Three days later, the Titan War ended. No grand last stands could last longer than that, as the batarian armada broke upon the rock that was the Federation Fleet. In every engagement, in every battle, it was quickly apparent that, at best, the four eyed aliens were fighting for a lost cause, and despite orders, many a military man surrendered his command to the mighty Terrans, and those that didn't soon learned the folly of their ways, as their atoms were spread across space as expanding clouds of dust.
As the final second of the countdown hit zero, two thousand ships folded in above the batarian worlds. Every batarian world. These ships, legion in number and massive in scale, were like hulking gods of destruction, hanging in space. The few forces in the skies were either destroyed outright under lances of blue light that sheared through them before they could raise a barrier, or capitulated, if the offer was made, giving the fleets free reign over the space around these planets.
The next step was the worlds themselves, and the same offer was extended. The governors or otherwise those in charge were contacted, and offered the chance to surrender. If they refused, they would soon hear a crashing sound, and then a single blue bolt would fall from the sky, exploding in a blue dome of utter devastation where it struck. Be they in their manors in the center of the cities, or in the mountains, buried beneath tons of rubble, these bolts of divine retribution found them, and destroyed them.
When either the world had surrendered, or when there were simply no leaders to be found, the great ships opened their bays. Out of them poured things. First, the fast and powerful veritechs, their winged shapes tearing through the atmosphere, flying over cities and towns, and taking stock of them. Some, having waited for this, fired at these vessels, with whatever weapons they had. In almost all cases, this had the same effect as one would have had spitting at them. Worse in some regards, as the veritech would typically stop for a moment, transform into guardian mode, and then snipe the offending party with a single shot, before moving on.
Once the surveys of the planets were completed, the veritechs would stop over the cities, hovering above them like sentinels, and making the people cower in fear, most expecting death to follow soon after. Instead of that, however, a booming voice echoed from the craft, with a message. The contents of the message differed, depending on the pilot, but the meaning was the same no matter the words used. They were not here to harm the people, they were here to free them. Supplies, both food and medicine would soon be distributed as best as they could manage, with more to follow.
Then the second wave of vessels exited the war ships. These vessels were not as sleek, nor as fast as the veritechs. No, these were the domed shapes of reentry pods, which blazed through the skies, and then gently landed as the edge of every city the batarians had. When the pods landed, they opened up, and out of them came a multitude of things. Each contained a few armored Terrans, their weapons clearly poised to defend those with them, while beside them were either other Terrans of micronian size, quarians, or even geth, carrying supplies, and instruments as they ran into the cities.
The streets, abandoned of people, the factories, silent without their workers, were soon awash with both, as the forces of the Terrans spread out. Into every home they went, they left food and supplies. In every group, there was at least one medic, and they would give everyone a once over, while others gave cards, IDs they called them, that would be used to get more food and medicine when the new government was set up. Faces of fear and despair soon gave way to hope and thanks as they went, and the word spread of what they were doing.
The large troops were careful, placing their hands on buildings, and helping to find any stragglers that might be hiding, or to discover small platoons of troops that were waiting for them to pass by. This last either surrenders, or they found their hiding places literally stopped to rubble by the giants, who moved on to the next ghetto afterwards. Of course, the troops also helped keep any begging mobs in check, and allowed the distribution to be more orderly than it otherwise had been, as when one of them demanded everyone wait their turn, they tended to be listened to.
That was not to say there was no fighting. In a few places, the batarian hold outs were able to set up ambushes and sniper posts, taking pot shots at the smaller forces. Most were protected by strong enough barriers that these shots only injured them. The few that died were quickly avenged, and in ways that made future forces much less willing to even try to oppose the Terrans. In fact, one such incident was credited with getting an entire garrison to surrender without a fight.
All of these things were shown to the galaxy in recordings that the Terrans made and put directly onto the extranet. They wanted everyone to know that whatever this seemed, they cared for the people. They showed the good of their charity, as they healed the sick and injured workers who had gone without such concern for their whole lives. They showed the bad of their people literally dismantling another government piece by piece. They showed those ugly moments where the warrior blood of the Zentraedi shown through in their moments of vengeance, as they tore apart the batarian military that fought them.
Bases were ripped asunder, lines of tanks and mechs from the batarians fought, and in some cases, might start to turn the tide against a few of the Terran armored giants, only to find lines of blue light blowing them away. Others that surrendered found their soldiers striped down to nothing, and processed like criminals, who were then herded into the ghettos they had once policed. All across the Hegemony, the defenses fell, and the Terrans took control of these once powerful worlds.
In deep space, the relays and other such choke points, the battle was different. These vessels were equipped and ready for battle, as the Terran ships folded in around them, and fighting there was fierce. Images were shown of the great dreadnaughts of the batarian military opening fire the instant their Terran counterparts were in range, beams of red light, now known to be tubes of liquid metal accelerated to the same speeds as their normal weapons, tearing into the green hulls of their foes, typically causing them to explode in balls of blue light before they could even fire a shot.
But the Terrans had more ships, and crews that fought despite the losses. For every ship destroyed, there were ten more that weren't, and even as the batarians proved able to damage them, they proved the same back, as swarms of veritechs launched from the fleet, the great fighters crossing the distance in moments, as they showed off what the Terrans had spent a year learning. These new models of the transforming vessels were equipped with eezo cores, and easily kept pace with their foes.
Dances of death and light took place, as the batarian ships with their news weapons and barriers swooped among the fighters, the larger ships soon finding their hulls dotted with humanoid forms. The great metal things latched on, and then used their hands to literally tear into the enemy ships, blowing the crews and personnel into space, and then firing into them with missiles that ripped into the decks and corridors, causing huge gouts of flame to pop out of the hulls at odd angles.
Then the other shoe dropped. As the Terrans disabled ships with the old barrier tech, and fought to keep those with the new pinned in, quarian and geth ships pour into batarian space through the relays. Suddenly, even the new ships found themselves overmatched, as their barrier buckled the instant the mass driver weapons touched them, the layered barriers bending inward, before popping like soap bubbles, and leaving their hulls exposed to fire that then blasted its way through them.
The graceful geth ships, like insect, flitted about the fleet, picking their targets, and never wasting a single motion or bit of fire. Everywhere the swarm of smooth ships flew, they left death and devastation in their wake. The quarian ships, with their more blocky designs, were far less subtle, and their fire rained down like metal hail, huge shells ripping into hulls and barriers as they advanced slowly and methodically, always trying to out maneuver the enemy's red lances, while driving them onto the blue ones of the Terran fleet.
By the end of the first twenty-four hours, organized resistance to the Terrans was simply non-existent. What few members of the batarian military command remained were in retreat, some going through relays into the lawless Terminus. Others fled to the Council, begging asylum that was given out rarely to their kind, while others were turned back, often right into the guns of pursuing Terran ships. Even those that were granted asylum weren't safe though, as to the Terrans, this war was to be the end, and it was shown that they were willing to keep fighting until either the batarians surrendered to them, or they were destroyed, no matter who chose to guard them.
When the first day was done, everyone in the galaxy stared a the events of the war in shock. Nothing remained of the sixth most powerful military. The Terrans had shown mercy where surrenders had been given, but otherwise they were utterly ruthless, crushing anyone who might oppose them, and smashing them into nothing but atoms. Recordings, images, and everything else was shown to the public, as even the best agents of the STG couldn't control the information flood that the Terrans insisted on putting on the hypernet.
The response of the people was a mixture of horror at just how far the Terrans went in their war, and one of fear that this could happen to them. Stories were traded of the old Rachni Wars, where the enemy had acted much the same, fighting until there was nothing left, or the Krogan Rebellions, where the krogan had crushed them under heel until they gave up because of the enemy's sheer numbers. This was, in many ways, worse than those, though, as the Terrans, unlike the beastial rachni and the warrior krogan, showed themselves to have compassion and understanding in their dealing with the civilians they aided, but then showed ferocity unmatched when you opposed them.
The second day showed mostly the former, as they began to take control of the worlds they had toppled. More supply ships came, the transports they had used to shuttle around their prisoners previously, but now loaded with food, medicine, and anything else they needed. Repairs were quickly done to the cities that had been damaged, and stock was taken of the citizens. In cases of non-batarians, they were asked for names, information, and then quickly sorted into those who wanted to return to their own people, and those who had known no other life but that of a slave.
Soon, across the galaxy, transports folded in above the colonies of the various peoples, asking permission to land and assuring those below they had no hostile intentions. When these ships landed, they disembarked those who had long been considered dead, those captured in slave raids, either on less well protected colonies or from ships that had simply disappeared over the years. Families, long shattered, were given tear filled reunions under the stoic gaze of the Terrans, who seemed passive to the events, assuring those that thanked them that this was their justice, before departing.
The Council, watching all this with their people, were quick to begin trying to open lines of communication with the Terrans, condemning them for their tactics, and otherwise trying to demonize them. The Terrans response was at best silence, at worst it tended towards the insulting, implying that the batarian Hegemony had been flaunting their laws for so long, that it had become a point of pride for the four eyed race. That in this, they were as much agents of the Council as the SPECTERs, ending violations where they saw them, and bringing hope to those who had never before had it.
The second day saw little fighting beyond a few pockets of resistance. Even when leaders popped up, trying to whip their people into a rebellious frenzy, they would find those they had oppressed for so long, those who had obeyed every order, were not so inclined to do so anymore. Some of those leaders even had to go begging for protection from the Terrans, as mobs, remembering the crimes of their masters, tried to tear apart the fools who reminded them of their status as plebs and slaves. Luckily for those who turned to them, the Terrans were magnanimous in their protection, and never allowed a mob to do as they wanted to them. Unluckily, they still found themselves locked up, and facing trials for their crimes.
As the second day waned, the Conclave met, to discuss the annexation of the Hegemony's old territory into the Federation as a client state. They held up those they thought would make good governors of the conquered people, and otherwise made plans to take control. It was in the middle of these discussions that the war flared up again, in some small way, as a patrol fleet encountered something on an unassuming outpost that tore through the Terran, geth, and quarian ships as easily as a hot knife through butter.
The third day dawned as that news played across the galaxy. Of a ship, a single vessel of batarian make, that was running rings around the Terran Fleet. Some felt this was absurd. Sure, the batarians had shown a few new tricks, but most knew the mechs were of salarian design, and the new barriers and weapons seemed like something that could be made by the same. Still, the lack of information was telling, as no video or the like came from that sector for most of the day.
Then it was over. Rumors spread, but it was undeniable that, at the end of the day, the Terrans defeated whatever superweapon the batarians had managed to acquire. Theories among believers began to rage. From some weapon the Terrans had allowed the batarians to steal, to a thing of the protheans the four eyes had somehow acquired. In any event, the last battle of the Titan War was ended decisively by the SDF-4's main gun, and when the dust settled, the Terrans claimed the Hegemony's former worlds as their own.
Messages came thick and fast from the Council, of course, that such a claim was without merit, that they had stolen those worlds, and they needed to be returned to the batarian people. They were informed that, while a Terran Governor was appointed by the Conclave, that once events had settled, they would allow the same elections their own society was given, and should the new leader choose, they might join their star to the Council again, but should they choose to stay with the Federation, that no further dialogue on the subject would be had. Reluctantly, the Council agreed.
Thus ended the first war between the Terrans and the Council, and everyone took stock. Many races no longer clamoured to join them, as the Council played up the devastation and destruction caused by the war, of how far the Terrans had gone to prosecute the batarians who had, in all truth, gravely wronged them. To many, this became enough, as memories of the long ago wars stirred a fear in them. For others, especially those who had fought those wars, the Titan War was yet one more reason to get themselves together, that they might become part of this Federation, and join in their future.