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)
"We will be jumping out of Warp in ten minutes, I want status reports." Xander ordered.
He was standing on the bridge of the Ares, with Buffy sitting at the dedicated station she occupied when the Athena was docked inside the Ares.
"The emergency bulkheads on decks four, thirteen and sixteen are holding. EPS conduits have been rerouted and the bio-neural gel-packs are compensating." The Ares Operations Officer reported.
"Rear torpedo tube two is offline, but otherwise weapons are good." Tactical added. "Shields are up to ninety three percent."
"The Athena's port Warp Nacelle isn't repairable short of space dock facilities." Buffy said. "And we lost one of the forward Cannons, but otherwise good to go."
The damage to the Athena's Nacelle was why it was travelling docked instead of under its own power.
"One of the Artemis' launch bays is out of action, and the industrial replicators have replaced sixty percent of our Callisto losses. Structural integrity is holding, but we are a bit low on power reserves." Willow reported over the comms from the bridge of the Artemis.
There had been a larger than expected number of Demonic Vessels and Celestial Draconis Demons around the portal breach, and they seemed to be guarding it, rather than just the damaged or exhausted remnants usually associated with a Nightmare Construct's entrance into the Universe. Also the portal had not started to fade, as records indicated they did. The fight had been brutal, both the Athena, the Artemis and all of the squadrons from the Artemis and Ares opening a wedge for the Ares itself in order to give the flagship the chance to close the portal.
Once the portal had been closed, the fight was much easier as the Demons had lost their connection to the Demonic Energy of their home dimension, a problem those that accompanied the Nightmare Construct did not face as the Construct itself emitted the same corrupting energy, but all three ships had been damaged in the fight to get to the portal, and despite the emergency beaming of crew pulled out of the ships or in damaged fighters there had been casualties.
"Have we gotten any reports from the Quarian Fleet?" Xander asked.
"They have engaged. Most of the Nightmare Construct's escorts are down, and the Construct itself is taking damage but it does not seem to be slowing it down. The Fleet is taking a lot of damage, and there are Demons on the ground, with ground forces responding." The Communications Officer reported.
"Ok, as soon as we jump in, the Athena will launch and all ships will concentrate fire on the Construct. The Ares will scan for weak points. Rosenberg, don't launch your squadrons, by the time they get close enough to be effective, the pilots will be fried by the Demonic Energy." Xander ordered.
Buffy soon left the bridge of the Ares to make the Athena ready for launch as soon as they exited Warp.
The Ares and the Artemis warped into the system, with the Athena launching from the Ares as soon as they arrived. The Quarian Fleet was shot to pieces, with almost half the Patrol Fleet destroyed and a nine of the Heavy Fleet also destroyed. The majority of the remaining Quarians ships were damaged to various degrees but they were all still firing on the Nightmare Construct, as all the other Demonic forces had been destroyed. The entire side of the Construct facing the Quarian Fleet was cratered with impacts from the Fleet, enough firepower that anything else would have been destroyed.
The space around the Quarian Fleet was filled with Quarian life pods, amongst the wrecked ships and Demonic corpses. Fortunately for the Quarians in the life pods, the Nightmare Construct was not interested in them, and only really was interested in the Quarian Fleet as it was between it and its primary target, the planet below. One of the Quarian Patrol Fleet suddenly changed course, did a full power burn from its engines and then launched all its life pods. A moment later the Nightmare Construct fired and the now abandoned Patrol Fleet vessel passed between the Nightmare Construct and the Heavy Fleet ship the Construct had been firing at. The Patrol Fleet ship was destroyed, but the more powerful Heavy Fleet ship was saved and continued to fire. It was obvious that the Quarians had figured out the Nightmare Construct's firing pattern.
The three Section 31 opened fire on the opposite side of the Nightmare Construct, and for a minute both the Quarians and Section 31 were simply firing as fast as possible, but once the Ares was able to properly scan the Nightmare Construct, the fire became concentrated on three specific points on the Construct, vital nodes that produced and channelled the Demonic Energy.
As the fire of the Quarian and Section 31 became more concentrated, the fire from the Nightmare Construct increased. The Artemis took a shot that penetrated its shields and scored the side of the ship, opening up small hull breaches along the flank which were sealed by emergency bulkheads. Four more Quarian Patrol Fleet ships and two Heavy Fleet ships were also destroyed before the Construct was destroyed in ball of fire that appeared more like a miniature sun than an exploding ship.
"Fall back." Cordelia ordered. "Keep it orderly."
The remnants of both teams of ground troops had been consolidated into a single unit and even so it was smaller than original size of team one. The vehicles were long since destroyed or abandoned and all of the troopers were now injured and tired but still stubbornly fighting.
The troopers slowly moved backwards, up a slope, as they continued to fire at the onrushing horde of Demons. They no longer had the illusion that they could stop the Demons by firepower alone, but every Demon felled by bullets was one more that could not fight in close combat.
"Halt." Cordy called as they reached the top of the slope. "We make our stand here. Go Melee when they reach ten meters."
Every trooper who had survived this long had picked up some kind of melee weapon. Most of the MACO had been equipped with swords as part of their standard load out, and they had been trained in their use, the original Sunnydale MACO Squad trained by Giles, Harris and Summers and the newer recruits trained at the MACO school on Tycho. The Quarian Marines had started with a Mass Effect compactable spear, which was easy to learn the basics of and had more reach to keep the Demons back. The Asari Militia had picked up whatever they could find, some with swords or spears from fallen MACO and Quarians, others with farming scythes, or wooden staves taken from destroyed fences, or a length of metal crudely fashioned with a sharpish edge.
The choice to make their stand was not really a choice. Behind the troopers was largest city on the planet, the only one that really deserved the name. The Demons had swept through and destroyed six small farming communities, each with no more than fifty Asari residents, and the troopers had mostly managed to evacuate the communities before the Demons had arrived but at one they had been too late and arrived to find the Demons feasting on the corpses of the residents.
Before the Demons had closed the range lower than twenty meters, the fire from the troopers began to slacken off, from either overheating on the Asari and Quarian weapons or drained power cells on the Phaser Rifles.
"Melee and charge." Cordy shouted.
Guns were dropped or quickly slung onto backs by straps and the assorted melee weapons were readied before the troopers surged forward. Just as the troopers and Demons were about to meet, from just behind the troopers, a new star seemed to bloom in the sky close to the planet. The combination of the bright light and the loss of the Demonic Energy provided by the Nightmare Construct dazed and confused the last Demon Horde on the planet, allowing the Troopers to hit it with a devastating charge. Weakened to about the same strength as a normal Human, and a lot less naturally durable, the troopers were able to slice through the Horde like a hot knife through butter.
The Demons, normally enhanced by Demonic Energy and not used to being on the losing side, had their minds clouded enough that they did not realise how outmatched they were by the exhausted but determined troopers, so very few even contemplated running before they were cut down. Of the few Demons who did run, a number were cut down by rifle fire from the periphery of the battle but most scattered, though that 'most' was a total of seven Demons and each from a different species of Demon.
Cordy cut down her last opponent and looked around, finding nothing but troopers standing. Looking around she noticed there were too many of troopers down, including Aurora and Stephanie, two of the original Sunnydale MACO, who were dead and Captain Harmony Kendall had lost her left arm from just above the elbow and was currently tying off a tourniquet around her upper arm holding one end in her teeth.
"Colonel, I got ground control on comms." An Asari MACO Radio trooper, who had a backpack radio connected to a headset. "The Section 31 ships arrived and with the remnants of the Quarian Fleet they managed to take out the Construct. That was the light bloom. Ares scans indicate no more concentrations of Demonic signatures on the planet. Extraction boats will be here in forty minutes."
"Boats?" Cordy wondered.
"All three Sec 31 ships are damaged and don't want to risk long range transporters." The Radio trooper explained.
"With all the damage and the loss of the farming communities, I doubt the colony will survive. We made self sufficiency twenty years ago. Not long enough to build resistance to this kind of event but long enough for the trade routes to dissolve." One of the local Asari Militia said.
"Get the higher ups talking to the locals about the possibility of assistance or the need to evac." Cordy order to the radio trooper.
Wiping her forehead with the back of her hand, Cordy grabbed her water bottle and raised it to her lips, only to find it was empty.
"Here." One of the Quarian Marines offered his own water bottle.
The Quarian water bottle was more a squeeze container, so the straw portion can be inserted into the port at the front of the helmet, and it was mostly full as the sealed environment suits meant they lost less water during exertion. Cordy was careful to squirt the water into her mouth without putting the straw into her mouth. Returning the water bottle, she received an appreciative nod from the Quarian Marine.
TBC….