The only thing in this I believe myself to own in this is the exact wording and any new characters I make up, like with most fanfictions. If you recognise any of it as yours, it almost certainly is unless you're claiming all of it, because I sure as hell remember coming up with this on my own.

Now go and read.

Arcturus station

"Admiral, I believe the question was, could, they, know, where we, came from?"

"… Almost certainly."

The room held it's hush for a while.

"So, almost certainly have an alien fleet approaching to investigate, with weapons that punch through our armor with great ease?"

"It's believed that with the aliens preference for kinetics and their likely higher understanding of mass effect that their weapons are able to inflict catastrophic damage on our ships easily, as our armor is designed to defuse heat and ablate easily, rather than act as shock absorbers. If we had more powerful kinetic barriers, we could consider this acceptable, but we've only considered them necessary for deflecting small debree. However using our lasers as a point defence system, a small ship was able to withstand a fleet's furry for a minute."

"We could cut the tour of the Hornet's Nest short, have the carrier use it's fighters to create a defensive screen while our other ships fire on the aliens. Did we get a good hull scan of any of the ships?"

"The scanners of the Memoria weren't set for such, however looking at it's hyper wave scanner readouts we believe we've figured out how to target some potentially more important areas of their ships, assuming they hold to similar layouts."

"What of the Remnant?"

"We don't need a panic just now, and can you imagine the message they'll receive if we tell them we can't protect our boarders?"

"We should alert them surely?"

"Yes, that would be best. Say we've had an unconfirmed Ethereal sighting in the next system over, they'll know to be ready but should understand we're just letting them know."

"And when they ask why it's unconfirmed?"

"The ship was leaving the system shortly after we arrived, so we didn't have any detailed scans. Same as we're telling our people to account for our defence status shift."

-XXXX-

TSF True Justice

"These… Pirates have gone insane. Not only are they threatening to expose us the Rachni's older brother, they thought it'd be fun to nuke Hierarchy vessels to prevent capture. I want them found and burnt out, if you can find their leadership, bring them to me, but not before you've sufficiently cowed them. They've already broken the conventions, that is all."

The memory almost made Desolas smile despite the pirates actions. It wasn't often he was given free reign. It's a good thing that the conventions were being broken, otherwise he'd likely have to deal with an Asari forced political crusade once all was likely to have been said and done.

He paused as he heard the fleet com activate.

"The Watcher, The Shieldhand, both destroyed with all hands in ambush. The Steel Talon, badly damaged and many of the crew severely injured. 500 of your brothers and sisters, dead in an instant. Pirates opening primary mass relays and using unknown secondary relays. That is all."

The hanger bay timer read one minute until they'd begin passing through the relay, and his fellow soldiers went through last minute weapon checks with quiet precision… The speech may not have sounded like much, but almost every Turian in the fleet was ready to bring death upon pirate scum.

-XXXX-

Shanxi Fleet Command

"SFC this is ASV Religion's Decree, there's no scheduled transits for the next half hour correct?"

"ASV Religions Decree this is the SFC, you are correct, all ships are to achieve combat readiness. Signalling now."

The Sigh then signalled the appropriate general and set up the Holographic display.

"They're here! Confirmi- Adam and Eve…"

The Sigh quickly tuned out the curses sent it's way by a great number of awed captains.

The alien fleet quickly finished arriving… It's numbers reached nearly half the Alliance's combined fleet.

It was to this that Shanxi's general to begin giving commands before he could even see what was going on.

"Cerberus support vessels are to rabbit! Let Earth and the Remnant know what is going on, all ships are to pull back over Shanxi, you have permission to give Sighs weapons control. I repeat, give weapons control to your Sighs!"

There were two generals on Shanxi who worked 12 hour shifts. Planetary defensive fleets were controlled by these generals, rather than shipboard admirals, which were not present in defence fleets, as they received a better picture through the use of dedicated Sighs and the combined sensor readouts of all sensor boys and ships.

General Randora Adenja struggled to contain his bodily functions once he saw the holographic display. Ships weren't falling anywhere near the speed he'd expect but they were quickly losing ground and numbers.

"ASV Religions decree and the ASV Catholic Saint have successfully fled. Carrier bouys aren't being targeted, it's believed their stealth coatings are preventing detection. The alien vessels are not using hyper wave for communication and likely can't pick them up through that either."

"Weapons effectiveness?" Adenja's voice was rather quiet and meek compared to the Sigh's dispassionate tone.

"High. Excluding certain areas the alien's vessel's armour is not built for heat dispersion. Lasers are occasionally passing through rounds to strike alien vessels, some have already retreated. Aliens also made use of missiles, but after multiple detonations shortly after launch causing the loss of vessels they stopped. It is believed the aliens main defence was kinetic barriers combined with anti-kinetic armour. However, being forced to use weapons for defence and being so outnumbered means that our fleet is losing decisively."

"Inform all ships to retreat at full speed to Shanxi, using FTL as needed. Then get on the line to the Remnant, send them everything we have on the aliens, message 'Your little brother's being bullied at school.'"

"Please provide your confirmation code."

"Ah…. Fuck…. Dammit!"

"Thankyou, message sent."

"Oh… I forgot I changed it to that."

"Fleet elements are beginning to arrive over Shanxi."

"Good. Get someone to start yelling at the aliens with a first contact package… It may be our only hope at this point."

The general sighed as he turned to examine the hologram, and began dictating changes to remaining the fleet's deployment.

-XXXX-

The battle over the pirates claimed planet was rather quick. At least, that's what Desolas would be thinking, if he and a great number of the crew hadn't already come to the conclusion that this was another species first contact, judging by the hails that got filtered down to him as general, when attention was paid to them, turned out to be gibberish, and the large number of ships.

Of course, the aliens were living on a desolate planet, so this was either a recent colony, or one of the more ruined worlds nearby was their home world. As expected, crews were expressing low levels of discontent… That'd become ingrown plate if command didn't tend to it shortly, and he wasn't authorised for that...

"All hands this is Commander Narsus, some of you may have figured out this is likely a first contact situation. Be aware that this situation was already planned for, as has been said by the admiral in his address to us, if nothing else these aliens must be subjugated for our combined safety. Updated orders have been forwarded where relevant. Ground crews are to be ready for deployment; you should be disembarking within the next 10 minutes."

Desolas' plates barely twitched, he knew the new orders, he basically wrote them... This would likely get messy… But at least the few Asari mercenaries brought aboard would earn their pay.

Then the ship shook… Likely the ship bombarding a native ground-space missile battery.

-XXXX-

"General! Wake up!"

Smooth metal hands shook General Williams awake.

"General I know you're tired but you need to wake up now. The main command hub has been destroyed by orbital bombardment and we need to get you to the Cerberus base now, we're currently organising the defe-"

"I get it, let me get dressed! You can brief me on the ride over."

-XXXX-

The Remnant rapid reaction force arrived to a grim picture.

Two BiteGeists with their defending frigate escorts [4 each] and 5 cruisers had to disrupt an invasion, while the slow reaction fleet elements arrived…

The stealth command vessel was unhappy for a rather good reason, and it wasn't just the sheer numbers disadvantage.

And they arrived inside an alien fleet.

Bytegeists communed with bytegeists and ships had their control taken to them, the 4 man command group, all psychicly linked and mind tapped to communicate with the ByteGeist Rios' Mask.

Immediately large numbers of fighters were psi-warped out of the Bitegeists, forming a large screen that would protect the inside vessels from counter-fire, lasers streaked out in all directions targeting eezo cores and engines just because they had the greatest heat generation. Within seconds the fleet blockading the Relay had begun firing but with Remnant vessels so over armed with weaker lasers, and being present in their formation was hesitation to fire, and when shots got through, the ships began warping before impact.

And that was before ship-wide mind controls began occurring as the BiteGeists, through the will of artificial-psionics bays over a hundred meters long, began dominating frigates. While psionics had horrible range over space normally, that wasn't a problem, quarters were close and the sheer power of thousands upon thousands of sectoid minds each Gollop enhanced allowed frigates to be dominated, and they proceeded to ram enemy vessels or protect Remnant vessels with their hulls and shields.

Shots made contact however, and though tough Firaxite alloy hulls weren't made for the stresses, and there was no room for retreat except by Turian forces. In exchange for routing the blockade fleet, only one cruiser and two frigates remained, while the BiteGeist Ship-wide Malevolence was critically damaged, and had to retreat after the remaining Turian forces had left…

Humanity then had a front row seat to watch the planetary bombardment of Shanxi, not a single one knowing the bombardment was only of defensive placements continuing to fire on the fleet overhead.

Turian forces were enraged by the routing of the defence fleet by so few, but reduced their bombardment as they prepared to face what they believed were the native's alien allies, to drive them away from the relay with their sheer volume of firepower.

However, in a sacrificial play approved by all crew members, instead of keeping the Relay clear, the quick reaction fleet charged, using all weapons to protect the remaining BiteGeist, Legion of One, they even used their own hulls when it couldn't psi-warp past volleys of fire.

Finally, though badly damaged, the BiteGeist got close enough to launch it's contingent of X-Com operatives and ground mechs, before being rendered inoperable. The ground contingent was 85% deployed, with the deployed suffering 30% casualties in the process of reaching the surface.

-XXXX-

"This is 192, I've pinned a unit of Turians. I can't drive them out of cover without risk of becoming inactive, requesting assistance."

The CARVR continued firing pulses from it's VAHL, currently wide beams the caused minimal damage to cover, but would near-kill anyone even remotely out of it.

"192 this is Commisar Ripley, be there in a minute, I am alone so be ready to use the distraction."

"I'm ready for anything given .002 seconds."

"Oh, well then I should be fine leaving you then."

"Do not tempt me to end you."

Seconds ticked by, someone tried to use a rocket launcher and lost their cover as 192 shot the missile in transit… 5 kills were scored with that shot.

"Entering cloaked, watch for the plasma."

It was learned not long into the invasion that Plasma made a terrible weapon against kinetic barriers. Plasma, already being low mass was made laughably so, causing the slight spin of the mass effect field used by the aliens kinetic barrier to spray plasma wildly, making plasma weaponry useless in close quarters…

Of course, a near miss or a hit would almost certainly kill, and at medium range against clustered targets… It worked almost as well as a jellied-elerrium flamethrower on tight nozzle setting against a cluster of Mutons.

And of course, someone had managed to use one of those an alien infantry group, the pilot actually laughed at how the flames, being merely low temperature plasma [albeit, much higher tempreture than usual due to the jellied elerium] almost propagated and spread like an ultra-high explosive plasma grenade…

No one had managed to catch a video of the later, the explosion was too fast to properly see the effects, but it did result in a large amount of molten mess, as the kinetic barriers held long enough to prevent the force of the explosion spreading it everywhere before frying due to intense heat, somewhere a picture was floating about of a 3 by 2 rectangle of puddles left by the aliens after one such explosion, having originated from a cooked grenade which left them no time to react before it exploded.

As 192's wait was interrupted by a plasma grenade flying into the tightest alien cluster, followed by plasma bolts spraying everywhere with a refire rate suggesting a heavy riffle.

The alien unit was killed within 3 seconds, and most of that was cause by the plasma riffles refire rate being so low.

-XXXX-

General Desolas was more than a little furious… The natives not only had infantry-scale high-power energy weapons, but their robots were near indestructible unless properly equipped.

The allies appeared to be some federation of aliens and natives using heavy amounts of robots, likely with this being some colony world. And here's where the great deal of trouble came in.

Tanks were rendered useless outside of extreme distance artillery shelling.

Aircraft were rendered useless outside of extreme distance bombing runs.

And infantry had to pack Drill or AP ammunition just to have an effect on all but the colonies own soldiers… And just about everything they had except the less armoured colonial soldiers, or the less augmented, could cloak!

It was maddening, and now forced him to resort to orbital bombardment in most areas…

At least a few good shots with a riffle with drill rounds could destroy their robots, they had eezo cores that were barely shielded, and the robots themselves lacked kinetic barriers despite their basic biotics… However, a great many soldiers would be suffering from eezo poisoning once all was said and done.

It was unwise to even get him started on the purple energy that would send soldiers into a panic [Which fortunately just made most soldiers just dig in and fight harder.], or seemingly control them, or cause hallucinations. No one had any defence other than shooting the things that were generating the energy, which was always quite thankfully obvious…

"General Desolas, this is Black Talon Cabal."

"Tell me you have good news."

"The robots all fall to a single warp. While whatever they use for their armour is rather hard and there's no immediate effect, within seconds the robots deactivate, apparently their Eeezo cores are also their power generators. Their casing often breaks after a second warp, which will allow recovery of their cores."

"That's good to know, I'll be dispers-"

"We also have a prisoner, one of the mechanically augmented colonial natives, his body is rather ruined but apparently unnecessary for survival, like expected. How soon can you get a dropship out?"

"Prepare to hold for two minutes, you're also getting some gunships. Your cabal has my endless gratitude."

"Understood. We await extraction."

The augmented native resisted melding, but after several hours he broke.

29 hours into the invasion, and we were working on basic translation software.

Hour 32, after tremendous bombardment, we managed to force the surrender of the native forces. There were none of the 'X-Com' battle suited forces among those surrendering, nor where there any AIs, and they couldn't be found, though potentially surviving robots were placed in buildings en-mass, only for the area to be cleared for orbital bombardment to dispose of them.

-XXXX-

Shanxi Invasion, 39 Hours in.

The delayed reaction fleet Remnant and 3/8ths of the remaining Alliance fleets prepared to pass through their respective relays to arrive in system, with fleet deployments carefully controlled to ensure they'd arrive in system at near identical times, and arriving as one fleet.

The remaining forces would gather on the same sides the others were leaving, and begin mine laying operations, preparing in case of failure.

This time, the combined fleets of the A-R Alliance soundly crushed the fleet orbiting Shanxi, as the sheer volume of lasers available destroyed any chance of Turian attack, and there were more than enough spare to begin blasting holes in Turian vessels, or using wide-spread lasers to roast the occupants…

Or use massed psionics to capture a frigate, with the TSF Twin-Talon being boarded after being co-opted, with psionics being used to rip what knowledge they could from Turian minds… X-Com and Cerberus scientists had a field day with the living specimens.

With no means to demand surrender, and no particular desire to or to accept surrender from those few who had access to translators, Turians planet-side where wiped out to the last. X-Com forces in particular enjoyed their victory, taking a number of KB generators for protecting their mechs and certain higher end robots from being destroyed with as much ease as they were.

This is not to say there weren't escapes, several Turian vessels escaped into FTL and then ran the meagre blockade left by the relay, escaping to Turian space, however with no time to form a ground evacuation, limited study material was brought back.

However, armed with the knowledge within the Citadel Codex, they knew the Turians would be back, likely looking for blood, or worse, a new 'client' race. In order to try and gain assistance, the ASV Religion's Decree's stealth paste was given additional coating, and sent towards the Citadel.

And for once, a limited and secret technological exchange began happening. Of course, it being secret meant that a technological exchange had absolutely nothing to do with the Remnant hurriedly refitting all their forces with kinetic barriers, or Alliance forces fielding Firaxite alloy armour for it's special forces troops what so ever.

Publicly, looting and scientific breakthroughs caused by said looting were the given reason, and no one will catch any official saying otherwise, despite how public the secret is, or how the Remnant would have surely viewed looting the corpses of it's soldiers.

General Williams was publicly court marshalled and sentenced to death by firing squad for having surrendered, with his royal status stripped from him and his family, much to the outcry of Remnant forces and the aborted planning of a rescue operation.

-XXXX-

The second invasion of Shanxi occurred 6 days after the first, being what could quickly be gathered of several fleets and a number of mercenaries hired in great secret. This invasion more than matched the remaining numbers of the A-R Alliance fleets, and despite minefields and laser saturation, the fleets defending Shanxi quickly fell, and it was only after all the nobles had been executed that a surrender was wrung from the planet.

Then, leaving only a small portion of their forces, the Turians targeted the Remnant, due to it's smaller size, and higher potential threat given AIs.

By this time, the ByteGeists were fully able to leverage their electronic warfare abilities, as the Turian programming architecture was no longer unfamiliar, and had been mastered through mind taps to aquire knowledge of the systems, and practice over Shanxi.

The Turian fleet suffered heavy casualties, but ultimately the relay was captured and the System secured, though no surrender was offered, with all settlements needing to be bombed to dust, only for heavily secured and carefully bunkers to safely conceal some of the population.

The final relay however had been shut down, and been surrounded by the most devastating mine field possible.

Turian scout forces didn't survive long enough to send back reports, and the Turians wisely left the relay alone, and believing the system to be empty, left, leaving only scavengers to loot what technologies they could, unknowing that robots and X-com operated MECs had been left on the surface carefully hidden.

The colony of Aiur however could call home and relay information, but the Turians didn't know that. They also didn't know there were any defences.

Days of careful and masterful guerrilla warfare cleansed the surface of Aiur of Turians whenever they deployed, with signal jamming becoming known as a death sentence, and survival of X-Com raids considered a miracle of the highest order. Eventually, the Turians 'settled' for quarantining the planet of Aiur, while they planned their attack on the Alliance.

The Turians, expecting the a minefield on par with the one protected the relay to Renebus, came up with quite the simple plan for making a hole so their fleets could enter Alliance territory.

It involved high yield nuclear weapons being sent through the relay first, before detonating on a timer. After a large volley, scout ships would arrive and destroy the mines, which they could now locate due to damage to their stealth covering.

Then the Turian fleet arrived, offering quarter in exchange for surrender. Alliance fleets however fought their hardest, each step of the way to Earth, falling back only for repairs and to defend the next relay, and with only 2 stops on the way to Earth, they were sorely lacking in time, however everything they could do to buy time they did, lives being spent to buy time for the ASV Religions Decree to reach the Citadel and convince someone, anyone, to step in and save them from becoming slaves or being wiped out.

In the end, the third contact war lasted 3 weeks, with the end being suspected a day before the return of the ASV Religion's Decree with Turian forces halting in their assaults, and the Sol system remaining un-breached.

As hoped, the next day heralded the arrival of the ASV Religion's Decree, and the Asari fleets.

AN:

And there ladies and gentlemen, is the short version of the Third Contact War/Relay 314 incident, to be expanded on later.

Due to the nature of the chapter, there's less sub-titles. Next chapter will be the short version of how humanity comes out of the negotiations following the 3rd contact war... I think you'll like how the Remnant manages to secure it's independence. After that chapter I'll probably do a chapter as to humanities recovery, before introducing major players of ME 1, such as who Shepard is now, and how the Remnant/X-Com is going to have a presence.

And finally, someone falsely caught the name Kane Rios as Kane Krios, and thought that everyone's favourite Drell Assassin [Unless you prefer his son, in which case why?] had somehow gone back through time and infiltrated X-Com, or I was using the name in a way that would cause confusion down the line.

I can confirm that isn't the case, and that Rios is someone important, being the descendent of Rios from Army of TWO, which has been added to the crossover list [And I'm ashamed for having forgotten it, as it's existence had been planned from day 1, when this was just a nagging Muse I was mostly ignoring.].