2014-2015: While the economy crisis in Europe appears to be ending, the Russian Federation announces its prime plan to create the Unified Earth Federation, an alliance of almost all nations on Earth who help each other in times of war.
2015: 154 of every sovereign state on Earth joins the UEF, increasing their economic success.
2019: The new 'Riga' line of space shuttles is created. Surprisingly, the UEF Mars mission is to be launched at 2023
2020: Researchers at Frankfurt successfully discover sentience in their latest AI research and after a concentrated UEF-sponsored mission, successfully create fully sentient AIs who are near perfectly Human
2023: Riga 2 discovers a giant cache of alien data on the south pole of Mars, the AIs successfully translate the data and discover the name of the species, the data cache was apparently a 'Prothean' spaceport with the sole purpose of overseeing evolution of the Humans until the Protheans mysteriously disappeared 50,000 years ago. Surprisingly, the UEF Minister of Defence does not decide to reverse engineer Prothean tech, stating "If the Humans decide to reserve-engineer alien tech then they're stuck on a never ending circle of evolution, never advancing. We must learn to create our own path into the stars and to become the gods we strived to be."
2025: The Secretary of Defence's refusal paid off, AIs discover a way of containing antimatter and amplifying it. This allows it to be used as a propulsion system for spacecraft, as well as a power source, a concept for the 'Star Fleet' is created, equipped with 'Wolf' class Corvettes, 'Foxhound' Class Frigates and the 'Kiev' class Carriers. The UEF Navy military doctrine is written, the Frigates will greatly support the Carriers, which will stay behind in fights and deploy fighter and attack bombers, as well as the 'Kortana' Nuclear Cruise Missile, only used on concentrated amounts of enemies. But the main bulk of the UEF is the Corvette, these 200m long tiny ships are hard to find, even if you do find them there is no guarantee you can fight their Antimatter charged torpedoes, these Corvettes fly in legendary wolf-packs that are a nightmare for Frigates. Captains give their Corvettes great respect and trust their capabilities with their lives, leading to the UEF motto "What can be done, is worth doing."
2027: Researchers discover that AIs suffer from a brief period of insanity nicknamed 'Insane Pixilation' approximately 7 years into their lifetime, they become jealous of Humans and cannot stay idle for any amount of time. Fortunately, they later learn true emotion and can be stated as fully sentient.
2028: Miners find a large network of Prothean tunnels under Lake Balaton in Hungary.
2033: The UEF makes an outstanding breakthrough in the Mars Archives and discovers that the Protheans used Mass relays for large scale interstellar travel, these giant fork shaped objects could instantly transport a star ship to an identical relay thousands of light years away. They also find several entries into the early space-faring days of the Protheans. Multiple entries show that Mass effect technology is not the creation of the Protheans, instead they were created by a galaxy-wide civilization before who mysteriously disappeared like the Protheans. The UEF Senate secretly begins research into Prothean Data Caches after a small space station is found on a low and rapidly decaying polar orbit of Saturn. The Secretary of Defence begins to think of a theory to explain the cycle of fallen galactic civilizations. In actuality, he and the president found the most secret organization of all time. A organization so secret that only conspiracy theorists would believe in. A organization that will do its best to serve not only humanity, but protect all that exists. Its will be known, fittingly, as the Knights Templar.
October 3rd 2067: On 14:35 GMT, at the UEF Facility on Europa, the UEFV Bird of Prey travelled across the 4 light-years to the red dwarf Proxima Centauri with the help of the Alcubierre Drive, or more formally, the Alcubierre Superluminal Engine. A small, blue gas giant orbited it, which also had a habitable moon (giving it complex and interesting days and nights.). Once a probe landed on the surface and took a sample of a nearby plant, it was discovered that the moon's life is of a completely foreign amino acid. The science team who built the Drive said that it "opened a path to the stars for all of us." The Knights Templar begins charting the vast reaches of space for further artefacts, and finds more data on their theory.
UEF begins rapid colonization of outer space.
2079: The UEF Naval Fleet is reformed and modernized. Small arms are adapted with electrothermal-chemical technology and plasma cartridges while keeping inspired designs from the early 21st century. The M8A5 is adopted as the standard assault rifle for the UEF.
2107: The UEF establishes a form of democratic transhumanism when it releases nanites intended to advance 'humanity as a whole'. The UEF economy is set back a little but remains strong as billions of people sign up. President Chen passes the Biological Augmentation Regulation Act, stating "The people who dare to use the instruments of Human Evolution as consumerist products are embarrassments to Humanity." Unknown to the population, it was the Knights Templar which made these decisions.
2111: The UEF begins expeditions into the Andromeda Galaxy, it doesn't know however, that the Knights Templar has beat them to here long ago. The Templars send a probe to the Supermassive Black Hole at Sagittarius A* and find the Collector Base. Scared of the ramifications of first contact, they keep surveying the Collectors for the next several decades, through a base at the star S0-102, now completely certain of their theory.
Early 2167: A long-range warship detection probe found an increased number of major magnetic anomalies in a specific star system 25 light-years away from Epsilon Indi. The UEF Ministry of Defence decides not to inform the public of this discovery "as doing so may lead to problematic results." Thus, they station an increased number of ships to Epsilon Indi and nearby colonies. The Knights Templar have foreseen this and begins collecting data on these 'Turians'.
February 2nd 2167, Epsilon Indi, High orbit of Outreach, UEF Fleet 5INDI, Task Force Indi.
The Carrier UEFV Quid Pro Quo rotated 90 degrees right with its RCS modules to match the movement of the rest of the 30-ship fleet. The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) located several unknown signatures inbound to Epsilon Indi at approximately 5000 times the speed of light, at first they thought it was either an anomaly or their scanners were malfunctioning, but it was later confirmed to be a fleet of starships with FTL signatures and eezo traces similar to Prothean ships. Immediately, they informed the MoD and ordered all available assets to Epsilon Indi.
Now an entire fleet under the command of Fleet Admiral Hastern was now in high orbit of Outreach, a green garden world in orbit of its star. Hastern sat in his command chair in the CIC and looked into the transparent hologram of the Combat Information Hub, a real-time 3 dimensional image of the fleet orbiting Outreach was shown. "Unknown fleet 98.9% to Outreach. ETA 5 minutes, sir." A synthetic voice said as a panel opened up to Hastern's right and a hologram came up. This was the Quid Pro Qou's AI, Altair. His avatar was a simple humanoid shape covered in the green triangular shapes that represented data files. "Right, tell the guys to pucker the hell up." Hastern ordered. Every slug, missile and nuke was waiting to be launched and the AIs were preparing a first contact message and translator, the translator was an encoder that encrypted the message into a scramble of binary codes, the AIs theorized that if an alien species had experience with binary numbers then they could translate it to their language. Hastern stood up as his sprained ankle ached in pain. This was either the best event that will happen to Humanity or the worst. Thing was, Hastern didn't plan on living past 56...
4 minutes later...
The ships stood in an effective formation with their fingers on the trigger, there wasn't much to describe, the fleet was prepared as It could be. The clock clicked down to 5 seconds and the blue-shifted glow of the opposing fleet came into view. Hastern was surprised, the most indications of a star ship coming out of FTL were the the slight warps of space-time 100km out and the warp bubble being dissipated in the form of a blue ring of electricity. The five seconds counted down and the entire fleet appeared 1,000km away. It was an impressive display, the fleet was in a rather effective formation and was strategically decent. But this confused Hastern, why would they send an entire fleet unless they intend to attack, he could understand the defensive side but even he would send an individual civie ship to fully show that they meant no harm. Altair was busy analyzing the battle group and sending the first contact message until he saw what they truly intended. "Admiral, the ships are powering up their weapons and shields!" He exclaimed. "Shit, fire." Hastern plainly ordered. As soon as his orders were said, the two opposing fleets fired simultaneously. The enemy, or Turian as Altair called them, fleet fired a large salvo of tiny slugs at unbelievable speeds, 300 kilometres per second was analyzed by Altair as a surprisingly small (at least to Human side) frigate opened fire. The 5INDI fleet instead fired their coilguns, 50-ton ferromagnetic uranium slugs were fired at a speed of 100 kilometres per second, they also delivered 60 Antimatter missiles powered by a fine streak of antimatter.
The damage done to the 5INDI fleet barely grazed them, the Kinetic energy their weapons relied on were absorbed by the thick energy shielding their ships possessed, however, energy shielding could only go so far, and the UEF lost 1 frigate and 3 corvettes. The damage to the other side was substantial, the uranium slugs were much slower and were easily attacked by the kinetic barriers, yet the difference between 5kg and 50 tons really did make a difference as dozens of terajoules of energy impacted most of the hostile ships, they punched mighty holes into most of the ships, crippling many and destroying more. The fleet kept in formation and fired 70 Disruptor Torpedoes as it closed within 500Km. The 5INDI fleet quickly destroyed most of them with the Missile Interception Systems possessed by almost every ship in the fleet but lost one more corvette. 'I guess we're about to drop a hammer, a nuclear one, to be precise.' Hastern thought. The Quid Pro Quo fired a dozen torpedoes at the main dreadnought. As a torpedo streaking forward was destroyed by a GARDIAN laser, another boosted through the aftermath. Unlike the normal torpedoes, the missile was much bigger and had a sharkmouth painted on the nose. The fleet greatly underestimated its power and only two GARDIAN lasers fired at it. Surprisingly, a golden barrier flared as it deflected the intense heat of the lasers, it was only half a second from impact before the captain of the dreadnought realized its nature. A Kortana-class 150-megaton Thermonuclear Warhead impacted the hull of the TSV Valiant. In the same millisecond, a nuclear fission explosion ignited the fusion fuel covering all of the space that was not occupied by Fission Ignition Stage or the missile's powerful engine.
A blinding light was seen, covering the dreadnought and rapidly expanding beyond. The closely packed fleet was, literally, thrown into disarray by the shockwave and burnt by thermal radiation. And if that wasn't enough, the EMP knocked out the vital systems of several unfortunate ships. Knowing that they have been caught with their pants down, what remained of the Turian fleet attempted to retreat into FTL. But there were others who had their Eezo Cores shut down, they either accepted defeat and surrendered or prepared for boarding action.
"Nuke forced them to retreat and disabled the ones that couldn't. I'm receiving all-spectrum radio transmissions from remaining ships, it looks like they want to surrender." Altair reported. "Good work, alert the MoD and send boarding parties." Hastern sat down on his chair, worrying about where this will lead to. Whoever they were, they will adapt, that was for certain. Every advantage he had in the battle would be naturally worked around and the war would get a lot more bloody. He was sure that the Ministry of Defence would not see it this way; And that there was a commander on the other side with equal skill. A nemesis, to be plain.