Date Requested: 4/15/2187 (requested by: authent. ID Hackett0491c)
Date Filed: 4/19/2187
Security Level: Black (eyes only)
Filing Agent ID: 0110904 [Working Codename: Lancelot]
FA Affiliation: Special Tactics and Reconnaissance (transferred to Alliance control under Emergency Military Government Executive Order 04 of December the 8th 2186).
Filing Agent Location: SSV Surprise [last known location: outer reaches of the Perseus Veil as of 3/26/2187]
Receiving Officer Location: Received and filed aboard the SSV Vonnegut via the Command/Control frigate SSV Dresden.
-----Begin Report-----
It would of course be easy to declare Operation: Acheron a failure - simply another blunder on the sidelines of a war seemingly won by one person alone. However, the easy path, as you well know, is almost always the incorrect one. By requesting this report you have confirmed my suspicions that you share my belief that Operation: Acheron was in fact a success, though certainly one of a different kind. Despite the cost in personnel and resources, and the failure of the majority of stated Op.: Acheron objectives, the discoveries made by the expeditionary force whose exploits are detailed in this report may yet help our galaxy in any number ways which we cannot yet fathom, and in one way that fulfills a very dire need which we are acutely aware of.
Due to the state of galactic communications I am forced to deliver this report in a less than advantageous text only format. In order to increase the informative value of this text I have had my personal VI (serial # 1911A2CCOB27d - called by her familiar name - “Windjammer” from this point on for my convenience) do her utmost to transcribe the various comms intercepts, video feeds, security taps, and hardsuit cam/black box recordings into a highly descriptive narrative format for your perusal.
Additional Note: I am respectfully requesting your permission to pass along all or part of this report to our mutual friend. I feel that her cultural and scientific insights in this matter could prove invaluable. Given her line of work, however, I will understand if you refuse. Although, at this point I cannot guarantee that our mutual friend will not simply acquire the report regardless.
-Lancelot
--------------------
October 23, 2186
Athena Nebula, Parnitha, Thessia (Orbit)
Before The Fall
The fact that the Reaper armada descending upon the azure tinted world had failed to notice the SSV Normandy SR2 entering standard orbit was the result of the vessel’s stolen Reaper IFF as well as her advanced IES stealth systems. The fact that the Reapers had missed the other three Alliance ships flying in loose triangular formation several miles above Thessia was due to simple, dumb luck and a little bit of Solar interference. Not that there was much for the Reapers to detect anyway, the three Promethean class Ultralight Corvettes were far smaller and much less threatening than the Normandy SR2, having been based, in fact, upon her ancestor, the Normandy SR1. The Promethean class UL Corvette was the same length as the SR1 frigate, but lacked the frigate’s second deck and cargo bay, as well as her stealth systems and two of the SR1’s four ion thrusters. This made the PCULC a quarter of the weight of its progenitor, but thanks to the Tantalus drive core which had not been altered (but, in fact, somewhat enhanced) from the SR1 design, six times faster. The trimmed down, finely tuned Promethean class Corvettes appeared fast and razor like even when lazily orbiting a planet, as they were doing now. At the head of the three ship formation was the SSV Nikola Tesla, with the SSV Guglielmo Marconi and SSV Michael Faraday following a ship-length behind and half a ship-length offset to the left and right respectively.
The Commanding Officer’s Quarters of the SSV Nikola Tesla were twice as large as the accommodations afforded to lower ranking officers, let alone enlisted personnel, but half the size of the CO’s quarters on even the most spartan Alliance frigate. This had not stopped Captain Wyatt Cooper from making himself at home. On minuscule slab of metal that passed for a desk rested a half finished model of the RMS Olympic, alongside a stack of datapads, paperwork and old ‘real’ books. On a shelf above the desk dwelled a completed model of the battleship USS Missouri with his Grissom Medal for Exemplary Valor and Foresight in Space Operations leaning against it, both occupied a place of relative honor, as they were on the highest ledge in the tiny room. A music stand and instrument case which contained a real (not holographic interface) violin had been pushed unceremoniously into one corner in order to conserve precious space. These were not the conditions Cooper had imagined he would be in at 61 years of age. No, Cooper had expected an extravagant office on (at minimum) a Nelson class fighter carrier with a real mahogany desk, a large observation window, and an attractive, female yeoman at his beck and call. Back in the reality of his tiny cabin, Cooper himself was seated on his bunk putting on the last bits of his uniform.
The intercom built into Cooper’s omnitool flickered to life and announced in the voice of the Tesla’s pilot that the Normandy had engaged the Reapers and was landing ground troops. As per Admiral Hackett’s terse orders which Cooper had received the day before, the Tesla and her sisters were to break orbit and hit atmo as soon as possible. Their ultimate destination was a facility in the planet’s northern polar region, upon arrival, Cooper was to open and read the sealed orders which detailed the entirety of the mission, but not before. This compartmentalization of mission critical information, up to and including the missions themselves, had been enacted to prevent leaks via indoctrinated agents. Much to Cooper’s (and many other commander’s) chagrin, “Shepard’s All Stars” (as the crew of the Normandy was referred to with some annoyance by the more discontented elements within Alliance Command, Cooper included) were exempt from this enormously inconvenient policy. Cooper finished getting dressed, grabbed his custom M2111 Service Magnum Automatic Pistol with pearl grips from his bedside table and holstered it in a smooth well practiced motion. The door to his tiny office slid open as Cooper approached and he strode purposefully through the door, down a short corridor, and into the CIC.
Cooper’s Executive Officer, Lieutenant Commander Maria Von Kouhler, snapped a salute Cooper’s way as soon as she sighted him. The rest of the crew in the CIC (most of the ship’s complement) followed suit soon after. Maria was about average in terms of height, quite a bit above average in terms of intelligence, and, by Cooper’s scale, slightly above average in appearance (though, he noted, that there was room for improvement if she started sleeping regularly, and did something about the premature [she was only 37] flecks of gray appearing in her regulation length dark brown hair). This unspectacular ‘evaluation’ combined with the fact that Von Kouhler had been washed out of the N7 program after acceptance due to ‘emerging psychological issues relating to combat stress and specific traumatic experiences,‘ (N7 washouts, especially Category Sixes with a modicum of self control were the Alliance Office of Special Projects expendable operatives of choice) not to mention the age difference had placed Von Kouhler firmly in the ‘not worth the trouble’ column in Cooper’s mental ‘fraternization opportunities’ chart.
Cooper brushed past the Lieutenant Commander and continued to the raised platform facing the galaxy map, authoritatively grasping the railing at the end of the platform. A holographic projection of Thessia appeared, the planet seemed largely unmolested, but its larger cities were marked by plumes of smoke and blazes of orange. Cooper had seen it on 12 different colonies, it had begun, and there was no hope for anyone down there now. The Tesla needed to get in, complete her mission (whatever it was), and hit the relay before Space Cthulhu and friends realized they were there in the first place.
Cooper looked at the communications tech standing to one side of the galaxy map.
“Comms?” He demanded.
“Open, Sir!” The tech replied with a slight tremble in his voice.
“Marconi, Faraday, this is Tesla Actual, we are breaking orbit, bleed off any excess heat or rads into the ionosphere, you’ve got my clearance to ignore the regs about doing it on garden worlds, the squid-heads have bigger problems today. I want everything loaded, master arm on! Buckle up, polarize your bow plating and follow us in.”
A chorus of “affirmatives” and “aye ayes” echoed from within the CIC and over the comm.
The SSV Nikola Tesla’s thrusters fired and knocked her out of a stable orbit, the Marconi and Faraday followed suit. The Tesla and her sisters nosed downward attaining the perfect angle to penetrate the atmosphere at the highest possible speed without burning up or skipping off. Thanks to Mass Effect fields, inertial dampeners, and some tech “borrowed” from the Turians this was a fairly steep angle, a fairly exhilarating angle. The Tesla and the other corvettes plummeted towards the planet. When the Tesla broke atmo the entire ship was quickly wrapped in a blanket of flaming plasma as the heat coming off her hull ionized the particles around them, leaving a trail of fire, and as a result of radiation and thermal bleeding, an Aurora behind them. The Tesla’s pilot and flight engineer, Flight Lieutenant Gwendolyn Price, began reading off their altitude moments later:
“70 Kilometers.”
“50 Kilometers.”
The Reapers will be focusing on the major centers, should be a trouble free insertion.
Cooper realized he was grinning. “Prometheans lead the way!” he shouted the first verse of the Promethean class Corvette’s motto.
“Every day!” The CIC crew shouted in response.
“All the way!” The CIC crew and the crews of the other two Corvettes shouted in unison over the comm.
Gwendolyn cut in: “Leveling off at 25 Kilometers. Whoa, hold on, I’ve got a contact. Yep, ‘Leaper’ incoming! Its targeting us.”
“Leaper?” Captain Cooper questioned.
“Aye, its a portmanteau of ‘little’ and ‘reaper,’ I figured we needed a new name for the smaller ones, ‘cause calling them ‘destroyers’ is really just asking for it, if you catch my meaning. Also, its still trying to kill us.”
“Flight Lieutenant, seeing as we are in mortal peril and I don’t want the last sentence I utter to contain a string of colorful vulgarities, I will simply say this: Shut your mouth and Evade. For the love of god evade!”
Cooper made a mental note to, if he survived, locate the Office of Special Projects admiral that had convinced him that the college-aged whiz kid’s crack piloting skills made up for her eccentricities and punch him, repeatedly.
The Tesla accelerated into her descent instead of pulling up, the ground based Reaper Destroyer fired a pulse from its laser cannon, the Tesla rolled only a few feet to one side and expertly avoided the deadly beam by mere inches. The Marconi was not so lucky. She had already leveled out her atmo-piercing dive and caught the Reaper’s beam amidships, the Marconi blossomed into a plume of blue fire as her Tantalus drive core went critical, the ship and all aboard were completely vaporized.
Cooper directed his gaze toward the fire control station on the right of the galaxy map, shouting to be heard over the sounds of buckling metal and roiling flame: “Bring the Thanix online!”
“Aye”
Cooper was confronted with the fact that he could not control the ship nor see what was going on outside, only one person could do that, and it was the pilot, and Cooper had only moments ago decided she was completely mad.
“Gwen, can you hear me!”
The Flight Lieutenant made a distracted but affirmative sound.
“I’m going to give you control of the main battery! If you think you have a shot, take it!”
Despite having to dodge frequent bursts of certain Reaper-dealt death, Gwendolyn managed a complete response this time.
“Thank you sir, that is exactly what I wanted to hear, Sir!”
Gwen began to pull out of the dive the Tesla had been in for the last 100 kilometers. The nimble corvette finally leveled off at 300 feet above sea level, so close to the ground that little cyclones of dirt were whipped into a frenzy by her maneuvering thrusters. The ship hugged the ground, the Reaper fired another blast from its main cannon, but it was aimed at the only other surviving corvette, the Faraday, which managed to dodge fast enough to take only a grazing hit.
The Reaper must be prioritizing airborne threats. It probably can’t even aim that big gun this low the way its standing.
The Reaper Destroyer shifted its stance, going into its equivalent of a crouch. The main cannon cut a swath of destruction across the forest landscape before it, encroaching on the Tesla with every passing second.
Nope.
The Tesla bobbed and weaved but the beam of death came ever closer. Gwendolyn fired the Thanix battery, the shot struck the Reaper in the leg but it kept firing, less accurately at first but it quickly shifted its weight and recovered.
“Get us out of here!” Cooper ordered.
“I can’t, the main drives are spun down, we are at maximum heat capacity, weapons, propulsion, everything is overloaded!” Gwen replied. “That last Thanix shot cooked us!”
Dead in the water.
A lance of blue Thanix fire hurtled toward the Destroyer from above, followed at almost the same speed by the ship that fired it.
Commander Helena Newman of the SSV Michael Faraday cut in over the garbled comm: Tesla Actual this is Faraday Actual, our drive core is breached, rad levels off the scale, we’re as good as dead anyway! We’ll handle this son of a ****!”
“Dammit Helena!” Cooper shouted back.
“Make it count, Wyatt.” Faraday Actual replied almost serenely.
The SSV Michael Faraday, with 21 souls aboard, slammed into the Reaper Destroyer at Mach 1.7, only a few seconds after the Thanix shot it had fired. The ship’s Tantalus Drive Core overloaded with a blast equivalent to a little less than the nuclear explosion that destroyed Hiroshima in the latter days of the Second World War. The Thanix shot itself did three times that level of damage concentrated into an area three meters square.
The Tesla shuddered but suffered no actual damage from the blast.
“Status report!” Cooper barked.
“Reaper Destroyer is down sir.” His XO, Maria, reported.
“Its going to take several days to vent the drive core properly, and we don’t have enough Eezo or He3 to last that long. We need to find a place to put down, but our landing skids are fused in place by the excess heat coming from engineering, so wherever we land its going to be rough.” Gwen added.
Cooper surveyed his CIC, the damage control board was lit up in crimson, “DRIVE FAILURE” flashed across it. He saw at least one crewman crying softly, and several more were doing a poor job of hiding their desire to cry. Many others looked quite distraught. They had trained alongside the Faraday, they all had friends on the Faraday. They would all remember the Faraday, and if Cooper had anything to do with it, so would the Reapers.
Cooper left his perch behind the galaxy map and walked through his CIC and onto the bridge, which housed only Gwendolyn.
“We need to put down and make repairs, scout for fuel. What are my options.”
Gwen looked up at him, rubbed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“On thrusters only, I can get us to a clearing marked on my terrain maps in about five hours without roasting us all alive. Honestly, the most dangerous part is landing this thing. Her designers expected that the Mass Effect core would always be somewhat functional, so our landing equipment and hull plating isn’t actually built to support the ship’s full mass. I’m fairly confident most of us will survive, but the Tesla might not make it.”
“We’ll make it. She’ll make it.” He reassured her. “Get us underway.”
“Yes, sir.”
END OF PART 1
Modifié par CmdrSlander, 01 juillet 2012 - 06:32 .
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