Humanity met the Turians. But the Turians didn't meet the Systems Alliance. They instead met the Confederacy.
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A Just Measure (One Piece x Mass Effect)
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Vagabond
The Clone Guy, Swiss Guy, and Battletech Guy
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Commissioned by Mace Sheperd
A Just Measure
Chapter 1
-VB-
Commander Oseup Mandalin
Aboard CNS Today's Justice
AR 2111.11.13
Oseup took a deep breath in and let it out slowly.
Sitting by himself aboard his one and only ship, he felt … conflicted.
On one hand, it was an honor to serve aboard a Confederate Navy vessel. On the other hand, he was serving aboard a small corvette on the edge of the confederate space while looking out for pirates, smugglers, and their ilk while knowing that his little corner of confederate space was known for its lack of interesting things.
Shanxi System sat at the literal edge of known space, and while there was a relay here that led out of the system and into the unknown, that relay was being jealously guarded by half a dozen destroyers and a cruiser. Meaning, nothing was getting through to explore the other side of that relay without permission from the Blue Planet Confederate central government, and the BPC jealously guarded one of the few privileges they had.
He knew that there was some sort of a scientific and explorative expedition being put together, but he didn't have a part in it. Only the best and the brightest across the confederacy had a chance to submit their applications. Acceptance? You better be related to some admiral, be a famous professor, or something.
Which meant that he, Oseup Mandalin from some bumfuck nowhere world who joined the navy to climb his way out of poverty, was not getting a chance at being in the expedition.
Now, while the relay was exciting, the rest of the Shanxi System wasn't.
Shanxi System had exactly eight main celestial bodies, thirty natural satellites, and one asteroid ring. Of those thirty-nine celestial objects, only three were interesting: one for being habitable and the other two for their mineral contents, Element Zero specifically speaking.
He yawned, making his fishman mouth and gills widen as he sucked in a lot of air. A bit of tears built up in his eyes and he sighed.
He wanted to be in water to freshen up his shark scales, but that wasn't possible aboard a spaceship. He just had to deal with his lot in life.
At least, he wasn't poor anymore, and his posting could be so much worse.
He shuddered.
The Confederate Navy had dominion over the very oceans that they originated from, the very oceans that were crawling with Sea Kings and other monsters of the deep. Even now, thousands of years since the founding of the confederation after the Revolution, the navy took its jobs to deal with the Sea Kings very seriously.
There were plenty of unfortunate sons of bitches - and bitches - who ended up stationed aboard ships that had to fly a little bit too close to Sea King territories. It wasn't odd to hear about someone who died to Sea Kings every year.
So, yeah, he wasn't posted there, got plenty of food to keep up with his big fishman body, and got paid well.
It could be so much worse.
… But it didn't change the fact that the Shanxi System was boring.
There was one plenty that was habitable, yes, but that planet was a mostly arid world with nothing going for it. Sure, it was habitable, but it was a dry and dusty world that needed a constant delivery of water from the local ice belts. There were quite a few fishmen who lived down there, though they stuck around the one ocean that was on the planet.
He didn't understand why any fishman would want to colonize a dustball, but then again, he wasn't one of the dumb fuckers. Maybe they got swindled by some colonization corporations. He knew it happened. They got promised one thing and got sent elsewhere because they didn't take care to read their contract.
Sad shit, but the confederate government couldn't intervene in member states' policies and laws.
Speaking of which, Shanxi was one of the few colonies that was still within confederate jurisdiction, mostly because its population hadn't decided to join any specific member state or choose to become a member state.
That meant that, for the foreseeable future, he and other sailors and soldiers of the confederate navy would be patrolling this boring ass system.
Ugh.
So boring.
Oh, well, at the very least, it was time for him and his crew to return to Shanxi for shore leave.
-VB-
Regos (Captain/Colonel) Gillius Gruminos
Aboard HFS Unsung Dawn
CC 2157.05.08
Gillius took in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
He felt bored. Here he was, having climbed up the ranks of the Hierarchy's military to the rank of Regos, and because he mouthed off a colonel, he had been reassigned to this border frontier leading to nowhere to watch over Relay 314 that he knew the Citadel Council would never open.
And because he was also here with his cruiser HFS Unsung Dawn and five escort frigates, no pirate was going to be able to open it either.
So here he was.
Stuck.
Bored.
And probably not due for any promotion for the next decade.
… Should he retire? Life in the military suited him, but he wasn't one to keep taking shit from his superiors. If they didn't want him, then he could retire without a problem. It wasn't as if he wouldn't be receiving a good pension for the work he did so far. Besides, his family had a farm in one of the safer colonies. If he brought some more money over, then they could grow that farm into something bigger.
He raised his left hand and picked at his mandible's carapace. It was a childhood habit that never went away, and because of that, he had a scarred left mandible carapace. It made him look rougher than he actually was.
Hell, despite being a soldier, he only got into two handfuls of fistfights (outside of the ring) over the last two decades of his service!
But it made him look dashing for the ladies, so he wasn't going to go out and correct that misunderstanding.
Besides, ladies loved it when a rough man had a soft side.
"Regos?"
He blinked and looked up from where he had been looking through cute chalcha photos. "Yes?" he asked the ensign who'd just walked in. If he remembered this man's title… he was the sensor officer, wasn't he?
"I-I detected something on our sensor, sir, but I couldn't believe it so -."
"Get to the point, grogin (ensign)," he sighed.
"S-Sir. I checked three times, and the eezo power build up in the Relay 314 quadrant hasn't gone down, sir."
He froze.
What?
"Report number?"
"Gn-559-Yr, sir."
He quickly looked it up on his officer cabin's computer. He scrolled down from Tn and Ri to Gn and Vr. There, he found the report.
He quickly read through it.
And his eyes widened.
He pulled the regos's officer coat from his chair. "Sound the alarms. Someone is trying to open the fucking relay!"
The ensign froze stiff before he rushed off.
He connected his omnitool to the ship's intercom and made his call.
"Code Grey! I repeat code grey! We have a potential inactive relay activation! All crew to their stations. This is not a drill! All crew to their stations, this is not a drill!"
He ran out of his cabin and out into the halls along with the rest of the crew who'd been relaxing.
When he got to the bridge, his soldiers immediately snapped to attention and he had to quickly order them to get back to their work at hand. He sat down as he clasped the last button of his uniform and looked at the holographic map of the still unnamed solar system.
"Status!"
"Relay is still powering up, regos," the sensor officer from before reported from his station. His claws flew across the holographic screen in front of him as he took in data after data. "It'll reach the unlock stage in just under half an hour!"
"Damn," he muttered. "Can you see if there are any ships on this side?"
"Negative, regos. The only ships that are in the system are our task unit, sir!"
Which meant that someone was opening the relay from the other side.
A complete unexplored side of the relay network.
Drats.
"I want to send a message to the Palavan Command! How soon can we get … HFS Regal Talon up to the task?" he asked after he opened a channel to the rest of the hierarchy ships in the system.
Because of how isolated this system was from Hierarchy's interstellar comm network, the Bronze Ring, getting any message out meant that someone needed to get to a system with one of the comm buoys set up to contact the high command.
The gnoris (commander/major) of Regal Talon was quick to speak up.
"I am ready to jump through Relay 313 to send the message out."
"Then do so."
Less than three minutes after his command, Regal Talon was racing toward the relay on the other side of the system.
This left Gilius with just his cruiser and four escort frigates to deal with whatever was coming through.
"Eager Truvius, Grand Marine, Flowing Nila, and Second Wind, all form up on me," he spoke. "And whatever happens, do not fire unless fired upon first or ordered to do so."
The four escort frigates formed around him in a ring.
"We are jumping in 10!" the FTL officer shouted.
And on zero, they jumped forward together as one.
---
When they came out on the other side of the jump, they found themselves looking at a small flotilla of ships and a deactivated mass relay.
They saw plenty of ships, ranging from ugly and large cruiser-sized ones to sleeker and less armored corvette-sized ships. There were roughly fifteen ships in total.
Gilius wasn't sure how to analyze the flotilla in front of his task element now. A pair of cruisers were of the same make and model, five destroyers were of the same make and model, a pair of frigates were also of the same make and model.
The other six ships were of vastly different shapes and sizes. Where the previously paired and similarly made ships were all blocky with many gun turrets, these smaller ships - the largest of which was a frigate - were all vastly different in appearance. The frigate in question almost looked like a sailing ship found on any pre-space age civilization. It even had sails, though it was made out of hexagonal solar panels. A smaller ship had a similar hull shape but had four pairs of sails… on the side. Another ship was a brick with thrusters. The funniest looking one was definitely some kind of an animal-shaped ship.
It didn't … look like a hostile scouting force.
And this definitely felt like an exploration force.
A First Contact scenario…!
"Esgos (lieutenant), initiate the First Contact protocol."
His words snapped the bridge of its daze and his officers quickly went to work.
Then one of the ships within the alien fleet broke off and sped deeper into the system.
"Flowing Nila, get in front of that ship and stop it from leaving!" he barked out.
One of the escort frigates quickly broke off to carry out his orders. The frigate flew forward faster than the alien ship and quickly got in front of it, bringing that ship to a stop.
"Anything, esgos?!" he barked at the comms officer.
"I've opened all channels, sir! We're transmitting the First Contact package, but we're not getting anything back in return!"
"Regos, this alien is trying to circumvent us!" the gnoris (major/commander) of Flowing Nila chimed in.
"Fire off a warning shot," he grunted.
The Flowing Nila did.
And that's when everything went wrong.
The ship swerved to the exact side that the Flowing Nila had fired off a round with its weaker gun turrets and not the spinal mount cannon. In doing so, they ran directly into the warning shot.
The attack cored the much smaller ship from stern to aft on the spot. Fire broke out.
And Gilius watched in horror as the ship detonated.
"ALIEN SHIPS ARE POWERING WEAPONS!" the sensor officer shouted from the front.
"Shields up!" he shouted. "Get us out of here!"
And the cruisers opened fire.
And Gilius's eyes widened when a red laser, thicker than a construction steel beam, slammed into Second Wind. The laser burned through one of the wings of the frigate, but the frigate hung on to life.
Laser.
Shit.
"Ready the cannon!" he shouted as he took aim with his ship. He couldn't afford to outright destroy these alien vessels lest the situation grew even worse than before. But shoot to disable? He could do that.
At the same time, he saw the gate activating.
The aliens were trying to flee. Their smaller ships were moving behind the cruisers and destroyers while they fired upon Gilius's ships.
"Ready!" the fire officer shouted.
"Ready!" engineering confirmed.
He fired.
The tungsten round shot from the rear of his cruiser, traveled along the length of the spinal mount barrel, and blitzed into space. It struck something like a kinetic shield surrounding the alien cruiser, punched through it, and slammed into the armored hull.
Something exploded. Not the entire ship but something aboard.
They fired again, and the laser struck his ship, Unsung Dawn, instead of any of the escort frigates.
The ship shook like there was a Po-Scale 7 earthquake.
"Damage report!" he demanded as he got ready again. The mass effect engine needed time to spool up.
"Starboard level 1b through 5c are all gone!"
"Incoming!"
Another laser burned into Unsung Dawn.
"Levels 1a through 4d are gone! Port-side thrusters are all damaged!"
"Operational?!"
"Negative, regos!"
By this time, everyone was slinging kinetic rounds and lasers. Flowing Nila took a coring laser shot from one of the destroyers, and detonated from within, all hands on deck dead with no chance to escape. Grand Marine was reporting heavy damage while the other two were reporting no damages yet.
Then the relay activated, taking all of the smaller eclectic ships and half of the obviously military vessels.
Engineering and fire gave the green light again.
He hesitated.
For a single second, he hesitated.
But then he saw that the alien cruisers, both of which were left behind along with three destroyers and one frigate, and saw how they weren't stopping their fire despite what was possibly civilians no longer in the way.
He clicked.
A second tungsten round left Unsung Dawn's spinal cannon, and punched into the same cruiser's shield and armor.
The ship's lights started to go out and it began to lose its heading.
Then he saw it before his officer could report it.
A beam of red laser.
Aimed straight at his bridge.
"D-!"
Everything burned for a split second.
And nothing.
-VB-
Commander Oseup Mandalin
Shanxi
AR 2111.11.16
"What?"
General Charles Williams grunted from his hologram. "You are not hearing things wrong, commander," he stated as he pointed to the images on screen. "Two days ago, Exploration Expedition 19 went through the Shanxi rimward relay and encountered a hostile alien species. At first, there was an attempt to communicate, but before any communication could be achieved, one of the civilian ships tried to go around the stand off. It was intercepted by one of the alien frigates, and when the civilian ship, despite orders from Admiral Enni Rantam to stop, tried again, it was shot down. This sparked the battle, and the expedition retreated with the loss of one cruiser and one destroyer. In return, we destroyed their cruiser and two of their frigates before they escaped."
Oseup slowly sat back down as he watched the event play out on the video captured by one of the ships of the expedition. The enemy frigates were quick to fly around and fire on their ships with turrets but the enemy cruisers stayed in place, only swerving side to side to dodge. And why it had done so was clear.
It fired off a massive kinetic round and punched through BCS Maria Greuschugen's energy shield.
'That's a pretty powerful cannon. But why is the cruiser moving so -?' His eyes widened. "General, is that cruiser's main cannon a spinal mount?"
The general glanced at him and nodded. "It is as you noticed, Commander Mandalin. The alien cruiser had a spinal cannon. It is powerful enough to punch through the shield in one-go. This is a strategic problem for us because all of our naval ships and their shields are geared towards deflecting and absorbing lasers as lasers are the mainstay naval weapons for the vast majority of provincial navies, private, commercial, and pirate ships use. But our armors can hold against their attacks. If it wasn't for the second hit striking the main fusion engine directly, then Greuschugen would have made it out of the system." He took a deep breath in. "We have sent word for reinforcement to the homeworld. All we can do right now is to hold the line and wait."
Then rapid bangs in the meeting room rang out as someone pounded on the meeting room doors. There was also a sound of scuffles outside. "General! I have urgent news!" someone shouted.
"In, now!" the general's hologram demanded.
A lieutenant stumbled in before quickly standing at attention and saluting. "General! News from deep space telescopes and gravitic sensors! We have incoming from the rimward relay! There's at least two dreadnoughts, four battleships, twenty cruisers, twenty frigates, and more than a hundred transports!"
The tension in the room skyrocketed.
That was ten times what was defending the entire system. They didn't even have a battleship.
"Commander Mandalin," the general spoke up.
He quickly stood up. "Yes, general."
"You, as the highest ranked naval officer in the system, will take all of our ships… and flee."
"Sir?!"
"I will not let you lose those ships when they could be of help to our navy in future engagements. It is clear that our ships are capable of matching theirs. Which means every single one of those ships are valuable! Thus heroically losing yourselves and those ships against an overwhelming number of enemies where you achieve little is not allowed. That is an order. I expect you to carry it out in letter and spirit."
Oseup's mouth opened and closed before he finally responded. "Yes… general."
"Good," he said before he turned to the other officers inside the meeting. "Prepare for the worst possible scenario. I want all of our bunkers stocked up, nuclear warheads ready, and all of the elites ready to pounce on their ground command center. Dismissed!" Then his hologram went out.
Fishmen, humans, and others - but all in their uniforms proudly displaying the flag of the Blue Planet Confederacy and the Blue Confederate Navy - all stood up and saluted.
---
Oseup was back aboard Today's Justice along with his officers, crew, and what few people who were willing to board naval ships to flee the battle.
Because everyone who could and would run was getting on any kind of ship to flee the planet.
But with just twenty ships in system at any given time, there were just simply not enough of them to lift every single civilian.
Instead, only a tenth of the civilians were being taken with them, leaving the rest to fight and survive against the coming onslaught.
And though he wanted to take his place in orbit, he had his orders.
All twenty ships - both of civilian and military ownership - all jumped out from the planet's orbit just as the alien fleet jumped into the range of Shanxi's orbital defenses.
-VB-
General Charles Williams
Shanxi
He watched from where he and his special troops hid.
He watched as the meager number of anti-orbital cannons pointed up and fired upon the now orbiting alien ships.
"Lasers are the most effective, general," a colonel reported from within the underground bunker. Charles couldn't fit in there, which was why he was up here on the surface, itching to jump the aliens the moment they landed.
"Against their small shuttles, too?"
"It seems that way, sir. All of their ships seemed to be geared towards kinetic and missile engagements."
He grunted. Well, there went his plan to throw rocks at their shuttles. Actually, he'll throw it anyway to see if speed mattered.
But he did have a backup for that plan.
"Continue to shoot at their capital ships," he ordered over the radio. "But ignore the shuttles unless they move towards our inner defensive perimeter."
"Yes, general."
Now, the alien shuttles and transports streamed down toward them, and looked to be landing nearby the capital city.
"Fools. Landing your troops so close to the city when they don't know what defenses and defensive technology we might have?"
More importantly, the shorter distance between their camp and the city meant that the few elite fighters Charles had under his command would be able to cross the distance before anyone thought to fire on them pre-emptively.
And as they landed, he had to keep his hand up to hold his people.
Hold.
Two dozen shuttles and one of the capital ship transports landed.
Hold.
Close to a hundred shuttles had landed, disgorged their cargos of soldiers, armored vehicles, and supplies, and took off. Two capital ships had now landed and were still pushing out their contents. Actually, no, only one of them was doing that. The other hadn't put their ramp down.
Why wasn't it doing that?
HOLD.
Then one of the transport ships began to take off.
Fuck it. It was now or never.
"Now!" he roared as he rushed out from behind the hill. 'Armament Haki!'
---
Regos Baellos H'radrusak reacted immediately from aboard the HFS Nadal's Embrace, which was leaving the ground to go back to orbit.
He whirled around when his ship's sensors blared at a sudden thermal flare-up..
And he nearly stumbled back at what was heading toward him.
A fucking giant had jumped out of the tall and dense forests surrounding the clearing. Its skin was quickly changing from dry sand and muddy color (no, that was actual mud sliding down the giant's body) to … shiny black?
And it had a giant rock in its hands.
The giant reared its arm back as it got into a throwing stance.
"EVADE!" he roared. But nothing happened. He looked at the pilot.
The pilot… hadn't seen the giant. And then he did.
But it was too late.
Baellos overrode pilot's maneuvering controls -.
But he saw the giant boulder rushing at his ship from the periphery of his eyes.
And he realized in that moment that the no rock thrown would trigger the passive speed threshold of the kinetic barriers.
So he overrode the passive shield from his command console.
The kinetic barriers flared and then the rock crashed into it.
The ship rumbled and shook, and he felt gravity reasserting itself in how his stomach dropped.
But the kinetic barrier held!
Then he saw something he couldn't comprehend.
The now glossy black skinned giant had uprooted one of the giant trees… and swung it down at the ship.
"BRACE FOR IMPACT!" he shouted.
And then the tree trunk struck the barrier like the creator god's own smithing hammer.
The barrier shattered and then the trunk struck the thinly armored hull.
He heard metal squealing and breaking. He heard screams as the ship went down. Through the bridge's windows, he saw the ground approaching too quickly.
Shit shit shit -!
And then the ship crashed.
---
Charles grunted as one of the transport ships went down but the other got away because his son missed his rock throw and decided that throwing a tree was better than using the tree to pin the ship down.
And missed.
He told James that his aim was bad but the boy never practiced!
And the metal birds - because that's what the aliens looked like - were shooting at him with their guns. He could feel it piercing through his Armament Haki, but it was like getting poked by a hair. Annoying and not dangerous.
Hell, he wasn't even bleeding!
"What kind of puny guns do you little birds carry, hah?!" he laughed as he jumped into the fight with nothing but his hands.
And while all of the metal birdies were focused on him, his small troops - the regular sized ones - fired on the aliens from their hidden positions.
---
"What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck -?!" Gno'iis (private) Mex stuttered out as he rolled out of the way like his training taught him.
And his training just saved his ass.
The tank he was using for cover squealed and crashed as something giant stepped on it and cast a shadow over … a lot of them. Mex looked up and saw the giant - living giant! - that he and everyone else had been shooting at while their smaller guys in the forest were shooting at them.
'Oh, well, why aren't you shooting at the shooters, Mex?'
Because there was a giant in front of their faces tearing all of their armored and shuttles apart with its bare hands!
And the goddamn aliens were shooting lasers at him!
The thing had to be … at least two hundred narins* tall.
Oh spirits. How were there living things that big?!
And then he saw something in the periphery of his vision. He looked and realized that the giant's soldiers - the regular sized aliens - were on the ground.
'There's at least four species,' he realized as he looked at what looked like an aquatic species, the giant itself, a hairless tumak**, and a lanky thing with long legs that looked like the hairless tumak but twice as tall.
The Hierarchy hadn't just come to subjugate a single species but a federation of species!
And Mex knew enough about Citadel laws to realize that the Hierarchy … might have fucked up.
Royally fucked up.
One of the long legged ones saw him… and then disappeared?!
Suddenly, it was in front of his face with its gun pointed at his face.
He immediately raised his arms up.
And for a moment, a blissful moment, nothing happened.
It stared at him.
He stared at it.
It barked something at him loudly, and not wanting to piss off the thing who was twice as tall as he was and could apparently move fast enough to cover a hundred narins in under two seconds, he slowly set his gun down and then kept his hands up.
It blinked.
A few other soldiers came to support the long leg one, and one of them cuffed his wrists.
And then dragged him away.
And as they dragged him away, he saw what had happened to the ground invasion force.
One of the capital-grade transport ships had been ground with its back broken, shuttles that weren't already in the air were all smoking and destroyed with what looked like molten holes all along their hulls, and most of the soldiers that hadn't immediately died to the laser barrages were now surrendering.
Mex … relaxed.
He wasn't going to die to absurdities today.
That's good.
… Yeah, that's good. Not dying on some barbarian backwater colony was good.
-VB-
Kringal (Admiral) Dakkan Edruius
HFS Might of Palavan
"What?" Dakkan uttered out in utter shock, breaking his own discipline.
"The ground assault failed," Shagin (General) Tsirius hissed. "They have biological weapons. Living giants that were taller than my transport ship was long!"
Dakkan leaned back into his seat.
As much as he wanted to call Tsirius a coward for leaving his men, if there truly were biological weapons that were … ship-sized, then he did the right thing to save the troops that were still on his transport ship.
"Do you have footage?" he asked.
"Of course, I do! No one will ever believe us otherwise!"
When he received the footage, he reviewed it immediately.
And he felt his stomach turn and sink.
While Tsirius had focused on the giant, Dakkan saw something much more important: a diverse set of races, laser infantry small arms, and the giant's ability to ignore mass effect small arms after turning black.
It wasn't just at the periphery of the largest city that their assault had been turned aside.
Other assaults, especially those sent to put down the anti-orbital guns, have also failed. All of those assaults all reported the same thing as well: soldiers capable of turning their skin black to fight against mass effect weapons. Unlike the giant, however, the "regular" sized soldiers capable of doing that didn't survive long if they charged head-first into a barrage.
Whatever these races had, it was obvious to Dakkan that this small fleet that the Hierarchy had sent would not be enough to subjugate them, especially if this was nothing more than a backwater planet (which was almost certain considering that there was almost no heavy industry centers observed from orbit).
"Kringal!" the sensor officer shouted. "We have emergences from the other mass relay!"
"Has the Talon Fleet engaged the enemy?"
"Negative, kringal. Talon is pulling back. Their commanding kringal states that the enemy fleet is too big."
"I want numbers, esgos!"
It was obvious to him that this attempt at subjugating a new species was not only a failure… but something that will become a diplomatic crisis, especially since this was not a single race but an alliance of races.
They may have just encountered an interstellar alliance just like the Citadel Council, and that was bad news for them all.
"Instruct Talon kringal to join back with Maw Fleet," he ordered. "We're pulling out of this system and waiting for further instruction. It's clear that we are not prepared."
All of the officers on the bridge looked up at him in shock.
He didn't defend himself, even if the act of pulling out without giving a proper fight might get him in hot trouble.
No, his job was keeping his men alive. The mission to subjugate came after that in his list of priorities.
"Move!"
-VB-
A/N: *made up turian measuring unit for length. 1 meter = 4.42 narins = 3.28 feet
Charles Williams, a descendent of the ancient giants, is roughly 50 meters tall, or 221 narins, or 164 feet.
**tumak = a made up monkey-like creature found in one of Hierarchy's colonies.
A Just Measure
Chapter 1
-VB-
Commander Oseup Mandalin
Aboard CNS Today's Justice
AR 2111.11.13
Oseup took a deep breath in and let it out slowly.
Sitting by himself aboard his one and only ship, he felt … conflicted.
On one hand, it was an honor to serve aboard a Confederate Navy vessel. On the other hand, he was serving aboard a small corvette on the edge of the confederate space while looking out for pirates, smugglers, and their ilk while knowing that his little corner of confederate space was known for its lack of interesting things.
Shanxi System sat at the literal edge of known space, and while there was a relay here that led out of the system and into the unknown, that relay was being jealously guarded by half a dozen destroyers and a cruiser. Meaning, nothing was getting through to explore the other side of that relay without permission from the Blue Planet Confederate central government, and the BPC jealously guarded one of the few privileges they had.
He knew that there was some sort of a scientific and explorative expedition being put together, but he didn't have a part in it. Only the best and the brightest across the confederacy had a chance to submit their applications. Acceptance? You better be related to some admiral, be a famous professor, or something.
Which meant that he, Oseup Mandalin from some bumfuck nowhere world who joined the navy to climb his way out of poverty, was not getting a chance at being in the expedition.
Now, while the relay was exciting, the rest of the Shanxi System wasn't.
Shanxi System had exactly eight main celestial bodies, thirty natural satellites, and one asteroid ring. Of those thirty-nine celestial objects, only three were interesting: one for being habitable and the other two for their mineral contents, Element Zero specifically speaking.
He yawned, making his fishman mouth and gills widen as he sucked in a lot of air. A bit of tears built up in his eyes and he sighed.
He wanted to be in water to freshen up his shark scales, but that wasn't possible aboard a spaceship. He just had to deal with his lot in life.
At least, he wasn't poor anymore, and his posting could be so much worse.
He shuddered.
The Confederate Navy had dominion over the very oceans that they originated from, the very oceans that were crawling with Sea Kings and other monsters of the deep. Even now, thousands of years since the founding of the confederation after the Revolution, the navy took its jobs to deal with the Sea Kings very seriously.
There were plenty of unfortunate sons of bitches - and bitches - who ended up stationed aboard ships that had to fly a little bit too close to Sea King territories. It wasn't odd to hear about someone who died to Sea Kings every year.
So, yeah, he wasn't posted there, got plenty of food to keep up with his big fishman body, and got paid well.
It could be so much worse.
… But it didn't change the fact that the Shanxi System was boring.
There was one plenty that was habitable, yes, but that planet was a mostly arid world with nothing going for it. Sure, it was habitable, but it was a dry and dusty world that needed a constant delivery of water from the local ice belts. There were quite a few fishmen who lived down there, though they stuck around the one ocean that was on the planet.
He didn't understand why any fishman would want to colonize a dustball, but then again, he wasn't one of the dumb fuckers. Maybe they got swindled by some colonization corporations. He knew it happened. They got promised one thing and got sent elsewhere because they didn't take care to read their contract.
Sad shit, but the confederate government couldn't intervene in member states' policies and laws.
Speaking of which, Shanxi was one of the few colonies that was still within confederate jurisdiction, mostly because its population hadn't decided to join any specific member state or choose to become a member state.
That meant that, for the foreseeable future, he and other sailors and soldiers of the confederate navy would be patrolling this boring ass system.
Ugh.
So boring.
Oh, well, at the very least, it was time for him and his crew to return to Shanxi for shore leave.
-VB-
Regos (Captain/Colonel) Gillius Gruminos
Aboard HFS Unsung Dawn
CC 2157.05.08
Gillius took in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
He felt bored. Here he was, having climbed up the ranks of the Hierarchy's military to the rank of Regos, and because he mouthed off a colonel, he had been reassigned to this border frontier leading to nowhere to watch over Relay 314 that he knew the Citadel Council would never open.
And because he was also here with his cruiser HFS Unsung Dawn and five escort frigates, no pirate was going to be able to open it either.
So here he was.
Stuck.
Bored.
And probably not due for any promotion for the next decade.
… Should he retire? Life in the military suited him, but he wasn't one to keep taking shit from his superiors. If they didn't want him, then he could retire without a problem. It wasn't as if he wouldn't be receiving a good pension for the work he did so far. Besides, his family had a farm in one of the safer colonies. If he brought some more money over, then they could grow that farm into something bigger.
He raised his left hand and picked at his mandible's carapace. It was a childhood habit that never went away, and because of that, he had a scarred left mandible carapace. It made him look rougher than he actually was.
Hell, despite being a soldier, he only got into two handfuls of fistfights (outside of the ring) over the last two decades of his service!
But it made him look dashing for the ladies, so he wasn't going to go out and correct that misunderstanding.
Besides, ladies loved it when a rough man had a soft side.
"Regos?"
He blinked and looked up from where he had been looking through cute chalcha photos. "Yes?" he asked the ensign who'd just walked in. If he remembered this man's title… he was the sensor officer, wasn't he?
"I-I detected something on our sensor, sir, but I couldn't believe it so -."
"Get to the point, grogin (ensign)," he sighed.
"S-Sir. I checked three times, and the eezo power build up in the Relay 314 quadrant hasn't gone down, sir."
He froze.
What?
"Report number?"
"Gn-559-Yr, sir."
He quickly looked it up on his officer cabin's computer. He scrolled down from Tn and Ri to Gn and Vr. There, he found the report.
He quickly read through it.
And his eyes widened.
He pulled the regos's officer coat from his chair. "Sound the alarms. Someone is trying to open the fucking relay!"
The ensign froze stiff before he rushed off.
He connected his omnitool to the ship's intercom and made his call.
"Code Grey! I repeat code grey! We have a potential inactive relay activation! All crew to their stations. This is not a drill! All crew to their stations, this is not a drill!"
He ran out of his cabin and out into the halls along with the rest of the crew who'd been relaxing.
When he got to the bridge, his soldiers immediately snapped to attention and he had to quickly order them to get back to their work at hand. He sat down as he clasped the last button of his uniform and looked at the holographic map of the still unnamed solar system.
"Status!"
"Relay is still powering up, regos," the sensor officer from before reported from his station. His claws flew across the holographic screen in front of him as he took in data after data. "It'll reach the unlock stage in just under half an hour!"
"Damn," he muttered. "Can you see if there are any ships on this side?"
"Negative, regos. The only ships that are in the system are our task unit, sir!"
Which meant that someone was opening the relay from the other side.
A complete unexplored side of the relay network.
Drats.
"I want to send a message to the Palavan Command! How soon can we get … HFS Regal Talon up to the task?" he asked after he opened a channel to the rest of the hierarchy ships in the system.
Because of how isolated this system was from Hierarchy's interstellar comm network, the Bronze Ring, getting any message out meant that someone needed to get to a system with one of the comm buoys set up to contact the high command.
The gnoris (commander/major) of Regal Talon was quick to speak up.
"I am ready to jump through Relay 313 to send the message out."
"Then do so."
Less than three minutes after his command, Regal Talon was racing toward the relay on the other side of the system.
This left Gilius with just his cruiser and four escort frigates to deal with whatever was coming through.
"Eager Truvius, Grand Marine, Flowing Nila, and Second Wind, all form up on me," he spoke. "And whatever happens, do not fire unless fired upon first or ordered to do so."
The four escort frigates formed around him in a ring.
"We are jumping in 10!" the FTL officer shouted.
And on zero, they jumped forward together as one.
---
When they came out on the other side of the jump, they found themselves looking at a small flotilla of ships and a deactivated mass relay.
They saw plenty of ships, ranging from ugly and large cruiser-sized ones to sleeker and less armored corvette-sized ships. There were roughly fifteen ships in total.
Gilius wasn't sure how to analyze the flotilla in front of his task element now. A pair of cruisers were of the same make and model, five destroyers were of the same make and model, a pair of frigates were also of the same make and model.
The other six ships were of vastly different shapes and sizes. Where the previously paired and similarly made ships were all blocky with many gun turrets, these smaller ships - the largest of which was a frigate - were all vastly different in appearance. The frigate in question almost looked like a sailing ship found on any pre-space age civilization. It even had sails, though it was made out of hexagonal solar panels. A smaller ship had a similar hull shape but had four pairs of sails… on the side. Another ship was a brick with thrusters. The funniest looking one was definitely some kind of an animal-shaped ship.
It didn't … look like a hostile scouting force.
And this definitely felt like an exploration force.
A First Contact scenario…!
"Esgos (lieutenant), initiate the First Contact protocol."
His words snapped the bridge of its daze and his officers quickly went to work.
Then one of the ships within the alien fleet broke off and sped deeper into the system.
"Flowing Nila, get in front of that ship and stop it from leaving!" he barked out.
One of the escort frigates quickly broke off to carry out his orders. The frigate flew forward faster than the alien ship and quickly got in front of it, bringing that ship to a stop.
"Anything, esgos?!" he barked at the comms officer.
"I've opened all channels, sir! We're transmitting the First Contact package, but we're not getting anything back in return!"
"Regos, this alien is trying to circumvent us!" the gnoris (major/commander) of Flowing Nila chimed in.
"Fire off a warning shot," he grunted.
The Flowing Nila did.
And that's when everything went wrong.
The ship swerved to the exact side that the Flowing Nila had fired off a round with its weaker gun turrets and not the spinal mount cannon. In doing so, they ran directly into the warning shot.
The attack cored the much smaller ship from stern to aft on the spot. Fire broke out.
And Gilius watched in horror as the ship detonated.
"ALIEN SHIPS ARE POWERING WEAPONS!" the sensor officer shouted from the front.
"Shields up!" he shouted. "Get us out of here!"
And the cruisers opened fire.
And Gilius's eyes widened when a red laser, thicker than a construction steel beam, slammed into Second Wind. The laser burned through one of the wings of the frigate, but the frigate hung on to life.
Laser.
Shit.
"Ready the cannon!" he shouted as he took aim with his ship. He couldn't afford to outright destroy these alien vessels lest the situation grew even worse than before. But shoot to disable? He could do that.
At the same time, he saw the gate activating.
The aliens were trying to flee. Their smaller ships were moving behind the cruisers and destroyers while they fired upon Gilius's ships.
"Ready!" the fire officer shouted.
"Ready!" engineering confirmed.
He fired.
The tungsten round shot from the rear of his cruiser, traveled along the length of the spinal mount barrel, and blitzed into space. It struck something like a kinetic shield surrounding the alien cruiser, punched through it, and slammed into the armored hull.
Something exploded. Not the entire ship but something aboard.
They fired again, and the laser struck his ship, Unsung Dawn, instead of any of the escort frigates.
The ship shook like there was a Po-Scale 7 earthquake.
"Damage report!" he demanded as he got ready again. The mass effect engine needed time to spool up.
"Starboard level 1b through 5c are all gone!"
"Incoming!"
Another laser burned into Unsung Dawn.
"Levels 1a through 4d are gone! Port-side thrusters are all damaged!"
"Operational?!"
"Negative, regos!"
By this time, everyone was slinging kinetic rounds and lasers. Flowing Nila took a coring laser shot from one of the destroyers, and detonated from within, all hands on deck dead with no chance to escape. Grand Marine was reporting heavy damage while the other two were reporting no damages yet.
Then the relay activated, taking all of the smaller eclectic ships and half of the obviously military vessels.
Engineering and fire gave the green light again.
He hesitated.
For a single second, he hesitated.
But then he saw that the alien cruisers, both of which were left behind along with three destroyers and one frigate, and saw how they weren't stopping their fire despite what was possibly civilians no longer in the way.
He clicked.
A second tungsten round left Unsung Dawn's spinal cannon, and punched into the same cruiser's shield and armor.
The ship's lights started to go out and it began to lose its heading.
Then he saw it before his officer could report it.
A beam of red laser.
Aimed straight at his bridge.
"D-!"
Everything burned for a split second.
And nothing.
-VB-
Commander Oseup Mandalin
Shanxi
AR 2111.11.16
"What?"
General Charles Williams grunted from his hologram. "You are not hearing things wrong, commander," he stated as he pointed to the images on screen. "Two days ago, Exploration Expedition 19 went through the Shanxi rimward relay and encountered a hostile alien species. At first, there was an attempt to communicate, but before any communication could be achieved, one of the civilian ships tried to go around the stand off. It was intercepted by one of the alien frigates, and when the civilian ship, despite orders from Admiral Enni Rantam to stop, tried again, it was shot down. This sparked the battle, and the expedition retreated with the loss of one cruiser and one destroyer. In return, we destroyed their cruiser and two of their frigates before they escaped."
Oseup slowly sat back down as he watched the event play out on the video captured by one of the ships of the expedition. The enemy frigates were quick to fly around and fire on their ships with turrets but the enemy cruisers stayed in place, only swerving side to side to dodge. And why it had done so was clear.
It fired off a massive kinetic round and punched through BCS Maria Greuschugen's energy shield.
'That's a pretty powerful cannon. But why is the cruiser moving so -?' His eyes widened. "General, is that cruiser's main cannon a spinal mount?"
The general glanced at him and nodded. "It is as you noticed, Commander Mandalin. The alien cruiser had a spinal cannon. It is powerful enough to punch through the shield in one-go. This is a strategic problem for us because all of our naval ships and their shields are geared towards deflecting and absorbing lasers as lasers are the mainstay naval weapons for the vast majority of provincial navies, private, commercial, and pirate ships use. But our armors can hold against their attacks. If it wasn't for the second hit striking the main fusion engine directly, then Greuschugen would have made it out of the system." He took a deep breath in. "We have sent word for reinforcement to the homeworld. All we can do right now is to hold the line and wait."
Then rapid bangs in the meeting room rang out as someone pounded on the meeting room doors. There was also a sound of scuffles outside. "General! I have urgent news!" someone shouted.
"In, now!" the general's hologram demanded.
A lieutenant stumbled in before quickly standing at attention and saluting. "General! News from deep space telescopes and gravitic sensors! We have incoming from the rimward relay! There's at least two dreadnoughts, four battleships, twenty cruisers, twenty frigates, and more than a hundred transports!"
The tension in the room skyrocketed.
That was ten times what was defending the entire system. They didn't even have a battleship.
"Commander Mandalin," the general spoke up.
He quickly stood up. "Yes, general."
"You, as the highest ranked naval officer in the system, will take all of our ships… and flee."
"Sir?!"
"I will not let you lose those ships when they could be of help to our navy in future engagements. It is clear that our ships are capable of matching theirs. Which means every single one of those ships are valuable! Thus heroically losing yourselves and those ships against an overwhelming number of enemies where you achieve little is not allowed. That is an order. I expect you to carry it out in letter and spirit."
Oseup's mouth opened and closed before he finally responded. "Yes… general."
"Good," he said before he turned to the other officers inside the meeting. "Prepare for the worst possible scenario. I want all of our bunkers stocked up, nuclear warheads ready, and all of the elites ready to pounce on their ground command center. Dismissed!" Then his hologram went out.
Fishmen, humans, and others - but all in their uniforms proudly displaying the flag of the Blue Planet Confederacy and the Blue Confederate Navy - all stood up and saluted.
---
Oseup was back aboard Today's Justice along with his officers, crew, and what few people who were willing to board naval ships to flee the battle.
Because everyone who could and would run was getting on any kind of ship to flee the planet.
But with just twenty ships in system at any given time, there were just simply not enough of them to lift every single civilian.
Instead, only a tenth of the civilians were being taken with them, leaving the rest to fight and survive against the coming onslaught.
And though he wanted to take his place in orbit, he had his orders.
All twenty ships - both of civilian and military ownership - all jumped out from the planet's orbit just as the alien fleet jumped into the range of Shanxi's orbital defenses.
-VB-
General Charles Williams
Shanxi
He watched from where he and his special troops hid.
He watched as the meager number of anti-orbital cannons pointed up and fired upon the now orbiting alien ships.
"Lasers are the most effective, general," a colonel reported from within the underground bunker. Charles couldn't fit in there, which was why he was up here on the surface, itching to jump the aliens the moment they landed.
"Against their small shuttles, too?"
"It seems that way, sir. All of their ships seemed to be geared towards kinetic and missile engagements."
He grunted. Well, there went his plan to throw rocks at their shuttles. Actually, he'll throw it anyway to see if speed mattered.
But he did have a backup for that plan.
"Continue to shoot at their capital ships," he ordered over the radio. "But ignore the shuttles unless they move towards our inner defensive perimeter."
"Yes, general."
Now, the alien shuttles and transports streamed down toward them, and looked to be landing nearby the capital city.
"Fools. Landing your troops so close to the city when they don't know what defenses and defensive technology we might have?"
More importantly, the shorter distance between their camp and the city meant that the few elite fighters Charles had under his command would be able to cross the distance before anyone thought to fire on them pre-emptively.
And as they landed, he had to keep his hand up to hold his people.
Hold.
Two dozen shuttles and one of the capital ship transports landed.
Hold.
Close to a hundred shuttles had landed, disgorged their cargos of soldiers, armored vehicles, and supplies, and took off. Two capital ships had now landed and were still pushing out their contents. Actually, no, only one of them was doing that. The other hadn't put their ramp down.
Why wasn't it doing that?
HOLD.
Then one of the transport ships began to take off.
Fuck it. It was now or never.
"Now!" he roared as he rushed out from behind the hill. 'Armament Haki!'
---
Regos Baellos H'radrusak reacted immediately from aboard the HFS Nadal's Embrace, which was leaving the ground to go back to orbit.
He whirled around when his ship's sensors blared at a sudden thermal flare-up..
And he nearly stumbled back at what was heading toward him.
A fucking giant had jumped out of the tall and dense forests surrounding the clearing. Its skin was quickly changing from dry sand and muddy color (no, that was actual mud sliding down the giant's body) to … shiny black?
And it had a giant rock in its hands.
The giant reared its arm back as it got into a throwing stance.
"EVADE!" he roared. But nothing happened. He looked at the pilot.
The pilot… hadn't seen the giant. And then he did.
But it was too late.
Baellos overrode pilot's maneuvering controls -.
But he saw the giant boulder rushing at his ship from the periphery of his eyes.
And he realized in that moment that the no rock thrown would trigger the passive speed threshold of the kinetic barriers.
So he overrode the passive shield from his command console.
The kinetic barriers flared and then the rock crashed into it.
The ship rumbled and shook, and he felt gravity reasserting itself in how his stomach dropped.
But the kinetic barrier held!
Then he saw something he couldn't comprehend.
The now glossy black skinned giant had uprooted one of the giant trees… and swung it down at the ship.
"BRACE FOR IMPACT!" he shouted.
And then the tree trunk struck the barrier like the creator god's own smithing hammer.
The barrier shattered and then the trunk struck the thinly armored hull.
He heard metal squealing and breaking. He heard screams as the ship went down. Through the bridge's windows, he saw the ground approaching too quickly.
Shit shit shit -!
And then the ship crashed.
---
Charles grunted as one of the transport ships went down but the other got away because his son missed his rock throw and decided that throwing a tree was better than using the tree to pin the ship down.
And missed.
He told James that his aim was bad but the boy never practiced!
And the metal birds - because that's what the aliens looked like - were shooting at him with their guns. He could feel it piercing through his Armament Haki, but it was like getting poked by a hair. Annoying and not dangerous.
Hell, he wasn't even bleeding!
"What kind of puny guns do you little birds carry, hah?!" he laughed as he jumped into the fight with nothing but his hands.
And while all of the metal birdies were focused on him, his small troops - the regular sized ones - fired on the aliens from their hidden positions.
---
"What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck -?!" Gno'iis (private) Mex stuttered out as he rolled out of the way like his training taught him.
And his training just saved his ass.
The tank he was using for cover squealed and crashed as something giant stepped on it and cast a shadow over … a lot of them. Mex looked up and saw the giant - living giant! - that he and everyone else had been shooting at while their smaller guys in the forest were shooting at them.
'Oh, well, why aren't you shooting at the shooters, Mex?'
Because there was a giant in front of their faces tearing all of their armored and shuttles apart with its bare hands!
And the goddamn aliens were shooting lasers at him!
The thing had to be … at least two hundred narins* tall.
Oh spirits. How were there living things that big?!
And then he saw something in the periphery of his vision. He looked and realized that the giant's soldiers - the regular sized aliens - were on the ground.
'There's at least four species,' he realized as he looked at what looked like an aquatic species, the giant itself, a hairless tumak**, and a lanky thing with long legs that looked like the hairless tumak but twice as tall.
The Hierarchy hadn't just come to subjugate a single species but a federation of species!
And Mex knew enough about Citadel laws to realize that the Hierarchy … might have fucked up.
Royally fucked up.
One of the long legged ones saw him… and then disappeared?!
Suddenly, it was in front of his face with its gun pointed at his face.
He immediately raised his arms up.
And for a moment, a blissful moment, nothing happened.
It stared at him.
He stared at it.
It barked something at him loudly, and not wanting to piss off the thing who was twice as tall as he was and could apparently move fast enough to cover a hundred narins in under two seconds, he slowly set his gun down and then kept his hands up.
It blinked.
A few other soldiers came to support the long leg one, and one of them cuffed his wrists.
And then dragged him away.
And as they dragged him away, he saw what had happened to the ground invasion force.
One of the capital-grade transport ships had been ground with its back broken, shuttles that weren't already in the air were all smoking and destroyed with what looked like molten holes all along their hulls, and most of the soldiers that hadn't immediately died to the laser barrages were now surrendering.
Mex … relaxed.
He wasn't going to die to absurdities today.
That's good.
… Yeah, that's good. Not dying on some barbarian backwater colony was good.
-VB-
Kringal (Admiral) Dakkan Edruius
HFS Might of Palavan
"What?" Dakkan uttered out in utter shock, breaking his own discipline.
"The ground assault failed," Shagin (General) Tsirius hissed. "They have biological weapons. Living giants that were taller than my transport ship was long!"
Dakkan leaned back into his seat.
As much as he wanted to call Tsirius a coward for leaving his men, if there truly were biological weapons that were … ship-sized, then he did the right thing to save the troops that were still on his transport ship.
"Do you have footage?" he asked.
"Of course, I do! No one will ever believe us otherwise!"
When he received the footage, he reviewed it immediately.
And he felt his stomach turn and sink.
While Tsirius had focused on the giant, Dakkan saw something much more important: a diverse set of races, laser infantry small arms, and the giant's ability to ignore mass effect small arms after turning black.
It wasn't just at the periphery of the largest city that their assault had been turned aside.
Other assaults, especially those sent to put down the anti-orbital guns, have also failed. All of those assaults all reported the same thing as well: soldiers capable of turning their skin black to fight against mass effect weapons. Unlike the giant, however, the "regular" sized soldiers capable of doing that didn't survive long if they charged head-first into a barrage.
Whatever these races had, it was obvious to Dakkan that this small fleet that the Hierarchy had sent would not be enough to subjugate them, especially if this was nothing more than a backwater planet (which was almost certain considering that there was almost no heavy industry centers observed from orbit).
"Kringal!" the sensor officer shouted. "We have emergences from the other mass relay!"
"Has the Talon Fleet engaged the enemy?"
"Negative, kringal. Talon is pulling back. Their commanding kringal states that the enemy fleet is too big."
"I want numbers, esgos!"
It was obvious to him that this attempt at subjugating a new species was not only a failure… but something that will become a diplomatic crisis, especially since this was not a single race but an alliance of races.
They may have just encountered an interstellar alliance just like the Citadel Council, and that was bad news for them all.
"Instruct Talon kringal to join back with Maw Fleet," he ordered. "We're pulling out of this system and waiting for further instruction. It's clear that we are not prepared."
All of the officers on the bridge looked up at him in shock.
He didn't defend himself, even if the act of pulling out without giving a proper fight might get him in hot trouble.
No, his job was keeping his men alive. The mission to subjugate came after that in his list of priorities.
"Move!"
-VB-
A/N: *made up turian measuring unit for length. 1 meter = 4.42 narins = 3.28 feet
Charles Williams, a descendent of the ancient giants, is roughly 50 meters tall, or 221 narins, or 164 feet.
**tumak = a made up monkey-like creature found in one of Hierarchy's colonies.