Arcturus Station

Arcturus Station was a five kilometer space station that served as the military and political headquarters of the Systems Alliance from the First Contact War onward. Built at a Lagrangian point of the gas giant Themis and sitting at the nexus of several mass relays, it guarded the relay leading to Earth and housed the Alliance parliament alongside the nerve center of its naval armada. During the Reaper War the station was abandoned in the face of an overwhelming assault and later destroyed, becoming a cold grave for the 45,000 people who had lived aboard it.

Structure and construction#

Arcturus Station was a five kilometer diameter station of the Stanford Torus type, positioned at the trailing Lagrange point of the gas giant Themis. Construction began in 2151 and concluded in 2162, making heavy use of the metal rich asteroids that drifted nearby, which also housed transient populations of workers during the build. The station was inaugurated in 2156 and from that point served as the headquarters of the Systems Alliance. By the era of Commander Shepard it held a permanent population of 45,000.

Function as Alliance capital#

From the close of the First Contact War, Arcturus Station served as both the political and the military heart of the Systems Alliance. As the headquarters of the Alliance Navy it was the command center of the fleet, and its placement at the nexus of several mass relays made it a natural choke point for defense as well as a launching point for further exploration. Crucially, it guarded the mass relay leading to Earth. The station also functioned as a shipyard, where the dreadnought SSV Aconcagua was constructed, and it was from Arcturus that Admiral Steven Hackett commanded the Fifth Fleet.

History and the fall of Arcturus#

Arcturus saw significant events well before the Reaper invasion. Following the First Contact War the station hosted a prisoner exchange between Alliance and turian forces. It later served as the site of the first test flight of the newly completed SSV Normandy, a stealth frigate designed in collaboration with the Turian Hierarchy; during that flight the pilot Jeff "Joker" Moreau seized the cockpit and demonstrated his skill so convincingly that the Hierarchy pressed the Alliance to make him the ship's permanent pilot.

When the Reapers came, Arcturus became the site of a battle between the Alliance's Second, Third, and Fifth Fleets and the invading armada on its path to Sol. As the Alliance defended the station against a dozen Reaper capital ships, the bulk of the Reaper fleet rushed past through the mass relay. Recognizing that the battle could not be won, Hackett was forced to abandon Arcturus and sacrifice the Second Fleet so that the Third and Fifth could escape. Soon afterward the Reapers destroyed the station entirely. The entire Alliance Parliament and Prime Minister Amul Shastri were aboard at the time and were killed, leaving the fused metal fragments of Arcturus as a cold grave for its people. Intelligence salvaged from the wreckage of the battle would later prove valuable to the war effort.