Do not own Mass Effect. Did not write Mass Effect.

Warning: this narrative will make you Rage. If you succumb to elaborate revenge fantasies, genocidal proclamations, or lose vision in a blood red haze of blood lust, this story may not be good for you.

Renegade Reinterpretations

AC 97-98: The Terran Blitz

The Terran Blitz, despite its name, was not a single battle centered around Earth. Though Earth was the climax, it was simply the end-point of a three-month long Batarian offensive to conquer all of Humanity. An offensive that the Alliance, amazingly enough, weathered.

Beginning in late AC 97, the Alliance was taken off guard when Batarian pirates launched a massive offensive across most of the Human-Batarian frontier. Beginning with large pirate raids across an expanse of Human resource colonies, the Alliance's initial responses to these raiders was just an expected aspect of the Batarian plan. When the Alliance fleets left to make relatively short order of the pirate forces, the Hegemony launched its offensive in full: a coordinated, simultaneous invasion of nearly all the known Human garden worlds that had been recaptured, and then those that had never been in Batarian hands. Though the human defense turrets and small-scale kinetic barriers around defensive positions made direct drops unfeasible, mass deployments of troops to surrounding undefended areas were made. When the Alliance ships rushed to return, they were met by Batarian counterparts. Four of the eleven primary Alliance response fleets were routed in the first days of the offensive.

Even as ground forces struggled for control of the garden worlds, however, the main Batarian effort proceeded: the Blitz on Earth itself. Arranged and traveling for nearly a year in advance by conventional FTL from Batarian space, the fully-mobilized Batarian navy went to the furthest-known Human possession they had ever found, Acturius Station and its nexus-point of Mass Relays. Timed to link up with Batarin fleet elements and dreadnaughts island-hopping the Mass Relay chains of Human space, a third of the entire Batarian navy attacked the assembled defenses at Acturius and pushed to cross the Charon Relay.

In what became a decisive moment in the war, the Batarian armada fought tooth and nail against and through the defending 5th Fleet. Batarian ships managed to advance even as every available Human force was being sent through all the surrounding relays, including a never-stopping stream of ships through the Charon Relay itself. Ignoring casualties and even the defenses of Acturius Station itself, significant elements of the Batarian forces broke through and passed through the Charon Relay to attempt their primary mission: to attack and knock out the Human home planet.

While Earth itself had been fortified since the start of the war, and even though the Sol-system defense network easily qualified as the densest (if not most effective) defense system in the galaxy, limited resources and needs in the colonies had long since focused the defenses on where they were most logical: on the primary transportation routes, industrial areas, and war-critical infrastructure. And had the Batarians attempted to attack those places, the defenses might have held.

But the Batarians, gleaning what they could from captured Human histories and publications about Earth, had determined that the best way to strike the Terrans was to strike Terra itself, selectively, where there were no kinetic barriers or shields to get in the way of the main guns of their Dreadnaughts. The oceans, the rivers, even the very land itself became the target board for the illegally-modified Dreadnaughts with improved planet-devastating strike packages.

Even as the Batarian intrusion force were engaged by in-system defenses, Batarian dreadnaughts began striking a large number of places across the globe. Dreadnaught strikes in the 'empty' Great Plains of North America successfully triggered the North American super-volcano under Yellowstone, devastating not only the continent but sending the global temperature down for years as ash hugged the skies. Strikes at the water sources in the Tibetian Plateau would devastate much of Southern and Eastern Asia, as the sources of old rivers were diverted and new rivers tore through developments. The Three Gorges dam in China was destroyed by a shockwave of an impact up-river: miniature tsunamis across the Indonesian island chains wrecked the Pacific Rim. The Mediterranean and Caribbean Seas became cauldrons of debris and devastation after a systematic bombardment of the coastal waters.

By the time the last Batarian ship in the sector was cut down, the planet Earth would be devastated for centuries to come, requiring trillions of man-hours in cleanup, rebuilding, and recovery. All told, 5.72 billion of the planet's remaining 13.36 billion residents died during The Terran Blitz and in the following year.

Author Notes:

Rage, genocide, Batarians, blah-blah-blah...

Two things of note is from the Terran Blitz is that it has two important (and not-to-be-addressed later) demographic affects on Humanity.

First, it marked the first point when the majority of the Human population shifted to off of Earth and to the Colonies, from (a) the mass die-off on Earth, (b) the post-Blitz evacuation and resettlement of most of surviving population, and (c) the pre-climax evacuation of Earth when the Alliance realized what the Batarian's main objective was. With most of the Garden worlds under assault, however, a lot of people couldn't be evacuated because the good ships were needed elsewhere, and in lieu of anywhere major to go Earth had its own 'migrant fleet' scenario of ships packed to the gills with people. Fortunately, it was temporary and measured in weeks/months, not centuries.

Second, the Blitz marked a point at which clones became a majority of the Human population. Cause, you know, Earth was the one basked that most/nearly all the 'natural' humans still lived on. Come arrival on the galactic stage, Humanity isn't quite one of those 'race of clones' from sci-fi... but it isn't missing by much.

Other than that, who else enjoyed the break? Peaceful, yes?