SmartSteel is not my creation, it belongs to Hieda no Akyuu. I did, however, invent it's properties
THOMASPENZHORN11: One of the many concepts I drafted up in my headcanon for KanColle was the ability for a ship to have an 'avatar' that could interact with other ship-avatars (but while Princess of Wales limits an avatar to within five kilometers of her hull, my concept let they wander where they wanted. Also they'd be in a half-comatose state untill they got launched or smthng...lol), except for few rare occasions where they could directly interact with normal humans, like, say, being partially visible in a cloud of mist from a leaking cooling line (haunted ships lmaao). And they'd be literally innume to nothing short of a full-on warship shooting at them too.
On side note, your concept of stripping down a fleetgirl to her keel and building a new warship round her seems kinda intresting; it might be something I'll try to flesh out later down the line. I was really struggling to figure out how to make Kaga revelant in this timeline since there's absolutely no way a Zero could fight in the 2250s, lol
...speaking of which, autocorrect royally suks, I agree wholly with you on that
gn
Der Countdown zum Himmel hat begonnen.
Wir können die Konsequenzen erst jetzt verstehen.
Theta Lyrae system, Qinghai, Shanxi, 17th July 2257 0800HRS local time
Shigure walked in past the open doors of the Fujisawa-flaired cafe as she entered, at the same time returning the welcoming gesture of the part-time waitress dressed in a gray-and-red polo shirt and a matching red skirt to compliment her rimless eyeglasses, navigating her way through the dense maze of folding chairs and tables packed inside, with a dozen more guests seated in front of their laptops and tablets, browsing away, eyes focused on the screens in their hands. A background melody of calm violin music filled the air of the spacious cafe, an unmistakable sound that told Shigure she had entered the right place.
Walking past a group of sixteen-year-olds discussing bits and pieces of news about the discovery of a Mass Relay just three days prior and about a military expedition being sent to the relay to activate it, she went up a flight of creaking wooden stairs that seemed to be homemade with just some plywood, nails and a hammer (plus sandpaper), one that led up to a second floor laden with even more tables and chairs, however having a distinctly British-pub flair to it this time as opposed to the postwar-Japan flairs on the ground floor. It went beyond her as to how or why would one construct a cafe in such a fashion, but she let it slide for the moment; right now, she had much more important matters to attend to.
"Heeey! Over here!"
Her head immidiately snapped over towards the source of the audio, coming around to face a girl seemingly right about her age, dressed in a sailor outfit, white with blue trim. Her dark gray hair was trimmed neatly at the jaw, with a single hairband to give it variety, while her legs were adorned by a pair of light olive stockings with bows tied neatly around them, giving her the appearenceof someone no less than thirteen years of age. In fact, her appearence and demanour spoke of a girl who should be at home with her family rather than away in a faraway place, and most certainly not the military. Little did they know, not only was she a retired veteran already with several medals and decorations to her credit, but also late of the JMSDF's Tōkkōtai. Fubuki was her name, and her rank, Captain.
"Right here, Shigure!" Fubuki waved her over, a bright smile plastered across her face as always as she waved her over.
"You're sure energetic today," Shigure said, taking a seat in front of the retired Tōkkōtai captain, who took a sip of her drink, a small glass of brandy, which she kept in front of her the whole time she waited for Shigure.
"I wonder why?" Fubuki asked, raising an eyebrow as her tone was one of total disbelief as she continued to drink her alcohol.
"Well, it probably has something to do with you drinking alcohol at like eight in the morning in the middle of a Sino-Japanese frontier town," Shigure said, getting up and pouring herself a glass of her own from the glass bottle placed on top of a coaster next to the drink. She wasn't one to drink too much, but she had a feeling this day was going to be a long one.
"Oh, that," Fubuki said, taking another sip. "Yeah, it was nice."
"Indeed," Shigure agreed. "You remember the crowded big cities right? Tokyo, Vienna, and New Alexandria, just to name a few. And in each of those places, people, soldiers, police, diplomats, tourists, and the like. Well, now there are just... people, walking around, just minding their own business...ehh...they're just plain ol' crowded and...y'know."
"I share your opinion," Fubuki said, resting her chin on her hands just as the waitress came up with two rudimentary menus that looked like they were made out of A4 printer paper, laminated, and stapled to a folder that was manufactured close to thirty years ago. Shigure was quite amused at how the place was more like an old bar or restaurant than a genuine cafe, though, frontier colony worlds weren't exactly known for their modern construction, either. If anything, it was pretty much the opposite.
"Two servings of breakfast for us," Shigure told the waitress, who promptly left in a hurry to get to the kitchen. "Now, then...what's the plan?"
"Eh, nothing?" Fubuki answered with an innocent expression. "Really. Just sit back, recline, and chill, enjoying the nice Shanxi air. A break from life support air that's recycled well over a million times already by the time I made landfall at Qinghai International...whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean. Didn't even have a proper runway, for fuck's sake."
"...uh huh..." Shigure mumured at that, before something clicked in her mind. "Anyways. This system's gotten itself a Mass Relay discovered three days ago, eh? That's why you're here, right?"
Fubuki nodded. "Heey, I make my living with my good ol' freighter and some friends who zip here and there, taking all sorts of odd things from this corner of human space to the other...of course I'm going through the relay when it blows. Could make a fortune if I hit the jackpot and bring home something cursed that sells for a million pounds, y'know."
"...well, whatever," Shigure nodded. "...still got a bad feeling about it, though."
"...uh huh..." Fubuki agreed, lifting her glass to her mouth and downing a sip. "You can't help but feel a bit wierd about it, folks. Because think of it: we find a relay in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere, we have no idea where it leads to because all the Prothean data archives got corrupted and therefore we can't find any maps, charts, or whatever, and the first thing we do when we do find one is to poke at it. Yeah, seems legit, we don't even know who's lurking in the system..."
Fubuki couldn't help but nod in agreement. "You may be right, after all, when everything's going to plan, then nothing else will..."
She took a sip of her drink, setting the glass back down against the table, before continiuing again. "But I didn't come all the way here just to be safe, my friend, it's life. What is life if it dosen't have a splash of adventure and risk to it?"
"Uhhh, yeah...that would make sense—"
She didn't get a chance to finish, for the television in the corner—a flat-screen forty-two inch bolted to the wall on a mount that looked like it could fall to the ground at any moment—handed them, as well as everyone else inside the whole cafe, and probably the whole of Alliance space as well, the media bomb of the century.
"...greetings, everyone," the broadcast began, showing the image of a man dressed in a buisness suit done up with a red necktie, seated behind a large brown desk with grizzled hair and a moustache, a pair of round eyeglasses giving him the look one would attach to a 'kind old grandpa'. Of course, Shigure didn't need a genius to tell her who it was—she—along with all the other residents of Shanxi—knew him well enough.
"...the Governer?" Shigure asked herself.
"...at around seven this morning, as you all may probably know, a task force arrived to scout out the relay that exploration teams discovered three days ago. They activated the relay at around four in the morning standard time, which is about six-thirty local time here in Qinghai. At half-past eight, Qinghai time, I recieved some bad news."
He paused for a moment, as if to let his words sink in, before continiuing. "I know that this might be a big deal, but there's no subtle way to put this. We have made first contact; and it's hostile."
Qinghai, Shanxi, 0900HRS local time
Aliance Ground Corps, Shanxi garrison (501st Division), Qinghai Defense Fortification Line, Redoubt Wan Hai
HMS Shepard glanced forlonly at the view of the city beyond the open sally port of the redoubt, her emelard green eyes staring out from behind a pair of squarish rimless eyeglasses, which she soon raised a hand up to adjust. A smouldering cigaratte hund from the corner of her mouth as she did so, and with eyes on the gold-and-red starliner as it took off from the starport, laden with evacuees leaving Shanxi to avoid the immient invasion, she let out a sigh, taking a drag out of her cigaratte and watched listlessly as the smoke drifted away.
"...Commander?" a female voice spoke up from behind her, prompting Shepard to look around and let the cigaratte hang loosely in her mouth, smoke spilling out from between her lips as she stared at the officer standing there. A pair of violet irises located behind a a squarish monocle, light blonde hair flowing all the way to her waist. Of course, Shepard didn't need a genius to tell her who it was—the 'maid' uniform once common to fleetgirls of the Royal Navy, and later, the SAS, was something she knew well enough.
"Erin," she said after a pause, using one hand to hold her smoke-stick and her other to brush off a few loose strands of hair. "I told you not to call me that like a million times already, Erin."
The long-time veteran of Jutland—both 1916 and 1986—let out a slight chuckle at that. "Besides proper military dicipline, what if I told you that I prefer to call you that way? Isn't it better to keep traditions alive?"
"That's the second time, Erushin,"
"Well, it's only fair," Erin said, pulling out a squarish lighter and flipping it open, lighting her cigaratte before closing it with a sharp click. "We're both officers of the SAS, well, now, it's N7, and officers should always have their traditions, no?"
"...You do have a point there," Shepard admitted, letting her arms fold and turn towards the starport, watching as the ship took off in a brilliant burst of white light and quickly disappeared into the darkening sky, on its way to safety. She let out a sigh at that, and to Erin, she soon spoke up again. "How's it going?"
A heavy atmosphere hung over the entire base, and it didn't take a genius to figure out why. And nobody could blame them for it, either. After all, it's not like you have a hostile alien invasion banging down your front door every other day of the week, either. In fact, this was humanity's first, first contact ever, to be made with an extraterrestrial sapient species. And it was now a war.
"...well, that escalated quickly," Erin said after a pause, blowing off another cloud of cigaratte smoke.
Shepard nodded in agreement just as another liner loaded up to the brim with evacuees took off from the starport. "Welp, the folk running the evacuation's going to have a field day."
"Agreed," Erin said. "Factoring in the fact that the Shanxi garrison consists of only one full-strength division...oh dear."
"Fuckers brought close to two thousand ships to the fight too...damn, if the intel spooks are to be believed, then that makes their ground complement close to half a million...that's grounds for keeping engagement to a minimum, if at all."
"The fortifications and the maginot line around Qinghai could help us, somewhat."
"Doubt it," Shepard countered, blowing off a cloud of cigaratte smoke. "While five-to-one odds certainly won't be the end of the world, it's going to be by no means sustainable. We might as well face better odds piting a battalion of ours against the whole might of the Grande Armée...as the first wave out of six."
"...point taken," Erin said with a sigh. "So we're all doomed, I guess."
Both heavy cruiser and battleship stood there silently afterwards, watching the evacuation ships leave Shanxi one by one, wafts of tobacco smoke drifting into the distance in contrast to the bright plasma blue exhausts of the liners. A few leaves fluttered towards the ground, as the trees around them rustled from the strong wind blowing in.
After a while, Erin spoke up. "What should we do now, Commander?"
"What should I do? Simple," Shepard replied, her glasses catching the glint of the sunlight. "Head over to Redoubt St. Clair, meet up with a pair of ex-TKKs chilling there, and then see how things go...uhh...that's what the Colonel said half an hour earlier. Once you showed up, we were to do just that."
Erin didn't need a genius to tell her what Shepard meant by 'TKK', for it was something she knew herself easily enough.
Formed as a branch of the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Forces during the Abyssal War of 1983, the Tōkkōtai, translating literally to English as the Special Attack Corps, it made up the entirety of Japan's fleetgirl complement, similar to Germany's Marinewaffe or the US Navy's Naval Auxiliary Forces, a special forces branch integrated to the navies of their respective countries. Britian lacked such a service branch, instead opting to integrate them into the SAS, but the point remained the same nonetheless: the absolute best of the best, the end-all-and-be-all of all land or naval warfare. After the events of the Second Inner Planets War, often referred to as World War IV, and the subsequent merging of all nations' militaries into the Alliance Defense Arm, the Tōkkōtai, Marinewaffe, and other similar fleetgirl corps were merged into the Alliance Naval Arm's N7 Corps (NavWarTacSpecOps, Section 7), but the names stuck. Either way, the fleetgirls that formed up their ranks, active or retired, were a force to be reckoned, unopposed by none short of orbital bombardment or another fleetgirl unit.
"Well," Erin said, her voice sounding distant and slightly troubled, "I do wish our situation here wasn't so dire."
"As do I," Shepard said with a sigh, turning and walking back into the redoubt. "Let's go meet up with the others."
Erin let out a sigh, but nevertheless followed after the Commander, as the two headed towards the corridor leading towards the QR rail station, normally it was reserved for civilian traffic but in times of war, like this one, it was repurposed as a military logistics and transport system. Along the way, wind blowed past her, causing her hair to flutter, and as she raised a hand to push it down, she caught sight of the horizontal triple red-gold-red stripes that made up the flag of the Systems Alliance fluttering proudly in the wind, defiant of any extraterrestrial invasion that might befall it, be what it may. Shepard, seemingly understanding, stopped, casting in the direction of the flag a solemn look, before turning her eyes on Erin.
In the end, they both said nothing, walking off towards the exit together, but Erin could understand Shepard's grim opinion nonetheless.
It won't be flying for long, our flag, for it'll be soon lying in the mud.
Qinghai, Shanxi, 0919HRS local time
Aliance Ground Corps, Shanxi garrison (501st Division), Qinghai Defense Fortification Line, Redoubt St. Clair
The sound of a five-round stripper clip of 7.62x40mm shield-and-armor-piercing high-explosive rounds being fed into the quad-stack 60-round box magazine meant for an SA42 assault rifle was the only sound to be heard other than Fubuki's own breathing as her companion, Shigure, walked up to her with a pack of cigarattes in her left hand and an SA42 assault rifle already slung over her shoulder, her having already donned a tactical vest and accompanying helmet and headset combination, the vest's oversize pockets laden with extra magazines for both her rifle and the sidearm holstered on the destroyer's left side. Shigure, ever the smokescreen destroyer, had already lit a cigaratte and was now smoking it already, if the distinct odor of tobacco smoke and the smoke itself wafting from the end of her smoke-stick was of any indication. Fubuki said nothing, nor did she make any movement to indicate that she had known of her companion's approach, but still, Shigure got it nonetheless.
"...never thought we'd be in tac-vests ever again," Shigure mumured, exhaling out a cloud of tobacco smoke. "I came to Shanxi for a change of air, not to get thrown into the middle of a big ol' fucking warzone. Jesus, how the fuck did that escalate?"
"...not sure," Fubuki admitted, exhaling her own breath as she did, a faint cloud of mist appearing around her as she did so in lieu of the bitterly cold Shanxi morning air. Setting down the quad-stack magazine meant for an SA42 assault rifle as she did so, the magazine's plastic construction landing on the ground with a solid clack, Fubuki pulled out a box of matches from her pocket before motioning at Shigure's box of cigarattes. "Mind if I take one?"
"Nope, feel free."
"Thanks," Fubuki nodded in response, accepting the paper box and flipped it open. She closed it immediately afterwards, handing the box back to it's owner before lighting the single cigaratte she had removed with a match, stowing away the matchbox she used to strike it against shortly after. Tossing the spent single-use lighter-stick into a conveniently located trash can just opposite from where they were, she took a drag, watching listlessly as the smoke drifted away before resuming her task of feeding rounds into their magazines, snapping one back onto her tac-vest once it was full before reaching for another one to load.
A few moments of silence passed before Shigure broke it. "Welp, that really did escalate quickly."
"Of course it would, it's the Milky Way after all," Fubuki answered, eyes not leaving the 60-round quad-stack box magazine she was feeding rounds into. "A scouting force opens a relay, they meet some aliens doing their own whoop-de-doo thing on the opposite end of the relay, and boom, things go down south. It was something bound to happen sooner or later, we just can't expect all aliens we meet to welcome us with open arms, tea, and crumpets, don't we? I'd be surprised if it didn't go down south."
"That's...actually a pretty good point," Shigure remarked, nodding at the point Fubuki made.
"Of course it's a pretty good point, why would you think otherwise?" Fubuki asked rhetorically, the tone in her voice indicating that she wasn't angry at her companion's response.
"...uh huh...by the way...any idea what would we do in this operation? We, as ex, uhh, newly returned N7, would be of too much tactical value to be simply deployed on the frontlines. Does Major General Clarkson have any plans for us as of yet?"
"No idea," Fubuki answered, feeding the last few rounds into her magazine before slotting it onto her tac-vest. "Infiltration and sabotage, maybe? They'll be sure to have a FOB setting up somewhere. If they attack, and we repel their initial assault, we can drone-track them all the way back to base, and once then the five of us can blow up a nice big chunk of their base and throw them into chaos in the meantime."
"Five?"
"A pair of N7s from Britian plus my friend on the freighter, they'll be coming once that lil' girl gets the freighter's autopilot on a course to friendly lines...yeah, five, you and me and the two of them," Fubuki confirmed. "So, we got infiltration and sabotage, and possibly a guerrilla warfare campaign. It'd make sense, considering the fact that our forces on the frontlines are outnumbered."
"Uh huh..."
"Anyways," Fubuki said after a pause, glancing at the dirt-filled canvas bags that made up the exterior of the redoubt which they were in, dotted here and there by reinforces duraplast casemates several meters thick each, housing their 75mm, 85mm, and 105mm field guns inside. Reinforced bunkers and pillboxes were likewise set up on the perimeter, a ring of fortifications designed to break up and delay any advancing hostile armored units long enough for the main defensive line of fortifications behind them to turn the attacking units into a smoldering ruin of a battle tank. And of course, that overwhelming firepower extended to infantry as well, that was exactly what the pillboxes were meant for, after all. Nothig beat led moving downrange at close to or past escape velocity, if history was of any indication, and this would be no exception, at least. The sound of a 155mm artillery round flying overhead was heard, alongside with the distinct boom of a Krupp & Wassau K212 field gun, shortly followed by the faint thud of its detonation, the faint vibrations of the impact traveling through the soil underneath the pair. Judging from the force of the impact and the angle at which it arced overhead, flung at a little over three kilometers a second, as well as it's forty-six kilograms of TBX and the remaining ten kilograms of incendiary napalm-infused flechettes, they could roughly estimate the distance of impact relative to their position, the 155mm anti-personnel high-explosive round, often nicknamed 'beehive' shell, had impacted roughly a few hundred kilometers out.
"What?" Shigure quipped up, naturally.
"What I'm thinking here is how exactly are we going to make it through unscathed? If the intel spooks are to be believed then the fuckers are going to bring to the table at least half a million troops, the 501st Division tasked to defend Shanxi numbers at 100,000 not counting auxiliary logistics, medics, and signal units. We'd be outnumbered at odds of five-to-one, and that's not odds to be taken lightly. Normally, those would be grounds to keep conflict to a minimum, if at all."
"'Normally' was a long time ago." Shigure muttered between drags of cigaratte smoke. "Right now, we're the only ones standing between them and Shanxi, and I'm pretty sure that we won't be going down without a fight. We've a week until reinforcements arrive, while we won't be able to beat back the invaders with this kind of odds we'll at least stall them long enough for our buddies to mount a proper counterattack. And perhaps give them a bloody nose or two while we're at it. It's just one week, after all, we'll hold out. Assuming fuckers didn't bring more fuckers to reinforce themselves, that is..."
"...and I suppose this means that we'll be taking out as many of their tanks as possible while we're at it? As well as whatever air assets they'd have in the meantime?"
"Yup, that's exactly what it means."
"Okay, fair enough," Fubuki sighed.
"You've already called in your buddy over on that freighter, haven't you?" Shigure inquired.
"I did."
"Alright then."
Fubuki nodded, pulling the cigaratte from her mouth and flicked the spent butt into the same trash can where she discarded the match earlier. "...we're going to have to pull a counter-D-Day to deal with those fuckers..."
"What makes you say that?"
"Well, if we look at it, an exoatmospheric assault is basically a beach landing, but on a much larger scale, and in three dimensions instead of two, right? So we'll have to do a counter-D-day to stop them."
"That's...actually a really good comparison."
"Praise the dude who wrote Reign of Sovereign, not me. That guy was centuries ahead of his time—dude literally published his novel a hundred years before the first spaceships left Earth. We're still basing a good chunk of our doctrine on his work, remember?"
Silence took over after that, with the only sound to be heard was breathing and tapping of feet against the ground, both destroyers wordlessly working their way through their cigarettes and watching the wind blow the falling leaves from west to east. It was a peaceful sight, with the distant booms of artillery rounds and the whirring of engines overhead being the only reminder that a war was happening outside of the relative safety of the redoubt, the two destroyers standing sentinel within the redoubt, with one holding her rifle with one hand while the other had her smoke-stick.
The two destroyers, along with the rest of their comrades-in-arms, knew that the peace they enjoyed would only be temporary, and when the storm broke, it would not be pleasant.
It would not be easy.
But it had to be done, nevertheless.
They were a long way from home, but this was their world.
And they will defend it.
To the last.
Even if it costed them their very lives.
If someone told Sorlak Brab'babar the day before that he and his fleet would get their asses handed to them by a flotilia less than a hundred strong in terms of raw numbers in a trans-relay assault, he would've have probably laughed him off. Had him shot, even.
And yet, in a perfect display of raw irony, he was doing just that.
His dreadnought, the Wings of Glory, had been the first to transit the relay as the fleet did do in parade formation, intent on surprising the enemy into submission via shock and awe, but that plan went awry from the start as the situation turned downhill from there in the form of overpowered mass accelerator fire.
"We're under fire, Supreme Commander!"
The damage control officer had stated the obvious when the Wings of Glory rocked violently to one side as alarms blared all over the bridge, as an electro-plasma console located next to the door overloaded, exploding into a shower of sparks and burnt electronics in lieu of the lack of proper fuses or circuit breakers, throwing the crewman manning the console across the bridge to slump lifelessly against the opposite wall.
"The entire fleet is under fire! Hostiles are located at 75 standard degrees lateral by ten degrees ventral..." he paused as the dreadnought rocked from another impact, before continiuing. "...from astern, offset to the right, sir!"
"It's taking too long for the ships to accelerate to speed and make the turn, multiple ships are already reporting kinetic barrier failures, many more are taking heavy damage, Supreme Commander," Comms reported bluntly, the serverity of the situation clear in his voice. "Twenty-one ships have been confirmed destroyed already, fourteen cruisers, seven frigates."
"Enemy fleet numbers confirmed!" Tactical shouted out from across the bridge. "65 cruisers, 6 larger cruisers, and...12 dreadnoughts!?"
"Confirm!" Brab'brabar snapped as he spun around to see the feed for himself.
"Sixty-five cruiser-class contacts, length estimated at five-five-zero, six larger cruiser-class contacts, length seven-zero-zero, twelve dreadnought-class contacts, three length one-four-zero-zero and nine length one-seven-zero-zero!" Tactical reported as yet another cruiser exploded under enemy fire.
"First frigate and cruiser formations have completed their maneuver and are returning fire on the enemy fleet! Hostile forces are maintaining formation and rate of fire."
The bridge shuddered yet again as the Wings of Glory's engines roaring at full power suddenly fell silent, before coming back, but weaker this time. Another console exploded under the electro-plasma surge, sending another crewmember tumbling onto the floor.
"...Engine Three is gone!" Damage Control managed as soon as he regained his bearings. "Enemy fire struck Engine 3 and destroyed it outright, our cruiser screens are taking the brunt of the damage but our maneuverbilty is now serverely compromised. Damage control teams have been dispatched, bringing auxilary engines online to consempate."
"How long will it take to bring them online?" Brab'brabar asked, though the answer came in the form of another explosion.
"ENEMY FIRE STRUCK ENGINE TWO! ENGINE TWO IS DESTROYED, BRINGING AUXILARY ENGINES ONE AND THREE ONLINE TO REPLACE IT!" Damage Control shouted again as fire alarms blared all over the bridge, two consoles exploding one after the other in rapid sucession due to the crappy wiring in them as well as lack of breakers or fuses, flooding the bridge in smoke and burnt electronics. It was something that almost every batarian ship had to deal with after a battle, often half the bridge would have to be repaired and the crew replaced because the consoles kept exploding every time something integral to the ship's power network, such as the engines or main gun capacitators, got hit.
Shots from the enemy pounded relentlessly the fleet from behind, even as the ships making them up tried desperately to maneuver out of the way and into a position to let at least a shot off, only to be annihilated by overpowered kinetic projectiles that obliterated them whole, shredding kinetic barrier and armor alike as if they were paper before a shredder. A cruiser ate a mass accelerator shot clean through it's stern, the shot piercing through the cruiser's kinetic barriers and gutting it stern to bow. Another cruiser was more lucky, but not lucky enough—a single glancing blow tore it's left-hand side engine array almost clean off, puncturing two eezo tanks and rendering the ship effectively dead in the water. A third vessel was much less fortunate—no less than twenty secondary mass accelerator shots broke through it's kinetic barriers and tore the hull apart almost to ribbons, leaving naught but shredded metal and burning sections where once was a cruiser.
The rest weren't spared from the brutal, overwhelming fire either. Frigates and cruisers alike were torn apart or shredded, their broken, burning husks tumbling through space.
"Tactical, get me a firing solution! We need to get these bastards off our back!" Brab'brabar barked angrily.
"Negative, Supreme Commander. Our current maneuvering capabilities are insufficient to bring our weapons to bear on the enemy fleet. The frigates and cruisers will have to do the job, we're too badly damaged to be effective," Tactical answered grimly, and the Supreme Commander swore.
The ship shuddered once more, but this time not from weapons fire, but rather from the catapults on the hangar deck as they launched the Wings of Glory's 48 fighters to join the growing battle, just as the surviving cruisers also launched their complements of strikecraft. Blue trails of exhaust followed the fighters as they launched from their respective hosts, forming into squandrons of eight as they did so, and the ships they launched from began firing at the enemy fleet, trying desperately to drive the hostiles away.
"Enemy fleet has detected our fighter attack and is deploying their cruiser reserve to counter," Tactical reported as the icons showing the batarian fighters approached the enemy fleet. "Six larger cruisers, deployed in a double-triangle formation on the fringes of the fleet. Three ships on either edge of the fleet, they're intent on blocking both ends of our fighter pincer, Supreme Commader."
"Intresting," Brab'babar remarked. It was, after all, a fairly standard move for any normal commander, deploying a screen of lighter units to defend against incoming strikecraft, although normally any commander would be deploying frigates for this task, not cruisers somewhere in between a turian cruiser and a salarian second-line dreadnought. It was a standard, logical move, but with his pincer consisting of close to a hundred fighters incoming at flank speed, there would be little any escorting screen could do to his assault. Well, even a hundred frigates, and turian ones at that, couldn't, so there would be little the six oversized cruisers can do. Oversized or not, there was only so much quality can do...
"MASSIVE FIGHTER CASUALTIES!" Tactical cried out in shock as the display suddenly siezed up with fighters winking off at an astonishing rate.
"How is that even possible, you said they didn't have guardians on their ships! How are they doing this!?" Sensors shot across the bridge as a large chunk of the fighter formation got eaten out of the sky in mere moments. "300 fighters have been destroyed in action already, and that number is rising by the minute!"
"They didn't!" Tactical shot back as fighters kept winking off the display at an appalling rate. "It's not guardians they're using—they're using some kind of rapid-fire mass accelerator that has unheard of speeds, accuracy, and rate of fire, which just can't be impossible, that was supposed to be something the asari was working on and still yet to pass the prototype stage! They can't pull this one off, how could this species possibly can!?"
Sure enough, the enemy ships were raining golden tracer streams of projectile death into the skies at an unheard of speed and rate of fire, each projectile and the next creating a dense blanket of tracers that the fighters would have to make their way through if they were to complete their attack run. Each projectile exploded into a dense cloud of smaller flechettes as soon as they came close towards a fighter, flooding the entire void in thousands of tiny explosions, beehive rounds creating a dense chaotic maze for even the most daring of pilots. Fighters went down with holes peppered in their sides and all over otherwise while others were obliterated entirely when a slug impacted them directly and shattered their pathetically weak kinetic barriers before shredding their fragile spaceframes almost to ribbons. Two fighters crashed into each other attempting to evade beehive rounds and weave through the dense flak cloud, a singular large fireball of eezo marking their end. Another was torn in half by a single round, spilling it's remains into a trail of blue eezo before exploding, and another exploded midway as a beehive round ripped through it's port-side and out the starboard, a few tiny flechettes hitting the wing of another, the fighter crashing into another and the two tumbling together before exploding.
It was a massacre, and a one-sided slaughter, no less.
Brab'babar could only stare on in mute shock as the miniscule detachment continiued to dismantle and mangle his strikecraft wave in defiance of every known rule of modern warfare, fighters continiuing to wink off the display at an appalling rate.
"Fleetwide, launch torpedoes," he ordered after a moment's pause, trying his best to salvage the situation. "Put pressure on them, with their attention diverted between us and them the fighters'll have some breathing room."
The din of battle within the combat information center of the Tōkyō-class heavy cruiser SSV Countdown to Heaven rendered the usually orderly command room into a mess of complete and utter chaos as crewmen shouted out reports, officers gave out orders, and shots impacted the shields every so often, rocking the ship slightly as they did so.
"Oerlikon batteries nine through eleven are dry, reloading, time to re-engage eight and a half seconds, mark!"
"Hostile aircraft is breaching the perimeter, the destroyers won't hold for much longer!"
"Hostile aircraft formation is breaching the screen! SSV Kalingrad is reporting hostiles on their flanks!"
"Vampire, vampire! Missile launch detected! Fleetwide, fleetwide, hostile fleet is launching anti-ship missiles!"
"Fighters re-orienting, they're taking heavy casualties but they're still overrunning our flak screen!"
"Vampire, Vampire, missiles inbound! Hostile aircraft wing is engaging with missiles!"
"Engage with Rapier pods, all of them!" Captain Fujimiya Saito shouted over the din of pure chaos and mayhem that was his flagship's CIC, glancing at the tactical display and the icons indicating the enemy missiles inbound on his fleet. "Full barrage, target inbound vampires and aircraft! Batteries free, I say again, batteries free!"
"Batteries engaging, all pods!"
Immediately afterwards, all nine heavy cruisers within the fleet lit up with their Rapier missile pods, each pod launching a missile every second until they had expended all thirty-two cells within, the missiles igniting their engines and speeding towards their target while the covering point-defense autocannon batteries rained more than enough 57mm beehive shells into the void to make the Chinese New Year seem like a joke in comparison. Twenty-one inches across each without the fins, the ships that launched them seemingly disappeared under a dense cloud of missile exhaust as upwards of ten thousand warheads raced to meet the enemy inbound salvo, intent on using their very short lifespans on intercepting the threat in the form of both shipborne and fighter-launched munitions, of which a little over twenty-five thousand were inbound to target. Trails of eezo and rocket exhaust exchanged paths, and as soon as they did so, the void exploded into tens of thousands of flakbursts, creating a wall of high explosive destruction that the inbound enemy warheads flew into head-on.
A wall that was too thick to punch through, for warhead and aircraft alike, as the resulting chaos proved.
A full half of the missiles ignored the enemy barrage entirely, instead opting for going up against the fighters instead, leaving their explosive brethen to get the job done instead. The salvo instead headed straight into the heart of the enemy fighter formation through predesignated 'corridors' in the dense field of 57mm proximity-fused beehive shells, and with the aforementioned fighters too preoccupied with just merely surviving the flak screen, none were prepared for nor expecting the coup de grâce to fall in the form of a ship-to-air missile barrage as numerous in numbers as they were.
Needless to say, chaos reigned afterwards.
"...not even one made it through?" Sorlak Brab'babar demanded as the Wings of Glory vibrated as it's spinally mounted mass accelerator fired yet again, propelling an eight-hundred-standard-ton payload downrange at .85 of c.
"Negative, Supreme Commander," Tactical reported grimly, the batarian still stunned at how the flotilia that had mangled a fighter attack wave that would have overwhelmed an entire turian armanda had now fended off their whole fleetwide torpedo salvo without even breaking a sweat. While almost completely annihilating their fighter attack to boot.
"...what did they hit the fighters with?"
"It appears to be some sort of scaled-down micro-torpedo that is launched in swarms of unprecedented numbers, Supreme Commander, and in this case, it appears to be loaded with the same kind of payload used by their point-defense mass accelerators. They're something out of a fighter pilot's worst nightmare or even worse, Supreme Commander, they took down the torpedo salvo in less than a second. While taking a garguantuan chunk out of our fighter screen to boot."
Brab'babar cursed, the entire torpedo salvo of his fleet had been expended to no avail, and to make it worse, his fighter wave had been absolutely mangled. What was left of them was already returning in shambles, reduced to less than a quarter of their full strength. "Get me a firing solution—"
"Torpedoes! Torpedoes! A MASSIVE TORPEDO SALVO IS INBOUND!"
"What!?" Brab'babar demanded just as the dreadnought's bridge burst into a flurry of alarms and klaxons as the tactical display suddenly siezed up, the sheer amount of contacts being displayed causing it to lag to a halt.
"They're... they're launching a massive salvo, Supreme Commander! Thousands upon thousands of micro-torpedoes are heading our way!"
"Guardian arrays up now!" Brab'babar cried out but then realized it was pointless when he looked back at the tactical display that was now lagging again, the number of torpedo contacts so large that the tactical plot was literally overflowing and was about to start rolling back.
"Spirits... so many..."
Then, in what could only be described as a torrential tsunami of pure fire and torpedo exhaust, thousands upon thousands of torpedoes leaving the tubes en masse and orienting themselves against his fleet, just as a salvo of larger warheads launched from the dreadnoughts and medium-size torpedoes launched from every other vessel within the enemy flotilia. The tactical display was completely unprepared for a torpedo salvo of this magnitude, stuttering and lagging as it tried to process the completely unheard of amount of warheads launched their way. The sides and bows of the enemy ships seemed to disappear in a dense cloud of smoke and exhaust as upwards of twenty thousand micro-torpedoes began screaming at his fleet, intents and purposes clear. The starlight reflecting off their red-painted warheads only further reinforced that, upwards of twenty thousand and closer to six digits in raw numbers of micro-torpedoes were headed in the fleet's direction at breakneck speeds.
"Guardian arrays up and firing!" Tactical shouted, not that they could make much of a difference given the sheer amount of inbound warheads, but at least they could help, somewhat.
The 300 guardian laser nodes on the dreadnought and the rest of the fleet spun around into position and began raining laser fire onto the torpedoes, thousands upon thousands of ruby infared laser beams lacing out and meeting a single torpedo nose-first, the warhead reflecting off the radiation soon enough but started to melt as it got closer, several petawatts of pure heat focused onto a single spot smaller than a tennis ball can certainly taking it's toll in no part thanks to the focusing lenses on each guardian node, the casing on the warheads starting to boil off as the laser beams boiled through to fry the delicate guidance systems within. Warheads began to fall out of formation, by the dozens at first, then by the hundreds and the thousands, but with the sheer number of warheads headed their way, it was naught but a reminder to the command staff that it was a futile endeavour to intercept them all.
"Radiation levels spiking!" Sensors shouted as if to hammer the grim reality of their situation further home.
"What are they going to open up with now!?" Brab'babar demanded as the void lit up with guardian laser fire, enough lasers filling up the skies to make the Citadel's Founding Day celebration seem like a joke.
"Sensor readouts detecting large radiation level spikes on the larger torpedoes..." Sensors began as data began to feed through to his console, before pausing in horror. "NUCLEAR MATERIAL DETECTED! RADIATION WARHEADS IDENTFIED AS NUCLEAR WEAPONS!"
"WHAT?!" Brab'babar thundered. The rest of the bridge also turned around to look as well. After all, nuclear weapons were banned as per the Citadel Conventions, which prohibited the development and usage of such weaponry, deeming it too barbaric to use in a war. They haven't been used in action ever since the Krogan wars of over a thousand years past, the last time any weapon of mass destruction was actually deployed. The fact that the enemy fleets were deploying them now was nothing short of shocking.
"Reroute the guardian arrays, target the nuclear warheads first, I want those nukes intercepted! Now!"
The guardians immediately began retargeting, redirecting their firepower towards the larger warheads, which had already closed the distance, but needless to say, it was futile. The torpedoes were as numerous as a turian first fire volley, blue trails of exhaust lighting up the void like a turian fighter wave on steroids, criscrossed with ruby laser beams as the guardian lasers tried desperately to shoot them down but the salvo itself was several orders of magnitude beyond what the arrays could ever possibly handle.
The first victim of the onslaught was a frigate that was overwhelmed by the massed onslaught of torpedoes far more numerous than the guardian arrays could handle, and paid dearly for it as a result. The warheads detonated in a dense, boiling hot jet of plasma that all but bypassed the kinetic barriers on the ship's hull and scorched the ablative armor, boiling through hull, decks, and material alike, dispersing shortly after but not before reducing the bow to naught but molten slag and rendering the spinal mass accelerator inoperable. At the same time, a second warhead impacted square on the broadside, boiling a gaping, jagged hole to mark where it hit as well as turning close to a dozen guardian laser emitter nodes into slag. The problem was only aggravated when well over a dozen other warheads impacted within seconds of each other, engulfing the ship in explosions and secondary explosions as boiling plasma went off all over the ship's spaceframe. Secondary explosions going off left and right started punching through engineering sections, blasting fountains of fire and metal shards into the void, the frigate disappearing beneath a wall of flame from burning fuel cells and electronics, reduced now to naught but a mess of floating debris in the void.
The larger torpedoes then struck home with a vengeance, impacting onto an unlucky cruiser that bore a distinctly turian-like design, one of the ships that the Hierarchy had found cheaper to simply sell off rather than scrap, the torpedo impacting slightly off the ship's starboard bow, the warhead detonating into a glowing golden ball of tessellating pentagons and hexagons, enveloping a large chunk out of the cruiser's broadside for a few brief seconds, before dispersing and leaving the cruiser with a gaping hole looking as if it had been messily ripped out by a giant with his bare hands to mark where the warhead had struck, the cruiser drifting out of formation with the hole exposing internal decks and equipment, the spinal mass accelerator put out of commission as a chunk of it's tracks was teleported to oblivion alongside the missing chunk in the cruiser's hull.
The first nuclear warhead detonated at the bow of the cruiser Pinnacle of Dawn, the ship's kinetic barriers bypassed in an instant under the nuclear blast, the shockwave from the detonation engulfing the entire ship and another dozen vessels spread out in a wide arc over a few thousand kilometers in plasma fury while others within thirty thousand kilometers had massive tempurature spikes in the order of hundreds of degrees C, the fireball burning with as much fury as if God himself had come down from the heavens himself to create a new star. The blast vaporized the cruisers outright, there was no trace left of them once the blast disspitated for they were exposed to the hellish confines of a nuclear detonation bringing forth enough heat to rival a supernova. Other ships had their barriers downed and kinetic fields blown away, the shields that had been protecting them vaporized and the ships themselves exposed to the plasma cloud of a nuclear fireball. Their hulls began melting, their crew and their captains burning alive and the vessels themselves were reduced to slag, the shockwaves slamming into the surrounding vessels and tossing them about like playthings. The cruiser Rage of the Abyss lost a third of her hull outright, her bow ripped away and her kinetic barriers knocked offline with the generators reduced to naught but slag.
Cruisers and frigates alike were ripped apart, some burst into the thermonuclear inferno that was a tactical nuclear warhead, annihilating entire ships in a raging firestorm before it disspitated or leaving drifting husks bereft of hull, their crews burnt alive and the ships themselves reduced to exposed, semi-molten skeletons that had their innards wiped clean. Others were punched through with wreckingballs the size of houses as multiple torpedoes struck simultaneously, making gaping, irregular holes in their hulls while sending the debris flying about, molten metal and slag making blobs in the void from the sheer heat from the thermonuclear impacts, boiling through meters of armor plating like water meeting a boiler, melting the ships on the outer edges of the explosion into slag and vaporizing utterly those too close to point zero.
Brab'babar grasped the sheer horror and destruction being wrought in that moment. Clearly this new race took no heed or consideration of the conventions, given the fact that what they were bringing to the table looked like they were several orders of magnitude beyond what would make a Councillor reel in horror, completely throwing all convention on weapons of mass destruction to the winds faster than a turian fleet transitioning a relay as this race was lobbing nuclear munitions like they were expendable baseballs on a field, weapons he thought that belonged to some dark times of history dating back over millenia. How they managed to find out how to build them he did not know, but that was the very least of his concerns.
Within seconds, the batarian ranks had turned from loosely organized battle-lines to complete and utter chaos, cruisers and frigates alike desperately trying—and failing—to shoot the micro-torpedoes out of the sky with their rapidly overheating guardian laser arrays, paying dearly for such failures, ships speared by micro-torpedoes left, right, and center while entire flights of cruisers and frigates alike vanished under nuclear fireballs. Luckily they were grouped far apart enough that the blasts only got three or four flights at a time, but the nature of those nuclear warheads meant that every time one went off the sensors on all surrounding ships would be surrounded in static dense enough to completely fry their sensor arrays if they were unlucky enough to be within the blast radius. A certain unlucky cruiser, one of a distinctly quarian design, found itself victim to no less than forty micro-torpedoes that shredded it's armor plating almost to ribbons and reduced the ship to what seemed to be a Bandai plastic model sent through a shredder. Nothing was intact of it, not even the wheeled mass effect drive ring at the stern, and the ship was reduced to little more than a slowly spinning pile of slag and debris.
Within seconds, the batarian ranks had turned from loosely organized battle-lines to complete and utter chaos, cruisers and frigates alike desperately trying—and failing—to shoot the micro-torpedoes out of the sky with their rapidly overheating guardian laser arrays, paying dearly for such failures, ships speared by micro-torpedoes left, right, and center while entire flights of cruisers and frigates alike vanished under nuclear fireballs. Luckily they were grouped far apart enough that the blasts only got three or four flights at a time, but the nature of those nuclear warheads meant that every time one went off the sensors on all surrounding ships would be surrounded in static dense enough to completely fry their sensor arrays if they were unlucky enough to be within the blast radius. A certain unlucky cruiser, one of a distinctly quarian design, found itself victim to no less than forty micro-torpedoes that shredded it's armor plating almost to ribbons and reduced the ship to what seemed to be a Bandai plastic model sent through a shredder. Nothing was intact of it, not even the wheeled mass effect drive ring at the stern, and the ship was reduced to little more than a slowly spinning pile of slag and debris. A cruiser opened fire with a volley of disruptor torpedoes accompanied by fire from it's spinal mass accelerator as soon as the loaders got the silos loaded up and ready, only to fall to a barrage of no less than thirty shots from the secondary turreted guns on one of the smaller cruisers which hit home all within seconds of each other and shredded the cruiser's hull almost to ribbons.
The rest of the fleet was already broken and shattered from the mass torpedo attack, which took well over a hundred ships out of the fight as well as obliterating just as many, the scattered formations returning sporadic fire against the enemy only to take overwhelming amounts of fire from the well-coordinated squandrons making up the enemy flotilia, their ranks forming, reforming, and maneuvering in and out of formation on demand with a fluidity and mobility that even the best turian admiral could only dream of. A three-ship large cruiser formation ganged up on a cruiser flight and two other frigate flights and obliterated those ships utterly in their drive-by run, broadside fire reducing the ships unlucky enough to be caught in the line of fire to little more than twisted metal and debris. The rest also opened up with their broadside armanents as well, with at least one cruiser managing to spear one of the larger cruisers with a salvo of disruptor torpedoes, only for the cruiser to effortlessly tank the shot off it's powerful adaptive barriers and promptly obliterated the survivors with sustained, rapid fire. The enemy ships then returned the favor by launching a salvo of micro-torpedoes that slammed into a trio of frigates and blew them apart from the sheer number of impacts, the combined explosions shredding the unfortunate frigates almost to ribbons.
It was clear that the enemy had the advantage. Their ships were bigger, their shields were tougher, their torpedoes were larger, their armor was more robust and their point-defense systems were so effective and numerous that they could even bring down a fleetwide-launched torpedo salvo, something that no other species could do, and now they were putting that advantage to work, decimating the batarian fleets with overwhelming firepower that left the batarians completely outgunned and outmatched, and the ships and personnel of the Hegemony's fleets were paying the price for that disadvantage, literally in blood.
The battle was turning into a slaughter. At the hands of an oppoment less than a tenth of their size, even.
"We've lost the Say My Name, Captain," Sakurajima reported across the chaotic interior of the SSV Countdown to Heaven's CIC, eyes on the readouts indicated on the holographic display of the tactical console and her hands racing across the keyboard...well, it was an actual, legit keyboard; touchscreen keyboards never really took off in military situations for obvious reasons, herself included. "Enemy fire pretty much singled her out for punishment with literally every gun they could bring to bear. She fought well, obviously, but they proved too much for her to handle...damn, yeah, that cuts us down to half strength."
"Well fuck," Captain Fujimiya Saito cursed under his breath as the CIC rocked from another weapon impact, the cacophony of officers and crewmen shouting above each other largely drowned out by the noice cancellers on his headset but still more than enough making their way through the ship's intergrated battle communications network allowed him to get the point easily enough. "That's not good odds at all...enemy fleet strength and numbers?"
"Enemy fleet count is at roughly 1-7-9-7 not counting destroyed ships, Captain, but they're dealing out much more punishment than our combined firepower can dish out. I expect us to hold out for an hour more, tops, before their combined firepower breaks our ranks or annihilate us entirely—whichever comes first. We're in a no-win situation, Captain, our situation now warrants a fighting retreat."
"Fall back, retreat and regroup...and leave the garrison to their deaths?"
"It's us or them, Captain," the android responded in her usual, nonclimatic tone. "There's quite literally nothing we can do right now, if we delay this any more we'll only lose more ships and soldiers—lives better spent on other operations besides this one. It'll be pointless to stay, if we do, we'll be essentially wasting their lives. Don't waste what we have already—make do and improvise."
"..."
Sakurajima meanwhile redirected her attention at the tactical display just as another icon blinked off the map to signify another ship meeting her demise. "We've lost the Begining of the End as well, Captain. I strongly recommend we pull back now."
Fujimiya merely kept his eyes locked on the tactical display in front of him as if he could change it by sheer force of will, as if it would somehow make things better.
"Captain," Sakurajima spoke again, more forcefully this time.
Fujimiya glanced around for a split second and cast his gaze in the direction of his tactical officer, locking eyes with the biomech for a few short seconds before lowering his head in resignation.
"All ships are to disengage, plot an FTL course to Huangshan."
Sakurajima merely nodded before relaying the order to the rest of the fleet.
Codex Entry: Humans — The Empire of Edelweiß— Overview
The Empire of Edelweiß (German: Edelweiß Kaiserreich), known often simply as Edelweiß or 'the Empire' and formally as the Greater Empire of Edelweiß (GroßEdelweiß Kaiserreich) is the primary governing body of humanity other than the Systems Alliance and is the second out of two recognized official states representing humanity by the rest of the galactic community. It is the sixth-most populous nation-state within the galaxy after the Systems Alliance, and is also the most populous nation-state within the Terminnus sector, where it remains the largest and most powerful single entity but chose to remain strictly neutral in all affairs. It is bordered by the Alliance to the galactic east, alongside the Quarian Federation, and the Terminnus to the galactic north. The nation's capital is Neues Berlin, Edelweiß, and it's largest colony is Essen, Lützow.
Formed during the events of the Second Inner Planets War of 2183, Edelweiß was founded by displaced pro-AI activitists and refugees expelled from human space during the chaos of the conflict, chosing to leave human space to settle somewhere else for the sake of peace and to not get caught in the crossfire. The first colony, Edelweiß, was founded in 2175, four years after the start of the war, and after the tempoary government was dissolved to make way for something more permanent, the populace, many of German and British decent, opted to return to their historic roots and formed a consitutional monarchy, resulting in the current Empire as the rest of the galaxy knew. First contact with the Alliance was made in 2186, three years after the war, and despite refusing Alliance membership on a number of reasons, they both nevertheless retain a close military and economic alliance, one they continiue to preserve untill today.
Similarly to the Alliance, Edelweiß is not a member of the Citadel Council, mostly for the same reasons as their brethen; differing shipbuilding standards, a distinctly pro-synthetic mindset, and extensive neural and genetic technology.
Flag: Alternating three stripes of black-gold-red, set horizontally, with the emblem offset to the top left corner in a golden square
Imperial flag: Alternating three stripes of black-white-red, set horizontally
Emblem: German Iron Cross
Coat of Arms: A black eagle with a red beak, a red tongue and red feet on a golden shield
Motto: Ode to the Fatherland (Ode an das Vaterland)
Anthem: Auferstanden aus Runien (2175-present)
Established: April 17th 2175
Capital: Neues Berlin, Edelweiß
Government type: Unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy
Head of state: Kaiser (Frienderich III, acended 2250)
Second to head of state: Chancellor (current incubent: Walter Lützow [elected 2260])
Government seat: Reichstag (Berlin)
Upper house: Reichsrat (lit. Imperial Council)
Lower house: Reichstag (lit. Imperial Parliament)
Currency: Reichsmark (ℛ︁ℳ︁)
Population: est. 870,000,000,000 (2280)
Territorry: 7 system group clusters, 886 colonized garden planets (second directly to the Systems Alliance in raw territory and colonized worlds, but has significantly more asteroid fields and gas giants for mining. As a result, their industrial capacity is slightly larger)
Alliance(s): Szurdok Defense Coalition (Alliance, Geth Consensus, Empire of Edelweiß)
Armed force(s): Kaiserliche Wehr (lit. Imperial Defense)
Military/government intelligence servive: Kaiserliche Geheimdienst (lit. Imperial Intelligence Service)
Internal security agency(s): Kaiserliche Sicherheitsdienst (lit. Imperial Security Service)
A/N:
let's hope the epilouge ever gets to see the light of day...lol
Note: The Citadel uses a base 200 when measuring angles as opposed to the base 360 we use here. 50 degrees to them would be roughly equivalent to 90 degrees by our system. Similarly, a Citadel standard length unit (meter) is roughly equal to a human meter, at ~0.997m, because I'm too lazy to make a conversion scale for a custom length unit from Citadel meters to human ones. Same applies to galactic standard time as I'm too lazy to make a table for GST—UTC
Also, I have buffed ME shipborne weapons to fire on the order of magintude of 100s-1000s of gigatons, bc think of it: We're a spacefaring race who has been in space for milennia, and the best firepower we can put on our battleships is a pitful 32 kilotons? lmfao
btw, Shanxi uses UTC and Earth standard calendars since it was terraformed (previously inhabitatable) into an Earth-like state, a side effect (that was probably delibrate) of which was the planet getting knocked into an Earth-like orbital period and rotational speed. At least in this AU, that is
