A/N: Well, decided not to hold this one back any longer. ISoaN is coming along well for those that are curious, hoping to have it out by the end of the week. Thanks to Kejmur, Clones, and Alucard for their reviews since last chapter was posted, and everyone that's followed or favourited this story so far.. I'll consider making up a map once I can get a program for it that's better then just using GIMP to make a map, and yes, the National Socialists are still incharge of the German Reich. They have tonned down since the 30s and 40s but there aren't to many people moving to Space!Germany and tensions are still high. The Italians are still a technical one party constitutional monarchy under the National Fascist Party and Japan is still run by Showa era esq statists. General rule of thumb going forward is whatever government system the nation was under before WW2, it's still under now. (Some exceptions exist but I'll get to those later)

A/N2: The codex entry this time ran away from me a bit, sorry about that.

As always, like, hate, see something you thought interesting or could use some work? Leave a review! I feast on your reviews!

Disclaimer: Don't own mass effect, though my friend is getting me a copy of andromeda so that'll be fun.

Imperial Japanese Homeworld Yamato.

"You are telling me that you cannot defeat these aliens yourself, Grand Admiral?" Prime Minister, formerly General, Kenji Fujioka half growled at the man standing across from him.

Grand Admiral Yamamoto stood firm, his bearded face drawn into a look of pure professionalism. "We could Prime Minister. I believe if we were to rally all of our fleets and make a concentrated counterattack. Then we could defeat these invaders. The problem is that we would leave all our systems vulnerable. Not to mention the damage our fleet would suffer in the process."

And that was what had Fujioka in a bind. He was caught between a rock and a hard place. He could demand the grand admiral take on this threat himself. Then he would have it on his head if the Empire was left weak and invaded after. The alternative was that he could go to the rarely used League of Nations. Bring up this invasion there. He would be admitting weakness on the public stage. He would almost certainly be removed from his position shortly thereafter, but they might be able to get some of the other nations to sacrifice their own vessels in place of Japan's own.

He bit his lip. Turning back to the wall he'd watch the scenes playing across it. The orbital defense batteries on Shanxi firing into the sky. Admiral Tsuyoshi's Dewa weathering fire from the alien battleship. Japanese soldiers charging behind a Chi-Ri as other tanks burned around them. He made a mental note to reward the major incharge of that action should he survive the war. The captured image from a nearby security camera would be worth more in propaganda then a thousand recruiters.

Then he looked to other images. Those same anti-orbital batteries spewing smoke from their firing slits, looking like fuming volcanoes. The wreckage of Shanxi station as the hulks of destroyed spacecraft drifted along. A line of Chi-Ri's wrecked on the side of a boulevard. Could he really allow this to be handled by Japan alone? For all they knew they'd destroy this fleet and there would be a hundred more behind it. Finally he turned back, not looking at Yamamoto, but at the man beside him. Short, balding, Ambassador Jurou Nakashima seemed to know what he was going to say before he opened his mouth.

"I will bring it up to the League today Prime Minister." The man bowed, and after Fujioka nodded the hologram winked out.

Turning to Yamamoto he added. "Any reserve fleets we have, anything away from the main pirate activity, send it."

"Of course Prime Minister. I already have the third, tenth and eleventh fleets moving to Yamato to link up with my own." Yamamoto said with a nod. "The third is arriving now. I will take my leave."

With that Yamamoto's hologram winked out as well, and Fujioka sighed. Turning to look at the images once again, even as new ones flooded in. Suppressed from the public of course, until they could sort them out at least.

-WoE-

League of Nations Headquarters, Orbital Station around Sol Relay

March 11th, 2065

Nakashima held himself to the attention that had been drilled into him for years as he stood before the other ambassadors of the League. His suit was perfectly fitted and completely unwrinkled. What hair he had was combed into an unassuming, business like short cut. His face was unblemished. The only thing that stood out about him was his mild rotundness. "Members of the League of Nations. I bring before you a matter of grave import not seen before in our lives."

The rest of the room was silent. Dozens of pairs of eyes, the surviving states from the destruction of Sol, staring at him unwaveringly. "As of march ninth, the Empire of Japan has been in a state of war with an alien power." The man turned on the projector, showing a clip of the aliens dropping out of relay and engaging admiral Tsuyoshi's fleet. "These aliens previously destroyed the exploration vessel Zhang He, which had been charting the exits of the Shanxi Relay."

"Initially, we believed this situation could be handled internally." The images continued, showing the defeat of the initial alien force. Then they changed to the arrival of the second alien fleet. "Unfortunately, the aliens have proven to have technology greatly in advance of our own. While the IJN has been fighting valiantly to keep them contained within Shanxi, we believe a break out is inevitable."

The image changed again, showing the systems that were within easy reach of Shanxi. Highlighting the Commonwealth system of Victoria, the French system of New Bône, and the US system of Rico. "If Shanxi were to fall, we believe that ontop of moving deeper into the Japanese Empire, the aliens would strike out at any nearby human system. As they have shown no attempt at negotiation yet, we can only assume they intend on the complete destruction or subjugation of humanity."

That brought out a series of mutterings and general noise from the collected ambassadors. Though they were quickly silenced as he continued. "The Empire of Japan proposes the creation of a joint force of all nations to deal with this alien threat. We also propose the creation of a joint defense treaty in the case we have a repeat of this incident."

The mutterings grew into conversation and shouting. Nothing different for the League. Regardless, Nakashima had said his piece, and began to join in the tide of debate that would follow. He could only hope they hashed something out in time.

-WoE-

New Yuncheng

March 13th, 2065

Private Kobayashi ducked into his trench as the aliens rounds whizzed overhead.

Armoured searchlights, along with the street lamps, lit up the dark street before him. Beside him a Type 133 machinegun barked out its staccato. It was a loud and brutal weapon that hammered into the night. Its volley was joined in by shots from all across the street wide trench.

His unit had withdrawn to the New Yuncheng spaceport, holed up on its groundside. They had no hope of breaking out. Their only hope was to buy time there against the alien invaders. Behind them, more units were evacuating into Ki Planetary Defense Center. The great mountain's main cannon may have been knocked out, but the miles of defensive lines and fortifications had no plans of buckling soon. Not to mention the artillery batteries that were positioned in them. Each scaly alien that tried to breach their lines would crumble, broken by bullets and shells, or turn back exhausted and dishonoured.

Elements of the IJA still held numerous sectors over the city. Generally the strongpoints were near or outside of evacuations bunkers. Many other units had been forced out of the city or destroyed entirely. Scraphouses had been broken open, and nearly two hundred Ha-Gos, each a century old, had been pressed into service. What they were doing out here, nobody really could guess, but the Sino-Japanese war era vehicles were still in mostly functioning shape. The guns were good enough to kill enemy infantry. Useful enough, the defenders hoped.

One of the antique vehicles rolled up to the barricade and fired at the encroaching aliens. The cannon taking out two of the aliens before withdrawing. The alien rocket launchers were deadly accurate, and had claimed much of the IJA's Chi-Ri's already.

Popping back up over the lip of the trench as the enemy fire shifted focus, Ren unloaded his clip into the invaders. Unfortunately the alien infantry was getting closer and closer. The alien's armour was easy enough to penetrate, but their shields could handle a terrifying amount of fire before they went down. A fact they were using to jump from cover to cover, letting their shields regenerate in between. Frustrating. It was impossible to deal with - if Ren didn't empty almost a whole magazine into the armoured attackers before they reached cover, they simply wouldn't feel a thing. As the enemy wised up, more and more slipped by, and ever closer to their lines as a result. This sort of protection was so far beyond their own - how were they meant to pierce this?

Down the trench he heard the Major shouting into the long range comms. "Enemy within fifty meters of our position. Requesting artillery support."

Ren didn't hear the reply. The Major was too far away, and the sound of bullets rang too loudly in his ears. Swapping out his magazine he stood up and fired again, managing to take out one of the aliens that had already been weakened by the machinegun. Then he heard the distinct rumble of artillery in the distance. The street in front of him exploding moments later. Even if the alien shields were strong, the concussive wave of the artillery shells passed through them like they weren't there. Aliens were tossed into the air, then fell back down like sacks.

The barrage ceased. The surviving aliens withdrew back down the street, taking shots as they fell back. Despite halting their advance, the artillery barrage did nothing to shake up their combat instincts. Ren tried to mow down some as they retreated, but that retreating fire drove him back into cover - bitter though it was, it was also disciplined of them. Something he begrudgingly respected.

Silence reigned over the battlefield when the aliens retreated out of sight. Ren and the other soldiers taking the chance to prepare themselves for the next wave, and the ones after that, until they would finally get to withdraw themselves.

-WoE-

Junior Serviceman Deius Horados growled to himself. These aliens, temporarily classified as 314ers, just didn't give up. They had been fighting through the streets for three days now. Inflicting hideous casualties on these aliens, but still they kept fighting. Spirits, he had passed five destroyed tanks and what had to be a hundred dead on his way here. Yet what he estimated as a dozen more still held the building in front of him and his platoon.

The utter insanity was that if the rumours were to be believed, the Admiral estimated that some 10% of this alien race was serving in their military. That was on par with the turians active solder to population ratio, but they had the excuse of being the galaxy's army. Their economy assisted by the rest of the Citadel and the Volus to sustain that large of a force.

A shell ripped out from the building and hit the soldier beside him, reducing the man to paste and forcing Deius into cover.

That was the other insanity of these aliens. Of all the things, they still used direct fire man packed artillery guns. These savages were using things that had been phased out of turian service centuries ago, and they were working. The thing that was giving the platoon so much difficulty was a small caliber cannon that was parked in the ground floor of the building. It wouldn't have been bad if they weren't out of rockets.

Anyone that tried to approach to lob a grenade in received the building's worth of gunfire on them. If they were really unlucky, the cannon fired and blew them to pieces. Still, they were slowly making progress. The number of shooters in the building dwindling with each exchange. What they were really waiting for was rolling around the corner though. The Hepestis class main battle tank. It was larger than the light tanks that had given the alien tanks so much trouble. Instead of a single railgun, the Hepestis carried a railgun, and two pods of missiles.

The alien's gun bounced off the Hepestis' shields, once, twice. Then the tank fired, two missiles blazing forward and detonating the building. Before starting to roll forward to support the infantry advance.

Unfortunately, these aliens were just full of surprises. While the building before them remained silent, the platoon heard grinding and clanking. It didn't sound like a tank, and seemed to be coming from all around them.

Then another building exploded outwards, showering men with bricks and metal. Before the dust could settle heavy autocannon rounds barked out from the cloud. Deius diving into cover even as one of the rounds knocked out his shield but didn't get further. Even as they started to be able to see the large turianoid form that was in the dust, two more of the things came out from the side streets. Large autocannons in their hands. One of them pointed the gun at the back of the Hepestis. With a soft 'thwup', the larger barrel under the autocannon fired out a projectile. It must have been sort of HEAT shell, as it hit the back of one of the Hepestis' armoured missile pods and burned through. The tank going up in smoke and fire knocking a few other turians off their feet.

Returning fire on the metal walkers, Deius and his platoon withdrew into the buildings behind them. The walkers extracting heavy casualties before two Vestus light tanks made it to the street. The tanks roof mounted railguns making short work of one of the walkers and driving the other two off.

Deius really hoped the aliens didn't have any more surprises. He didn't know if he'd survive them.

-WoE-

TSF Unbreakable, In Orbit over Shanxi

Bromraka was not pleased, to say the least. These aliens were putting up much more of a fight then he had expected. Even now, they were still battling throughout their capital city. Their fleet continued to hide away behind one of the inner planets, and one of those anti-orbital guns kept coming back online no matter how hard they shot it. It had only managed to damage one of his cruisers, but it was only a matter of time till it killed something.

These aliens were utterly insane. That was the only conclusion Bromraka could come to. They had to know he could blow them apart from orbit. Well, they should know. Or perhaps they were stupid too? Or too stubborn. Citadel laws kept him from actually doing so, but the enemy couldn't have known this. They should be surrendering by now. Rolling over like the volus had.

Instead he had to give them some credit. They fought like cornered rats. He pulled up images from his soldiers suit cams. Images of outgunned aliens throwing themselves at his men's guns, beating them down with their rifles and bayonets. It was savagery the likes of the krogan. Bromraka couldn't help but crack a small grin at that thought. At the very least, these aliens went down much easier than krogan. For every one of their charges that succeeded, two more were beat back or annihilated. What was much more terrifying was what they did instead of surrender.

Flicking the screen, he brought up a video of a wounded alien. His soldiers approaching it to get the creature to surrender. Only for the alien to pull out a grenade when they got close. The feed cut off with a last image of an explosion.

It was something he could have handled if he had the Hierarchy backing him up. Unfortunately, he had limited resources. If he had to take a guess from what his troops had encountered, he figured these aliens had at least one hundred thousand men under arms, maybe as many as three hundred thousand. He had little more than fifty thousand soldiers, and that was pulling all the garrisons out of the worlds under his control. That fifty thousand was dropping, not worryingly, but steadily.

Even worse, the positions the aliens now held seemed to be dedicated fortifications. Large numbers of enemy soldiers were holding out in the orbital defense installations. Others in underground fortress bunkers inside the city. He could only guess the latter were guarding evacuation shelters. He lacked the heavy equipment to deal with these on the ground, and had ordered his troops to isolate the pockets and lay seige. It was all he could do at the moment.

He was coming to the quite damning conclusion that he may need to seek assistance in this matter. Yet, it was something he couldn't do. If he came back without a victory he would likely be exiled for starting a war. He had banked everything on this, and he needed to win. He needed something anything to turn this into a quick victory.

Looking out the viewing screens of his quarters, he saw the floating debris from the alien fleet. An idea formed. An idea that could just as easily get him tried for war crimes as anything else. He chewed on it for a few minutes, before dismissing it for now. If these aliens didn't surrender within two weeks, then he'd consider resorting to that.

Codex Entry: Differences in Shell Philosophy at the time of the Shanxi War/A Study on the Effectiveness of Explosives vs Shields.

A continuation of the previous Codex Entry viewed by [USER] on the comparison of infantry weapons on Shanxi. As already shown, the increased caliber of human weapons proved to be ineffective against shields, but extremely effective against the armour underneath in comparison to Turian Vanguard rifles. For larger caliber weapons the difference remained similar. The human Chi-Ri 53. The standard IJA medium tank, equipped with a 93mm long barreled cannon and equipped with what could be considered a 'light' vehicle shield generator by citadel forces. The Chi-Ri compared unfavourably to the Turian Veletis infantry fighting vehicle and Hepestis Main Battle Tanks. The Veletis, and the Hepestis being equipped with a 37mm mass driver cannon that fired with enough speed to very literally, and very fatally, pull the crews out behind it as it passed through IJA vehicles.

The problem the Turians came to find on Shanxi was that their rounds would pass through IJA tanks and fail to damage the vehicles much at all. Leaving crewless hulls that would be put back into operation by other IJA forces in the area. Meanwhile the Chi-Ri's own 105mm cannons tended to reduce the lightly armoured, but heavily shielded Turian vehicles into twisted wreckage once they had worn down the Turian's shields. This was thanks to the large amount of explosive filler inside the Chi-Ri's shells instead of being only solid penetrators like the Turian rounds were. This explosive filler also allowed IJA tank cannons, artillery like the 155mm Type 207 howitzer, and anti-tank guns, like the 47mm Type 133 Infantry Cannon, to engage turian infantry. While the shields proved effective against the shrapnel from these weapons, they failed entirely to protect against the blast itself. With turian soldiers suffering heavily to concussive pressure and the heat output by these weapons impact.

In space combat, this trend continued. Though it was much more pronounced. Comparing the main battery shells of the TSF Unbreakable to the IJN Dewa, one can near immediately see the design differences. The Unbreakable's main battery of 5" cannons fired a round that was approximately 58 kilograms at near 1% the speed of light. These rounds carried more impact force then IJN rounds, but like Turian cannons on the ground, they tended to pass through IJN vessels with relatively minimal damage due to humanity designing their vessels with quite cramped, and heavily redundant designs. Even a major penetration could be sealed off quickly by a series of bulkheads. The Dewa's rounds meanwhile were ~1,000 kilograms, launched at slightly more then 0.1% the speed of light. This allowed the Turians more time to manouver to avoid these shells, and they were less effective at dealing with Turian shields, but on penetration these rounds were capable of coring a Turian vessel with a single hit. Citadel designs tended at the time to have large open decks with little compartmentalization as the holes from the straight penetration of a normal citadel round could be sealed by the ships shields. During the war the catastrophic internal damage caused by human shells tended to cause entire decks to cave in on eachother and created breaks in the hull that were too big for internal shields to handle very effectively. Following the Shanxi war, the Turians, and to a lesser extent other Citadel species, redesigned their fleets to a more human style mindset when it came to damage control and heavily compartmentalized their vessels.

Back on the ground. The Japanese Shikigami walkers also proved surprisingly effective against Turian vehicles. More so then the IJA's Chi-Ris. This was because as was later learned, Citadel Shield generators were very poor at handling the effects of the long out of date HEAT rounds. Similar to their ineffectiveness against some of the more esoteric tech abilities like freeze bombs, or the impact of melee which has long been known to infuriate shield design companies. Such rounds hadn't seen use in most nations since they had reached space, long before shields became commonplace in their armed forces. Well placed rounds by the 120mm HEAT grenade launchers equipped on the Shikigami walkers could detonate the missile racks on the Hepestis, or destabilize the engine on the Veletis. In turn though the Shikigami walkers proved to be vulnerable to heavier Turian infantry weapons like the Scorpio Heavy Machinegun.