Chapter 03

"We have confirmed detonations of the stealth mines near the relay! All of them have just gone up! I'm detecting probes entering FTL heading in our direction. ETA, ten minutes," a young ensign called out. Admiral Hiller paused for only a moment before he started giving out orders.

"Call General Quarters throughout the fleet. Have every ship move to their designated positions immediately. Give me a count at how many ships are coming through the relay. Get a message down to the colony tell them to stop evac and to try and get everyone into the shelters." Every crewman immediately began moving about the CIC. A comms officer opened a fleetwide channel.

"GENERAL QUARTERS! GENERAL QUARTERS! ALL HANDS MAN YOUR BATTLESTATIONS! THIS IS NOT A DRILL. I REPEAT, THIS IS NOT A DRILL!" A few moments later, that same comms officer spoke out.

"Sir, we still have a destroyer, the USV Pegasus, assisting civilian mining craft near the outer edge of the system!"

"What is wrong with the civie craft?" the admiral asked?

"They had reported issues with their relay FTL systems. The Pegasus was assisting with repairs as the Turians ran into the mines." Hiller rubbed his brow before responding.

"Can we get a message through to them?"

"Yes, sir, but their last report stated that the civilian craft would have their FTL systems online within an hour. That report was twenty minutes ago, sir."

"And we can't spare any ships otherwise the Turians would notice our FTL capabilities. Send them a warning message. Abandon the civie ships and load everyone onto the Pegasus if they have to but the Pegasus needs to move, now." Hiller ordered.

(Line Break) A few moments ago…

"How much longer until we finally have their FTL systems fixed?" Captain Jesse Clayton openly asked her crew. She received a quick response.

"We are actually ahead of schedule right now, ma'am. Apparently some parts just needed a good cleaning, not full replacement." a CIC officer reported.

"Alright then. Prepare to send a message to…" she was interrupted by the officer watching the scanning systems.

"Nuclear detonations detected near the relay! I am receiving no more telemetry from the stealth mines placed in geosynchronous orbit!" All noise on the bridge just stopped. Then people got to work. The tactical officer charged up the tactical capacitors, meaning the weapons and defenses could be brought to full power at a moment's notice. Engineering readied up all secondary systems and had emergency crews on stand-by for damage control. Flight ops was trying to get a status update on the mining vessels. Comms received a communication from Admiral Hiller.

"Ma'am, Rear Admiral Hiller has ordered us to evac the mining vessel crews onto the Pegasus and scuttle the vessels. We are to high tail it out of here, ma'am." Clayton wanted to hit something at that moment.

"Does he know that our Trojans were taken to be used as evacuation craft at Shanxi and that in order to move the civilians we would have to dock with each ship one at a time?" she asked of her comms officer, who picked up the hidden order and sent the message. It took a few moments for a communication to come through.

"Live feed coming in from the Admiral ma'am."

"Put it on my receiver," Clayton ordered and picked up the small phone shaped device off of the console in front of her. "This is Pegasus Actual."

"Pegasus Actual, this is Rising Alpha. SITREP."

"Sir. All Trojans assigned to this ship were allocated for civilian evacuation before we were ordered to assist these mining vessels. In order to evacuate them all, sir, we would have to dock with them each individually and move the crews. It would take ten minutes to dock with each ship then it would take half-an-hour to an hour to evacuate each ship. And I'm sorry but I will not follow an order to abandon the civilians."

"I'm not ordering you to. Now, what is the status of their FTL repairs?"

"It wasn't nearly as bad as we thought. Turns out, it was a case of neglect on part of the engineers on those ships. The drives are cleaned and they should be online within the next half hour. Do we have that time, sir?" Clayton asked.

"I don't know Captain. Alright, here are your orders. Defend the civilians to the best of your ability. I'll try and send what reinforcements we can spare but right now we have an enemy fleet in excess of two hundred Turian vessels heading straight for Shanxi. We also have readings of a small strike force heading in your direction. I don't know how long you have but you best get those ships out of there ASAP. Are your orders clear?" Rear Admiral Hiller asked.

"Yes, sir. Defense of the civilians until they can jump out of combat area. We will get them to safety, sir."

"I know you will, Captain. Rising Alpha out." With that, the Admiral cut off the communication and Captain Clayton started giving out her own orders.

"Alright people. We have a big job to take care of. There is a Turian strike force headed right for us and their target is most likely the civilian ships. We are to defend them until they can get their drives online and jump out of the combat zone. I want all crew to put on their pressure suits. When the enemy arrives, they may knock out our shielding systems early so I want everyone to be ready for intentional decompression to avoid as many casualties as possible. Tactical, I want some of our nukes hidden among some of the debris that's floating about. We might be able to use them as DIY mines. Engineering, I want you to try and find the quickest way to get those civie FTLs online. I don't care if you have to bypass some safety protocols to do it but they need to be out of here quick. Have the civies move their ships as far behind us as they can. Have them place themselves as close to the gas giant as possible. If the Turian FTL is based on Prothean tech, they may not be able to drop out of FTL too close to a large gravitational pull. Move it, people. We have little time." Officers all over the bridge scrambled to follow their Captain's orders.

Half of the ship's nuclear weapons were launched using their RCS thrusters and moved into position for remote detonation. As soon as everyone was in their pressure suits, the ship was automatically decompressed and everyone switched to their personal oxygen supplies, which could last for several hours. A few minutes later, one of the civilian ships reported a green FTL and sped off out of the combat zone. This left two other ships that still couldn't leave the area.

Then they arrived…

"I'm reading Turian vessels off of our port side! Four Turian cruisers, thirteen destroyers, and twenty-two frigates. They are running with barriers up and weapons hot." the Tactical officer reported.

"Ma'am, I'm receiving a message over comms. Running it through the translator. It states, 'Surrender, and prepare to be boarded.'"

"Then this will be a real kick in the pants for them. Target the closest enemy cruiser and fire the Lance!" A green lance of energy swiftly fired out from the Pegasus and struck one of the four cruisers. Said cruiser didn't have a chance as the blast passed straight through their barriers and pierced through the entire ship. It drifted aimlessly for only a moment before detonating, pieces of metal flying in every direction. Several ships were damaged with two frigates actually being destroyed from the close proximity to the explosion.

The Turian fleet was quick to respond with every ship opening fire with their main cannons. The shielding on the Alliance destroyer was quickly draining under the onslaught, but they weren't going to take the fire sitting down. The Pegasus' Onager guns spewed out green blasts of plasma and yellow kinetic railgun rounds into the Turian warships, with many of the smaller frigates and destroyers either being destroyed outright, or just crippled to the point of abandonment. Her MAC gun went to work on the destroyers, with each shot completely gutting the target vessel.

While, as a destroyer, the Pegasus would normally use its powerful engines to avoid enemy fire due to its lighter armor not being able to withstand nearly as many hits as one would expect, but the Pegasus had to protect the unarmed civilian ships and, as such, had to keep itself between them and the Turian warships.

After several minutes of fire being exchanged, one of the Turian destroyers managed to get around the Pegasus and fired off its' Mass Accelerator round into one of the civilian ships. The round passed right through the shielding, as it was meant for dealing with smaller meteorites and not military ordinance, and plowed right through the main reactor. The smaller craft detonated in a bright green show before disappearing. All that was left of it was some small debris floating outward.

Captain Clayton had watched the small craft be destroyed before one of her plasma onagers could get a solid lock on the Turian destroyer. Seeing the innocent civilians be slaughtered so ruthlessly made her blood boil.

"I want that Turian ship absolutely pulverized right now!" shen ordered. Instantly, two of the Pegasus' topside plasma onagers locked onto the Turian ship's flightpath and fired. The first bolt pierced right through the engine assembly, effectively paralyzing the alien ship, and the second bolt passed clean through the center of the ship. Though it was practically out of the fight, the Pegasus continued to fire until there was almost nothing left of the Turian ship before the guns changed targets and began firing again. Another blast from the plasma lance knocked out another Turian cruiser, and the explosion managed to do extensive damage to the cruiser directly next to it, knocking both vessels out of the fight.

The remaining Turian ships gathered around their remaining cruiser to try and protect it from a plasma blast while simultaneously firing off their weapons to try and disable the lance. Meanwhile, more Turian ships were disabled or destroyed by the powerful energy weapons of the alien ship in front of them. Torpedoes couldn't even get close due to the advanced anti-air capabilities the destroyer possessed, so all they could do was fire off their accelerators and their smaller cannons.

The CIC continued to shake as more mass accelerator rounds continued to pummel the ship.

Soon, Captain Clayton heard the statement she hoped she didn't have to hear for at least a little while longer.

"Captain, the shields are failing!" a young officer reported before the shaking got even worse as the enemy rounds were now slamming into the armor of Clayton's ship.

"Order all hands to close helmets! We are depressurising the ship!" As soon as she was sure that her crew had the time to get their helmets on, Clayton ordered the complete depressurization of her ship. It was an odd sensation as now the loud explosions were muffled almost to nonexistence. The only reason Clayton knew her ship was still under fire was the constant shaking from ordinance impacts against the hull. "Have the enemy ships moved into range of the mines?!" she asked through the intercom in her suit.

"Negative, ma'am! But they are slowly making their way toward us and should be within effective range within the next minute." Another explosion rocked the crew around a bit before everyone resettled.

"Captain, both the plasma Lance and the MAC gun have been taken out! Their anti-air guns are still stopping all missiles from hitting their targets," the tactical officer reported.

"Continue to fire off the onagers. What's the status of the civilian ship?" Clayton asked.

"They have reported their FTL is online and are jumping away now," just as that statement finished, Clayton watched the screen as the civilian ship jumped off.

"Alright. Prepare to…" she was cut off as the Turians increased their firepower on the Alliance destroyer. The ship was constantly shaking from the firepower being thrown at it.

"Wormhole drive and missile targeting systems are offline!" An officer reported.

"Reactors are dropping in energy output. Our onagers aren't able to keep up their rate of fire," another called out.

"Multiple hull breaches detected throughout the ship. We have power fluctuations all over," a third stated. Clayton overheard all of these reports and made a decision that she knew was risky.

"Set all weapons to automatic fire. Bypass all safeties and have them fire off as fast as they can. I want everyone to the escape pods. Abandon ship. I'll detonate the nukes to scramble their sensors. Hopefully that'll give the pods enough time to hide away from the enemy ships that might remain." The CIC crew was silent at the orders that were given. Then Clayton's X/O opened a mass intercom to the rest of the crew.

"All hands abandon ship. I repeat, all hands abandon ship." The CIC crew quickly started setting up all of the systems needed to follow the captain's orders before they themselves would attempt to reach the pods. It wasn't too long after the order was given that the first few escape pods were launched. As the sensor operator watched them fly away in an attempt to flee the battle, the operator was shocked to see what happened next.

"Captain, the Turians are firing on the escape pods!" All activity stopped on the deck. Clayton made her way over to the operator's station and watched as the last of the first batch of escape pods were destroyed by intentional Turian cannon fire.

"All hands do not launch escape pods," she screamed into her comm. "The Turians are firing on all pods that launch. Do not launch pods." she then switched to the CIC private channel. "I guess that's that then. Continue to fire off all weapons as fast as they can. I don't care if they melt or blow up, I want them firing as fast as they can. Engineering, this is the CIC, come in."

"This is Adams, go ahead CIC," the Pegasus' chief engineer called back.

"This is the Captain. Override all reactor safeties. I want us running at 110%." The line was quiet for a moment before Adams responded again.

"Roger that, Ma'am. It's been an honor." The line went dead and Clayton ordered a final call to the entirety of the ship.

"Men and women of the Pegasus, this is Captain Jesse Clayton. These Turian creatures have come to us fully expecting to pound us into the dirt. They expected us to simply surrender this ship and the innocent civilians we were meant to protect. But we showed them the error of their ways. We have shown them what happens when you underestimate humanity. The Locusts made the same mistake in 1996 and look what happened to them. Now these Turians think they will be able to board our ship and use the tech they find against the rest of humanity. We can't let that happen. We won't let that happen. Ever. To the next horizon ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain. Out." The call ended. All was quiet except the shaking of the ship and the sparking of conduits.

"To the next horizon, Ma'am." Clayton's X/O repeated with a salute. This verse and action was repeated by everyone on the CIC of the USV Pegasus. Clayton smiled and returned the salute. She then turned to her navigational officer.

"Plot a course directly into the enemy cruiser. Use all excess power to ram us into them."

"Roger that, Ma'am." the officer responded before inputting the last few commands she would ever give into the computer systems. The remaining Turians watched in horror as the bright blue engines of the alien ship suddenly blasted out with a harsh orange light and the ship began accelerating quickly. They could see what its target was and continued to fire everything they had, from Cannons to Torpedoes, in an attempt to knock the ship off course. It was all for nothing as the battered Human ship slammed bow-first into the Turian cruiser. Its engines continues to burn for a few moments before sputtering back to a blue color than dying out entirely. Lights all over the human ship went out as the reactors shut down.

For a brief moment the Turians thought they were finished with the battle. How wrong they were. All of a sudden, the Pegasus blew as the remainder of their unused nuclear warheads detonated simultaneously in a blinding flash of light. The resulting explosion almost completely vaporized the Pegasus and the Turian cruiser she rammed, and severely damaged the smaller Turian ships that were nearby. The survivors of the explosion didn't even have time to breath as the DIY nuclear mines that were being kept from detonating by a constant signal from the Pegasus, went off as the signal was no longer broadcasting. The remainder of the Turian forced were almost completely destroyed with only two of the smaller frigates managing to survive due to their distance from the detonations.

To say the Turians commanding these ships were horrified would be an understatement. A task force of thirty-nine ships went up against a single armed warship and was almost completely wiped out. If this was only a single ship that caused such a large amount of damage, the Turians could only wonder what was happening to the invasion force.

Author's Note:

I would like to apologize for the lateness of this chapter. Also, I apologize for how bad this chapter might read. A few days after I posted the previous chapter happened, something awful occurred. No one died or anything like that but its something I'd rather not get into. I hope you guys can understand. Thank you for the continued support of my story. It truly helps me out mentally, so from the bottom of my heart, thank you. All of you, thank you. Sincerely, D'terran.