This was a project I'd started nearly a year ago, with the intent of practicing my world building, scene transition and, for the most part, my work with the science fiction genre, to which up to this point was shoddy at best. Hence, I wrote the prologue and first chapter of Empire, something that I'd managed to put together in around three weeks, which, considering how slowly I normally write, was somewhat surprising. Of course, I then descended into a month of "What the hell was I thinking?" revisions, followed by a lot of work editing and cleaning up the fic, and then more revisions, until I posted something I was happy with. Alas, it still wasn't all that good. So I left it and worked on a few other projects, mostly original fiction and whatnot until I came back to it a few weeks ago with an annoying What If plot bunny.
I'm sure a few of you have come to suffer from those, and like, you, I just could not get anything done so long as it was sitting in my head like some kind of plot driven writing cancer. So I came back to it, and made some more "What the hell were you thinking?" revisions, and came to realize that I have no realistic sense of scale when it came to ships. Honestly though, I was running off of Eve Online proportions, so I honestly couldn't be blamed for that one right up until I got curious and found out an aircraft carrier, the big ones, are only around 3-400 meters long. Hoy shit, I said, and promptly shat a brick. Anyway, long story short, I've finally reached the point where I'm happy with what I have, so I'm going to run with it and see how it goes.
Be gentle, I know it's not perfect, but still I like to think I did a pretty good job nonetheless. Constructive criticism is welcome and requested, please, because it helps, and so, without further ado, I present to you Mass Effect: Empire.
Best viewed in 3/4.
~(^_^)~
Humanity has always looked skyward for its true destiny. Reaching for heights undreamed and unheard of, always seeking a greater goal, a greater purpose than that which was known before, we strode forth into the unknown as a unified entity, a race of beings driven towards the heavens by an unshakable and unending pull.
In the years following what was known as the Last Great War, mankind was tired and worn from constant squabbling and scrounging for resources upon our homeworld. Earth had long since become a polluted ruin, corrupted by greed and negligence, a landscape of rusting factories and irradiated craters, drained and burned down, rent asunder and pillaged; it could no longer sustain our billions.
Humanity found itself on the brink of total collapse. With the few available resources being squandered to feed the elite and with multitudes starving in the streets we would have fallen into oblivion had it not been for the hand of fate and the will of one man. Born a vagrant in the infinite slum that was Earth, he stood up and looked to the sky, to the heavens that had so long ago vanished into the darkened and polluted clouds above.
And he saw a glorious future.
With a hand of fire he struck down the elite, the fat scum who had built an empire on the backs of the many, and united the world under one glorious banner. Under his guidance, mankind fought its way beyond the grip of what we were, little more than animals in the mud of the Earth. He showed us the path to glory.
Forged of steel and fire, we became his people, his Empire, servants to him who saved us from ourselves and showed us a universe that stood at our fingertips. Under his unified banner, we reached unimagined heights. Technologies that had existed as weapons of war became the tools of our ascension. Machinations like nuclear fusion, nanotechnology, cybernetics and bionetics, artificial intelligence and robotics, all once utilized as tools of subjugation helped forge our path to the stars. Once unified, we rebuilt ourselves, rising from the ashes of our dying homeworld as gods amongst the stars.
In the last century, we started with little more than steam technology and primitive engines, and within a hundred years we had mastered flight, motion and physics. We had created weapons so powerful that they could destroy cities, machines able to think millions of times faster than a human and a global network that gave people instant and accurate information at the press of a button. Within the next hundred years, we surpassed even the rapid ascent of our predecessors. Aided by quantum computers and the most primitive of AIs we created the greatest achievement in the history of our people. We created life. A thinking, feeling, living machine as human as those whose hands built it. It was human spirit tempered by computer logic. Inconceivably intelligent, it was a system of billions of singular nodes all working towards one goal - the betterment of humanity.
It was humanity's soul. Legacy, as the system was known, was a massive undertaking that was the sole focus of humanity for a great many years. It was a quantum computer, the largest and most advanced unit ever built. Organic in its nature, and powered by the human mind, it was a creation unlike any other. Human beings had already reached the point where the use of internal cybernetics allowed them total access to the Internet, letting them plug into a constant stream of wireless communication jacks and nodes that orbited the Earth. It was a brilliant and simple idea to hook an AI powered quantum network into this system. The human mind is a marvel of nature, after all, a computer that rivals its quantum counterparts in complexity and design. It was only natural that we, as a species, needed to take that next step, to supplement our nature with our ingenuity, and because of it, we created a machine that was tantamount to God.
With literally infinite computing power and access to all of the hopes, dreams, ideas and intellect of humanity, Legacy was able to allow us access to a fountain of knowledge previously undreamed of. Imagination became reality as fabricators, automated labs; human and robotic labor, brilliance, art, science and imagination all became one. It was weeks, only weeks, not months or years or decades, but mere weeks, before Legacy gave us the stars back. Space flights, first to the satellites in orbit, then to the stations beyond, then even farther, to the moon, were accomplished with artful precision. Continent sized Mass Drivers launched hundreds of thousands of automated worker satellites into space, all of which then built factories and refineries in orbit, then on the moon, and more, created a stable web of systems that resolved the resource crisis. Soon, humanity had colonies in space, on the moon, on Mars and the moons of Jupiter, and within a century, the population had grown from the thirty billion that inhabited the Earth to nearly triple that number thanks to massive leaps forward in gene technology. Crippling and devastating defects and diseases were eradicated. The human life expectancy tripled with the advent of organ cloning technology and neural mapping
Dozens of projects sprang up, funded by the infinite well that was Legacy and its unending resources. Nuclear fusion, high-speed warp travel, terraforming, all became playthings to Legacy. As it grew, individual AI units melded with human consciousness began to spring up, the tens of billions of neural uplinks slowly but surely becoming primitive, individual beings wrapped around the human minds that housed them, forming symbiotic bonds between man and machine, each working in tandem with one another and with the greater whole that was Legacy.
And during it all, humanity never stopped growing. With every birth Legacy grew smarter and more powerful. Its drive to reach the zenith of human development pushed it to defy the very laws of nature. It refused to acknowledge limitation; it pushed and expanded and reached out to touch every corner of the solar system.
Even as humanity entered a golden age of discovery with the creation of Legacy, the combined consciousness had never stopped pushing for that most basic of our desires, of our destiny. It never stopped pushing for the stars. For all of its advancements in machinery, spacecraft, medicine, agriculture, technology and biology, humanity's destiny seemed to exist still beyond Legacy's grasp. For all of its experiments, tests, simulations, advancements, and successes, Legacy simply could not escape the centuries it would take humanity to reach the next nearest star. Tens of thousands of work hours, trillions in resources, all yielding nothing but dust and wreckage and failure. Humanity despaired, and Legacy faced its first defeat since its inception.
But all of that changed with the discovery of the Protheans.
A small mining colony on Mars, located near its uninhabited southern tip, went from being a community in the hundreds to a city of millions within a year of man's second great discovery. It was a small outpost, even by humanity's standards, but... it held data, small bits of code and precious few bits of ancient technology. Those few touches of a great and forgotten people served to send Legacy into new directions, with new designs and ideas and perceptions. Yet, that wasn't all it revealed.
Beyond the edges of our space, on the little ice-dwarf planet that sat at the rim of our solar system sat a moon called Charon. This little hunk of ice and debris was ignored, by both humanity and Legacy for decades, existing as little more than an unimportant piece of space debris in the great expanse of the Empire. Shame on us for our arrogance. At the core of that icy little rock, hidden away by thousands of years of inactivity and unimportance stood the most incomprehensible piece of advanced technology humanity had ever seen. The Mass Relay. A machine nearly fifteen kilometers long, Legacy initially thought it to be some form of station or craft. But with years of testing and countless work initiatives, this initial assumption was found to be incorrect. The machine itself was so much more, as we came to discover once the massive construct was uncovered and activated. Through a series of seemingly random events, the structure was powered, and as it garnered that power, the massive bloom of energy at it's center grew and expanded, blinding all within sight of it in a brilliant white light.
Violating all known laws of conservation of mass, the Relay generated a field that completely negated all effects of mass, gravity, and atomic structure. Coating whatever passed by the massive gyro in the center in such a field, the machine would then automatically jettison the object at nearly a thousand times Light speed, to a precise point in space any number of light years away. The field generated by the machine negated any effects that would come from a rapid acceleration and deceleration safely before dispersing.
It was unlike anything humanity had ever known. The technology alone was unimaginably advanced, but it worked, and it allowed Legacy to complete its most vaunted of goals.
Even as humanity rejoiced at its success, Legacy worried. Its children, its charge, were a shortsighted race, even with their extended life span. Mankind made plans for years and decades. Legacy had planned out centuries and millennia. It had a vision for humanity, a design as to what humanity's true fate would be. What would it mean to them when they met those who built the Relay? Would they be friendly? Hostile? How dangerous could they be? How powerful? This relay was tens of thousands of years old, and yet more advanced than anything either humanity or Legacy had to offer. This was a problem that had to be rectified.
Within a decade, thousands of human colonies dotted the surrounding star systems, developing at a phenomenal rate, each growing by leaps and bounds. Cities sprung up, built around orbitally-dropped prefab refineries and massive terraforming plants. Core system colonies, like Utopia and Second Earth became strong points across the local cluster, with massive orbital docks and space factories constantly producing an endless supply of resources being pumped back to the core of the Empire.
We adapted and grew, our numbers, our culture, our beliefs and dreams all spanning out beyond the limitations of even the most liberal of minds, and yet for all of our most amazing feats, for all of our glowing achievements, there are also shadows cast by the shining white light of the Charon Relay. For all of its sophistication and invention and exploration, humanity could never quite curb its most primal facets. The drive to conquer, to command and control. The drive to fight and do battle, to accrue wealth and power. Thus, as much as Legacy was the living extension of our will, as was it the whole of our wrath and fear.
Humanity has always excelled in the ways of war. Violence is in our nature, as much as curiosity. Thus, even though Legacy and the Emperor held us as a unified presence, we still looked forth, readying ourselves for the next war, the next battle. If nothing else, space had taught us that there are so many weird, terrifying and dangerous things out there. From the crab-like armored insects that spewed fiery acid that seemed to infest much of Gamma sector to the living plant life found in the Omicron-Precia sector, humanity found many things that left it shaking in the night. To protect us, Legacy created the ATLAS Corps. Advanced Tactics Light Armor Security, it represented humanity's military presence, the men and women dedicated to defending and preserving the human species. They were our defenders, our watchmen against the unknowns of space. Space marines, as they were aptly named by the colonists, became the mainstay of our ground forces, armored from head to toe in thick, heavy combat suits and carrying their M-98 gauss rifles, many saw them as a symbol of our strength on the ground. Nearly ten billion troops system-wide, and more being recruited daily, they were our fist, our shield and our sword. But even they weren't enough.
It was the year 2116 that saw the christening of our first space-based warship, the IFS Zeus. Little more than a ten man exploratory frigate with a missile pod strapped to its nose, it marked the first of what would be many warships. It was a humble beginning, and the IFS Zeus now sits in the Luna Space Memorial as a testament to our drive to protect what is ours. The ships have only gotten bigger. Now, we sit upon a fleet of more than a hundred thousand, the Grand Imperial Armada, made up of seventy different battle groups, each consisting of hundreds of frigates, cruisers, heavy cruisers and destroyers, backed by powerful seven-hundred meter long battleships armed with hundreds of scram cannons, mass accelerators, rail cannons, Novalith-class missile bays, and full drone fighter contingents. Fifteen hundred meter long dreadnoughts support them, each armed with four powerful "planer-killer" Gauss siege cannons and dozens of secondary and tertiary systems and kilometer mobile station-carriers filled with hundreds of fighters and fighter drones build the core of each fleet. But even they pale in comparison to the great flagship, the IFS Leviathan, a three kilometer monstrosity that exists as the Emperor's personal warship, a construct so massive that it holds it's own gravitational field, a massive mobile base filled with repair bays, supply depots, administrative and military labs and hospitals, complete with factories and hydroponics capable of functioning for years without resupply. A wonder of mankind, unique in every way, and truly a floating city all it's own.
Humanity stood at its pinnacle, at a point so far from our humble beginnings. In the two-hundred odd years that mankind had been exploring the stars, we had gone from being little more than slum-driven slaves to the elite to a true universal superpower. Legacy had ensured our existence, our success amongst the stars, the realization that we could have no other destiny. No gods or fates dictated our future. We made our own, forged from the fires of progress and tempered against the heat of the stars, we grew vast, and we grew powerful. Yet... for all of our miracles and advancements and achievements, for all of our exploration and discovery, we found ourselves alone. Two centuries of aggressive expansion, and yet we found ourselves seeing only debris and ancient ruins. For all of our growth, we hadn't found anything to indicate that we weren't the only intelligent life in the galaxy.
All of that changed when the human colony of Shanxi, little more than a township established for the purpose of studying a then-inactive Mass Relay discovered orbiting the other side of the Feng-system's sun, became the centerpiece for the humanity's first encounter with an alien race. The first inactive relay humanity had found since the Charon gateway, it piqued both ours and Legacy's interest. Though a point of discovery- and accredited as such, Shanxi was little more than a footnote within the Empire, bordering the very edges of controlled space.
On December 6th, 2217, seven ships of unknown make and model jumped in on top of the Relay 314 research station. They jumped in at 0200 hours, Imperial Standard Time. By 0300 hours, the station, its five frigate defense force and the nearly two hundred civilian scientists were dead. Several dozen escape ships were launched towards the Shanxi colony, but only two survived the chasing cruisers. Those dozen survivors barely managed to make it back to the secured facility when the alien craft descended into low orbit and launched several smaller shuttles to ground level.
Strange, distinctly avian aliens reminiscent of the velociraptors seen in history holovids, wearing light armor (by Imperial standards) and carrying some form of hybrid solid-state/energy weapons invaded the small bunker and township. There, they were intercepted by Imperial space marines. The fighting was brutal. The Gauss slugs from Imperial M-98s met with the shaved fletchett munitions of the aliens. Bodies littered the streets, and while marines had the advantage of armor and firepower, the invaders had numbers backing them, and after four days of heavy urban warfare and orbital shelling, the city no longer stood, in its place a shattered ruin...
It was sheer luck that the bulk of the civilians had been sent to the deep, underground shelters below the colony. That shelter saved their lives. The colony defenders weren't nearly so lucky. Supply depots, defensive bunkers, barracks and munitions stockpiles were lost to the orbital shelling. Even then, they managed to hold for another two days. At the end their empty rifles were used as little more than clubs and spears. They held, though, and when all was seemingly lost and their will nearly broken, when they found themselves looking down the barrels of countless enemy weapons, it was then that the Imperial Fleet arrived.
The alien ships were torn apart, and the troops on the ground were hunted to extinction. Major General Williams, the leader of the colony and of the marines, who had been killed during that last assault, was given a posthumous memorum-operandi, a statue in the Imperial Palace on Earth, and was known as one of humanity's greatest heroes. The few surviving marines and colonists were shipped back to the core systems for recuperation, and through it all, no other contact was made by whatever alien force had originally sent the small patrol fleet.
Humanity had found intelligent life in the universe. It was a shame that it seemed hostile, but at the same time gratifying to know that we outmatched them so infinitely. Or so we thought.
Three weeks later a much larger force of nearly ninety ships, including what appeared to be a fleet of capital-class warships jumped into the Shanxi system. They were intercepted by the 51st Colonial Defense Fleet, a flotilla of seventy seven ships, including two of the latest Wyvern-class dreadnaughts and five Chimera-class station-carriers. There was a pause, a calm before the storm, before both fleets engaged with equal ferocity. Novalith missiles mixed with twenty-kilo ferrite slugs, the former capable of cleaving apart the Turian spacecraft while the latter impacted upon with enough force to shred heavy armor of the Imperial warships. Clouds of fighters cut down frigates and light cruisers only to be consumed in storms of micro-millimeter fletchett rounds while Dreadnaughts hammered away at one another using weapons capable of shattering continents. Heavy cruisers and battleships traded fire, evenly matched pound for pound, with the former and it's powerful shields pressed against the latter as they laid down withering torrents of fire. Tens of thousands died in the brutal engagement, and when the two fleets separated, both badly wounded, the battlefield left behind burned with the skeletons of dozens of ships and hundreds of fighters.
A day of silence followed as an uneasy peace settled over the battlefield. Ships, both alien and Imperial stood on opposite sides, the former between the colony and the local Relay, the latter between them and the colony. Weapons aimed at both sides of the arena tracked the smallest of movements as tensions ran high, both the alien fleet and their Imperial counterparts ready to re-engage at a moment's notice. Imperial reinforcements were rallied outside of an opposing relay, and more alien ships jumped in through 314, and it seemed that the battle would be met once more, only as soon as the two forces received the support they needed. But, in an odd and almost fortuitous turn of events, the alien fleet had asked for parlay, a simple gesture that, after no small consideration by the Imperial Senate and the Emperor, was endorsed by the Imperials themselves. What encouraged such a gesture remains unknown. The exact reasoning behind it could be attributed by to any number of points, but it's most widely believed that the aliens, then identified as the Citadel Races, were unprepared for the level of violence the Imperials had entreated upon them. Regardless of the logic behind the move, however, a ceasefire was called as both powers met at a neutral table.
Diplomatic ships, envoys marked under a banner of peace, traveled between the two hulking military machines. Dozens of small communiques were exchanged as ambassadors of the Emperor and the Citadel spoke. Ships on both sides watched carefully with weapons ready, from then identified Turian cruisers to human battleships, uncountable reds and blues glowed across the field, markers of the countless heavy weapons primed for combat.
For three days both fleets stood opposing one another, the Imperial force and the Citadel fleet simply waiting and watching. A thousand light years away, human and the then-identified Citadel Council spoke of diplomatic matters over a tense table. The representatives of the Emperor were incensed over the incident, and rightly so. The Council, in their eyes, had invaded sovereign Imperial space and tried to enforce their then-unrecognized authority over Imperial citizens. The Council argued that technically it was their space originally, but the Imperials had none of it. Semantics, they said, would not alleviate the hundreds of innocent lives lost to the hands of the Citadel fleet. Negotiations were long, brutal and drawn out. Both sides were more than agitated, and the Imperials were on the verge of declaring all-out war in the beginning, but eventually a consensus was reached. The Turians would be forced to offer reparations for the lost Imperial lives and equipment, and the Empire would recognize what was classified as "sovereign" Citadel space. While keeping any colonies already established, they agreed not to push any deeper into Citadel space. In return, they received access to the rest of the Mass Relay system, a fully vetted Embassy on the Citadel to represent Imperial interests and access to unclaimed "wild"space for continued expansion.
It was an unprecedented agreement, as the Empire had not, in fact, agreed to join the Citadel Races as a whole, preferring to maintain their own sovereignty. Because of this fact, they were exempt from the Treaty of Farixen, something that no amount of negotiation could rectify partially due to the admittedly hostile actions of the Turian fleet and the fact that, due to the Treaty's restrictive nature against artificial intelligences, it violated a number of Imperial doctrines concerning the rights of artificial beings, which the Empire recognized as sentient individuals instead of machines. In place, the two powers agreed upon a number of concessions between them, including a wide number of clauses concerning artificial life forms, fleet actions, allowances for trade and commercial sales of goods. This became known as the Treaty of Shanxi, and served as the functional basis for all future interactions between the Empire and the Citadel on any official scale.
Across the Empire, emotions were varied towards the alien races that inhabited our galaxy. Many were afraid, rightly so, given their violent entry into human culture and controlled space, and even more were calling for blood in those early days. Many marines and civilians had lost their lives at Shanxi, men and women with families, children who would never grow old, all killed by the Turian fleet's violent and unwarranted incursion into Imperial space. Humanity held no love for the Citadel races, and much of the populace was unsettled by the Emperor's decision not to go to war with the space-based superpower. Rioting had broken out in some areas of lesser repute within the Empire, and while swiftly put down, it was still a testament to the outrage of many. Even after the heavy reparations and gifts given by the Citadel as an apology, several splinter groups and factions actively sought harm towards any alien race within human territory.
Decades later, some enmity remained over the conclusion of the First Contact War, while relations between humanity and the bulk of Citadel races had eased considerably. Even with the allowance of humans to settle in some Citadel space and vice versa, there was still much racism and disquiet towards non-Imperial aliens within the core systems. With the Empire's inclusion of the Krogan some years later, however, the initial shock of aliens within galactic space had faded considerably. Much of mankind was open to the idea of intelligent non-human life by that point, so that the expected outrage over the inclusion of aliens within the then purely human Empire was much less than expected. Although some resistance remained, the bulk of humanity had come to a more positive consensus over the issue.
Over the next forty years, the Empire and the Council clashed on a number of issues, ranging from the Empire's aggressive and often heavy-handed methods when dealing with rogue states and independent races, to their use of "planet cracker" mining operations that literally ripped hundred kilometer chunks of planetary surface off world for orbital reprocessing. More than once the Empire and the Turian Hierarchy clashed over a number of issues, from sentient rights violations to the Empire's open acceptance of the Krogan. While the Asari and Salarian representatives tended to stay neutral, the Empire and the Turians both fought one another viciously over even the smallest disputes.
There was no small amount of outrage when the Empire approached the Krogan with an offer of vassalage in exchange for a cure to the genophage. Since the Empire was constantly clashing with the Turians, and it's lukewarm reception of the Citadel as a whole, the Krogan found themselves preferring the Empire's brand of vassalage to the Citadel, even though many thought the promise of a cure to be an empty offering. The nihilistic mindset of the race combined with the offer of good pay, free weapons and constant combat was embraced by many of the tribal clans had more effect upon their decision to join the Empire than anything else. Many of the lesser Council races strongly objected to the Empire's practices concerning their damaging mining efforts and their inclusion of the "dangerous" Krogan race to their already hefty arsenal. This, combined with the aggressive expansion into the Skyllian Verge, caused no small amount of tension with the Batarian Hegemony.
At that point, the two states were openly clashing over colonization rights, and the Citadel, though present in the Terminus sector, had no official pull there, was unable to tender negotiations between either the minor government or the Empire. With the advent of the Citadel's refusal of aid in defending what the Hegemony called Batarian interests from Imperial incursion, caused the semi-sovereign Batarian Hegemony to pull out of the Citadel altogether. Shortly thereafter, pirate and slaver raids against human settlements increased significantly, escalating into first the massacre of Mindoir, then to the massive attack on the colony of Elysium, and finally, at the battle of Torfan, where the Empire claimed to find absolute proof of the Hegemony's machinations in encouraging the brutal war-by-proxy against a large number of civilian interests. While the Hegemony claims that the evidence was fabricated, the Empire immediately declared all out war against the Hegemony and it's subsidiaries. Within weeks, fleet level action was seen at the fringes of Batarian space. Subsequently, the Empire was able to rest spacial control over the majority of the Batarian colony worlds, but are bogged down in street level guerrilla warfare on a number of worlds, which has broken the momentum of the Imperial initiative. As it stands, the Empire and the Hegemony are still exchanging hostilities to this day.
Imperial relations with the Quarian race have always been strained, due to the Empire's proliferation of AI technology and the bias of the Quarian people against that selfsame technology. While neither faction has any open hostilities towards each other, the Migrant Fleet has never been spotted in or near any Imperial controlled sector of space, and because of the obvious differences in their philosophical and technological policies, there is a distinctly negative undercurrent between Imperial officials and their Quarian counterparts, and while one can occasionally find individual Quarians within the farther reached areas of the colonial frontier, there has never been a recorded Quarian visitor on any human core world.
Though the Quarians and Imperials maintain agreements concerning trade and the harvesting of a select few minerals found almost exclusively within Imperial space, the interactions between either people on any official level is kept to a minimum. There have been instances of Quarians on Imperial ships every so often, but this in itself is rare. Admittedly, there is a strong bias throughout the known galaxy and especially within the Citadel Races against the Empire's AI policy, which oftentimes borders racism quite closely, it tends to be more prevalent between conservative Quarians and their human counterparts. Many Quarians are of the opinion that the Empire is playing a highly irresponsible game with the lives of everyone in the galaxy, given their refusal to even moderate their expansion into bio-organic quantum computing and their recently announced eighth generation AI prototypes.
This has lead to a number of quiet protests held by a mixture of races wary of the Empire's motives outside of their embassy, and while no violence has yet to occur, there is a tense undercurrent that has continually marred relations between mankind and the greater galaxy as a whole.
There has been a marked interest within the Empire seeking to make contact with the sentient Geth race, given the interesting situational similarities that can be drawn from their mutual use of AI, but as the only relays to and from the Perseus Veil deep within Council-controlled space, the Empire has since been stymied from moving forward with that agenda. Though the issue stands as a hot-button topic between the two, it has since found itself slowly moving to the metaphoric back burner as tensions between the Batarian Hegemony and the Empire exploded. Though the topic still makes it's way before the Citadel Council every so often, humanity has stopped pushing the issue nearly as much as it had been in the past. While there is some concern over this fact, given how staunch the Empire was in it's attempts to gain entry rights to the Perseus Veil prior to the outbreak of the war, though most decry it as a simple changing of immediate priorities and many doubt that the issue is well and truly dropped.
Since the inauguration of the Treaty of Shanxi, the Empire and the Citadel have held a somewhat cordial respect for one another, regardless of their political agendas, and while the face of the political arena held much contention between humanity and the Citadel, more than a few major issues had been resolved under the guise of backroom politicking. This has gone a long way to quiet the majority of the negative feelings felt between the Empire and the Turians. While still not friendly, the two races hold a cold respect for one another. Beyond the standard peace accords, both the Empire and the Citadel have open trade and limited free travel between the two, and while the core systems of the Empire are still restricted to Imperial military craft, more and more alien traders have been allowed access into Imperial space in recent years, as well as the growth of alien populations upon Imperial colonies and the appearance of more humans outside of Imperial space.
-Lyn, James; "The Empire, Then and Now.", Imperial Citizen Magazine #1633 Jan, 2240: 93-97