I made a Sufficient Velocity thread for this fic, titled 'FanFiction Discussion and Mecha thread: Fall of the Citadel', feel free to ask me any technical and mecha-related questions there. No spoilers, however
Note: segments written from alien POVs will use GST as opposed to UTC. A heads-up lol
Die Politik ist immer noch das Herzstück jeder Kriegsführung.
Location unknown, Class 1 garden planet, 1400HRS Galactic Standard Time
Prarag Dhan'cador felt his temper growing shorter by the minute as he glanced at the dents and holes in the walls of the forward operating base he was in, relics of the attack made upon it less than a day ago. It was supposed to be a snatch-and-catch slaving operation like any other operation he or any other mercenary warlord in the Terminius would have done at any given time without a second thought, the operation he and his private military company was undertaking, not an assault on a colony world so heavily fortified with so many defenses littering it that the locals could even give a turian patrol fleet and it's legion of ground forces a good run for their money. And his forces even outnumbered them by a factor of eight, to top it all off, and they had repelled them using stone-age tactics and warfare, completely and utterly turning on it's head almost every amount of common sense of modern warfare, completely defeating a modern, mechanized army utterly despite the odds stacked against them and the archaic tactics they employed. While said army even had orbital supremacy to boot.
The space battle that had unfolded across the void around the Class 1 garden planet had been nothing short of a rodeo, and a good one at that, too. The locals defending the planet lacked eezo in any shape or form, instead opting to use a suite of what appeared on sensors as hopelessly obsolete and archaic magnetic accelerator cannon and ancient reaction engines for propulsion, but as events proved, they more than made up for their lack of eezo and seemingly hopelessly stone-age primintive technology in raw overwhelming brute force, if the fighting with their vanguard through Relay 314 ended up proving. And to top it all off, the enemy they faced didn't seem to give a crap about the rules of war in any shape or form, either. Nuclear weapons, antimatter warheads, nuclear slugs in their magnetic accelerator cannons, and of course, even more nuclear weapons. It was almost as if their entire arsenal was built around the premise of 'go loud or go home'...which indeed it was. The wrecks partially boiled to slag floating around in space, once proud cruisers and frigates that fell victim to nuclear weapons was more than enough evidence for that. Nukes had been banned as per the Citadel Conventions following the Krogan Rebellions for being too barbaric to use in war, and so had been antimatter warheads...and yet this new species simply lobbed such barbaric weaponry downrange as if they were simple hand grenades.
After the defending fleet had retreated from the system via god-honest portals, conceeding victory to the mercrnary forces at a cost of over two hundred of their own ships mere slagged wrecks of metal, victim to those nuclear weapons that they seemed to sling around casually as if the rules of war didn't even exist. The fleet had then scanned the lone garden world in-system completely top to bottom, but the scans revealed naught but a large city with numerous smaller settlements scattered around it in a ring, connected to the city itself via a primintive railroad, which was rather surprising, given how they had managed to create dreadnoughts with performance surpassing even those found on the Hierachy's arsenal. The settlements, villages, and towns had all been abandoned, their population having presumably been evacuated to the city, but the city itself didn't seem to be the sort of easy-for-pickings city in the Terminus, either. The city itself was small, clearly at the start of it's life, many of it's buildings of a rudimentary build that looked almost like something straight out of a movie on the earliest days of colonization and exploration on a species's homeworld, an age that predated even the god-honest Citadel as far as anybody was concerned. There was a single, open square at the center of the city, one filled with vegetation and what seemed to be recreations of ancient historical buildings and temples not unlike what the asari would build all over their cities on their homeworld of Thessia, and surrounding it were, in the footprint of a six-pointed star, six archologies roughly a thousand meters in height, linked together with elevated walkways and plazas. They were constructed in a clever way as to cast a set of shadows onto the ground in an elegant, artistic fashion, but nobody cared much about them, but they did care about the emplacements on the roof of the archologies. Present were dozens of anti-aircraft emplacements on each building, and dozens more littered the roofs of the buildings around it, creating a dense killzone that any attacker would have to get past in order to even land a squad of troops onto the ground, and several spaceports were also visible underneath which were also similarly littered with mobile anti-air weapon platforms that would serve no purpose other than to make a lightning fast assault through the air impossible, given the sheer amount of anti-air batteries littering the place with overlapping arcs of fire that ensured that multiple batteries could fire upon any given direction at any given time as well as be able to maintain their fire even with several batteries taken out, not to mention the mobile platforms that could just drive around to cover any gaps in the fields of fire.
Adding further to the dense killzone that made the place a complete death trap for any kind of airborne attack or airstrike, dozens of large forts were placed in a ring around the inner wards of the city, each laden with anti-air guns, torpedo launchers, and even more, their roofs bristling with medium to light AA armanents to stand as a last resort in case anything got past the killzone of anti-air torpedoes that the larger buildings and open squares seemed to bristle with. In further addition, the city was surrounded by a dense ring of hills, slopes, and ridges a thousand meters in thickness by two hundred and fifty times that in total length, completely encircling the city. Some were obviously artificial, but what had took the analytics' attention the most was the set of firing bells and other fortifications littering the set of hills and ridges, some being trenches that had what appeared to be firing mounts for infantry with their small arms. The Supreme Commander had openly burst out laughing when he was briefed on the matter, and so did he, thinking how did the locals think a set of hills and ridges could stop an invader, not even a wall...that laughter didn't last the first day. It died within an hour, literally.
Two bases were set up north and south of the city, respectively, while the dropships had maneuvered very clear of the enemy's anti-air net, setting up the bases that were clearly meant to house a double-pronged assault onto the city itself, while the fleet remained in orbit and began to rain dumbfire orbital kinetic strikes from the ultimate high ground above in the meantime, demoralizing their oppoments into surrending via the simple message that they could just chill in orbit and pummel anything they could bring to bear into oblivion from orbit, and their first move was to simply rain fire onto the city itself, the forts and hills, rail links, and anything else that seemed to be of value; the dust kicked up from the impacts blotted out the sun from the locals' point of view for added effect. Which was even better in helping their cause, nobody gave a crap about the damage they were causing so long as it gave them the results they desired; property, slaves, and credits.
It failed.
The elevated walkways and plazas were gone, sure enough, pounded into oblivion, and so was entire wards of the city itself, gone, pounded to naught but rubble and debris with craters littering the place as if God himself had come down with his hands full of asteroids. The rudimentary buildings that were rather hastily constructed, gone, the larger buildings in the outer wards of the city, gone, the historical-flaired buildings and the natrual-park square in the center of the city, also gone. The railroads were no longer on the map, so was the outer settlements, lying all in smoking ruins for all to see as a testament to the strength of the ultimate high ground that they had over their oppoments, even as the bases were being erected on both fronts in preparation for the assault on the city. But that was, as far as anyone was concerned, the full extent of the damage.
Much to his, the Supreme Commander's, and that of the analytics' surprise, the archologies, lines of hills, and seemingly primintive fortifications lay undamaged, protected by what evidently was the locals' equivalent to a kinetic barrier, leaving the buildings underneath it standing in a silent 'fuck you' to the fleet above as if to taunt them to 'catch me if you can'; the anti-air emplacements, starports, and other open areas with the mobile anti-air platforms protected underneath the protective covers of the barriers so completely that the lettering was even still visible on some of them. The barrier generators were laid out in a grid-shaped pattern around the areas protected from bombardment, undulating and overlapping each other to act as a single barrier, only to make the nasty surprise even more complete. And as if to top it all off, the analytics after pouring over the return data sent back after sensors pinged the areas in question had concluded that the barriers were anywhere in between dreadnought and superdreadnought-grade in terms of raw energy output as if to rub salt into the wound, and with the average turian 2nd line dreadnought similar to the Vuture-class dreadnought in service with the Navy of the Hierachy of Palaven being capable of slinging a 440-ton projectile to roughly point eighty-five of the speed of light, compared to the pitful 42 kilotons that their Citadel-grade bombardment guns could crap out per hit it was clear to them by this point that nothing short of a direct bombardment of the garden planet below with their spinal mass accelerators was going to be able to do any meaningful amount of damage. But that also had it's own roadblocks and hurdles to cross in the form of the Citadel Conventions, Article One, Section Four, Line Two; id est Do not bombard garden class planets with spinal mass accelerators no matter what!
He didn't care about the conventions at all, but the penalties for such an offense were immense, and he knew better than to ignite the wrath of all three major members of the Citadel Council; he was smart enough not to try. At least, they could argue that they could not be held responsible for the activation of Relay 314 since it was the locals who brought it online, not them, but it was a different matter to deal with. Which left them with three options; to shatter the Citadel Conventions to the winds entirely and pound the planet below with spinal mass accelerator fire, to accept defeat and withdraw from the system, or to assault the city's defenses directly in a traditional pitched battle. The dense net of anti-air emplacements meant that taking the place by air was more or less impossible, and sending in air support was also similarly suicide, but left open was a direct armored and mechanized assault on the city's defenses and push all the way through. The Supreme Commander had said that defeating the enemy in a straight up traditional pitched battle would be a cakewalk once the bases were set up, and he had agreed with him—after all, what could a line of hills do to stop an invader?
Then the locals nuked their northern base.
A flight of small craft, clearly remote-controlled, had taken off from within the protective cover of the barriers and beelined for the northern base, clearly scouts meant to gauge the strength of the invaders so that the locals could come up with and plan a proper defense, but nobody cared; they held the high ground advantage after all, and there would be little that the locals could do without getting pounded into oblivion by orbital fire from the absolute high ground, Brab'babar proclaiming himself that the sheer amount of forces he deployed would just simply scare the locals into submission coupled with the fact that they could just pound anything they could bring to bear into oblivion from orbit...Dhan'cador himself had his suspicions, but ended uo conceeding to common sense; they held all the trump cards, after all. It was then that things began to go wrong. Very wrong.
The locals turned out to be dammed patient and smart; in fact, smart enough to give the Hegemony's cilent mercenary groups a bloody nose and a half! The crafty engineers didn't even bother launching a counterattack of any kind, they just sat there and chilled, watching the base intently as it was being constructed and stocked, to the point where not only 250,000 troops were landed there alongside their asccosiated support vehicles and armored support, nor loads of artillery and other similarly equipment, but to top it all off plus a week's worth of supplies for the entire base itself, and they waited until the army literally began marching out of the base before making their move. They hadn't made it the first hundred meters before a single silo had opened within the confines of the area protected by the locals' barriers and launched a single torpedo at them on a hypersonic gliding trajectory towards the northern base, lighting up the sensors like a fireworks display with the onboard payload of nuclear material; and of course nobody gave a shit to the silo as it opened, and by the time it had launched and set off every radiological alarm across the entire fleet it was too late to do a single dammed thing; a thermonuclear explosion lit up the site of the former base for a few seconds before disappearing into a thick black mushroom cloud of nuclear inferno and completely blotted out the northern base from view, and by the time that cloud had disspitated, the northern forces had been reduced to naught but boiled, molten slag where a giant forward operating base once was.
The moniker of 'primintives' had disappeared almost immediately afterwards after the primintives turned out to be not so primintive at all, not in the very least, even as the Supreme Commander had the fit of his lifetime and the supplies initially meant for the northern base got redirected instead towards the southern one; ordering for the amount of troops sent in the first attack wave to consist of a total of eight thousand troops as opposed to the original three after the turn of events, he was taking chances no longer as far as events showed. And yet, the so-called 'engineers' had still found a way to show off their ridiculous skill at engineering and doctoring surprises and booby traps for them to walk into, and it was only becoming worse by the hour.
The tech spooks ended up coming up with the term 'engineers' to describe the locals they were up against after the events of the previous few days, a simple term that spoke volumes about their uncanny ability to engineer and doctor hopelessly obsolete and primintive technology into something that could not only stand up to the technology used by the rest of the galaxy but actually outperform them on a number of fronts was of any indication. And the engineers didn't hold back, either. Asari would call it overengineering, turians would call it overkill, but either way, the point remained the same. And they had applied their knack at ridiculously overengineering anything they could get their hands on to static defenses as well. And their infantry weapons, too.
One word was enough to sum up the engineers' infantry weapons: brutal.
They didn't accelerate flecks of metal shaved of a stamped block of reactive metal like turian rifles did, or that of most of the galaxy, for that matter. Neither did they barf hyper-compressed air heated hot enough that it might as well be plasma held in place by an eezo field like salarian or geth rifles do, at the cost of crappier heat tolerances and thus a need for thermal clips, but honest, actual, spirits-dammed slugthrowers. They were using weapons that were older than the Citadel Council itself! But they weren't the archaic slugthrowers the krogan slung around prior to being uplidfted to the Citadel, or the ancient relics on display at the Palaven Museum of History at the turian homeworld, either; if the horrendous wounds inflicted to his men were of any indication. These slugthrowers fired oversized projectiles at unheard of velocities for a slugthrower and whatever type of ammunition these weapons chambered weren't helping things, either. Explosive rounds wreaked nothing but absolute havoc on his troops, bits and pieces of shrapnel accelerated to escape velocity from the explosion sent sprays of gore, flesh, and shredded corpses into the air; shield-piercing rounds sent dozens collapsing to the ground in crumpled heaps with holes punched neatly into their armor, the shots piercing clean through armor and kinetic barriers alike, leaving many a soldier with his head exploded inside out from an explosive round going off inside their skulls. They were almost krogan in their brutal and barbaric approach to warfare, the engineers; one merely needed to look at the medical ward for proof, but he didn't need proof for it was something he knew himself well enough. The wounded were either screaming their heads off in pain or not even moving at all, some without limbs, others missing chunks of flesh, others still left with fist-sized holes punched in their armor from the engineer slugthrowers firing projectiles propelled to respectable fractions of escape velocity. Some even looked like a giant had taken to them with a battle-axe.
The engineers proved more or less to be as skilled at operating their equipment as they were at doctoring it, their soldiers firing off precise, accurate shots at long distances well within the range of operation for turian snipers or asari commandoes, some of them having an aim even better than some lower end Spectres. Headshots, torso-shots, even shots directed at the weak spot of the armor worn by some of the krogan mercenaries unlucky enough to find themseves within the sights of an engineer. And for most of the time, being unlucky was much more common than not.
The engineers' attack on the southern forward operating base only muddied things even further, it was a daring, reckless attack either carefully planned at the start or hastily drawn up on the fly, he didn't care, but it turned out to be a very successful attack nonetheless; somehow sending only five of their equivalents to a Spectre on an infiltration and sabotage mission straight into their base and gut it from the inside out, an operation so risky that not even the best salarian infiltration team at STG would ever consider, and yet, they pulled it off, not only destroying another entire week's worth of supplies in a single go and left a large chunk of their storage capacity in flames, not to mention turning their largest vehicle repair facility into an unsightly mess to clean up (after the fires were put out, that is), but also leaving another chunk of their base to burn out in fire. And to top it all off, the engineers hadn't taken a single casualty.
They even managed to jack away his personal relief slave.
It was already clear to him and the rest of the command staff as to what had they just dragged themselves into and how badly the tables were now turned against them, sandwiched in between the engineers' defenses and their surprise asari-style hit-and-run attacks they seemed to love to employ. They'll have to get this done and over quick if they were to make it out of this alive, or else their asses would be beat and their fates will be sealed by the turian patrol fleet that woud undoubtedly follow them through Relay 314 once they found it active. If their newly-found enemies didn't get to them first, that is.
And right at this moment nothing came to his mind.
Qinghai, Shanxi, July 22nd 2257 0700HRS local time
Shanxi garrison headquarters, Qinghai Underground District
Being one of the first colony worlds in the system cluster, and the one closest to a Mass Relay leading to uncharted space certainly had it's advantages, Lieutenant General John Williams thought to himself, as he glanced at the live strategic map of Shanxi on the far end of the wall of his office, his Irish-blue eyes looking at it from behind a pair of rounded glasses that, combined with his grizzled hair and moustache, gave him the appearance of a typical middle-aged father in 1890. Shanxi's Underground District was originally supposed as an underground bunker meant to house 150% of the total population embedded inside a giant underground nukeproof, orbital-fireproof, and heavily reinforced with titanium bracings, SmartSteel plating, and heavy shielding that can be flicked on or off at will to ensure that nothing short of a Class 7 nuclear weapon impact could reach the bunker's inhabitants. Despite that, however, the designers had overreached, and while the dirt excavated for the bunkers was used in the construction of Qinghai's maginot line alongside surplus equipment from the Second Abyssal war, they ended up having a large, cavernormous city situated five kilometers below ground linked to the military bunkers via tunnels, all part of the defense system meant to counter up to Abyssal invasions for sustained periods of time. The bunkers and Qinghai's Underground District was specially hardened against orbital attack, the maginot line made it impervious to land attack, and the camoflauged surface-to-orbit guns could counter any fleet in orbit, but the enemy hadn't seemed to have spotted them yet, and they were being held in reserve for when they launched their next move.
Granted, apart from the Underground District built specifically for housing and living in, the shelter network itself was less of a city and more of a bunker, but at the very least it could house the archologies' populations inside it with room to spare. The showers were communal, the canteens looked like something straight out of a historic run-down Saigon street eatery, and the sleeping areas looked more like a bunk room for a dormintory rather than proper rooms, but it was entirely self-contained, like an entombed colony ship, and in a sense, it indeed was one. Alliance colonization playbooks dictated that a colony ship (or several) to excavate an area using specialized excavation beams not unlike the ones seen in the video games of all those years past before landing in the resulting area, and then the colony ship would be dismantled for parts to construct the city above it. Which rendered the colony impervious to orbital and nuclear attack, which exactly was what wanted of Shanxi after the cluster had been colonized and Shanxi itself became a strongpoint for countering an Abyssal invasion.
The migraine that Lieutenant General John Williams had dealt with, on the other hand, mere days ago had been nothing compared to this one; in fact, it was way worse, even as his sleep-deprived mind tried to absorb far more information on the attack upon the enemy FOB by Szurdok Fireteam than it could properly handle. At least he could thank the engineers at Krupp & Wassau for inventing the excavation mining beams for massively speeding up the mining process for constructing the Underground District, the shelter network, and the maginot line, or else it all would've taken more than enough pounds to pay for the entire Alliance defense budget instead of just triple the costs estimated for building a regular city without it's defenses.
The fault lay not in Szurdok Fireteam—in fact, it was very much the opposite. It was what they brought back that was the problem.
Namely, who.
It was a huge surprise to him and the rest of the command staff when Szurdok came back with a blue-skinned humanoid in tow as part of their prize home in further addition to a collection of what seemed to be their equivalent to laptops and wrist-multitools, whatever the hell they were. The tech spooks were probably having the time of their lives now that they had alien tech to study, whilst the members of the fireteam went off for some much-needed rest. The AIs and tech experts had managed to compile together a translation codex from hacking into one of their laptops (after a lot of pain trying to figure out where was the power button) and downloading the language database from it, although there still remained some glitches in the codex that needed to be worked out. But at the very least, Williams got a rudimentary understanding of the alien language called 'batarian' or whatever the hell they called it, and thus able to understand the prisoner's answers to the interrogators.
Still, his head throbbed as if it was hit by a sledgehammer, and it wasn't having any signs of lessening anytime soon.
For Arlikze M'Liotari, the events that unfolded just a day ago might as well be for her a dream.
Her mind drifted back to the events of three months past as she stared at the walls and ceiling, all simple and brutalist design yet still bearing an elegant look to them, unsure what would happen to her next. Three months. Three long months captive at the hands of slavers, day and night at the mercy of her captors with neither hope of release nor relief. And it ended in the most dramatic way possible.
It all happened so fast that she couldn't even believe it herself, the strangely-equipped soldiers with their surprisingly asari-like features, the firefights across hallways and warehouses, their escape from the base that ended with a single bomb going off with enough force to completely obliterate a whole chunk of the place in explosive fire. Driving through the woods in an open-topped vehicle that looked almost turian in design and used godess-honest wheels for mobility, arrival at a large base with more of these beings who looked so suspiciously like asari just like her, but this time, they ended up giving her something properly to eat, clothes to wear, and even removed the slave collar and chains that had bound her ever since she was captured, well, what was left of them anyways.
And yet, there was one memory, one detail that stood out vividly to her amongst the jumbled mess of impressions and memories that was her mind, as clear as any event that had happened mere hours ago. Some were faded, others were hazy and vague, but that one memory stood out to her the most, clear amidst the faded and fading. The memory of one of the newcomers, who had called herself 'Fubuki' and had beckoned for her to follow them, kneeling one leg with her hand extended. She had no idea why she decided to trust them, and to this moment she couldn't, either, but she ended up taking the hand of the stranger and went with them. And as far as she was concerned, anything was better than being captive at the hands of some random slaver or merchant in the Terminus who only wanted to use her as a toy; and that included being whisked away by strangers. Anything.
She got up from her bed, folding the covers draped over her in half as she did so, swinging both of her legs over the bed as she did so and leaving them dangling in mid-air, watching them swing intently suspended above the floor as her blue skin found itself covered by a pair of dark gray leggings that covered her legs all the way up to the knees. They weren't something unheard of within the galactic community, but the newcomers who had taken her in's sense of fashion truly was. At least the outfit they gave her didn't get anywhere nearly as reveling as the ludicrous slave outfit that she had to contend with during her time jacked away by the slavers...
She winced sightly as a sharp pain made itself known in her left arm, said armhaving gotten banged against something either during her escape or directly afterwards when one of her rescuers used herself as a shield to protect her against the blast of one of the overpowered explosives that they seemed to possess in abundance, planted evidently as a trap to secure their exit. It had been treated with bandages and a proper sling afterwards when they had returned to base, but a lack of information on her atonamy, something completely understandable for any first contact situation like hers, meant that they couldn't adminster painkillers or any other proper treatments for fear of unexpected side effects. She wasn't complaining, however, at least they weren't overly hostile and willing to just plain sell her to some other random merchant in the Terminus, or even worse, some wealthy baron in the Hegemony. She had no idea what these newcomers had planned for her, but at the very least it had to be better than being someone else's plaything.
She lifted her left arm and extended her hand, watching it sway as it was held by only her right. She remembered when she was a young maiden, free to roam the streets of Thessia on her own, or just explore the galaxy on her own free will, as all asari did in their youth. It felt like such a long time ago, despite only being about 950 or so, an asari equivalent of someone in her early-to-mid-twenties, a period of time when the young asari is free to explore the world around them on their own terms and is encouraged to do so by their peers and families. To feel like such a thing had been lost forever, was something that she would never get back...
The sound of the door clicking open brought her back to reality, the open door being gently closed by one of those asari-like beings as she entered the room, what appeared to be a datapad within her hands as she did so. She was dressed in one of those simple outfits that her species appeared to prefer, a white loose shirt with round pins holding it in place, an odious garment fastened at the waist and left to be wrapped around her thighs, complimented by a pair of leggings that reached well past her knees, almost like the lower part of a form-fitting asari bodysuit, but looking much thinner. Her skin was also pale yellow as opposed to blue, and her head was covered by a mass of black hair trimmed neatly at the shoulders, a flower of whatever species and type she had no idea of fastened to a band as if it was a decoration piece of some sort.
"How are you feeling?" She spoke as she looked at the datapad she had brought with her, her voice being so close to a Thessian asari's that it was almost scary. She spoke in Thessian, not very fluent, per se, compared to the merchants who had abducted her from her family months ago, but despite being fairly broken, it was still enough for her to understand...which quite literally caught her off guard. They'd been in contact for less than a standard day, and for direct interaction, even less, and yet they had managed to crack the language barrier? That was just...impressive.
"A-a bit better, I think. It doesn't hurt as much anymore." Arlikze responded in kind, hoping to get her point across to the newcomer without breaking out of their limited Thessian vocabulary, still a little hesitant. "Um...thank you, for what you've done, and for what you're doing. I know you're not obliged to, so, um...thank you." She followed up as she looked at the figure that she had come to call 'Fubuki'.
Fubuki put away her datapad before replying with a small smile. "It is nothing. I'm glad to see that you're getting better." Her smile widened a bit. "So, I have to ask you a few questions."
She dragged over a chair towards the bed, leaving enough space for legroom, before taking a sip out of a metal can that she was holding in her other hand before entering the place. "And before you ask any questions about how we managed to crack the language barrier, well...it took me and my friends all night, and a lot a' hacking, but eventually it paid off. Lucky for us that we managed to find translation codexes on the computers we got home...damn, that took us all night, I could only imagine how much pain it would take if it was done without them..." she added. "But it wasn't all bad...it helped me pick up on some stuff...so I'm guessing you don't know anything about the 'Human' race?" she said with a smile.
Humans? she thought to herself, before shaking her head sideways in response. No, she didn't know anything about humans, at least not until now. Was that what they called themselves? Humanity? Humans?
Fubuki sighed as she took another sip of her drink, the similarities between these 'humans' and asari like her clearly more than enough for her to understand how sleep-deprived her interrogator/questioner was. "...welp, here goes nothing..."
Alliance Parliament building, Vienna, Austria, Earth, July 22nd 2257 2144HRS Coordinated Universal Time
The Austrian Parlamentsgebäude remained beautiful as ever in the setting sun, backlit by the light of Sol filtering through the atmosphere of humanity's homeworld against the skyline of Europe's capital of culture, Vienna, lit up with electrical lights courtesy of the city's electro-plasma power grid system. Buses, trams, and the occasional tourist coach drove past it along the streets of the capital of the Republik Österreich, all combining to form the rather lazy, slack, laid-back capital of what was once the center of the Hasburg monarchy and now the capital city of both the Republic of Austria as well as the capital of all of humanity. The building dated back to the late nineteenth century and had somehow miraculously survived all the wars that had led up to the twenty-third, and given the sheer amount of historical events that had happened near it, the building itself might just as well be history.
None of it mattered, as far as he was concerned, to Chancellor Andrew Blackwood, Chancellor of the Systems Alliance as he stared forlonly at the window and at the bustling city below.
"...they call themselves the Citadel Council, essentially the galactic equivalent to the United Nations we had centuries ago," Colonel Yang Wen-Li said off the list of data feeding through onto his cyber-proof datapad as he scrolled past it with a finger. "They're composed of three primary species: the asari, salarians, and turians, alongside several other cilent and asscociate races. The batarians are amongst one of them. The data retrieved from the enemy computers also comes with an extra set of data entries all labled as the 'codex', quite convienient, actually, detailing plenty of basic details about their history, technology, among others. Also included is a translation matrix for batarian to all the other languages spoken by the races that inhibit the Citadel."
"Any indication that the attack was sanctioned by the Citadel?" the Prime Minister asked as the head of the Alliance Intelligence Arm finished his report and stood by.
"Too little data to theorize and base assumptions off, but I believe it was not, Prime Minister. There was more in the transmission burst from Shanxi. Their own analytics have run through the data themselves as well. Apparently, the batarians are a race of slavers, pirates, and mercenaries, they often hire PMCs for attacks on colonies belonging to other species. This appears to be no exception, except that they have chose to sneak past a 'turian' patrol fleet undetected and ambushcade us instead. Only for them to run headfirst into a military prepared for total war, apparently."
Blackwood nodded. He turned around away from the window towards the holographic map of the Theta Lyrae system, dotted here and there with red dots and splatters marking the enemy fleet in orbit of Shanxi as well as the ground forces currently present on the ground, both friendly and hostile. There was a large section marked in yellow with a radiological warning symbol on top of it, and of course, he didn't need anyone present to tell him that it was where the northern landing zones had been nuked to all hell. But that didn't change the fact that the 501st Division would be facing down a force numbering at least 250,000 troops in number, possibly more. The battle would not be easy for them.
"How many reinforcements are being sent to Shanxi?" Blackwood asked.
"Battle Group Kirishima is diverting from it's naval exercises and headed towards the Theta Lyrae system at flank FTL speed, Chancellor," Fleet Admiral Karl Lütjens said as he kept his eyes glued to the holographic display, his distinctly German-Austrian features coupled with a set of grizzled hair giving him the look of a respectable officer of the Alliance Navy. "ETA is in three days at maximum cruise speed; but forward prowler formations can make it in two. Sixteen hundred ships centered around four Kongō-class battleships, four Sōryū-class light carriers, and their respective battle groups under the command of Rear Admiral Katraine Drescher."
"I see." Blackwood frowned, "Hudner, how's the ground situation on Shanxi?"
Field Marshal Arleigh Hudner sighed, the distinct sigh of a man who has not seen his bed in a long time, as he composed himself. "The 501st performed admirably despite the odds stacked against them, and the maginot defenses built to counter an Abyssal invasion worked wonders at driving back the enemy, but it's not ideal. They've managed to push out the batarian ground forces to a point where we can establish some semblance of control over the northern sectors, but the southern sector remains firmly in their hands. The enemy also have their own airpower, and while our own fighter wings are performing adequately against them, it doesn't help that they outnumber us at least seven to one in terms of aircraft numbers. We'll have to keep them off the backs of our ground forces as best as possible until Battle Group Kirishima arrives and helps drive them back."
"So we're relying on Battle Group Kirishima to turn the tide," Blackwood noted.
"Indeed. We're also conducting the largest mobilization of Alliance military assets since the Second Abyssal War. They will undoubtedly be sending reinforcements themselves, if they haven't already. On the flip side, the entire Eighth Fleet is being mobilized to full-wartime status with all other fleets placed on high alert, and all Ground Corps army groups are also on similar levels of alertness. We're preparing for all out war with the batarians, Chancellor."
Blackwood hummed, before sighing. "I suppose so. Anything else?"
The General of the Alliance Air Arm, Ema Ketler, sipped some tea from her cup before speaking up. "I also advise the activation of all Class 7 nuclear weapons and placing them on stand-by mode, Chancellor."
Blackwook raised an eyebrow. "You're asking for us to bring online our planet killers?"
Class 7 nuclear weapons had only been used twice in warfare before—both against enemy strongpoints during the Second Abyssal war, such was their destructive potential. They were essentially scaled-up versions of typical human nuclear weapons operating off the principle of compressing the shockwave of a fusion-type nuclear detonation onto itself to make it fuse on itself again and again until the critical point was reached and the shockwave bursts open the container, creating tempuratures close to that of a supernova at the point of the detonation and creating an explosion well beyond that of conventional nuclear weapons ever made previously. It was basically humanity taking advantage of nuclear physics to create something that could level cities like nothing, and even destroy small continents at worst. Their levels of destructive potential was several rungs up the destructive ladder, with one Class 7 warhead more than enough to replicate the Death Star. And humanity had thousands of inter-stellar ballistic missiles, delivery vehicles launched through the interdimensional slipstream to FTL jump to their destinations and wipe out entire swathes of galactic sectors at a time, and they each had seven warheads in MIRV payloads. While bringing them all online might be considered an overreaction by some, there was no denying that they were facing an oppoment that they knew very little about, with everything they knew gathered through what could be considered their equivalent to a technical magazine. And as much as he hated to confirm it, the Abyssals had taught humanity one lesson, and taught it well enough—nothing is ever too much. They had learned that lesson the hard way.
They were considered planet killers for a reason.
"Indeed, Chancellor," Ketler continued after finishing her tea. "We're facing an opoment whose technological level we know next to nothing about, and considering that the batarians appear to be the equivalent of a galatic mafia or crime syndicate, it is entirely likely that they may resort to such measures themselves, and we must remain prepared to retaliate should they do so. And besides, these weapons are designed for planetary targets, Chancellor, not population centers."
Blackwood sighed. "Alright then. Issue the orders. Bring the Class 7 ISBMs online."
Location unknown, exact time unknown. Galactic Standard Time.
Admiral,
Please be advised, Patrol 371, consisting of the cruiser PFS Vanker, frigates PFS Bellus, PFS Arma, and PFS Narka have failed to return to port after their sceduled patrol yesterday, and all attempts to contact them remotely have so far ended in failure. Recommend sending a task force to investigate.
Friend;
I understand. Standing by.
Codex entry — Humans — Human conflicts and wars — the First Abyssal war
The First Abyssal war, sometimes referred to as the 'Great War' or simply as the 'Abyssal conflict' until the onset of the second was a major, world-spanning conflict fought in the late 20th century on the human calendar, during the period of 1983—1989. It brought a death toll of roughly 7% of the human population at the time, a rather minisucle scale compared to the major conflicts fought within galactic history, but it still nevertheless retains a deep and profound impact on humanity and nudged their military mindset closer to the extremes.
The earliest confirmed sightings of humanity's earliest enemies, at the time, was made by the Slava-class guided-missile cruiser SVK Varyag within the North Pacific Ocean at 4:00AM local time roughly 200 kilometers south-southwest of the Bering Strait, at which an unknown contact was sighted on radar, believed to be a ship, headed towards them at roughly twenty-three knots at a bearing of one-one-seven. The contact refused to respond to all attempts at communication, and after Varyag launched a Kamov helicopter to establish visual contact with the contact, it opened fire and destroyed the helicopter, killing all five on board, but not before they were able to send a final message to the cruiser with a single image of a monstrous vessel roughly the size of a typical cruiser, but with alien features and jaws not unlike those from any doomsday movie at the time. Varyag reported the incident to Soviet High Command and fired upon the vessel with a single P-700 Granit anti-ship cruise missile and destroyed the contact, later designated as a Kii-class cruiser, with a single shot. It was the first recorded incident of contact with an Abyssal.
Further incidents would follow across the globe in the following months, escalating into full-blown naval combat as Abyssals began attacking unprovoked. Nations of Earth soon realized the severity of the situation when more advanced Abyssals such as the attack on Yokosuka in April 1983 and the Battle of the Philippine Sea, forcing humanity onto the defensive for the first few years of the conflict. Initially, nations did not want to band together, believing that the Abyssals were only targeting certain regions and thought themselves safe, but this belief was shattered in 1985 when in January of that year, the Abyssals launched an all-out attack on the US West Coast and began a naval invasion of Spain, Japan, and Eastern Russian simutaneously, opening the European theatre of the war as well as sparking the Asian front. Eventually, nations of Earth formed the United Nations Allied Fleet (UNAF) in 1986 in order to organize defenses better and fight back against the Abyssals, who had already conquered a large swath of territory across the globe.
It was in 1986 that the tide began to turn. The Japanese Self-Defense Forces, fighting for years with support from both sides of the Pacific, were able to push the enemy away from Hokkaido and Kyūshū, as well as joint fighting alongside Chinese and Vietnamese troops alongside the Southeast Asian regions and waters, discovered an artefact of unknown origins and makings, but despite an Abyssal attack on the dig site killing most of the JSDF personnel present, a few used a bayonet charge to allow the others to escape safely with the artefact at the cost of their own lives. After return to underground, nuclear-proof bunkers constructed underneath Tokyo in order to counter a potential nuclear war between the Eastern and Western blocs, and now against the Abyssal threat, the artefact was activated, alongside with a catalyst—a relic left behind to one of the researchers by the late captain of the Japanese destroyer IJS Fubuki, Shizuo Yamashita. The artefact thus triggered a process of 'summoning' a young human female, a 'fleetgirl' as was she referred to later on, named Fubuki. Further probing of her revealed her true identity to be somehow a humanized and personalified version of the destroyer IJS Fubuki, and without any other means of discovering how the process worked, it was decided for her to be deployed as-is within the JMSDF as a special forces operative to counter the enroaching Abyssal threat. She was later joined by dozens of more fleetgirls as the artefact was found to be able to summon any fleetgirl as long as a relic of her was used to activate it, resulting in many fleetgirls of various classes being summoned throughout the course of the war, with some even being dead historical figures who were brought back from the dead. Several more artefacts of similar purposes were found, bolstering this newfound advantage even more.
As the decade rolled on, the UNAF slowly pushed back the Abyssals, using their newfound edge against the Abyssals and taking the offensive. Now bolstered by the JMSDF's Special Attack Corps, the US Navy's Fleet Auxiliary Forces, the Budensmarine's Marinewaffe, and other similar fleetgirl special forces operatives branches formed all across the world, the UNAF was finally able to push the Abyssals away from Europe, alongside a fierce, major battle in Jutland in 1986, and back into the Pacific, where the decisive battle took place in 1989. The UNAF launched a massive multi-front assault on several major Abyssal strongholds around the Pacific Ocean, culminating in a joint operation led by the Japanese fleetgirl force roughly around Midway to end the conflict once and for all. In total, over 17 Abyssal capital ships were sunk, including a supercarrier, two battleships, and four cruisers, and the rest either fled or dispersed into stateless remmants, ending the war and allowing peace to finally arrive on Earth once again.
Following the conclusion of the war, humanity began reverse-engineering captured examples of Abyssal technology, including weaponry, vessels, and Abyssal bodies themselves, in order to create new technologies and weapons for the future defense against the Abyssals should they ever return, which eventually led to the development of the modern anti-gravity and coilgun technology seen today, along with the creation of the fleetgirl program. The UNAF also remained operational after the war, changing its role from an offensive and defensive fleet to a peacekeeping force, often sent out to quell global threats or provide assistance to developing nations, though it has been known to engage in combat during times of crisis.
The war was not humanity's deadliest war, nor was it the last, but it merely opened up a new frontier for humanity and prompted their first forays into space colonization and exploration, and would undoubtedly lead to the Inner Planetary Wars by the turn of the 22nd century.
The UNAF, alongside with the United Nations, was dissolved following the events of the Second Inner Planets War and it's components were integrated into the N7 Corps and the Systems Alliance, respectively. It's former headquarters are now open as a museum.
(most former UNAF fleetgirls are now registered citizens of the Systems Alliance; while some remain in active service, others have left the ranks of the military and chose a variety of career options, from janitors to company founders. Many fleetgirl veterans live relatively quiet lives.)
A/N:
Sorry for posting this two days later than usual, as the drafts for this turned out to be incomplete and as a result I had to improvise a large chunk of this chapter from scratch. I also spend the past day dealing with headaches and a sore throat, too
suks
Next chapter will be back to Shanxi, hope you guys stay tuned until then...and no, there won't be any ISBMs launched in the FCW arc. This is an HFY all right, but not that HFY lmaao