January 22nd, 2091
There was something about the way the enemy fleet had maneuvered that didn't sit right with Fleet Captain Ranalett'Goss (Known as "Ran" by his friends and "that uppity caste-hopping bastard" by his enemies). Of course, the maneuverings of his fleet didn't sit right with him either, but one didn't last long in the Hegemony Navy if he couldn't stomach incompetent superiors. He understood the Warlord's logic. The enemy was, obviously, holding some force in reserve, and it was equally obvious that the Warlord was aware of this and the fleet's current formation was some kind of misguided attempt to counter that. The decision to hold the dreadnoughts and heavy cruisers in reserve was clearly an attempt to avoid falling prey to the envelopment tactics used by the enemy in the previous battle. It was a textbook formation: artillery in the back, escorts in the front. Except the idiot had also held back almost all of the light cruisers to escort the heavies. No doubt the Warlord feared missiles from the as-yet-unseen enemy super ship, but depriving his main assault of a significant proportion of its point defenses was not the way to counter it. Ran glared at his tactical display as casualty reports from the fighters under his command rolled in.
How many of those pilots would still be alive if their cruiser support wasn't sitting around with their thumbs up their asses waiting for an ambush?
The Warlord was overthinking things, in Ran's humble opinion. The Hegemony, in a rare moment of competence, had gone to great lengths to ensure that their massive strategic superiority was actually brought to bare for this battle. The fleet had the numbers and the firepower. All they need do is maintain a tight formation and roll right over the dramatically outnumbered and outgunned enemy fleet. Instead, the Warlord was being cautious, attempting to avoid casualties by methods that were only increasing them.
The battle went on, and Ran did his best to direct his forces from afar, lamenting the fact that he couldn't move in his flagship, Hel'Shan, to provide fire support. Then, as if Venzeeltir himself had woken up from his coma and answered his prayers, orders came from headquarters to him and several other heavy cruisers to advance with a detachment and support the assault. Ran's elation was cut short as he parsed that this was not a general attack order, but rather a case of the esteemed Warlord dividing the fleet even more. For just a moment Ran fantasized about being in command. The enemy would be defeated by now, the super ship - where ever it was - would be reduced to a speed bump due to its supporting fleet being dead, and the creeping dread Ran was feeling would be nowhere to be found. Unfortunately, reality was not so kind, and so Ran and the light cruisers of his squadron advanced, along with hundreds of other ships.
As Ran arrived at the battle, finally able to bring the full firepower of his squadron to bare against the enemy, the dread began to fade away. The men of the 46th Frontier Squadron, his squadron, were crack troops. Tempered by constant low-intensity combat against raiders on the Hegemony fringe, and guided by Ran's relentless drills, they were amongst the best in the Navy, even when Ran's obvious bias was laid aside. With their leader in their midst and their formation reforged, the 46th Squadron had the opportunity to demonstrate this. Their particular session of the battle's messy and three-dimensional front line had them facing off against a squadron containing what appeared to be mostly terminus models and older Citadel ones. Likely a mixed quarian and human scratch formation. A more cautious commander would have sat back and let his superior firepower carry the day, but a man didn't make it to Fleet Captain at the age of thirty by being cautious.
"The Squadron is to assume formation nine." He ordered. His Chief of Staff relayed the command, and the ships of the 46th rapidly arranged themselves into a conical formation, with the heaviest ships at the tip, all of which was done under heavy fire from the enemy.
"The Squadron will advance under attack plan six." The next order came, and the cone of batarian ships charged right at the enemy. The ramshackle formation of refurbished or second-line ships had no real answer for a proper heavy cruiser like Hel'Shan, other than concentrated fire. Which was difficult to apply, as the batarian formation penetrated their lines and cut their formation in half. With the enemy fleet divided, the batarian cone split into two unequal halves. The smaller one held the line, while the larger one consolidated its now superior numbers and enveloped the now inferior number of enemy ships, swallowing it whole like the mouth of some sort of cosmic fish. The enemy ships, already greatly outgunned, now faced a three dimensional crossfire. It was a massacre, with only a ragged handful of survivors managing to scatter like frightened prey animals. The larger half of the batarian squadron went to join the smaller one - still holding the other half of the enemy force at bay - and began consolidating its firepower to repeat the envelopment again. The timely intervention of a wing of elcor fighters - no doubt hastily scraped together by the enemy fleet's commander to prevent their flank from collapsing - forced Ran to react and allowed the remnants of his prey to escape and remake their formation.
"Formation two, collapse our lines!" Ran ordered hastily.
The 46th moved to obey, compressing its formation and creating a lethal wall of overlapping point defenses that deterred the elcor fighters from pressing their attack.
"Time to regroup, formation one." Ran ordered once he saw the fighters break off. His ships reformed into a standard battle line, and began pouring disciplined volley fire on the now significantly depleted enemy squadron. It was not the first victory that the 46th had won in such a manner. More than one grand raiding fleet of a would-be pillaging and despoiling warlord from the Terminus had been carved into pieces by the very same tactics from the 46th. Of course, the raiders were usually routed from the field altogether when Ran was done from them instead of retreating in good order like in this case. Granted, disciplined professionals defending their homes and families could hardly be compared to cowardly pirate filth, so Ran wasn't particularly bitter about the results he'd gotten. His actions had created a sizeable dent in the enemy's formation.
Now if only our fearless leader had the brains to use it.
"Request reinforcements from HQ to exploit the weakness we've created in their lines." He ordered the communications officer.
After an unpleasantly long moment, his officer looked at him with the batarian equivalent of an exasperated expression. "They are not responding to our hails. I've sent a message but no response yet."
Ran's eyes twitched. Even in the middle of a fleet battle, petty political games were being played. There was no doubt in Ran's mind that some idiot fourth son of a Lord Admiral who was on the Warlord's staff as a favor had taken one look at who had sent the message and promptly ordered it ignored. Ran was a commoner of great talent and even greater irreverence of the nobility. The sort of man that filled the cavernous egos of talentless young aristocrats with a sense of inferiority that manifested itself as borderline treasonous sabotage.
Ran ground his teeth and set himself to wait for a reply that he knew wasn't coming.
Ran watched in despair as the oh-so-brilliant Warlord of the Hegemony Navy sent all of his light cruisers forward as a screen against the newly emerged human ambushing force. The Heavy fleet was completely exposed, and Ran was completely mystified.
Is...is he stupid? Does he honestly think that this was all the human's had?
The Warlord obviously intended to use the light cruiser screen to blunt any incoming missile swarm before it could reach the heavies, and then crush the ambush force with his massively superior firepower. The only problem with his logic was that it assumed that the missiles in front of him were the only missiles he'd be facing. Ran was almost certain that was not the case.
If I was laying this ambush, where would I put them? He mused to himself.
His eyes drifted to a large object on the tactical map, a moon that the VI claimed was called "Eirene" and his eyes widened. It was, of course, foolish to think that they'd hide it there. It would require a level of pre-planning that would make the humans completely helpless if the Hegemony fleet didn't do almost exactly as they expected it to.
It would only be conceivable if we were completely predictable fools, or the humans were desperate enough to take a gamble. ...Both of which are completely true.
His heart rate increased as his instincts screamed into his mind.
"Contact HQ immediately, maximum priority!" Ran ordered.
His communications officer looked at him after a moment fiddling with his console, disgust on his face. "Still no response to our hails, sir."
Ran went completely still as icy rage flooded his veins. Then he reared back his head and laughed uproariously, much to the concern of his subordinates.
He managed to choke down the laughter enough to speak. "The Batarian Hegemony died as it lived: under the watch of idiots."
Everyone on the flag bridge gaped openly at him. This was the kind of talk spoken by the people who were taken away by the Dinlat and never seen again. Several more courageous sets of eyes stole a glance at Captain Jarro, the Squadron's political officer. The Dinlat agent stared impassively at the screen of the intelligence console - like all political officers, he also server a dual-role as intelligence officer - and not visibly reacting to Ran's words. Ran stole a glance of his own at the man, before approaching him. Jarro looked up with a smirk as Ran stood over him.
"If you're concerned about any less-than-patriotic statements made recently by...members of the crew, then I regret to inform you that our surveillance equipment is on the fritz again. And, of course, my hearing isn't what it used to be..."
Ran smiled back. Jarro was a rare sort of Dinlat officer who had managed to survive a career in the agency with some tattered shred of a conscience still intact. Ran always went out of his way to cultivate a good relationship with his political officers (as anyone who enjoyed his career - and freedom - did). Though, how much of Jarro's good will was derived from his own moral compass and how much of it was derided from disdain of his superiors (one did not get assigned to a dangerous posting on the ass-end of the periphery by being in the good graces of the higher-ups) was something of an open question. Ran decided to gamble on Jarro's good will. He leaned close and started talking in a low voice.
"Things are about to get very bad and HQ is not going to do anything about it. I'm going to order the Squadron's support ships to join up with us when things fall apart, and I'm not going to wait for permission from upstairs to do it. Feel free to arrest me for insubordination after the fact, but I need to know that you won't stand in my way in the present."
Jarro narrowed his eyes and studied the other man's face. Jarro was hardly a military genius, and indeed, he wasn't even sure that such a thing truly existed. However, if they did, then he had grown increasingly confident over his time in the 46th that his Fleet Captain would rank among their number.
In other words, if Ran thought things were about to go to shit, then Jarro was inclined to believe him.
"Do what you have to do. I can feel my hearing and vision impairments flaring up as we speak..."
"Good man." Ran straightened and approached his communications officer. "Tell Captain Gavnetek that he needs to get ready to get those fat tubs of his over here on my mark within less than a minute. I don't care how hard he has to push them. After that, get me in touch with Captain Trentegg. We're calling the birds to roost."
Ran wished he could have said he was surprised when the humans revealed their second set of hidden units and launched a vast flight of missiles. He also wished that he could say he was surprised when the Warlord, in his infinite wisdom, ordered the fleet into a full frontal assault that was - for all intents and purposes - a suicide attack. Alas, he was not surprised by either event. Fortunately, he had not been idle in his predictions. While other units collapsed into disorder as the brutal melee took on an even more chaotic character, the 46th remained a fully cohesive unit. They drifted forward, patiently waiting, seemingly heedless to the oncoming ordinance that had inspired a frenzy in their fellows. Then their support ships reached them, and they suddenly sprang into action.
"Formation five." Ran ordered, though it was mostly a formality, as the Squadron was already entering that formation as part of maneuvers he'd pre-planned minutes before the missiles launched.
The ships of the 46th arranged themselves into an elongated ovoid shape, with the support ships buried deep in the center of the formation. They began moving forward in this formation, and Ran gave his next order.
"Attack plan three, ram right through them!" Ran ordered. The 46th went in for a headlong charge. Their slight delay had spared them from the alpha strike of the missiles from the human ships among the mixed part of the enemy fleet. As such, they had the most intact leadership of all the large units of the fleet, which led to the disorganized blobs of Hegemony ships naturally following the 46th as an adhoc leader of sorts. The fell in behind his squadron, but that suited Ran just fine. When their were thermonuclear weapons aimed at its shaft, the tip of the spear was the safest place to be.
Of course, while they may have been out of range of the nukes, the hail of kinetic fire the 46th was coming under proved that the enemy's mass drivers were very much not out of range. Fortunately, it wasn't long before the two sides clashed, and the 46th found itself no longer at the front of the batarian attack, with the sheer numbers and momentum of the attack being the only thing driving the mass of Navy ships forward to overtake them. Ran scanned the tactical display with an expert eye, and found a weak point in the already quite thin enemy line.
"There, tell gunnery control to direct the fire at that point!" He ordered, gesturing to the point on the display for the benefit of his aid.
His orders were relayed, and (despite their relatively small numbers) the disciplined volley fire of the 46th punched a whole clean through the screening ships. Still maintaining its cohesion expertly amidst the melee, the 46th charged through the hole it had made. Ran was surprised to find the elcor dreadnoughts straight in his crosshairs, far closer than he had anticipated. The furthest dreadnought ducked away, retreating after a turian heavy cruiser took a round from a batarian dreadnought to save the threatened ship's life. Ran pushed the other ship from his mind. For the next few precious moments, it would be irrelevant. There was only him, his Squadron, and the dreadnought right in front of him.
"Focus all fire on that dreadnought!" He roared. The strategic benefit of felling one of the enemy's precious few dreadnoughts was of course not lost on him, but of far greater import was the fact that the ship stood between him and the safety of his men.
The dreadnought, its shields already buckling under the strain of the batarian heavy fleet firing on it in earnest. The 46th's barrage would finish the job. Her escorts melted under the overwhelming numerical disparity, and her shields finally broke. She was beaten savagely by the smaller caliber guns. It seemed destined to be death by a thousand cuts, but then Hel'Shan angled her spinal mount and put a round straight through the drive core, putting the stricken ship out of its misery. It went up in a drive core detonation, and the 46th rushed to pass through the enemy lines entirely, before the rapidly summoned enemy reinforcements could close the gap. Fortunately, they made it through, and the closing of the gap was prevented by the flood of batarian ships that followed after the 46th.
The missiles detonated, a second sun was created for a split second, but the attack continued on regardless. More holes were punched in the enemy lines and more batarian survivors flooded through. They formed up, more from instinct than from the ineffectual shrieking from the surviving officers over the comms. They watched as the enemy fleet showed up, and that terrible super ship moved to join them, missiles at the ready. The tattered remnants of the fleet, harrowed and leaderless, had finally had enough. They turned tail and ran.
Once again, a notable exception to the chaos was the 46th Squadron. While exhausted and depleted, their casualties were relatively light compared to the disastrous losses elsewhere in the fleet. For this reason they were able to retreat in good order, fending off the pursuing enemy, while other less organized groups of ships fell prey to the enemy pursuit ships.
Hours later, the 46th reached the edge of the system. Ran took one last look at the graveyard behind him.
Venzeeltir have mercy on the souls of the brave among their number. He clenched his fists, and ground his teeth. With the gods as my witness, these will be the last sailors sent to die for the ambitions and delusions of fools. He loosened up, and frowned at the image on the display for a moment longer.
"Jump to FTL. Brace yourselves, it's going to be a long way home."
He turned away from the millions of his dead country men he was leaving behind.
With the gods as my witness, the status quo dies with them.
Hey all, the next phase of this story will be made up by multiple "series within a series" that will be happening concurrently within the narrative. What you've just read is the start of the series that will be exploring the fallout of the Hegemony defeat from the perspective of its citizens, which I have named "Audacity". There is also one other series you have already seen, which covers the goings-on in Conspiracy Land, called "Organization". In addition to those two, there will be at least one other series looking at how the UN and Citadel are doing, and there may be others besides that but these are the only three that are set in stone (if you have any other perspectives/angles within the narrative you'd like to see explored that don't fit into those categories, please feel free to make a suggestion). I chose to use this title format as I don't intend to tell all of the stories in a set order (so, as an example a human chapter might be followed by an Audacity chapter, or an Organization chapter, etc and then it will eventually be brought back around to another human chapter) so we're not stuck in one part of the story for too long (nothing worse than an arc that overstays its welcome).
As always, thank you very much for reading!