A few Titans solve many issues, including the Reapers.

Chapter 6: a rough drop-in

I'm not sure if I listed what ship designs the Stellaris factions use so I'll just list them here:

UNSA: Humanoid design

Federation of Free Nations: Anthropoid Design

Vissari Directorate: Avian design.

Guardian Alliance: Fallen empire designs

Raloi: Using canon Systems Alliance designs.

Enthari Partnership Alliance: Mammalian design

That's all. First contact with the Quarians is now.

Please note that I do not own Stellaris, Mass Effect, or some of the artwork in this chapter. The art is there purely to give you an idea of design. All credit goes to their respective creators.

January 28th, 2966 UNC

Somewhere in the outskirts of Citadel Space and a Citadel Colony.

UNSA 4th Aggressive Recon Task Force

Detached from the 10th fleet were 4 light carriers, 10 light cruisers, 24 destroyers, and 32 corvettes. Over the course of two weeks, they quietly slipped into Citadel space via hyperdrives. So far they hadn't encountered any contacts.

Newly promoted Rear Admiral Mikhailovich watched from the bridge of the UNSV India, one of the light carriers. He watched as a pair of stealth SFi/A-72 Starwolf interceptors and dropship departed and used their onboard jump drives to depart.

According to this codex of the Citadel, they should be a planet within this sector. While it was important to gather first-hand information on the planets and their defences, Mikhailovich was more interested in the communication buoy that the system had.

As such, Mikhailovich decided to deploy a pair of fighters on a minor recon mission to the supposed location of this comm buoy.

"This Citadel Council is sloppy. No Battlestations, no patrols, it's like they assume that nothing bad would ever happen." Mikhailovich muttered. That last major conflict that remotely involved the Council was the Geth Rebellion, or the Morning War. And all they did was use their fleets to deny the Quarians access to a planet.

Mikhailovich, along with most other Commonwealth military personnel, were perplexed at the Council's actions. They dumped most military matters on the Turians, yet restricted them from operating in Terminus space saying that they would rally the Terminus factions? The Terminus Space Factions were bloody pirates and slavers for crying out loud. Tens of thousands of warships doing nothing, but wargames.

And he had to question the designs of some of these council ship designs. The Destiny Ascension, the 'largest' ship in the known galaxy was so weirdly designed for a warship. The giant hole in the center and the large parts sticking out of the side.

Ok granted, the Guardian Alliance had a very odd design with their ships, being shaped like a starfish and all. Both the G.A and Asari had similar designs, but the G.A could always protect their ships with a ridiculous amount of armour and shielding and maintain speeds with a UNSA battleship thanks to its dark matter thrusters. And the battlecruisers fit in with G.A doctrines, beating the enemy into a pulp with superior technology and weapons. The Ascension? It was the flagship of a fleet meant for hit and run. He admittedly expected the flagship to be of Turian or even Salarian design. A piss poor design for a flagship and for civilizations that were over a thousand years old.

And speaking of age, Where were their Dyson spheres? Megastructures? Major technological advances? Nothing, things barely changed within the last thousand years. Commonwealth AIs did a quick look over the timeline and noticed before any species makes contact with the Citadel, they advanced fairly quickly and as fast as Commonwealth species. When do they make contact with said Citadel? Their advance meant drops significantly. And yet somehow, the very stagnant and slow-moving Asari were somehow able to keep in the lead.