The first volley of shots were a slowly dispersing cloud of particles between the pair of ships, those super heated bits of metal giving the two forces a likely preview of what would happen should they come to blows. Between them, invisible to both ships, a black silhouette made its way slowly over to the turian side, the thrusters giving it momentum that built gently, giving the one inside the shape a chance to look at her targets, while idly checking over the double barreled reflex rifle in her hands, making sure the thing was fully charged and able to do what she needed.
Aboard the turian vessel, a dozen sets of hands were flying over floating holographic keyboards. To many outsiders, it seemed like the two fingered turians would have a bit of a disadvantage when it came to typing quickly, but within their own system, the fingers not only seemed to dance, but each subtle motion, a joint twitch here, a fingertip shake there, seemed to cause their displays to change a dozen times over, as they ran every bit of radiation from the ship across from them through every sim they could, looking for some pattern, some way of communicating.
Aboard the Terran ship, the captain sat in his seat, looking at monitors, as T'Pol ran through lines of data, studying everything she could, trying to decode anything she could from the alien vessel before her. Every blip, spark, or just odd movement was added as she went over and over again, even beginning to use old electronic warfare techniques to try and find a link with the aliens. In their gun wells, the three crewmen went over firing solutions, all of them taking targets in the force before them, as the two veritechs slowly drifted away from the Sling Shot, to cover behind their mothership.
Minutes passed, and finally, after crashing a dozen stations on the bridge of the turian cruiser, a link was established. At first it was flawed, no image, only some jarring screeching sounds, but the communications officers were hard at work on even this tenuous connection. On the other side, T'Pol found herself accessing data streams that were alien in structure, but still data. Her brain, a computer large enough to store the position of every star in the galaxy, devoted all its power to the task, translating every byte she could get her hands on, until finally she made a breakthrough.
To the Terran's eyes, an image blossomed in his monitor as T'Pol began to filter the transmission from the alien ship. A face slowly resolved out of static, one that was oddly shaped, with mandibles on the side of the mouth, and texture that looked like rough stone. The mouth opened, the bits on the side pulling away, and an odd cry came from inside, high pitched, but still obviously supposed to be words. The AI went to work on this immediately, using the system she was accessing to start a translation.
To the turian's eyes, a flat image began to form in front of him, overlaying the sight of his ships and his foes. He had expected some batarian slaver scum, but was surprised that, instead, he saw something with far more hair. At first, he thought it was some asari who had decided to test some new device, but he was quickly dashed of that expectation when the thing in front of him opened its mouth, and made grunting noises. He knew they had to be words, but what they said he had no clue, looking over at a display that formed, beside the image, a request to keep the creature talking, which he did by talking at it.
Fifteen minutes, thirty two seconds after first contact between the turians and the Terrans, speech became possible, as the translation program in the turian computers finally deciphered the speech of the odd mammalian thing before him. At that exact instant, accessing their systems, T'Pol found the same program running, and did a quick copy of it into her own system, as familiar words allowed her to alter it quickly, creating a slapdash, but workable program, which could let her know what was being said.
OoOoO
"Do you understand me?" asked the turian of the orange tinted image before him. He still wondered why the thing was flat, and intended on asking one of the techs about it later. It probably had something to do with this primitive's system not being able to handle full holo displays.
"I think I do, can you understand me?" responded the mammal, her words slurred a bit, almost like a krogan on a full drunken bender, but at least at the level where one knew what they were saying if one listened closely.
"Excellent. Now identify yourself," said the stone faced turian with the air of a man used to being obeyed, his mandibles starting to move in and out in an irritated fashion.
"My name is Jonathan Archer, Captain of the Terran Federation Starship, Phoenix. Whom my I inquire are you?" asked the thing in the floating square.
"My name Desolas Arterius, Captain of the Turain Hierarchy Vessel, Talons. It is now my duty to inform you that you and your crew are under arrest for violating Council Edict forty six stroke seventy three. Your ship is to match velocities with my command ship, and upon setting up a connection, we will take your crew on board, where we will interrogate them, to see if any farther action will be necessary," this was said in the same voice as before, and the turian just seemed to stare at the mammal in the image before him, waiting for her to answer.
OoOoO
A thousand thoughts went through Archer's head as he listened to this stone faced alien read him the riot act. Most of them were born of his Zentraedi blood which told him to just wipe this idiot off the face of the cosmos and then go on to conquer his people. Those thoughts, instincts instilled in his genes, he ignored, and instead followed other lines of thought. Most of those still required a bit of violence, but then, he was willing to give his instincts that much, and the arrogant way this stone face just seemed to think he would surrender, made Archer smirk a little.
"I believe we are at an impasse then. My orders in first contact situations are to try for peaceful relations, but given your first action was to launch an unprovoked attack on one of my subordinates, I feel that avenue has already passed us by. Give me one good reason to submit to the authority of someone who opens fire first, and demands surrender second," said the human, watching that face on the screen in front of him, turning looking out of the corner of his eye to find numbers running across several other screens, showing T'Pol hard at work accessing more of the turian's computers.
"My attack was hardly unprovoked. You were attempting to reactivate a dormant mass relay. That alone is enough to warrant the extermination of your entire formation. The fact that you stopped is the only reason I haven't ordered a full assault," responded the turian, his irritation growing more obvious, even to someone of another species, mostly thanks to the translators actually capturing tone of the statements pretty well.
"Mass relay? You mean the Sling Shot? That's very interesting, considering they're just dormant. If you didn't want someone coming along and reactivating them, your race should have scuttled them completely, rather than just leaving them there," countered Archer, giving the face in the monitor a moment of pause, before he made an odd gesture, his two fingered hand reaching up to tap on the side of his face. Archer, despite this being the first time he'd seen the species, actually recognized it as something analogous to rubbing the bridge of your nose.
"Primitive, so very primitive. I will brook no farther comments from you. I'll offer you five minutes, and when I contact you again, I expect you to surrender to my custody, otherwise I will be forced to obliterate you," and with that the monitor died, the face vanishing, and being replaced by the image of the seven ship formation slowly turning themselves so they were all pointed directly at the Phoenix.
"He seemed rather pleasant," commented T'Pol sarcastically, and Archer could only nod his head in agreement as he turned to face her monitor.
"I'm beginning to think we could learn more from the wreckage of his ships than from the crews," admitted Archer with a smirk.
"Possibly, though doubtful. As of now, I'm in their system completely, and have access to most of their files. Give me a few minutes to work, and I think I could download every byte of data there," she informed the captain, getting the man to raise an eyebrow.
"What about ecm? Aren't their ship board AIs resisting you?" he asked.
"They would be, if they existed. This ships system appears to have no AI controllers at all. In fact, the worst ecm I had to deal with was an attack algorithm, which I've already convinced to not only sit up and roll over, but to play dead for a while," she said, and he watched a little digital avatar of T'Pol playing on the screen with a small dog shaped mass of numbers.
"You have full access then?" he queried, curious as to how far she might have gotten.
"Not total yet. That will take some time, even with this pitiful defense, but I can give you things like a crash course in their history, and who each of the officers on board the cruiser and the frigates are," she told him, flashing pictures and names on his main monitor.
"Can you shut down their weapons?" he asked.
"Given twenty minutes, maybe, but we've barely got four left of Desolas' timelimit. I do think...yes, that would work," her voice seemed distracted, and Archer just sat there, letting the AI think for a few seconds.
"Okay, their ship is weird. I can see lots of protections of things like the shields, the weapons, and even the engines, but the controls for all of those systems are holographic," she told him at last.
"Holographic?" he repeated with a questioning tone.
"Yeah, light projections, not solid state like buttons or switches," she clarified for him.
"And how does that help us?" responded Archer, thinking he knew where she was going with this line of attack, but wanting to make sure.
"Well, every projector is hooked up to the same program, and that program is actually pretty low priority protection. Looking at their schematics, only like half their systems even have any kind of manual override, and all of that's for turning things off, like the engines of the weapons. Heck, I think the doors will be locked solid if the holos are turned off," she said, her monitor showing a wire frame of the larger vessel, and then highlighting what he assumed were the doors on board.
"That seems like quite the system vulnerability," commented Archer, wondering if this was some kind of trick. No species he knew of would have intentionally hobble their defenses against any kind of attack, and to be this open to an attack. It could be a trap, and yet, it was a very inviting one.
"How long till you can shut them down?" he asked at last, looking over at his own monitor, seeing the timer that T'Pol had helpfully provided there, showing he had only a minute and a half until the turian's deadline.
"Any time you're ready captain," she informed him.
"Alright then, inform Shepard to be ready to attack if this goes south. I want her to disable only though. Can she blow something out on their ships that won't destroy them?" he asked, and T'Pol's virtual head nodded.
"Easy, the engines are almost completely separate from the main body of their ships. Her rifle should be able to punch a hole straight through the things. I'm confident that won't be necessary though," she told him, and Archer just nodded.
"Give her the info then, and put Captain Arterius back on my screen," he ordered, watching the countdown vanish only to be replaced with a still annoyed look stone face.
OoOoO
Shepard drifted in space. In front of her, just in visual range, was the formation of arrowhead ships. She had been a bit startled when their engines had flared to life, and for a moment she had been able to fire, only to see that they were just shifting position, and she decided to wait for orders. She wasn't even sure her rifle would work on these things, after all. Those projectiles had been kinetic in nature, almost useless against a barrier system, but there was no telling what defenses she might be up against. One shot might be all she had, and she had better not waste it.
"Hannah, do you copy?" came the voice of T'Pol in her ear, and Shepard clicked a button with her chin, opening a laser channel with the ship, something that couldn't be tapped or tracked unless someone got between her and the Phoenix.
"I'm here, T'Pol. Do you have orders for me?" she asked, and got a face full of info dumping, including a weird stone faced thing, and some wire frame images of the aliens vessels, which soon highlighted sections near their aft portions, right where the glowing thrusters were.
"Affirmative. I'm going to try something that should disable the turian vessels. If it doesn't work though, you'll have to use more forceful means to get our point across. Hit these sections on the ships, and you should destroy their engines completely," said the AI, and Shepard shifted her gaze, the wire frames coming to overlay each of the ships she could see, highlighting her targets.
"Alright, just tell me when if I need to start firing," she said, pressing a release on her double barreled rifle, causing the thing to split down the middle into two single rifles, that she then pointed at the main vessel and one of the supports, her fingers on the triggers, waiting for the order.
OoOoO
"Captain, I'm getting a transmission from the Terran ship," said one of the officers, and Desolas smirked to himself. The primitive still had almost a full minute, and had probably spent the previous four trying to think of some way out. She had obviously realized how outmatched she was, and was calling back slightly early to help smooth over her surrender.
"Bring her back onto my display," ordered Desolas, and was soon confronted with that smooth, asari-like face again.
"Have you considered your position?" he asked, a bit of smugness creeping into his voice, hoping that this confrontation would be just what he'd need to push his star forward, and become a general.
"We have, Captain Arterius. I would like to make a counter proposal. I will send one of my veritechs with you, and one of your frigates will come with me, and we can put this incident behind us, in the name of peace," offered Captain Archer, her voice filled with sincerity. Some of the crew, including Commander Kryik and Lieutenant Vakarian were of a mind that the offer was a good one, after all, this incident could just as easily lead to a war, and after having seen the power of the Terran's odd weapons, they didn't think that would be a good idea.
"Unacceptable! I offer no terms, and will brook no dissent. You will surrender your ships and your crew to my care. We must find out how many of your people have committed this crime, and how much effort it will take to bring you in line with Galactic Law," he stated this, after the first word, in a monotone, trying to put all of his experience at command into the order, and the face in the small screen seemed to sigh, bring up her hands to cover his mouth, before turning to something only she could see.
"T'Pol, can you leave this connection open?" she asked of someone out of view.
"I believe so Captain, shall I begin?" asked another, softer voice.
"Make it so," was the command given, and then all at once, the stations all over the bridge began to wink out. Controls that allowed the turians to monitor everything from engine heat, to mass effect field size, to barrier density, all went dark, and the men and women at the stations took a single moment to see what was going on before beginning to try and force their terminals back to life, but finding them dead. Only one station remained active, this one showing the face of the Terran, who smirked at the turian on the other end, as he looked positively flummoxed.
"Now then Captain Desolas, I think it's time for you to surrender yourself to me," said the Terran, a bit smug now herself, as she fold her arms in front of her. Before Desolas could give an answer though, the image winked out of existence, and the crew was left standing there, their captain almost literally gnashing his mandibles against each other, while across his ship, many found themselves locked in rooms or stations, the door controls vanished.
OoOoO
"What the? T'Pol, what happened to my connection to the turians?" asked Archer, staring at the blank monitor, only to get an answer in the form of the view of the enemy ships, the six frigates starting to warm up.
"I'm sorry, Captain. It seems I underestimated what the algorithms were capable of. As soon as I shut down the holos aboard the main vessel, every outside connection among the frigates shut down automatically," apologized the AI, as the view of six veritech sized ships began to change as they prepared to fire.
OoOoO
"Shepard, take out those frigates!" came the crying voice of the AI in her ear, and Shepard reacted as quickly as one would expect a soldier to. Her fingers already on the triggers of her guns, she pulled off the first two shots without a second between the order and the action. Lances of blue protoculture energy flew from the barrels, and before the two targeted frigates had moved a fraction of a meter, those lances slammed home against the barriers.
Protoculture projectiles were an odd thing. Part energy, part kinetic force, and part heat blast. All three of these tended to mean anything impacted by such a blast was reduced to so much slag, or just out and out vaporized, as many a Zentraedi ship had found at the hands of the large cannons of the SDF-1 during the old Robotech war. Still, this odd mix of energies interacted strangely with the barrier of the turian ships, a thing designed solely for kinetic impact.
The barriers appeared like a bubble around the ships, a small shining shield against the even smaller shots. It gave a little to the attack, the edge pushing inward at the points of impact. Then the formally blue barrier red shifted, as the energy of the projectiles streamed along the surface of the barriers, lines of light crisscrossing the surface, until webs of blue light surrounded the red bubbles, which burst outward into space, the ships stopping dead as their systems failed.
"Life form readings?" demanded Shepard of T'Pol, wondering if they would have to change plans, or if she would be forced to kill the turians, as the two ships began to drift a little.
"They're still alive in there, Shepard," confirmed the AI after a moment, and the commander squeezed off two more shots in quick order, giving only a second of thought as the process repeated before she brought her guns to bare on the last two ships. One had the bubble pop again, but the other apparently had just enough time to turn the barrier off, hoping their armor could take the hit, only to have the beam carve through the metal of their ship, piercing the engine, and unfortunately sending them spinning off into space.
"Captain, that last ship is in a spin, and I'm not going to be able to catch it," she informed Archer, as she tried to jet after the thing. Her momentum should have matched the stupid thing, but somehow the ship kept accelerating away from her, the spin only becoming worse the longer it went.
"Affirmative, I've already got Lieutenant Faraway on it," came an almost instant reply, and Shepard nodded, stopping her pursuit and watching her sensors. Using subtle motions of her jaw, she was able to control the display before her eyes, and get a view of the veritech still in jet mode as it pulled away from the Phoenix, and then punched itself forward as the engines behind it took on the appearance of brightly glowing stars.
Watching him fly, she wondered just how he would stop the frigate as it kept spinning in space, growing more and more distant, and faster too. When the lieutenant reached it, just before it grew too fast for him, she had to whistle a bit due to his impressive stunt. Flipping end over end, he transformed his veritech to guardian mode, arms and legs unfolding from the jet, which then grappled onto the turian vessel, hands locking over engine powers, which he squeezed shut, while adjusting where his feet, tipped with the engines of his jet mode, were positioned, killing the spin of the ship in only a few powerful bursts, before finally stopping it in space.
"Katana Faraway, mission accomplished. Where should I park this one?" asked the young man.
"You and Tulley move the frigates within a few hundred meters of the cruiser, then come back. Shepard, you get back here too. We'll discuss what we're going to do with these turians," said Archer simply, and Shepard watched as Katana began to physically haul the ship through space, Tulley's veritech joining him, before she turned her attention to the Phoenix, wondering just what might be going on aboard the alien vessels, now they they were helpless.
(Author's Note:
I want to thank everyone for their support so far. This is by far the fastest growth of any story's following I have ever had, and that really feels nice. That said, remember, reviews/comments are greatly appreciated, and each one encouraged me to keep going.
That said, as I'm sitting here, reading over this, the third version of chapter 4, I think I might want some help in the editing department, and would ask if anyone reading this would like to become a prereader. I can't offer anything to go with the position of course, but you'd get to read the story a bit early, and help me iron out the details.
Also, I plan on doing a Codex entry list for the universe of Robo Effect, both because lots of other Mass Effect Fanfics do it, and it would be a great way to establish some things I don't feel like doing in the story itself. If you have anything you want to read about in regards to this universe, ask either in a comment/review or in a private message. Tech, Characters, Historic events are all open, though do remember, I am ignoring everything past the Macross Reconstruction Arc of Robotech, so don't bother asking about things that come from the Robotech Masters or beyond, though you might see a few familiar faces from those.)