eight destroyers, and thirteen frigates. While the rest of the fleet slowed down as they entered the system, in order to properly engage the batarian ships, the 4th Assault TF was to continue at FTL speeds. There was a good chance the batarians would try to flee the system as soon as they detected Systems Alliance ships on approach. So the 4th's job was to come in with speed, punch the batarians in the mouth, and then slow down and bring themselves back around to rejoin the fight. Per the quarians, batarians were hot headed, so even if the plan was to run, getting hit before they could do so might enrage his opposing admiral enough to decide to stay and fight.

The 5th Task Force was the bulk of the fleet; the dreadnought flagship the SSV Fuji, twelve cruises (three heavy, nine regular), twenty-two destroyers, forty-three frigates, and six corvettes (four combat and two EMC). Their mission was easy, to engage and destroy the batarian fleet in the Asgard System. Nothing too complex about that.

The 6th Task Force was the smallest at three cruisers (one light, two regular) and seven destroyers. Marines, shuttles, and Makos had been transferred to these eight ships, filling their cargo bays and shuttle bays to capacity. Their job was to ignore the batarian fleet and head straight to Terra Nova to get boots on the ground. Once the marines were deployed, they were to engage any ships in orbit over the planet, and to prevent any retreat from the batarians on the ground; they were going to need prisoners to help in potential peace negotiations after all.

"The 4th Task Force is transmitting operations data to us, Fleet Admiral," Kono said. Kono's full name was Konohanasakuya-hime, the Japanese goddess of Mount Fuji. However, the name was a nightmare to say, especially during battle, so the crew shortened the name of the AI to Kono, much to the AI's disapproval. Her appearance was a stereotypical Japanese looking woman with long hair and a traditional kimono with billowy sleeves.

"Show it to me."

The holographic table in front of him shifted, showing him a portion of the Asgard System they were seconds away from entering. Red triangles, representing the batarian fleet, showed the enemy position, and green triangles showed the 4th Task Force's location, before the rest of the fleet entered the system. The majority of the batarian fleet was in orbit above Terra Nova, while the rest were spread out from it in a half-circle, to act as a buffer from outside attack. The enemies were positioned between Terra Nova and the approach vector of the entire 2nd Fleet. If they stayed where they currently were engaging them in combat would be like trying to hit a bullseye in darts after ten beers. Is it possible? Yes it is. Is it likely you're going to hit it? No, you were more likely to miss the entire dart board before anything else.

The risk of hitting the planet with a round from one of the mass accelerators was high, and any ships destroyed in orbit had a high chance of crashing into the planet if the wreckage wasn't towed away in time, especially since direct hits from their current attack vector would push the ship backwards, towards the planet's gravity well. They'd have to alter their path, which meant the batarians would likely shift their positions in order to keep the planet at their back.

"Lieutenant Lowe, Lieutenant Randle, Kono, coordinate with the rest of the fleet to adjust everyone's approach vector. They want to keep the planet at their back, I want us coming at them from every angle. And pass the word to the rest of the fleet, any shot that the targeting system shows has the potential of hitting Terra Nova is prohibited, and any captain who takes one will be court-martialed." Not that he should be one talking about court-martialing anyone given there was a high chance he would be facing one himself.

The two Lieutenants, Lowe who was in charge of communications and Randle who was in charge of operations, as well as the AI, acknowledged his order. While the 4th Task Force would likely be launching their attack on the batarian fleet within the next ten minutes, there was still over an hour until the rest of the 2nd Fleet got within recommended firing range.

The 2nd Fleet outnumbered the batarians 118 ships to 96 but those numbers were close enough where they needed to be smart about this. Not all of the ships in the 2nd Fleet were new, or had the upgraded systems. The AIs would be their biggest weapons, and they needed to take advantage of them if they wanted to have any chance of winning this.