Chapter One Hundred And Fifty-Six

The Enduring Triumph. Batalla System

It might seem strange that I'd feel bad about bombing Lorek a world that the Reapers would likely depopulate in a matter of months, yet the idea of killing millions just to make an example did bother me so I'd spoke to the Lady Inquisitor and I'd declared that I'd found a better target, one that would hurt the Batarians without damaging a habitable planet which could one day belong to mankind of this galaxy.

Phrasing it that way had won the new plan a lot of support, and for my Imperial followers it made little difference which nest of foul xenos were purged as long as we did some purging as that served the interests of Him-On-Earth. As such I'd brought the fleet to a different part of the Terminus Systems as I'd seen myself doing during a recent vision when I'd attempted to plot a better course of action.

So instead of taking up orbit around Lorek and blasting its population we were now heading towards a world that didn't support any life, which was called Logasiri. It was barely more than a large asteroid, with a fraction of Earth's gravity and mass, yet it was populated due to the richness of its mineral wealth.

Logasiri is a planet with a carbon-heavy crust and a trace atmosphere made up mostly of CO2 and helium. Its surface is cool enough to have liquid water, but it is rapidly drying out as it has lost the critical mass required to have a self-sustaining hydrologic cycle, at least according to the codex and that meant unlike Bekke it didn't rain much on that world.

Despite barely being more than a dead lump of rock in space the batarians had colonized the world, and they forced many slaves to work in their mines and agri-habitats. The labour is hot, endless, and backbreaking, even in the low-G environment. Every horror story told by slaves elsewhere in the cluster seems to be topped by one from Logasiri.

That last part made me feel so much better about striking at this world as this world was really little more than a collection of slave labour camps.

"As expected the agri-habitats on the surface are protected by powerful kinetic barriers" reported one of the cogboys "To protect against meteorite impacts".

This world only possessed a trace of atmosphere so any space debris drawn into the planet's gravity well would not burn up on entry like it would on a world like Earth and even a small bit of space junk could crack open one of the domes on the surface due to the speeds it would be travelling at.

Due to the planet's rich mineral wealth it batarian masters had invested in layers of kinetic barriers to protect their domes that wouldn't protect them from my guns even if I wasn't going to order the domes destroyed by lances rather than marcocannons, as the locals just couldn't handle Imperial levels of firepower.

"The mining tunnels are underground" said another tech-priest "And some will survive our bombardment".

Giving us access to sources of Palladium and Platinum that could be recovered once my elite warriors had cleared out the tunnels. There was Element Zero here, and that was a shame as Thea Maxid, the chief cyborg, had some ideas about upgrading our Starhawk bombers, but we could pick up more Element Zero later on.

Unlike the batarian miners on Bekke, who had been low class workers rather than slaves, the miners here would have no real loyalty to anyone and the human ones could be liberated and come work for me.

"If the destruction of the domes isn't enough then we'll need to strike at Lorek" reminded the Inquisitor "We must force these xenos to accept human superiority in this galaxy".

My thinking had been that striking at a world which supplied the batarians with so much mineral wealth would be better than killing millions of civilians because the Citadel races wouldn't get so upset about me killing slavers, and it would hurt the finances of the batarian leaders, something that mattered to them much more than mere civilian lives.

"After we've bombarded the domes the new Thrax variant Furies will target any ground defences" I was now saying "Once the way is cleared the Sisters of Battle will have the honour of securing the remaining landing sites".

The domes had their own landing pads for the movement of goods for the rulers and the mines had different sites for the loading of their dug up minerals and the unloading of equipment as well as fresh slaves.

As for the Sisters of Battle, they had undergone their upgrades and trained to better make use of their new bodies, and now they would get a taste of action. No amount of exercises would demonstrate the true value of their upgrades, they needed a real fight for that.

"These sites will be guarded by mechs and perhaps a few specially armoured batarian troops" warned an Imperial guard officer who'd come to this briefing with the colonel I'd worked with since conquering the Stepstones back on Planetos "Similar to what was faced on Bekke only with more mechs since there's no atmosphere worth a damn here and be careful with no low gravity".

The Sisters of Battle wore power armour which could be sealed against the environment, and they'd think that I was honouring them by allowing them to be first on to the ground, when in reality they were just better armoured than the guard.

"Once the landing sites are secure the Sisterhood of Steel will begin to sweep the tunnels clear of any hostiles," I told everyone "We can just ignore the aliens who don't resist and those human slaves who surrender can be transported to this ship later. Clearing the tunnels and mining complexes of any resistance matters most of all".

This was because I wanted the cogboys to be able to get down there as soon as possible so they could start stripping the mines of anything of value. At the same time I'd be sending messages to the batarians telling them to back off or I'd target more of their worlds.

If they didn't do as I wished I'd have to go after them because otherwise they'd be labelled Xenos Horrificus which is an Ordo Xenos classification for alien races deemed hostile or dangerous to mankind, and in need of extermination.

Whilst all aliens are deemed anathema by the Imperium to an extent, some kinds are aliens tolerated to a degree, with such species being either too primitive in terms of technology to be a threat or too far away from Imperial space to bother with as long as they didn't mess with humanity.

The Citadel races were among the aliens not to be wiped out as they were simply no threat to the IOM and they were not willing to stand against me as long as I didn't try to genocide them. This was as close to live and let live as the Imperium of Man could get.

Alas for the batarians, most of which wouldn't even know I existed since the batarian government kept their citizens out of galactic affairs, their leaders had struck at the Imperium, and if they didn't sue for peace they'd be declared Xenos Horrificus and I'd be forced to kill millions of them.

"We must not get dragged into a long confrontation like we did on Bekke" I reminded everyone "Within weeks we'll be fighting the hated Geth and we must be united to do so".

In the end the batarians were a distraction against the truth threats to mankind in this universe, the geth and the Reapers.

Only Shepard had a chance of making peace with the geth and she'd not been heard from since I'd heard that The Normandy had been spotted in the Omega System. Which didn't mean she was dead, the Alliance could have stashed her somewhere, but I wasn't going to bet on her or someone else being able to make peace with the machines.

The Ad-Mech would never accept peace with a machine race and I could only hold off from going to war with them for so long.