A/N: This is the sequel to Mass Effect: Intelligence. Unlike it's prequel, this story will focus on the story of three characters - The Butcher of Torfan, The Ghost of Akuze, and the Lion of Elysium.
Prologue
The Systems Alliance had been entrenched in a grueling conflict with the Batarian Hegemony for seventeen years, a war that would forge a new power in the galaxy. Long before the first shots were fired, humanity's strategists had foreseen conflict with their galactic neighbors, the Batarian Hegemony, as inevitable. They knew that, if tensions escalated with any of the major galactic races, humanity would face overwhelming odds: outnumbered and outgunned.
The war's spark was lit with the attack on Terra Nova in the Asgard System. Though the Batarian Hegemony disavowed the assault, claiming it to be the work of rogue factions, their statements were drowned out by the cries of those who sought vengeance, who wanted justice in the form of an eye for an eye. The Systems Alliance was faced with a dire choice: fortify their defenses and hope the claim of a rogue faction was not an attempt to lure them into a false sense of security or strike back with ferocity to secure humanity's foothold among the stars. They chose the latter, embarking on a campaign that would set their section of the galaxy ablaze.
In coordinated strikes over the course of a few months, Alliance forces dismantled batarian outposts, slaver bases, and staging grounds. Their objective was clear: shatter the Hegemony's ability to launch an offensive and seize the precious time needed to reinforce their fledgling fleet. At the same time, a growing network of sensor arrays sprang to life in the uncharted depths of dark space, serving as a perimeter alarm around human territory.
Eight months after the last of their strikes, the war arrived in full at humanity's doorstep. The Hegemony's fleets, veiled in dark space, surged into the Asgard System to lay claim to Terra Nova once more. The Systems Alliance responded in kind, determined to hold the world. Though much of the planet had been evacuated following the initial attack, the battles fought there were epic in scale. For nearly a year, humanity resisted, their resolve mirrored in the fiery destruction of the planet's infrastructure. When the Alliance was forced to abandon Terra Nova, they left behind a battlefield drenched in stories of heroism and loss.
It was amidst the chaos of Terra Nova that the galaxy learned a grim truth: the vorcha had sworn allegiance to the batarians as a client race, serving as both ground infantry and naval crews. The vorcha's savage nature, ability to survive in the most deadly of environments, and near miraculous healing factor, boosted the Hegemony's forces, bringing a new, unpredictable threat to the war. Even the esteemed Citadel Council, with its far-reaching intelligence networks, had been blindsided by this unholy alliance.
From Terra Nova, the Hegemony turned its gaze to Reach in the Eridani System, unaware of the fortress's formidable defenses. Still under construction, Reach was a bastion of humanity's military might, guarded by sixty ground-to-space missile launchers, a growing 8th Fleet, and five experimental mass accelerator cannon orbital defense platforms (MACODP). In the ensuing onslaught, the batarians suffered catastrophic losses: forty warships to humanity's seven. For the first time, the Systems Alliance had turned the tide, forcing their enemy into retreat.
But the Hegemony was relentless, bypassing both Reach and Eden Prime to strike at the Horse Head Nebula's Webb System, home to the small colony of Tiptree. The battle's opening was marked by the Evacuation of Tiptree, a heroic effort that saw civilians ferried to safety aboard commandeered commercial and private ships under the shadow of enemy bombardments. The defense of Tiptree raged for two grueling years. Though humanity held its own on the ground, their AI and growing technological edge could not make up for the sheer difference in numbers of warships. The war in space tipped firmly against the Alliance, forcing them to abandon the colony after nearly two years of tireless combat.
As the Hegemony pushed deeper into human space, the Fortuna System became their next target. On Mindoir, the battle unfolded with staggering brutality. In the first few weeks alone, nearly 90% of the population perished before a proper evacuation could be organized. Mindoir fell within the year, a scar on humanity's soul and a rallying cry for their continued fight.
Five years into the war, humanity stood on the brink. Their fleets were shattered, they were slowly losing their colonies, and the light at the end of the tunnel seemed a thousand miles away. Since the start of the conflict, human diplomats had scrambled across the galaxy, pleading for aid. Some plead their case in front of the Migrant Fleet, sympathetic to human suffering but reluctant to put their ships on the line. Others spread throughout Citadel space, all but begging to whoever would lend them an ear, but whatever aid provided would have no major effect on the conflict.
Yet, amidst despair, a spark of opportunity ignited. The Hegemony, in their hubris, circled back around and struck at Eden Prime in the Utopia System. The world often described as a paradise was not just a human colony but the home of the first quarian settlement in three centuries. Unbeknownst to the batarians, they had awakened a sleeping giant. The quarians had spent seven years repairing and retrofitting their fleet at various human naval yards. It was no longer the mass of barely held together ships of yesteryear, but properly armed and armored warships.
The battle for Eden Prime, called the Defense of Utopia, was the first major conflict in quarian history since they were driven from their homeworld by the geth. Nearly three thousand ships of the quarian's Heavy Fleet rose to the colony's defense, pulling the Migrant Fleet into the war and turning the Systems Alliance - Migrant Fleet economic partnership into a full fledged military alliance. What years of diplomacy had failed to achieve, the defense of Eden Prime accomplished in a single, decisive moment.
The Defense of Utopia, fought predominantly among the space between the planets in the system, raged for eight months before the Migrant Fleet drove the batarian armada from the Utopia System. While the Systems Alliance warships were limited, the number of those willing to fight were not. Thousands of Alliance marines and naval personnel volunteered to help garrison the quarian ships to greatly bolster their manpower. The victory belonged not to humanity or the quarians but to a burgeoning coalition.
The Heavy Fleet, with their mixed crews of quarians and humans, pursued the Hegemony across systems, liberating Asgard, Fortuna, and Webb in a relentless campaign that would become the stuff of legend. Though that is where the legend would end. Neither the Systems Alliance, who didn't have the warships to do so, nor the Migrant Fleet, who didn't want to lose anymore of their still rather low population, entered batarian space to keep the pressure on the now reeling Hegemony.
The war never officially ended, though it was another eight years until another battle was fought. The newest human colony of Elysium, founded eighteen months after the liberation of Tiptree, had quickly grown into not only a dream vacation world, but also a powerful trading and commerce hub. It was there that a pirate fleet from the Terminus Systems, backed by a batarian flotilla, launched what became known as the Skyllian Blitz. Unfortunately for the pirates and batarians, Alliance Marines on shore leave rallied the civilian population to defend against the groundside forces, and fleets from both the Alliance and the Migrant Fleet arrived in the system within days. The attack never found its footing or gained any momentum, and was beaten back two weeks after it started..
Those who participated in the Skyllian Blitz were shortly tracked down to an underground military complex on a small moon called Torfan. A combined SA-MF fleet destroyed the remaining ships and blockaded the moon, trapping the pirates and batarians in their base. Three months later Alliance marines stormed the military complex in the bloodiest ground engagement in the war's history. Every pirate and batarian who survived the failed Blitz, and was trapped on Torfan, was killed.
Twenty months after Torfan and the war had settled back down to a cold war. Yet just because all was quiet on humanity's galactic western front, did not mean things were quiet everywhere.