The Normandy sped away at its best sublight velocity. Outside, one could actually see flames starting to appear on the hull as it accelerated quickly enough to ignite the very air, trying to tear itself out of Eden Prime's atmosphere. Behind them, the colony receded, disappearing into the green haze of the land. Still, if one looked closely, one could see a large blue shape, like some kind of cephalopod, rising just behind them, moving in ways that even the Normandy, the most advanced ship in space, would have found impossible.
Inside the Meeting Deck, with holos of all the relevant tactical data before him, Skarrde was struck by how convenient the display was, giving him automatically calculated probabilities, suggests on courses of action, and even real time assessments of the outcome of his plans. Not that it was a good thing, mind. His first order, run and hit the relay, had proven to be unworkable as at best, every calculation showed the ship hitting them minutes before they would get close to the thing, which was on the far side of Utopia right now.
"Heh, just like the old training in the tank," he mused to himself. This very scenario had been planned for, and dumped into his tank when he'd been created. The specifics were different, of course. The Masters hadn't known about real space FTL back when they'd made the training, after all, but running from a faster opponent, who outclassed you in every conceivable way? That was a problem that could be predicted. Mind, his training was to contact a larger ship, or to sacrifice himself for the glory of Tirol, or something of that sort. The former wasn't an option due to the jamming, and the latter wasn't even close to tempting anymore, even if he'd been alone in a battlepod.
"We don't seem to have many good options," commented EDI beside him, a small sphere of light representing her, as much of her other functions were busy running the Normandy.
"No, no it doesn't. Still, we have some bad ones. Calculate our approach to Zion. It's a gas giant. Not the perfect mixture of one, but it will do in a bind," said Skarrde, and got a display of his ship rocketing towards the planet, with time estimates and such. With a few they were caught before they got there, but those were outliers, with the ship going far faster than it was now.
"Good, we'll make a break for it then. Best speed. The instant we hit that atmosphere I want our sinks dumped, and I want us on full stealth," commanded the General, and the light ball bobbed as if nodding, before vanishing, leaving him to watch as the small models moved in front of him. He felt a few twists to gravity as the ship ramped up to speed, having to shed precious velocity to dodge as the ship behind them reached out with a mass effect field of overpowering strength.
"Obviously, the commander on that ship doesn't want to risk damage the beacon," commented Skarrde to himself, as the Normandy finally hit a decent speed, and then lurched a bit as it went FTL. Only a few times, for the moment though. It would have taken light over an hour to reach Zion from their current position. The Normandy, at its current speed, would reach the same point in ten minutes or so, fast enough to hopefully keep them away from their pursuer, but slow enough that Joker could stop them just on the edge of the atmosphere, before they entered it and burned to nothing.
This delay gave him time to think, plan, and then brood. The latter was a new thing for him, but then, he'd never been in this particular situation before. Well, never on this side anyway. Back during the Wasteland Wars, when he'd given Jack a datapod to take back to the human authorities with Zeraal's forces closing in, he'd stayed behind to hold them off, expecting to die in the attempt. Now he was faced with the same choice as Jack, leaving via use of Zion's atmosphere to get closer to the relay, a plan with almost a fifty percent chance of working according to his readouts, but leaving his people behind in a hopeless situation on Eden Prime.
"A Federation Soldier doesn't leave a teammate behind," he said at last, rejecting the plan. After all, they knew next to nothing anyway, so leaving now wouldn't change things, and might make things worse, if the ship got away before they could call in reinforcements. Even with instantaneous drives, it would take a few minutes to get anyone out to Eden Prime, and that was if they didn't raise the more normal Fold Jammers that blocked entrances as well as exits. In that time, the ship was likely to return to the colony and if its commander was particularly vindictive, burn the whole place to the ground.
"General, we'll hit Zion in approximately sixty seconds. Orders?" asked EDI as she and Joker appeared, along with a few officers on the bridge, their forms projected for his convenience in the Meeting Deck.
"After we dump sinks and dive while in stealth, I want you to start charging every weapon we can while remaining undetected. We'll blow this thing away with one shot, or die in the attempt," he ordered simply, and got several nods, as the people went about their works, getting ready to follow his command. A moment later, the Normandy shuddered as it dropped out of FTL, the hull outside already shining a little as it had been slightly within the upper atmosphere of the gas giant when it exited.
"Dumping sinks, now!" shouted one of the officers, as they pushed a button, and suddenly every light in the ship blinked, including the Meeting Deck going dark for a moment. When the holos resumed functioning, Skarrde watched a wave pass through the thick clouds as heat, static, and even kinetic force was blasted outward from where the Normandy had been, but was now diving even deeper, the ship hitting just behind them, and small lines of clouds rising from the gas giant towards it as those legs tried to lock on with gravity fields, trying to grab the Normandy as it juked and rolled around them.
"Stealth activating, launching decoys!" advised EDI as small probes, small balls of mass effect fields, came pouring from openings on the Normandy's hull. Each orb soon bloomed into a full sized recreation of the Normandy herself, even as the real ship turned hard at an odd angle, making their way out of range, even as a few of the false images got grabbed.
"Get us as far down and away as you can," ordered Skarrde as he began to review the readouts of the Normandy's systems. The ship, with the sinks dumped, was doing better than one might expect, given they'd had to travel at FTL with the things full, and thus risked overloading the things. Still, the Normandy was the most advanced ship in the Federation or Citadel fleets, and given that sort of power, she was bound to surprise their enemies, even as their enemies obviously found ways to surprise them.
"Launch a daisy chain of probes, passive scanners only, so we can keep an eye on the large ship," he added as their view of the ship outside the atmosphere started to distort. Instantly, a few more of the spherical probes were tossed from the image of the Normandy, feeding the ship more data, and resolving the image of their foe, even as they made their way to the limit of the hull, and finally stopped.
"We're as deep as we can get General. What's the plan?" asked Joker as the ship finally lurched to a halt, scanners continuing to show their enemy is detail, as it kept blindly grasping into the clouds, trying in vain to find them by sheer force of will. It wouldn't take long for the ship's commander to give up, however, and assume they made a break for the relay. At that point, they would probably turn their ship around and head straight for Eden Prime to finish their work there, before more reinforcements could be called in.
"We go on the offensive. The crew of that ship is responsible, in part of in whole, for the death of every man, woman, and child, on Eden Prime. I for one, want to make them pay for that," ordered the General, knowing it wasn't the 'correct' call in this situation, but also knowing he refused to leave anyone behind if he could help it. The crew seemed to agree with him, as everyone seemed to attack their stations.
"Power to the Mega Particle Cannon. All turbines to speed," said a quarian at his controls, beneath them, one could feel the whine as power was transferred to the gun, a sized up version of the weapon on Garrus' custom unit. Using super charged electrons in a mass effect sheath, the weapons power was, theoretically, a match for the largest gun ever made by the Council, and possibly even the Reflex cannon on the SDF-1.
"Synchro Cannon, protoculture chamber filling, eighteen percent and rising," came the counter from a batarian at her station, as readouts gave her pressure listings for every valve and seal leading to the gun. Like the Particle Cannon, the Synchro was a scaled up Gallant, firing a massive amount of protocutlure like a bullet. The single test firing they'd done had resulted in damages equal to a flag firing every Reflex Turret at once, and that had been only at twenty percent.
"Vector Cannon, life ring has started revolving," came the chime in from a turian at his station. This weapon, a new development, fired not a shot of energy or power, but literally space. Skarrde hadn't fully understood the meaning, but it somehow bent space with its fire, using the force of the bending like a sledge hammer. He'd seen the thing fire, again only once, but that had been enough to make him believe the thing was on par with any other weapon the ship might have.
"General, we are now visible to the enemy. A mass effect field is locking onto us," advised EDI, as her holo turned simple again, her mind scattered throughout the ship, keeping the core from overloading this time, managing the weapons as reflex turrets took aim, and mass drivers did likewise. Every joule of power on the ship was being focused, and the crew held their breaths, waiting for the release of all that energy.
"Joker, point us up towards the thing. As soon as we're clear of the cloud layer, I want us firing," ordered Skarrde, and he saw the holo of the pilot nod, before going into orb form with his wife, the ship shuddering a little as he flared the engines, soon leaving them with their nose pointed almost straight upwards, as the mass effect field of the enemy vessel continued to do their work for them. Slowly, they rose, like a predator from the depths, waiting for the hunter to realize this catch had far too many teeth for them to take.
"Fire!" ordered Skarrde, the moment he saw the last of the wisps part from his ship, and almost at that moment, the vessel poured starfire towards their target. Blue charged particles flew from their bay, lancing outwards like something out of an old religious tome, the cleansing fire of angles to smite some mortal foe. Green colored raw protoculture, life itself in its rawest form, sailing across the void to slam hard into the enemy's flesh. Red compressed space, a line of something only barely visible, but more powerful than all the hellfire of any underworld you cared to name.
Amid all that, the reflex turrets blue lines and the yellow dots of the mass drivers might as well have been raindrops, but they fired anyway, adding to the raw destruction that soon hit the enemy as hard as they could, their force only multiplied by the large ship's own attempt to drag the Normandy towards it, accelerating the shots. Then they hit home, the barrier of their foe a rainbow of colors as the attacks slammed into it. Ripples passed through the barrier, creating an odd visual effect, as the attack continued to stream.
"Hold! Don't let up!" ordered Skarrde, even as he watched the weapons start to drain their banks, and slowly but surely approach the red zone, threatening to melt the sinks of the Normandy into slag, before they tore the ship apart. Still, their enemy seemed to be having just as great a struggle as they were, the barrier itself seemingly melting off other parts of the ship as it focused on the area where the big guns were impacting it, the armor of the thing shrugging off the power of the reflex turrets and mass drivers that target the unprotected bits.
"Hold!" he ordered again, watching, almost dumbstruck, as the ship continued to take their assault. Finally, with that moment of stillness that came from watching something closely, the barrier gave. The armor, that wasn't even scratched by their other attacks, caved the instant the big guns touched it, the tendril falling into rubble and being vaporized, as the ship only barely moved itself out of the way, letting the three arcs of light continue on into space, even as the Normandy was forced to start a power down sequence to avoid exploding themselves.
"Damage to the enemy!" shouted one of the gunners, even as more fire started to pour down into that wound, shafts of blue light and yellow pellets of destruction exploding against the exposed innards of the great vessel. Then he heard it. First it was simple buzzing, an annoyance, but refusing to allow him to ignore it. It swiftly grew, however, and with a shriek of pain, Joker, EDI, and Skarrde fell, the AI's holos fragmenting, even as the Zentraedi went to his knees, and then rolled onto his side, clutching at his head.
Skarrde's mind filled with images and emotions he hadn't known in so long, they'd been forgotten. His leaders, the Robotech Masters, standing proud on their great ships, commanding him and his brothers to kill for them, to die for them. His memories, programed into the core of his being during his creation, kept trying to assert themselves over his sense of self. Skarrde was strong, however, two centuries and more of life had made him into someone not easily broken, especially after he had chosen his own path in this world, and after sitting there for what felt like hours in pain, he slowly rose.
"All stations! Keep us level!" shouted a voice through the pain filled haze of Skarrde's mind, and he distantly felt the rocking of the ship beneath him, vibrations that spoke of battles and maneuvers that strained the gravity systems of the ship. Breathing hard, he realized that beneath him, a puddle of sweat was forming rapidly, forcing him to be even more careful as he got back onto his feet, and took a look at the situation as it stood now.
"Report!" he commanded, and several shouting voices stopped at once, commands frozen on the lips of those about to give them. Instantly, the commander of the vessel appeared before him, saluting in the turian way.
"General, you've been out of commission for the last twenty minutes. Joker only recovered five minutes ago, and as of now, EDI is still offline. We're doing our best to keep the ship stable, but the enemy isn't allowing us much room to make plans," as the commander spoke, images of the battle sprang up around him. They had either flown, or more likely with Joker out, dropped back into the cloud layer. They were just above crush depth as it was, but it made it impossible for their enemy to find them.
Not that the enemy seemed to be doing so, as beams of red light sprang from the tips of the remaining tendrils, setting fire to entire swaths of clouds as they passed through. Worse though, and the source of the rocking were those tendrils that were distorted, orbs at the end dropping from them into the clouds. Those clouds would be drawn to the orbs, singularities like a biotics, and slowly the clouds inside would build, and build until the pressure reached its limit, and the hydrogen exploded outwards, creating a blast wave that struck the Normandy and shook it violently, nearly driving Skarrde back to his knees.
"Main cannons are still charging back up. We won't be ready to fire again for at least half an hour, and with their barrier back up, nothing else we've got will even dent that ship," advised one of the gunners, and Skarrde could hear a few panicked grunts as the ship shuddered under another impact as one of the beams got close to them, sending a wash of fire over the hull outside. Joker, his orb a deep crimson with his rage, screamed bloody murder as he dove to the side to avoid as much as he could, only for a second bar of red light to strike nearby, swinging towards them. Skarrde's tactical mind told them they were dead, there just wasn't time for him to give any orders, and Joker wouldn't have time to dodge.
"What in the?" said more than a single voice most adding a word or two onto the end, as all at once, the maelstrom of fire and force about them abruptly ceased. Above, the ship, seemingly limping with the broken tendril hanging dead off the bottom, turned away from the world, and then accelerated away, gaining speed quicker than any ship its size should have been able to do, before finally vanishing into FTL, leaving every person on the Normandy just staring at where it had been.
"Angle of departure suggests they're headed back to the colony, General," said an asare at her station, and Skarrde nodded.
"Alright, all hands, keep battlestations. I want as many repairs done in half an hour as we can. Doctor, see if you can get EDI back online. Joker, help with that," commanded the General, and he got confirmations from all stations.
"I will do my best, but I'm a biologist, not a code monkey," came the voice of the salarian medic the ship employed, before he began to hum show tunes again, a sign that he was already hard at work on the problem. It would take only fifteen minutes before the ship was deemed ready to fly, and they rose out of Zion's clouds, rocketing towards Eden Prime, and hoping they were not too late.