Tau system, Relay 314' orbit, september 2066
The two fleets stood at a standstill, neither daring to make the first move, six destroyers and one cruiser faced another cruiser flanked by eight frigates.
On the Guangzhou's bridge, Captain Zhao cleared his throat, bringing his crew back to reality, although that was mostly an unintentional side effect. "Does anyone know who the hell those guys are?" He asked to no-one in particular
"Ship design does not match to any known models sir, although they appear to have long spinal guns, so it could be the europeans". Zhao was mesmerized by the veritable alien ships on his screen and only nodded along to the answer.
"I doubt it, they would not have destroyed our drones, neither would anyone else from Earth actually", someone answered that for him.
"What do we do, sir?". The voice of his second in command broke him from his trance, and he barked his orders to the communications specialist
"Open a broadcast channel! Ask them to identify themselves"
Before the young specialist could get to work, a priority message flashed in his screen. "Captain!", he said, "We're receiving inbound communications from the unknown ships!"
Meanwhile, on the Turian flagship...
"Spirits". Hilatis was taken aback, he had just destroyed a couple of shuttles, probably some pirates or adventures messing around and trying to find something of value. He did not expected to be facing a force almost as big as his own. Still, he was a turian, and had a job to do.
"Run scans of those ships, see if we can identify their design and what kind of hardware they pack"
The scans were quickly done, spirits bless the young quarian pilgrim he hired a couple of months back. The results were, as for the shuttles, inconclusive for the design of the ships, but they did detect shielding technology, eezo cores and, were those nuclear missiles? Someone was packing some serious punch on those ships. Fuck, if one of the merc gangs got their hands on nukes...
"Communications!", he barked, hoping that whatever the hell was happening could be contained before it escalated, "send those ships a message! They are to stand down, power their engines and weapons down and prepare to be boarded. They're incurring in a serious Council crime and we will take them into custody". He paused, then added: "Full spectrum broadcast! Make sure they hear us"
Back on the Guangzhou...
Captain Zhao was taken aback by the sounds coming from the ship's audio system. They were nothing but a collection of chirps and whistles, almost like a Terran bird. His comm specialist assured him that the signal was clean, and no interference was detected. Zhao slowly realized he may be facing a completely alien race.
Going to the comms workstation, he ordered his specialist to open a channel and started speaking. "Attention alien race! You have provoked wanton destruction of chinese property! I am Captain Zhao Teng of the People's Republic Navy! Stand down and we may establish negotiations to settle this affair!"
Of course, the message received by the turians was complete nonsense to them, much like the one the turians sent to him. Realizing that empty threats wouldn't take them anywhere, Zhao ordered one of his destroyers to back away from the main fleet and go back to Shanxi to tell someone what was happening on this side.
What happened next can only be described as a tragedy of errors. Not knowing the tactics, or even which end of those alien ships was the front or back, some turian frigate commander panicked, and ordered his ships to fire on the moving destroyer. The chinese retaliated automatically, reflexes honed to rain death at the slightest provocation from an enemy.
The fight was swift and brutal. Chinese missiles and point defense weapons pepered the turian's shields, their sheer numbers breaking the energy fields surrounding the ships and penetrating their armor while each bark from a mass accelerator gun tore through chinese's shields and hull with relative ease.
At the end, only Hilati's ship was still standing, if only barely. A torpedo had obliterated the front of his cruiser and any unlucky sailor there. The chinese destroyer that started the scuffle had limped away trough the relay, telling whoever was on the other side of the violent aliens that they encountered.
"Sir, what. Do. We. DO" the exasperation on his XO's voice broke him from his trance and Hilati finally took stock of the damage caused. His eight frigates gone, and his cruiser badly mauled. All enemy's ships destroyed save for one injured ship. That was going to be a shit show.
"Contact Palaven command Lieutenant. Tell them we found an aggressive first contact on sector Tau Seven, Relay 314, we will need reinforcements, lots of reinforcements"
Excerpt from "The Concert of Sol: An Introduction to Earth's Political Affairs" By Lessa T'Feris
What is more intriguing about humans – and here I say human because it is one of the few things all nations have in common – is their lack of first contact packages. The United Nation tried to develop one single package for all nations to use, but their efforts were quickly turned down. No two countries could decide on what to include, which language to use, or what was to be the underlying message of the (or at least supposed to be) short video. As for the three great powers, not one of them even bothered developing a FC package. They were, at the time, much more worried about intra-human competition than with some, at the time, theoretical alien encounter. The most paranoid elements of each government were adamant that whoever may find them first was going to be hostile anyway, so why bother when "our first contact package is going to be a missile barrage to their faces", to quote a particular gun-ho American admiral. Nevertheless, their experience with finding isolated tribes or unknown people 600 years ago was still coloring their plans, to my utmost shock may I add, since none of these interactions ended up beeing even slightly beneficial for the natives. Unfortunately, the actual first contact between humanity and the turians (or at least, the chinese and the turians), seemed to have vindicated the most cynical elements of human diplomatic and defense personnel.