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(AN: If you see any Mistakes, please let me know, it will improve my writing)
Aboard an old dropship belonging to the Alliance, the void craft was ferrying down a detachment of Marines towards the main city on Shanxi itself.
Sitting on one of the many jump seats was none other than a young David Anderson.
For him, along with everyone else in that dropship, it was his very first time going into actual combat.
The First Contact War, that's what many of his fellow soldiers called this crisis, as well as the higher-ups.
The moment they would land, it would be dark, night had already fallen on this side of the world.
Strapped to his seat as the transport descended to the landing zone, Anderson took in how silent everyone was around him, aside from the rumble of the engines and shaking, there was just breathing.
They were all good men, he'd trained with them all, to hear them all silent was far from the norm, after all, they were always joking and horsing around.
But not this time.
The rattle of the shuttle along with the heavy breathing wasn't calming his nerves, he reckoned everyone was thinking the same thing: "we're off to fight alien invaders. Aliens!".
Thinking about it, back then, they all grew up wondering what was out there, if they were alone in the universe; now they knew.
They weren't alone.
And they were in trouble now.
So here they were, about to face an enemy as different and unknown as they could imagine.
Anderson knew he had to say something, anything, to keep the men and women here relaxed.
So he turned to the soldier beside him, Hendricks, and spoke to him.
"How's your mother doing?" the man raised an eyebrow before he responded.
"Fine. Why?"
"Cause I heard your momma's so ugly the Marines thought she was a Turian…almost shot her."
Gazing around the compartment, Anderson saw he got a few smiles.
The Hendricks turned to Anderson and said…
"Hell, Anderson, I thought it was a picture of momma that started this goddamn war in the first place. Scared the Turians shitless."
This time, the transport burst into laughter, then, like tumbling snow, more and more Marines started taking the piss out of one another.
Smiles, laughter, acting as though this was just another routine deployment to a far-off backwater colony.
Sometimes that's all it takes, a joke, a pat on the back, just a little reminder that everything is going to ok.
…
If only it was.
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Commander Gallen Derek eyed the approaching alien fleet on the map with growing dread.
It was a 2 to 1 situation, worse was the Dreadnought equivalent among them, that thing was not a pleasant thing to see.
"Send a message to Alliance High Command. 'The enemy has arrived with a force double our number along with a Dreadnought.'" He didn't look to his Com officer to see him type away on his console, he kept his eyes on the aliens.
They would arrive within 9 minutes.
He relayed orders to the fleet to prepare for combat, they would hold orbit for as long as they could, but once things grew severe, he would order a retreat, he only hoped this battle wouldn't be too one-sided.
He lamented the fact that they would lose, but he was determined to see that the fleet would give them a bloody nose.
Time ticked by in agonising seconds, the Marines and Army groups had been fully deployed onto the surface of the world, and they had plenty of time to prepare the battlegrounds, the ship Captains were ready, General Williams was ready.
"Sir, the enemy is closing in and has not attempted any reply to our hails."
So this was it.
Gallen swallowed hard, fist tightening on the handlebars.
"Have all vessels make their final checks and prepare to fire on my signal," he could almost make out the shapes of the alien ships out in the void, faint blue blooms of their engines, from his perspective moving slowly, but in actuality, they were moving exceedingly fast.
"Receiving weapon lock, all stations are green," and not a moment too soon, a blaring alarm sounded off.
The Turians had fired.
Streaks of blue and yellow blazed through the void, their targets all too clear.
"All Vessels, Weapons Free, Helm Initiate Evasive Manoeuvres." The ship jolted as the order was given.
The Alliance ships fired off their main guns, dual spinal mounts firing Mass Effected munitions, which passed by incoming alien ones.
Multi-tone slugs slammed into Kinetic Shields that shimmered into existence among the hulls, making it seem like they were protected, yet on the inside, the shock absorbers struggled to dissipate the energy, sparks flew, and metal groaned under the abuse.
"Ready missiles and torpedoes, fire when solution is at 80%"
Along the Cruiser's body, silos opened showing rows of missile racks, and then they began bursting out, with fiery trails, the warheads disappeared into the inky black as blue lights.
When they reached their targets, most wouldn't even hit their targets as thin red beams sliced into them with incredible accuracy.
Those that hit would only shave off mere percentiles of shield strength.
The Turians pressed onwards, concentrating their fire on ships too far away from their formation.
"Ship Lost, SSV Paris Is Going Down."
"SSV Verdun Is Heavily Damaged And Is Withdrawing."
Gallen gripped the railing harder upon hearing the first casualties.
However, thankfully, the battle wasn't as one-sided as he feared.
"kill Confirmed, Cruiser 4 Downed"
"Enemy Starboard Flanking Wolfpack Destroyed, Switching Targets."
Yes, it was good to know they had a chance against them, but they would not be winning this battle.
Gallen jolted to the side as his ship took a hit, and a big one at that.
One of the bridge crew yelled, informing him that their shield had taken a big dip, down to 55%.
Eyeing the map and the cameras, he found the issues almost immediately.
"The Command Ship Is Bearing Down On Us, Power To The Forward Shields, Incoming Fire!"
For the next horrifying few minutes, Gallen felt his ship being rocked from side to side as it was being pummelled by near-unrelenting focused fire from the enemy Dreadnought.
While power was redirected to the shields, it was despairing to see the metre drop further down.
"We need to fall back before we're a shipwreck, Helm pull us back, Com relay to the fleet to follow, we cannot maintain this stance."
It was a bitter feeling to essentially retreat, but he had no choice in the matter, to stay any longer in the fight would mean total destruction, but the consequences of leaving would mean ceding total orbital supremacy to these alien foes, leaving the defenders on Shanxi to their tender mercy.
Meanwhile.
As the Alliance blockade fell back but still harassing, the Turian fleet split off their forces, one to chase while another began deploying their own ground forces planet-side.
Fighter craft flew close to defend the transports, while human groundside flak and meager air force did their best to reduce the number of incoming combatants.
It was a brutal dogfight as human fighters through themselves at the alien invaders only to be rebuffed.
Sure, many transports were blown out of the skies, but it didn't stop the wave, soon, they landed, and scores of troops began rushing towards the Alliance defence perimeters while others secured the approach.
That night, flames illuminated the city just as much as the gun flashes from both sides.
Marines and Army men and women, along with the odd mercenary group, were fighting side by side against an alien force seeking to do god knows what to them, it didn't matter to them, for at that moment, they had a unifying enemy that they needed to kill.
The fighting would go on for hours.
The Navy kept on getting pushed back while ground forces lost more ground and a large part of the city, as the aliens held orbital superiority.
But that was going to change really quickly.
At the edge of the System, over a hundred dark blue wormholes ripped through the fabric of reality, giving the observer a glimpse into the eleventh dimension.
Coming out of those tears was the 'Black Fleet', tens of dozens of Frigates and Destroyers, and Light Carriers following behind the five capital ships of the fleet.
Kali had arrived as soon as her Slip-Space Drives would allow her, yet the real space flight time would still take her more time to get to Shanxi.
This was one of the many downsides of this [System] made Fleet or really early UNSC warship tech; they had no shields, FTL was slow and inaccurate, and real space flight was just as slow, the few saving graces were the armour and the MACs, including the unbound nature of her FTL exit points.
Another fortune was appearing relatively close to the battered and retreating Alliance fleet.
If her fleet had perhaps taken longer or dropped out further away, then the Alliance fleet would have definitely jumped out of the system.
Wasting no time, Kali commanded her forces towards battle, moving at full speed and tracking targets, there was an observable shift in both human and alien formations.
The Turians began to fall back in the face of overwhelming numbers while the Alliance rallied and began to push forwards.
Once the Black Fleet was within firing range, Kali did not hesitate, within moments, space was filled with bright yellow streaks of light, but unlike the turkey shoot at the Relay, the Turians were moving in all directions to avoid being hit.
Still, as much as they tried to avoid her shots, several vessels burst into flames or were riddled with holes as the MACs punched straight through them and into the next vessel.
Or perhaps the rounds will fly off into the void and hit something else in the next ten thousand years.
As both fleets began the flight back to Shanxi, the main Turian force responded quickly, as it didn't take long for Kali to experience return fire.
With morbid acceptance, she eyed many of her ships being hit, while the armour was formidably in tanking hits or deflecting them, even the UNSC had soft points and gaps in the armour, and concentrated fire saw a few Frigates losing their bridge decks, main engine wings being sheared off, or the side hangers getting shot to hell.
It was a glaring weakness to be shieldless, but thank god the Turians were not the Covenant with their plasma weapons, slug throwers were something early UNSC ships were most certainly built to deal with.
Eventually, they made it back to the planet within a few minutes, and from what Kali could see, many small spacecraft were zipping up and down from the planet, meaning the Turians were in the process of recalling their forces or deploying more, but logically, it was far more likely for them to be retrieving their men.
They had enough time to get a majority of them, but not enough to get all of them back as Kali and the Alliance fleet were back at it again, trading blows with the Turians.
In this fight, Kali was doing her best in micro-managing her fleet to act as a shield to the smaller amount of Alliance vessels, her ships were empty aside for herself on the lone Orion.
Kali dared not bring along the Fatui, she didn't believe they were at the point where they would fight and die for her yet, however, they were watching this battle, as before leaving she made sure to transmit everything that was happening back to HQ.
They would see how war was conducted and what future combat was like, it would serve as a good bit of experience for them before they stepped into battle.
"Things are going well."
A breakthrough was inevitable, and to pressure it along, Kali had the flight wings from her Carriers to begin making runs on the transports and any other left-over groundside Turian force.
Longswords, Broadswords, Shortswords, and Balesswords zipped down to the transports and to the city below and began ripping through the enemy air force in overwhelming numbers, their missiles and guns tore through alien metals just as effectively as they would do to Covenant crafts.
Eyeing the dreadnought, though, it seemed to be screening the retreat path for the rest of its fleet with a few Cruisers alongside it, however, a strange sense of something important was welling in her heart, Kali had a feeling it might be a certain future Specter's older brother.
No words were needed for what she did next, mental commands were issued and her entire fleet was given a 'Kill Order'.
In an instant, hundreds of MACs found themselves barrelling towards the lone Dreadnought.
The result, a fireball that left the wingtips of what used to be a mighty warship.
With the destruction of the flagship, the rest of the Turians seemed to break ranks and all ships began turning tail and jumped towards the Relay.
Very quickly, the firefight above Shanxi was reduced to clean-up work as crippled Turian ships that could not make the jump were subsequently disabled and boarded by the remaining Alliance fleet presence.
It also shouldn't take too long for the ground forces to round up the left behind planet-side Turians as well.
Kali, however, didn't decided not to outstay her welcome and had her fleet turn away from the planet and jump out back to HQ.
She didn't answer any of the Alliance hails, nor did she concern herself with securing the husk of Frigates that were destroyed or disabled, leaving them here would benefit the Alliance and the Galaxy in the long run.
Also, once the Citadel sent their diplomats, it would signal to Kali to move out to other regions of the Galaxy and farm Experience Points from criminals rather than good soldiers following orders.
Though in this battle, Kali did gain more levels, but not by much, as it seemed she only levelled up a total of 5 times, it was nice to gain more [Upgrade Options], but it also showed future level-ups would be harder to come by.
Thankfully, she had plenty of acceptable targets and more than enough time to get powerful enough to fight the reapers and hopefully win without using the Crucible, but that is yet to be seen.
For now, she will return to HQ, integrate more locals and Fatui members into her organization, and expand her capabilities.
These coming years were sure going to be some interesting times.
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