Title: Ship of The Line – Effect 31
Author: Knife Hand
Feedback: Constructive feedback appreciated, flames unappreciated
Spoilers: Nothing Specific.
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy, Star Trek or Mass Effect... I would buy them all but I am broke.
Summary: Bored with how things are going to play out, Janus interferes more directly in Halloween, making things more interesting and changing the course of the entire Galaxy. (Buffy/Star Trek/Mass Effect)
Willow sat at the command chair on the bridge of the Artemis, watching the passive scan data. It had been a year since the alliance between Section 31 and the Quarians had been forged, and since Section 31 had declared War on the Batarians. Many of the freed slaves from the earlier raids on Batarian Slave Ships and two Batarian 'Outer Colonies', read slave trading posts, had elected to join Section 31; as had a significant number of Quarians, including the original four Quarians they had rescued. Herris'Reegar Nar Kellos, now Vas Artemis, served as part of the MACO contingent onboard the Artemis under Commander Chase and the original MACOs, except for Aurora and Tina who were back on Tycho running the MACO training school. Zerra'Zona was a weapons officer on the Athena, Saris'Gerral working as an engineer assigned to Tycho working on a research project and Kemi'Zorah was working under Jenny Calendar in Section 31's Diplomatic Corps.
Willow's Command Team were quite an eclectic mix. Only Willow and Cordelia were humans. The Executive Officer was a Quarian, as was her Chief Engineer obviously. An Asari was on Helm and a female Turian was on Weapons Control. Her C.A.G., Commander Air Group who commanded the Callisto Light Escort Pilots, was a short and rotund Volus, who, while slow and ponderous on his feet, could make his Castello Light Escort almost dance. The Chief Medical Officer was an amphibian Salarian while her Chief Science Officer was a reptilian Drell. Most of the enlisted crew were Human, Asari and Quarian, because both Human and Quarians had decent free populations to draw from, while Asari and Quarians were the most favoured Slaves for Batarians.
The Artemis itself was the weakest offensively of the three Section 31 Starships, when just operating as a ship of the line, but she was also a Carrier, so when her Squadrons were deployed, they could put out more firepower than The Ares and The Athena Combined. But that was not why The Artemis was here, waiting in this system as she had been for over a day. At its core though, The Artemis was a Science Vessel, and therefore her sensors were far more advanced than either The Ares or The Athena.
Section 31 had been tipped off that Batarians were planning an ambush in this system, so the Artemis had been sent in early to keep the system under surveillance.
"Emergence from the Mass Relay." Her Slaraian Science Officer said. "Two more Cruiser Classes Batarian Ships."
"That makes six Cruisers and eight Frigates." Weapons added. "And the bait ship is not due for another ten hours."
Section 31 had a number of advantages over the Batarians. Much more advanced sensors, made even more efficient thanks to the genius of the Quarians, that were able to detect even low powered ships. Shields, both the combat shields that protected them from enemy fire and the lower powered navigational shields that hid their heat signatures, the primary way every other race detected ships, by acting like a pane of glass in front of a thermal sensor, masking everything behind it. Energy Weapons that left enemy defences useless. But their greatest advantage is that Section 31 was not bound to using the Mass Relays, instead being able to use their Warp Drives to enter any system at any point they wanted.
The major disadvantage of Section 31 was lack of Ships, which meant they needed every advantage they could find. The Joint Section 31/Quarian Shipyard, called the Forge, was still under construction, as was a second space station, called Gateway, that was located near an active Mass Relay in a system now claimed by Section 31 but previously unclaimed and uninteresting to the Citadel races. A small habitable section of Gateway was completed and, as of three weeks ago, the station was the transit point where individuals from the rest of the Galaxy could come to either settle in Section 31 space or join Section 31. The disgruntled would arrive via their own transport and then be shuttled into Section 31 space by warp capable shuttlecraft.
There were a number of Asari, former Slaves, who were quietly spreading the word throughout Council Space and the Krogan DMZ. The current number that had come through Gateway Station was small, but it had contained members of every species, including one Krogan who was now at the MACO training school, and two Quarians who had finished their Pilgrimage and had been routed through Gateway for their return.
Another rich Asari, who had been rescued when her ship was being chased by Batarian Slavers, was now working on Illium, an Asari world where they used 'Indentured Servants', and was buying up every Quarian 'Indenture' they could lay their hands on, and then smuggling them into Section 31 space and New Rannoch, then working the bureaucracy to make sure those indentures were 'lost'.
There was even a small team of Sunnydale survivors who had returned to Earth in a cloaked shuttlecraft and set up a 'Community Outreach' program in New York, London and Sydney to discretely recruit homeless former Military Servicemen and Servicewomen, along with other homeless or marginalised individuals that would be of benefit to Section 31 or the Haven Colony. Many were those simply willing and able to do the physically hard agricultural and other manual labour work required for a young colony to survive.
The crew watched for twenty minutes as the two new Batarian ships moved into ambush positions, coordinated with the already positioned warships, set to assault any ship emerging from the Mass Relay.
"Alright, first shift crew stand down." Willow ordered once the newly arrived warships were in position and powered down. "Second shift on duty. Lieutenant Commander, you have the bridge. I want first shift back on station one hour before the bait ship's scheduled arrival time."
The Lieutenant Commander in command of the second shift was a Sunnydale survivor who had dressed as a Starfleet Lieutenant Commander for Halloween, but he harboured no resentment to Hella'Kiria, the Quarian who was the Executive Officer, as she had been a Captain of a Quarian Patrol Fleet Frigate for almost ten years before she had joined Section 31. The Quarian Patrol Fleet were part of the Quarian Military and so the Captains were not a part of the Conclave of Captains and the crews were small, so the crew did not take on the name of the Patrol Fleet ship as their Ship Name, still using the ship they lived on when not on patrol.
Willow made her way to the Captain's Quarters, and lay down trying to get to sleep, but her thoughts kept drifting back to Doctor Tara Maclay, who had given her the required medical examination before The Artemis had left Tycho, and hopefully would go on a date with her when the Artemis returned to Tycho.
The Batarian 'Slave Ship' reached the outermost Planet in the System, turned around and began broadcasting communications chatter about how successful their raid was and that they had a lot of Asari and Quarian Slaves in their hold… exactly the kind of thing real Slave Ships never do and exactly at the time the 'official' intelligence leaked to Section 31 said they would be there, it was only thanks to a network of informants amongst Slaves, some of them owned very highly placed Batarians, that Section 31 knew it was a trap.
The Artemis had counted a total of twenty Batarian Warships having entered the System to ambush anything emerging from the Mass Relay. No more Cruisers had arrived, leaving their total at six, but the Frigates now totalled fourteen. Low powered scans, the kind not readily detected by the Batarian or Citadel Technology, determined the 'Slave Ship' was armed and the 'Slaves' were approximately two hundred Batarains, most likely Soldiers.
For the last few months a number of the real Slave Ships had been escorted by Warships, usually the Frigates but twice by Cruisers, So Section 31 had some idea about the capacity of their enemies. So far, though, The Ares had never needed to deploy its Peregrine Fighters and The Artemis had only deployed one Squadron of two Callistos, and that was against a Cruiser and was overkill as the lead Callisto had almost destroyed the Cruiser on its first pass and the wingman easily finished it off.
The Artemis sent out a subspace call and ten seconds later, just as The Artemis decloaked, The Ares and The Athena dropped out of warp behind the line of Batarian Warships. Within seconds, all three ships had started moving forward, weapons blazing, and the fighters were launched, two Squadrons of Peregrines from the Ares and the five Squadrons of Callistos from the Artemis. One of the Batarian Cruisers was instantly destroyed by The Ares' Spinal Lance as the Section 31 force moved to engage. Four of the Callisto Squadrons broke away from The Artemis, each targeting a different Cruiser, while the fifth Squadron stayed close to The Artemis. The two squadrons of Peregrines began split up and flanked around the Batarians to make sure none of them made a break for the Mass Relay and to harass as opportunity presented.
The three ships had very different styles of combat based on the capabilities. The Athena, being fast; manoeuvrable and with most of its firepower concentrated forward, made slashing attacks, coming in fast with withering firepower from cannons, beams and torpedos, often targeting two or three adjacent ships and doing significant damage, before shooting past before they could react and then sweeping around for another pass. The Artemis used the Callisto Squadron that stayed with it to isolate one Batarian Ship and then circled it with accurate beam and Torpedo fire into critical Batarian systems, while the Callistos kept any other Batarian Ships from blindsiding their Carrier. The Ares on the other hand waded into the heart of the Bartarians, breaking up any attempt at their attempts to create a formation, and often firing at three or four different targets at the same time with its Beams and sending spreads of torpedos from its fore and aft launchers, wearing down the Batarians as the Ares' shields stopped the vast majority of the Batarian fire, though occasionally a Batarian Ship would be unlucky enough to pass in front of the Ares when the Spinal Lance was ready to fire and was instantly destroyed.
Not everything went Section 31's way. Four Peregrines were destroyed by the remnants of the 'Slave Ship', the wreckage of which ploughed into them when it tried to ram through their blockade and they destroyed it. Two Callistos also accumulated enough damage to become inoperative. All of the pilots were able to activate the emergency beam out, which took them back to their mothership. After being checked out by medical staff, where one Callisto Pilot and three Peregrine were not cleared to fly due to concussion or broken bones. The other two pilots immediately went to the flight decks and were back out in the fray in spare fighters within a minute of their emergency beam out.
By the time the fight was over, almost two hours after the first shot was fired, all of the Batarian ships were destroyed or disabled, none having escaped or surrendered, and all three of the Section 31 Ships were damaged in some way. The Ares had been breached in one of its decks, with ten crew sucked out into space. The emergency nanite armour which is standard part of Section 31 uniforms all automatically deployed when sensors in their combadges registered vacuum, and sent a signal to Ares AI for emergency beam to med bay. Only three of the crew needed to stay in med bay as they had been hit by loose equipment when the section blew.
The Artemis had the least damage, with just some damage to one of its observation blisters, which was sealed and empty at the time. The Athena's damage was less from Batarian weapons, instead it was one of its cannon arrays being blown out from an overload resulting from excessive use, resulting in two crew and one Ensign being injured in the weapons room from the electrical discharge.
The Ares and The Artemis retrieved their fighters and the three Ships jumped to Warp on a course for Tycho.
TBC…