by Screwball » Sat Jul 24, 2010 12:33 pm
Bad Neighbours
Chapter 5
The main briefing room of the dreadnought Taetrus seemed cavernous with only Persis inside. The compartment was arranged more like an auditorium or amphitheatre than a conference room, with carefully designed acoustics, seating arrangements and lighting that would have allowed anybody sitting in any one of the hundreds of chairs set around it's circumference to clearly see anybody standing at the central podium, and likewise make it as easy as possible to hear what they might be saying. There were, of course, carefully hidden speakers placed at strategic points around the periphery of the compartment, and a microphone concealed within the podium, just to be absolutely sure – there was no point in taking chances that a statement might be misheard or misunderstood, after all – but anybody used to elevating their voice would have had no trouble making themselves heard without such technical assistance.
Finished with polished metal and grey tones, the whole assemblage was impressive purely because of it's size, for space on any warship, even a dreadnought, was always at a premium, rather than anything that even approached decoration.
It was not something that Persis was in the mood to appreciate. The room seemed to swallow him whole, it's acoustic properties eating even any echo he might have produced without any indication that it's silent tranquility had been disturbed, and the sharp, metal on metal tap of his footsteps seemed curiously flat and remote. How much of that was down to the location and how much of it was down to the fact that he was grimly certain was about to happen was not something that he would have chosen to comment on, had anybody else been present to ask the question. There wasn't much chance of that, however; when the Primarchs, as a group, asked for a private meeting with anybody, even such an august personage as a First Admiral, it was a rare officer that would dare deny them.
On reflection, Persis could just as soon have done without the 'honour'.
Taetrus, along with her escorts, had arrived in Zenso four days before, and being personally present hadn't done much to curb Persis' anxiety'. The fact that he'd scraped up every contact specialist, xenolinguist, xenobiologist and technical specialist that he could lay his hands on and brought them with him, along with almost two divisions of regular army troops and transport for them, on top of both dreadnoughts – Taetrus herself and her sister ship Parthius – and almost half of the cruisers and frigates assigned to the Galatana Cluster, which had been trickling into the system over the past sixteen days, contributed somewhat more effectively towards that end. Even there, however, there was the gnawing certainty that his unannounced, unprecedented fleet movements would attract attention, first within the Hierarchy, then in the galactic community at large and, most importantly, with the Council.
That spelt disaster for his intention to keep the entire situation quiet until it could be resolved, of course, but it wasn't likely that the situation would remain unnoticed now whatever he did. The humans' 'energetic' response to what should have been nothing more than a minor boarder incident was worrying, and the number of ships they'd been able to deploy at such short notice even more so. In fact, that scared him more than the fact that they had practicable shipboard energy weaponry.
Before leaving for Zenso, he'd officially notified the Hierarchy that there had been a hostile first contact, but that information was limited. What data Radik had been able to provide him had been included in the dispatch, but it was a tiny offering in the face of what was undoubtedly needed in order to respond effectively to the unwanted and completely unnecessary threat that had appeared out of literally nowhere.
A soft chime filled the chamber, and he cast an eye over the display on his podium, checking the security codes on the transmission attempt. The computer blinked at him, obligingly indicating that the codes had been accepted, and that he would not be explaining the current – and highly classified – military situation to a surprised Salarian making an interstellar call to his cousin on the planet or something equally unfortunate. Sighing, he jabbed a finger at the holographic button that would accept the communication.
The twelve turians that snapped into flickering, red-toned existence represented some of the most powerful sentients in Council space, and they looked every bit the part. Even through the low resolution of the holographic projection, it was obvious that their tunics were fantastically high quality and the crests painted on their faces used the best possible pigments. The fact that their holograms were three times his height, towering over him like house-sized monsters, only reinforced the point, and the perfectly blank expressions on their faces didn't fill him with confidence. Nevertheless, nobody could obtain the rank of First Admiral without the ability to remain calm under pressure, and Persis allowed the silent hostility of the primarchs to bounce off of him without effect.
“My lords,” he said, offering a respectful salute, fist clenched across his chest and body bent forward in a shallow bow.
“First Admiral.” Telarus Invidius, Primarch of Palavan itself, occupied the centre of the semi-circle of rulers. “It seems you've had an interesting few eight-days. We've been over your reports ourselves, and I speak for all of us when I say you owe us an explanation as to just how this... situation... was allowed to occur.”
“Of course, sir,” Persis took a deep breath. “As you know, sixty days ago, the 57th Patrol Fleet detected an operation around Relay 314. Unfortunately, we are not in possession of Fleet Commander Decius' logs, so I can't say definitively why he undertook his subsequent actions, but I can advance and educated guess. Area Commander Arterius nominated him for promotion to Force Commander four years ago on the basis that he had displayed an aptitude for commanding squadrons on independent operations and was extremely aggressive in his support for an implementation of Council policy. Considering the weak hold law and order has on some of the fringe systems out here, he seemed an excellent choice, and indeed, up until this incident, he has performed excellently. In this case, however, he was just the wrong person in the wrong place; there's not a great deal of thought given to how to respond to uncontacted non-Council races attempting to activate relays in the standard responses, and given the poor quality sensor data available on all of the human ships – it's noted in my report that they all have absurdly low infra-red signatures – it's reasonable top conclude that he mistook them for somebody attempting to remain undetected whilst they activated a relay.
“As far as I can tell, his intention was to prevent them from escaping; he dropped out of FTL extremely close – dangerously close, in fact, considering the risk of overshoot or collision – and destroyed both of their mobile units before they could even bring their drives online. He didn't notice the third ship until it lit it's drive off, and didn't catch it before it engaged an unknown form of FTL. Apparently, it was escorting or waiting for a resupply ship, which they managed to sanitize with surprising effectiveness given how little time they had. At that point, he landed troops on the station, and it was only then that it was realised that it was a first contact scenario and not a clandestine mission by one of the lowlife elements out here, and by that point, of course, it was too late. If he hadn't been quite so zealous in his implementation of the ban on activating mass relays without a known destination, then he might have tried to talk first rather than shooting, and the whole situation could have been avoided.
“Area Commander Arterius has all of the captured humans on Zenso, and has been doing the best he can to arrange medical care and suitable conditions for them. In my opinion, considering the communications barrier and inevitable difficulties that occur when dealing with completely novel alien species, he's done an outstanding job.”
“Yes, you noted that in your report,” Vilneus Ephysus, Primarch of Epyrus was an ancient turian, but his gravelly voice remained unaffected by his advanced age. “I find it interesting, however, that that report was submitted almost five eight-days after the incident at the relay.”
The other primarchs made sounds of agreement, and Persis twitched his mandibles.
“That was my decision, my lords. Given the nature of the situation, and the potential for uncontrollable escalation if hasty action was taken, I felt it better to wait an include a useful information packet in my report, rather than cause significant and possibly catastrophic alarm. Given that Geth incursions across the Perseus Veil are becoming more frequent and larger, and considering the apparent primitive nature of the humans' technology outside of the material sciences, it seemed wiser to delay until we had meaningful data on which to formulate a response and – possibly – at least a limited means of communication to open up a diplomatic channel and resolve the situation without further shooting. At the time, all indications were that I had more than sufficient local forces to handle even a significantly larger force of human ships with ease. Moreover, they had no nav data on our space, whereas we had an almost intact computer system from their station, and I hoped that we could extract useful information from that. Even had they proven implacably hostile, it would have taken them significant time to locate us through survey operations.
“However, we have been unable to generate any useful output from the captured computers, at least with regards to navigational data, nor have we yet been able to establish more than very basic communication with the captured humans – many of them don't seem very willing to talk to us, unsurprisingly – but at the time, I didn't anticipate those difficulties. It doesn't help, I'm told, that they may be speaking a number of different languages amongst themselves.
“I was, in fact, intending to delay my report pending the completion of Senior Researcher Daktarian's initial report on the state of the humans' technology and the initial analysis of the output we have extracted from their computers, but their response to Decius' attack on their research station indicated that my earlier stance was in error, and that the ships Decius destroyed were not, in fact, representative of their military technology.”
“Indeed. Teleporting fighters, barriers that can stop GARDIAN lasers, reactionless drives and directed energy weapons. Forgive me if I find those items somewhat hard to accept from a race that can't even generate artificial gravity, First Admiral.” That was the Ventus Halaus, Primarch of Invictus. It was rare to see an overweight turian, but Halaus went far beyond merely 'overweight'. It was a mystery to Persis how he had ever attained the rank of Primarch in the first place, given his slothfulness, but he appeared to manage his colony cluster ably enough, possibly even better than most.
“I raised the same point to Area Commander Arterius and Researcher Daktarian, my lord Primarch. They reminded me that the humans have apparently never encountered the mass effect or prothean technology before. It's not, apparently, unreasonable that they should display a completely different set of capabilites. It was even suggested that as we speak, a human xenologist is remarking about it being hard to believe that a race that can generate artificial gravity can't work out how to build energy barriers or beam weapons.” He quirked a mandible in amusement as something suspiciously like a chuckle emerged from one of the huge holographic figures.
“In any event, as soon as word reached Area Commander Arterius about the way they took the 57th apart, he contacted me,” there was no reason to tell them about the conversation he and Arterius had been having before the news of Decius' final destruction. “I recognised that my assessment of the situation had been in error, and immediately organised a dispatch including all the information we had to date. At the same time, I have begun concentrating my available resources in preparation for movement and heavy combat.”
“I was under the impression that you wished to avoid further shooting, First Admiral.” Telarius' voice was flat.
“I do, my lord. It was always a possibility, however, and not only are the humans considerably more deadly that I believed, they also now have access to captured computer systems. We cannot be certain that Helika managed to purge her computers, and we know that they captured her hulk intact. Moreover, the very reason Decius remained in the system so long when he knew he could not possibly win if the enemy brought him to action was to sanitise the station, and that he did not have time to succeed. They almost certainly captured significant sources of data intact. That means that they may well have secured navigational data that will lead them to our systems, and they've made it perfectly clear what they think an appropriate response to our actions are so far.”
“Your actions, Persis! Decius was your subordinate, and you should have...”
“Peace, Ventus,” the Primarch of Aquilius, Uril Remanus held up a single hand. “With hindsight, the First Admiral made poor decisions, but given the information available at the time, they were excusable. I question the decision not to at least inform us of a first contact, even if details were entirely omitted, but he is correct in assuming that nothing we could do would change things for the better. Indeed, I suspect that some of us would have insisted on reinforcing Decius much more heavily than he actually was, and we would have even more people dead.” Remanus never let his eyes leave the corpulent Primarch of Invictus, and the other turian seemed to shrink in on himself under that unwavering gaze.
“Given that he is the commander on the spot, and has the soundest grasp of the local conditions, I believe it is appropriate that he retain his command, despite his misjudgments. It would be improper to judge his decisions on the basis of information we have now that was not available when those decisions were made,” he continued. “That is, of course, contingent on no more... 'questionable' decisions taking place in the future.”
Persis held his breath as the subject was brought out into the open at last. There was a moment of tense silence, before Invidius nodded slowly.
“I agree. Decius' actions reflect poorly on his judgment, but I have checked the late Fleet Commander's records, and he did perform his job extremely well under most circumstances. We were, as the First Admiral said, simply unlucky that he was the commander on the spot. As for his failure to inform us of the problem, I myself would have waited until I had more information. Not this long, perhaps, but he is perfectly correct that, judging by the information available at the time, the geth appeared to be the larger concern, not what seemed to be a species of primitives without mass effect technology who had no way to reach our worlds.”
With the approval of Palavan's primarch, the decision to retain Persis in command was rapidly sealed – only Halaus and Ephysus dissented.
“Now, First Admiral, I assume you have a plan to deal with the problem?”
“Yes, my lord, several in fact.” He paused and manipulated the holographic controls hovering above the podium. A huge holosphere swelled into life in the middle of the room, dotted with the icons of stars. Those under the control of the turians or other Council races or affiliated burned a steady, unblinking yellow, while the rest were a simple, unimpressive white.
“This is the local starmap. Relay 314 is located here, in an uninhabited system with the number designation X324153,” a star flashed red. “Immediately following the initial action, Decius dispatched a frigate, the Fulminous, to scout for human presence in nearby systems. They surveyed these systems.”
More than two dozen stars flashed, then two thirds of them turned a sickly green colour.
“The green systems were all uninhabited and showed no signs of occupation. These systems,” all but one system turned blue. “Contained signs of technological presence, mostly in the form of what appear to be navigation beacons or survey satellites left in orbit of marginal worlds. We've got a good idea of the temperatures humans prefer from the environmental settings on their station and some of the video media we've discovered, and all the planets in those systems were too cold to be comfortable for them, but were technically habitable. These three showed signs of previous colonisation, but appeared to be abandoned.”
He highlighted two of them with green rings.
“However, this system,” he said, highlighting the final light chip, “is the site of what seems to be a major colony. There is significant activity in orbit of the fourth planet and throughout the asteroid belt, as well as on the surface. It is not, I should stress, the human home world; they require a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, like us, and this planet has an atmosphere that they'd find rather thick; carbon dioxide, water vapour, some hydrogen and noble gases, very little oxygen. It's far too hot for them as well. I'm not prepared to speculate why they appear to have colonised it so heavily, especially considering that there's a perfectly habitable world in the nearest system that they haven't even touched, but it's a point of contact that they probably don't know we have.
“My analysts have performed a threat analysis based on what little information we have available. It's not likely to be the most accurate picture in the world, but we need to make a decision based on something, and it's better – slightly – than simply guessing. It's included in my latest dispatch, but as that may not yet have arrived or you may not have had a chance to be briefed, I'll hit the height points.
“The first is that the humans are obviously a multi-system polity; we've found a well developed – in the tens of millions of inhabitants range – colony on a hostile environment world, so they have at least two, systems, probably a limited number of other core colonies and their homeworld, in addition to smaller resource colonies, but they can't be too widely spread or we'd have found them before now. That's not enough to win a war, unless they have further technological surprises for us to even the odds, but it's also not something that we can push over easily.
“The second is that they appear to have developed a significant industrial and technological base compared to what we would expect a polity limited to less than a single cluster to possess; the obvious fact of their advanced technology is one support for that, but the speed with which they responded to the attack on their research outpost indicates that what hit Decius was a rapid reaction force. We don't know how fast their FTL is, so we have no idea how far away they came from, but the size of their response is disturbing. We've established similar sized forces along the Perseus Veil to respond to major geth incursions – minus these 'battlecruisers' Captain Szara was talking about, obviously – so we have an idea of the expense involved. They, of course, need to cover a much smaller area, but the simple fact is, a force that size is expensive to construct and maintain. They very likely have more than one, and then a main fleet as well. That points to a large, well developed economic base. There's no way they can possibly have as many ships as us, but they're far more concentrated and have far fewer areas they need to cover.
“The third point is that their technology is completely unfamiliar. We accept that at face value, but consider the implications. We have no idea of their ultimate capabilities; so far, what they've displayed is concerning enough, but what haven't they shown us? Can they teleport soldiers onto our ships with their FTL? What sort of weaponry are their dreadnoughts armed with? What sort of systems do they have in their strategic arsenal, and what is their stance on the use of WMD? Those are all important things we don't know.
“Finally, there's the way in which their response force handled the engagement. As I said, they sent Helika a single warning before taking hostile action. There were no warning shots, no second attempts, nothing. Moreover, they didn't give the rest of the 57th any chance to surrender at all, they just blew them out of space. Given the circumstances, that's not entirely outside the realm of expected behaviour, but it suggests that their idea of an appropriate response to this sort of thing is rather harsher than we might hope.
“The summary, my lords, is that we believe that the humans are, for their probable size, a well developed, rich species with a large military, equipped with unknown but powerful technology, and would be willing – and possibly able – to launch retaliatory attacks on our local systems, if given the opportunity.
“That assessment underlies the possible courses of action I'm willing to advance. There are four; The first is to simply maintain our current stance. We can assemble nodal forces in strategically important systems to react to any incursions, garrison our frontier worlds and then focus our efforts and learning how to speak their language. Once we have a firm enough grip on that to engage in diplomacy, we contact them, explain the situation, and attempt to settle things diplomatically. This has the advantage of not getting any more people killed, lowering our exposure to political and diplomatic fallout, the ability to escalate our response if we decide it's necessary, and avoiding the possibility of us getting involved in a war we can't easily withdraw from if we need to – should the geth decide to kick off a major conflict in their end of the galaxy, for example. The disadvantage is that we completely yield the initiative; we aren't putting any pressure on the humans, and we don't know whether or not they will respond with force, so we may end up with a war anyway, and it would be happening in our star systems and on our planets.
“The next option is really a variation of the first; we remain on the defensive, as with option one, but we also conduct an aggressive survey campaign throughout the volume of space they appear to occupy. That will give us more information, and we can then escalate or pursue a diplomatic option if necessary. The advantages are similar to those of the first plan of action, with the added advantage of giving us greater intelligence, rather than leaving us groping in the dark. The disadvantages are the same as well, of course, with the added problem that they're likely to notice us if we get close enough to gather useful information. They probably wouldn't react calmly to that, given that we would essentially be scouting out their space for purposes of , potentially, at least, attacking them, and it's more likely to push them into a war if they were undecided.
“Thirdly, we gamble that they're going to attack us and pre-empt them; I've got two dreadnoughts here, and I've already requested reinforcements. We would attack X324153 and the single colony world we've identified, combined with the extensive survey in plan two, and when we identify other major worlds, we attack and occupy those as well. That puts us in an extremely strong bargaining position and forces them to come to the table, and keeps the conflict away from our planets. We would aim to keep collateral damage to the minimum possible; we are not attempting to destroy them, simply to keep them contained and preoccupied until we can reach a settlement. It has the advantage, as I say, of keeping the war away from our worlds and putting us in control of the operational tempo, but the backside of that is, it involves us in a war for certain, and we aren't sure jut how much fight they can put up. We would certainly win an extended campaign, by drowning them in ships if nothing else, but casualties could potentially be very high.
“Then, as the last option, we could involve the Council. I imagine that such a policy would be similar to the first option, but the disadvantages are mitigated by the fact that we would have far more military muscle available to picket our systems, so the threat of attack is reduced. On the other hand, we would almost certainly suffer a major blow to our prestige for allowing the situation to deteriorate, and since the humans don't know about the Council, it's not going t have a deterrent effect. That would probably result in dead asari and salarians as well as our own troops, and that might well have unfortunate effects on our ability to negotiate a settlement. If we don't involve the Council initially, then we have a third party to mediate should any conflict escalate out of hand.”
“Mmm,” Invidius waved a hand at the starmap. “How fast can we reinforce your operational area?”
“A dreadnought can make the trip here from Invictus in three eight-days. Cruisers and frigates are faster, of course. If my requests are met, I'll have doubled the strength of my screen in the next twenty days, and have seven dreadnoughts in the next thirty two.”
“Which approach do you prefer?”
“In all honesty, my lords, considering their newly displayed capabilities, I'm uncomfortable sitting back and waiting for them to come to us. We know that we won't deploy WMDs on planetary targets, but don't know that they won't. If we knew more about their political situation or military doctrine, or if they were weaker or didn't have such unprecedented technology, I would favour staying on the defensive, as I have until now. In light of current circumstances, though, I think we have to hit them before they hit us.”
“That's a risky option. I believe you mentioned uncontrollable escalation earlier; this would be a sure road directly to that.”
“Yes sir. On the other hand, if they do come after us, they're going to do damage, probably quite a lot, and then we'd have to fight them anyway. If we bring enough force to bear, we can shut them down hard before they do anything rash, and we know that we can keep collateral damage to their worlds low. There's some possibility that they can put up more of a fight, but when it comes down to it, they're a single region of a single star cluster, whereas we're the most powerful military force in the known galaxy. There's no way they can stand us off for an extended period of time, and I'd expect they will recognise the writing on the wall rather than fight to the finish; the humans on the station surrendered, after all.”
The primarchs debated amongst themselves; whatever they said, it wasn't piped to the briefing room's receivers, but eventually, Invidius engaged his connection once more.
“Very well, First Admiral. Proceed as you see fit. We will need regular updates on your planning, and you must request final authorisation from us to do more than simply dispatch scouts, but you may consider yourself free to prepare for an offensive against the humans.”
After careful study of Number One's biographic work My Ceaseless Quest to Conquer Earth and Destroy its Puny Inhabitants, we have come to the conclusion that the Ghast Empire may well be up to something rum.
), and I'm rather looking forward to more of this.
