Sol System, 2015

Hundreds of kilometers under rock and ice, a machine nearly a hundred million years old was finally starting to succumb to its damage. It had weathered the test of time and usage until a mere fifty millennia ago. Unknown energy had spread across the network, striking the relay even as it lay buried. The massive influx of power had contaminated the Element Zero within and then radiated outwards faster than the speed of light. The process had damaged the Relay, and it was only the awe-inspiring durability of its design that had kept it from detonating like many others.

But it was still damaged, and the stresses from the influx and firing of the energy pulse had finally reached a tipping point.

In a single instant the relay fractured: releasing untold amounts of energy and a mass effect field that would astonish any of the ancient civilizations that had used it. Its icy prison shattered like fragile glass; half the planetoid torn apart by the partial destruction of the relay.

And the enormous mass effect field spread outwards in all directions.

Unlike the last energy wave 50,000 years ago, this one did not travel faster than light and affect only a select few targets. Instead it caused mass and gravity to distort as it washed over the icy moon before snapping both back into place as it passed.

Moving at its current speed it would strike the only inhabited planet in the system in nearly eight hours.

The energy wave would disrupt life across the entire planet as mass, gravity, and force –constant values as far as the inhabitants were concerned- were casually cast aside.

For just over a minute ground and air traffic would be thrown into chaos, the support frames of buildings and structures would buckle and fail, and satellites would be ripped from orbit.

In a single minute the course of a species changed.

Amaterasu, Human Civilized World

"2nd, 3rd, 4th Company move up to the next engagement line, we've got artillery hitting them on grid 11-F point 3-B. Do not let them get past you as you move the encirclement. They threaten the armour support and this goes on for days."

Commander Shepard was in her element. The Assault on Amaterasu was winding down, with less than fifty thousand aliens left on the human world.

She waited a moment as she finished giving orders to her battalion and took a quick look at the building to her right. It had probably been a housing complex, given the cratered courtyard and half melted plastic jungle gym.

Without telling her officers a word she sprinted towards the building. She heard her soldiers break into a run to follow her seconds later, but she was already nearing the building. She took a single breath inward, shifted her body to the side… and rammed through the wall with her pistol drawn in her left hand and her chain-sword in her right.

The aliens who had been lying in wait bolted upright at her sudden entrance into their midst. The first one to raise its weapon only got halfway before Shepard's gun was pointed at its eye. With a muted roar, a bullet went into the alien's brain and detonated milliseconds later in a shower of spongy brown.

The second alien, a female by the looks of the beads hanging from the armor, managed to raise its rifle and fire. The rounds clanged off her armor, leaving dents and scorch marks along Shepard's left arm, shoulder, and helmet. With a step and a turn, Shepard swung her sword into the alien's midsection and bisected it through the lungs.

'Always aim for the vital organs. Crippling wounds don't work.'

She made another turn, raising the heavy pistol at the xeno in the corner of the room hefting a grenade launcher towards her. As it raised the barrel she aimed a single shot into it. The explosive round struck the grenade in the chamber causing an explosion which collapsed that section of the wall, while neatly dealing with the animal that had been holding it.

With the threats in the area neutralized, Shepard took a moment to lower her weapons and take a deep breath. The helmet she wore gave the sound a strangely deep tone. She smiled to herself.

Three dead in as many seconds.

"Damn I'm good."

She turned around and got a glimpse of the shadows as her subordinates neared the hole she made in the wall-

Before a shotgun blast caught her in the chest and face. Even through the armor she felt the heat of the rounds as some burrowed into the metal alloy. She could feel her world spin as the force of the impact knocked her off her feet.

Crouching right next the doorway she had ignored in favor a making a new one, was a fourth krogan. Covered in debris strapped to his armor, it had remained perfectly still even as she had killed of its squad in short order.

With a throaty chuckle, like gravel scraping over itself, it lowered its shotgun towards her prone form. A single pump ejected a heat sink with another sliding into place instantly. Shepard could barely raise her head to see the krogan smile as he pulled on the trigger. Then his head exploded along with the ground next to her.

"Commander you're being too reckless. Don't think I won't report this. Third time today you've gone after a straggler squad by yourself."

His response was a slow "Unnngh."

One of her other subordinates came over and helped her to her feet. As technologically advanced as the power armor was, it was still a hassle to get up off your back without any help. Especially if after being given a shotgun induced concussion. She could see the indicators on her HUD displaying the administration of medi-gel to her head.

"Commander…"

"Shut up bullet magnet. I don't want to hear it from you."

Indeed, her subordinate's armor looked far worse than her own. In this defense of Amaterasu alone it had gone from a gleaming grey and red to a blackened, pitted, creaking mockery of itself. It had been the same thing in the last campaign, and the one before that, and the one before that all the way back to '83 when he had first come under her command.

Twenty years. Damn.

Still, for all that he was a bullet magnet, he had never veered from her side. For someone as unlucky as him to follow someone like her, an excellent marine and leader who was often deployed to some of the worst fighting in this war... she respected that kind of loyalty and dedication. Not just to her but to humanity.

He hesitated a moment, clearly weighing if he should continue pressing her about this sudden bout with death-flirting, before opting to ignore it. For now. Shepard was brilliant, but she had a tendency to wear herself thin and it was his job to keep her from doing that.

"Sir, we received a message. The 17th Fleet is in orbit now. They're intercepting the majority of the Assault Landers. Only a dozen more should hit the ground, and we're funneling them and the remaining krogan forces into a kill zone prepped for orbital fire. This might be over by morning." He finished confidently.

Beneath her helmet Shepard smiled. After an onslaught of continuous ships coming from the krogan border, much of the planet was in ruins. At least they had managed to hold it. A campaign to take it back would have been far more costly. The Krogan bred faster than roaches and could reinforce a planet just by having sex.

By the time Intelligence had learned that the attack was coming, the Alliance barely had enough time to reinforce the planet and evacuate hundreds of thousands of people from the expected fighting areas.

Even so… they had won this battle. The gap the krogan warships had slipped through among the fortress worlds that protected the Alliance had been closed and the xenos had lost far more than humanity in this fight. The thought brought a grim smile to her lips.

"Jenkins." Her charred second in command looked towards her. "Let's move. I don't think I'll go running off any more today." She couldn't afford to do anything reckless now. She was sure Jenkins would be sending a report to the appropriate personnel aboard the fleet. And considering it was the 17th in orbit…

'Mom…'

"Commander." Shepard looked at one of her new subordinates and nodded, she couldn't recall his name. He'd transferred in a few days before the krogan had managed to bypass the fortress worlds. "Do you believe what some of the battalion is saying? That the salarians helped the krogan get this far in?"

Salarians. The other lizards. Amphibians. Whatever. Humanity wasn't openly hostile with them, but they certainly weren't friendly. Too many accidents happened whenever salarians got involved in human affairs. Not to mention the craptastic fiasco when a 'rogue' STG member was caught sabotaging the Primacy Project. That had killed any chance at a deeper relationship between the two interstellar powers.

A single alien had cost the lives of hundreds of millions of people because the gene augmentations hadn't been completed on time for the incoming krogan armies.

She paused before answering, wondering if actually saying what she believed would cause any blowback.

"Maybe. Probably. They seem to like doing that. They help out when the krogan might win too much, but back off when we start pushing them back. Could be the turians; the vultures don't like how many armies we've got sitting on their fence. Or the krogan just might have gotten lucky and saw the hole in the Fleet patrols. Either way it doesn't matter. We lost too many ships retaking Arcadia."

She sighed, thinking over the conversation she'd had with her mother the last time they were able to talk face to face. Her mother was part of a dying breed of humans. People who had been raised before First Contact. People who still had hope there was some advanced, egalitarian civilization that championed peace and collaboration regardless of species.

Shepard snorted as she looked at the burning city around her, as a krogan Assault Lander detonated kilometers overhead and dead littered the streets.

Mankind knew better now.

Commander Jane Shepard looked up at the sky as ships and debris streamed down like burning meteors.

It was 2503. It had been twenty five years since the beginning of the Krogan Invasions.

Palaven, Hierarchy Capitol

"For the last time: No. This discussion is over."

Din Korlack could tell from the look on the turian's face that he was in no mood to continue the conversation, but he had to see that surely…

"But Primarch, the benefits of establishing trade and relations with the humans-"

Primarch Sparatus did not seem amused his orders were being ignored. "No!" He raised a talon to his intercom. "Security. Escort the advisor off the premises. I will not be needing his services for some time."

The turian turned his attention back to Din, he could already hear someone walking towards them.

"The humans will be ignored until the krogan are defeated. Then we will turn our attention to them. Do not waste my- or any Primarch's time with something as insignificant as this again, volus."

The squat volus turned slightly as a taloned hand was gently placed on his shoulder. The message was clear, but Din Korlack had not risen to the position he had by being afraid.

"We are a part of this government. As the representative of Irune I have the right to be heard."

Sparatus seemed to find that statement funny, and chuckled softly. "You are right. You are a part of this government. Of the Hierarchy. The Turian Hierarchy. You are a part of our government. Not the other way around. Do not forget that or Irune can test how long it's" Sparatus raised his hands and finger quoted "'vaunted military' will last against the krogan."

The turian leader kept a cool, indifferent gaze on Din as he shuffled out of the room next alongside the guard. The idea that the volus, or any of the client races, had the authority to dictate to the Primarchs was folly at its finest.

With that chore out of the way Sparatus turned his attention back to the vid-screen as he tuned it to the right channel. The humans were already blaring their victory at Amaterasu across the galaxy. He shook his head as he watched the broadcast.

The humans had so much potential but they squandered it like children. They had no sense of respectability, no tradition to their history. They couldn't fight the krogan and rather than accept the turian way as the superior culture they mutilated their bodies. It was disgusting.

The Hierarchy had stood for over thousand years and the human government had existed for a fraction of that time. The human's bureaucratic and litigious nature was nauseating to most turians. They needed laws and rules to tell them everything.

His mandibles flared in disgust. The humans would get laws and rules. The Hierarchy was the only hope for this torturous galaxy. The only way anyone would know peace. The krogan were a blight to be destroyed, the humans were unruly brats to be brought to heel, and the salarians were weaklings who needed to be protected. The Hierarchy was the only way to accomplish that.

Certainly there were turians who talked about strength in diversity… but they didn't understand. They didn't realize the danger of that kind of thinking and the lack of discipline and honor that the turian people would be infected with.

The humans and salarians lied, cheated, stole and murdered. The turians didn't. To risk that kind of cultural contamination… the Unification War would have been for nothing.

His eyes came to rest on a data-tablet on his desk. He stared at it for a long moment.

The asari and the elcor… two more races that needed to be considered. The Primarchs were split over how to deal with them. The elcor war archives were wanted intact, but the asari were long-lived enough that they could simply outlast any turian leader. Bringing them into the Hierarchy would be a disastrous move.

But the alien coalition didn't have much military strength, and they were far too dependent on their automated creations. The elcor needed to be shown that they couldn't stand alone… and the asari needed to be removed entirely.

Jek Tuchanka, Krogan Capital World

"Useless piece of pyjak shit! If Wreave doesn't die on that planet I'll kill him myself."

"Warmaster."

"That fool has an extra quad where his brain should be-"

"Warmaster Urdnot."

"The opening in the human line was a trap and I told him so."

"Warmaster Urdnot, I have a message-."

"How many of our Landers were destroyed? How many warriors? Answer me!"

One of the other krogan in the throne room grimaced "Wreave took three thousand ships. Mostly Landers but all were fully stocked with weapons and warriors. The Landers will put us back half a year to prepare for another assault. But he took scores of warships and… nine million krogan."

By the time the krogan was finished speaking Wrex looked ready to kill. A haze of blue surrounded him and his heavy fists were clenched tight.

With a snarl of rage he smashed his fist down into the table that had been projecting a map of the human military planets. The force of his strike broke through the metal plating and the biotic power he built up exploded outward, pushing his advisors backwards several inches.

Wrex took a deep breath calming himself and pushing back the bloodrage that threatened to overtake him.

Those kinds of losses were not acceptable. Krogan bred fast, but they were being stretched thin across two fronts. An entire invasion force annihilated because of that damned Wreave. The only good that came from this was the deaths of the humans and his brother.

The death of any krogan, blood relation or not, who thought he could win by strength of numbers was a krogan who deserved death at the end of an alien weapon.

"You know what I want to know? I want to know why the Warmaster, the one who built this empire, the one who dragged our race kicking and screaming into glory, who got us off that irradiated chunk of a mudball… is only told of an invasion AFTER IT FUCKING LEFT!"

Wrex looked around the room balefully, daring anyone to step forward.

"Because Warmaster Urdnot, you are not as powerful as you once were."

Wrex turned disbelieving eyes onto the one who had spoken, realizing that it had been the voice he had been attempting to ignore.

"It is good that I have finally gained your attention."

Wrex snorted once "Well, well, well. What does one of the shamans want with me?"

The shaman was a female. Many centuries ago she had been called Urdnot Bakara. But that had been different life on a different world than the lush paradise they stood on now.

Bakara gazed at Wrex with an unreadable expression. "Did you know that Wreave gathered his army from the Pratom Region? That's the one that rims the edge of our enemies' territories." Wrex bared his teeth at the female's sarcasm. As if he didn't know his own domain. "Those that live there fear the humans and the turians. They know that if the Alliance or Hierarchy invades… then Pratom will fall."

Wrex shook his head in response "They won't invade. We have the bulk of their forces tied down in a dozen campaigns. They can't afford an offensive now. Not now and not ever. We're whittling them down. Once we take even a single of their core worlds it will start a chain reaction. They will fall like every other race we've met."

It was Bakara's turn to shake her head. As visionary as Wrex was- as he had always been- he was often blind to the feelings of those less capable than himself.

"The residents of Pratom care little for your assurances. They have seen the strength of our enemies and the strength of our selves." She looked directly into Wrex's eyes. "They find the krogan lacking, Warmaster. Thirty years of war and what?" She gestured at the map table. "The boundaries with the turians are constantly in motion. We take and lose both world and warrior, and the turians do not cower. We have not taken a single human world for more than a year before they reclaim it. The fortress worlds they crafted were waiting for us, and like pyjak we walk into a wall of gunfire."

The shaman tilted her head. Her eyes filled with something Wrex could not identify "The message I came to deliver is twofold. The first is insight. You do not understand that as the Clans have grown in strength so too did those who lead them. There are those far below the position of Warmaster, yet their words carry much weight to the krogan. It was not you alone who forged this empire, regardless of what you think."

Wrex grunted, and the warriors gathered in the room were once again shocked that the shaman could speak to Warmaster Urdnot so brazenly.

"The second is a warning."

Wrex's eyes narrowed.

"If the krogan cannot win these wars, then the krogan must not lose them. And if you do not lead your people… there are others who will."

Thessia

Matriarch Benezia sat in the final row of the audience as her daughter spoke of the Prothean Fall and the possibility that it had been the protheans themselves who had damaged the Relay network so badly, to deny their enemy its use.

But try as she might she could not focus all of her attention on her daughter.

'That is how it always seems to be' she thought bitterly. But she was a Matriarch; her duties could not be ignored.

The elcor and asari were protected by a massive stretch of uninhabited systems between them and the turian and krogan regimes, but they would not be ignored forever. Another century and the krogan would be expanding towards them to cover the losses from their wars.

The Council of Matriarchs stance to wait until the wars were over before attempting to forge a coalition was no longer an option. Something needed to change but the galactic powers closest to the Republics were unwilling to look at the possibility of a true interstellar federation. The krogan wanted everything and the turians believed it was their destiny to bring order to the other races.

Benezia moaned internally, the turians did not understand that there was strength in each race and culture. The asari needed to look further, to the salarians and the humans. The difficulty was that both of those races were on the other side of the krogan and turians and apparently had issues with each other. It would be years to convince the salarians and possibly decades for the humans.

But they had to try. The elcor and asari were peaceful by nature, and from the records she had seen the humans had become more militant than they had ever wanted to face the krogan. There was room for diplomacy. A better galaxy than could be made. The diplomats just needed an opening, some common ground other than appeals to a nebulous 'better future'.

Her comm vibrated as she received a message from one of her elcor associates she had asked to look after Liara. With a few quick taps she looked at its contents.

'Oh, Liara. You never listen to me. Always on to the next discovery…' On the screen was a copy of her daughter's proposal to the University of Serrice. A proposal she had not even hinted at to her mother. Liara had suggested creating a group to travel to the Alliance home system and inspect the prothean ruins there.

Benezia moved her fingers to close the message before freezing in place.

The asari could use this.

The ancient Matriarch gave her daughter a look. Even from so far away it was clear Liara had seen it, given her short bout of stutters. Liara took a deep breath to calm down before continuing her presentation. She also studiously avoided looking towards her mother. If she had looked, she'd have seen it.

For the first time in a decade her mother smiled gently. Benezia had responsibilities to ensure the future of the asari. Liara had an untamable love the past.

It was a truly rare thing when they overlapped.

Encyclopedia Galactica: Locations: The Fortress Worlds

The fortress worlds are a string of highly fortified planets spanning over a hundred star systems and nearly a thousand light years. Manned by hundreds of millions of military personnel and supported by a dozen fleets, the fortress worlds are an impassable barrier to protect humanity from the krogan.

When the first human exploration ship encountered the krogan in 2417, it was in the home system of a now extinct species. The explorers watched in horror as tens of millions of krogan descended upon the planet, with the pre-spaceflight inhabitants helpless to stop the invaders. Following the Krogan Contact Incident several months later and continued reports from surveyors, it was clear: The krogan were expanding in the direction of humanity.

Alliance military officials developed plans to stop the coming incursion. The fortress worlds and the Primacy Project would be the Alliance's greatest defense. Over the course of sixty years, as the krogan slowly expanded across the galaxy, humanity labored to create impenetrable strongholds and soldiers capable of fighting the krogan on even ground.

When the krogan finally launched their invasion of human space in 2479, the fortress worlds were not manned by legions of super soldiers, and human causalities were extreme. However the worlds did not fall, and as the Primacy Project bore the first generation of enhanced humans the losses began to lessen.

Now the fortress worlds stand as the single greatest testament to human resolve.

I had an Alternate Universe idea, for those who want to see a little bit more, go over to SpaceBattles and check out the mass effect thread. It was inspired by talk about heavily 'wanked' militaries and what would happen after the Reapers were defeated with all these massive forces.

Then I had a terrible, wonderful idea.

Rather than have everyone united to face the Reapers, I considered what it would be like if the Reapers were already dead. The protheans took them out with the Crucible, but the detonation damaged huge sections of the relay network and blew the Citadel to pieces.

I was actually surprised to realize that almost all of the home worlds are in roughly the same section of the galaxy. Except for the quarians and the hanar every planet is in the 'southwest' of the galaxy.

So I was left with what the galaxy would look like without a portal network connecting everyone and no seat of central government. As you can see it's not nice.

In summary:

Wrex unified the krogan and got them off Tuchanka. While their technology is far behind the other races, they expand rapidly. They've been breeding and fighting for centuries free of Tuchanka's influence. Wrex has focused so much on keeping the krogan expanding he hasn't really done anything about maintaining his own power. He may be the one who united the krogan, but that inertia will only take him so far when he has to deal with possible rivals.

Humanity got a wakeup call from the Sol Relay cracking Charon in half. I also fiddled with the timeline. Otherwise I'd run the risk of humanity just getting absorbed by the turians or killed by the krogan and that doesn't quite mesh with the idea. The alliance is powerful, but without the fortress worlds gutting invasion fleets the krogan front would collapse fairly quickly.

The salarians neighbor humanity to the 'north' and while they aren't enemies the STG does things that really piss off the Alliance. Like sabotaging the war effort against the krogan before it could get rolling. Though in their defense, they really had no reason to believe humans were being honest about a sudden gigantic military buildup to fight a new species.

The turians and volus are still together, but without any influence from other races the turians are much more confrontational and imperialistic than in canon. The never found the 'peacekeeper' role and the volus are chafing with their responsibilities and lack of turians don't need fortress worlds, which says a lot about their military.

The asari and elcor are allies, and are probably the only real 'good guys' around. Both are culturally stable, long term planners. They took a look at the other powers and basically said "Seriously guys what the hell?" But here they don't have the economic or political clout to easily force anyone's hands.

None of the factions like each other, and they have no reason to cooperate. Their territories don't overlap they did in canon.