It was only due to the time required for the fleets to actually get into position for a mass Mass Relay transit that Alliana and Oriana had managed to make it back aboard the Pheonix and get into their ship into its transit lane. Speed was everything for this operation, but there was simply no way to avoid the short delay required in trying to move over 200 Dreadnaughts and thousands more ships through a Relay. In truth, it wasn’t actually possible to move so many ships at once through a normal Relay. But, well, the Citadel Relay was over two and a half times the length and far more than that in mass compared to a regular Relay.

Even with that, they wouldn’t actually be taking the entire force through in a single jump. Roughly 40% of all fleet elements would make the initial Relay transfer, followed by six smaller jumps of 10% of the fleet each in a rotating pattern. Even as massive as space was, the fact that Mass Relays had a drift factor meant that there was only so many ships you could shove through a Relay at once safely. In truth, they were exceeding that safety margin with the first transit, making it virtually certain at least a few ships would be lost to collisions. It had been decided, unfortunately, that there was no other choice. There would be a Reaper guardian Fleet on the other side of this jump, even if it wasn’t likely to be huge. And they had to take it down before it could wake all of its fellows up from their hibernation.

In the end, despite all their careful planning, there was nearly a forty-five-minute lapse between the destruction of the AI Core and the initial transit. Even that had been extremely tight for them to make it, and the Phoenix had only just barely managed to slot into its own spot in the formation in time to make the synchronized jump. The length of that jump was disconcerting to those used to effectively-instant Relay travel. Yet, the distance to Dark Space beyond the edge of the galactic plane meant there was a noticeable lag of several long seconds in which they could see nothing but the corona of the Mass Effect Corridor they were traveling through. It was something that had previously only ever been captured by extreme high-speed imaging, so seeing it with nothing but the naked eye was…honestly a little intimidating.

Thankfully, despite the lag time, they came out of the transit with no more drift than usual, though that was not the case for everyone. Even the briefest of scans showed a grim reality that nearly a dozen ships had been lost to collisions, including a pair of dreadnaughts. Yet, as horrible as that was, it was the rest of what those scans showed that was both far more frightening and far more heartening. For there were Reapers here. Lots and lots and lots of Reapers. Thousands, tens of thousands! There were hundreds of stations as well, all in different sizes, styles and configurations. The product of hundreds of cycles as the infrastructure of this dark apace anchorage built up.

Yet, for all the fright of the sheer tonnage of enemy ships here, most of them weren’t moving. Just as expected, the vast majority of the ships present here were cold in space, dormant and drifting in a way that actually meant sensors were probably only picking up a fraction of them. While that added its own bit of terror, the fact that it matched with what they were expecting was perfect. Unfortunately, that didn’t mean their presence had gone unnoticed, or they didn’t have anything to worry about. After all, while most of the ships here were dormant, the Guard Fleet was not…and it was bigger than they’d hoped. Nearly seven hundred active Reaper emissions were already turning on them, even as every Citadel Ship opened fire the instant each had a shot.

Thankfully, not all of those ships were Reaper Dreadnaughts. If they had been, the attacking force would very likely have been overmatched before their reinforcements began to arrive. As it was, there were barely a hundred Dreadnaughts in the Reaper Guard Fleet. More than they’d hoped for…but fewer than the hundred and twenty Dreadnoughts they’d brought through in the initial transit. They’d prioritized their Capital Ships, knowing they needed to hit the Guard fleet hard and fast, without screens if they had to. Nothing smaller than a Cruiser had come through the initial transit, with the Pheonix actually being on the smallish end of the heavy metal that had made the first breach.

Not that anyone had questioned their inclusion. Even ignoring who the ship belonged to, Oriana had built the Pheonix to punch well above its apparent weight class. Something which became very relevant mere moments into the scrambled battle. Joker, with his usual razer-edged skill, managed to line them up for a firing pass on a Reaper Dreadnaught. The Pheonix closed the range much closer than any regular cruiser would, fighting more like a frigate as a hidden aperture spiraled open on her underside. The ship’s biggest secret, which had been used only once before now, opened fire in a blaze of focused Graser fire. The beam weapon, which shouldn’t have been able to be mounted on anything smaller than one of the New Eden class Dreadnaughts, completely ignored the Reaper’s kinetic barriers and ripped hell out of its flank. Those barriers failed as the gunner scythed the beam back and forth, hitting something critical…and two more cruisers pounded into the ship with more traditional weapons the moment the barriers were down. Then they were clear and looking for another target.

A smaller one this time.

The secret to that beam weapon being possible at all were a series of incredibly expensive capacitors that allowed them to build up the charge for the massively draining weapon over several minutes. They couldn’t fire it rapid succession, but even that one now-dead-in-space Reaper Dreadnaught was a hell of a kill for a trio of cruisers. And they’d likely get to do it again at least a few more times before the Guard Fleet was done. They might end up melting parts of the system down in the process. But, if there was ever a time for that, it was most certainly now…

-----

The battle had been brutal, but short. Only their first two waves of reinforcements had gotten through before they’d put down the Reaper Guard Fleet. A lot of ships had been sacrificed, sometimes intentionally by cruiser crews that knew this needed to happen fast and had outright rammed Reaper Dreadnaughts when their cruisers became too damaged to fight otherwise. Those sacrifices and losses, horrible as they were, had paid off. The assault fleet of Operation Lance had gotten control of the anchorage with barely a handful of the sleeping Reapers being awoken. The slaughter had begun immediately, even as waves of reinforcements had set up on the other Relay present here, connected back to Omega, to await the inevitable retaliation. That retaliation had come, despite everything Operation Barrier could do to slow it down on the Omega side. Thankfully, it had come in fits and starts as the still off-balance Reapers went in half a dozen directions, still unable to react cohesively without the AI on the Citadel to direct them.

With every mine, defense platform, and deliberately placed debris field added to the incoming Relay zone, fewer of the Reapers could get through intact. And the teams destroying repair stations and slaughtering sleeping Reapers had been equipped with every horrifying weapon of mass destruction their respective nations had been able to come up with. Things that should never have seen the light of day were unleashed in that pitch-black and eerie space in the frantic attempt to make sure they killed as much of this logistics support base and its reserves as they could. There was no chance they could find every Reaper. Not with so many of them dormant, cold in space. But, then, they had a plan for that too. When the Reaper forces finally started concentrating, striking not just at the Omega Relay but sending forces against the Citadel too, they all knew it was time to retreat.

They didn’t do so without a going away present.

Specifically, all the remaining anti-matter they’d been able to create.

All of it.

It wasn’t much, probably not enough to permanently destroy the Relays here. But it could and did disable them as the remnants of the assault fleet, reduced to a third of its original size, fled back to the Citadel. The Reapers still active at the anchorage could repair those Relays, someday, using the corpses of their brothers and destroyed Citadel ships to do so. But it would be a long, long time. Centuries, at least. More than long enough to finish the fight with the Reapers still in the Milky Way galaxy proper and build up the forces to come back and finish the job.

The battle to save the Citadel afterward, with it being the focus of a huge chunk of the remaining Reaper forces as they’d tried to stop or reach the extra-galactic fight, had been yet another brutal slog. But it was one that they won, albeit in a battered, brutally wounded sort of fashion. Not even the Pheonix had been spared damages or casualties. Its beam weapon had melted down, half its crew were dead, and they were still fighting fires in some of it’s compartments when the last of the assaulting Reapers pulled back.

“We…won?”

There was a equal mix of awe and disbelief as Alliana whispered that onto the bridge, breaking the momentary silence as the last of the Reapers fled the system. Oriana smiled hugely.

“We did. There is still a lot to do. But they don’t have the numbers now. We will lose worlds, the galaxy will burn. But, eventually, they will run out of ships to throw at us. They lost too many trying to save their logistics base and they no longer have the reserves. Add in the death of their Mast—”

Oriana Lawson did not have time to react as an Asari commando, carefully vetted and loyal right up until this exact moment, put an entire clip of assault rifle fire into her back. Brutal lances of pain were all she knew as her vision faded away, as she fell to the deck, she distantly heard a roar of anger and the sound of biotics ripping her attacker apart…