Despite the fact that I broke my promise to not do excessive research for this story, I was unable to find very many names for the veterans of the First Contact War, and I couldn't figure out who did what for the names I could find, so I'm making it up.
Because we've all read the story of the Relay 314 Incident a million times, I'm not going to write it in detail. I will, however, provide a summary of the events with the specifics and changes for this story.
A Coalition science vessel, accompanied by three frigates, a cruiser, and a dozen fighters, went to study the alien artifact located in the Shanxi system. During the investigation, one of the scientists accidentally activated the artifact. A turian patrol that had been in the area looking for a top secret prototype ship that had crash-landed, spotted this and opened fire on the science vessel, which was destroyed with all hands. The protection detail, led by Captain Anderson of the CSNS cruiser Fearless, retaliated. The turian Mass Accelerator rounds were largely ineffective against the armor of the Coalition Space Navy Ships, and the AIs in charge of the ships' point defense and Electronic Warfare systems were able to take down or distract most of the disruptor torpedoes. Despite the technological advantages of the CSN ships, the turian advantage in numbers allowed them to destroy all three of the frigates and severely damage the Fearless. The Fearless was forced to retreat. Turian forces studied the system and located Shanxi. Believing it to be the homeworld of their enemy forces, the turians withdrew to Palaven to inform their superiors. The Coalition fleet retrieved as much information as possible from the enemy databanks and withdrew as well. Over the next few days, the Coalition AIs managed to learn much of the information stored in the enemy computers, and form a rough translation program for Turian and Asari, and a less passable one for Salarian and Quarian.
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"Do you mind explaining exactly how you managed to lose a cruiser and five frigates in a simple police action against a race of primitives that doesn't even have kinetic barriers? Or even Element Zero, for that matter?" Primarch Fedorian asked.
Admiral Therus Kerussan sighed, and looked at his superior.
"It seems that they use some form of primitive magnetic acceleration for their weapons, rather than Mass Accelerators. The projectiles that their weapons fire are slow enough and large enough that our kinetic barriers don't stop them. Once they impact our ships, their projectiles are so massive that they simply tear right through them. As for their lack of kinetic barriers, it's irrelevant. Our Mass Accelerator slugs are designed to flatten and spread on impact in order to maximize the energy transfer. However, since the primitives lack shields, their ships are far more heavily armored than ours are. The slugs simply flatten themselves on the primitives' armor. The only weapon we have that does damage to them is disruptor torpedoes, and their point defense is extraordinarily effective, and for some reason, a great deal of our missiles miss entirely. We were only able to damage them by flooding them with torpedoes."
The Primarch thought about this for a few minutes, then nodded. "Very +well. These primitives are clearly dangerous. Any race foolish enough to activate a Mass Relay without knowing what's on the other side must be subjugated for the safety of the galaxy. You are to take the First and Third Fleets and subdue these creatures. Once they have been suitably cowed, we will make them into a client race."
"I understand," Admiral Kerussan responded.
"Good. You are dismissed." The Primarch said.
Kerussan saluted, then left the audience chamber to prepare for the invasion.
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Admiral Frank Cortez looked at the hologrid showing his forces and swore under his breath. He had one carrier, one dreadnought, fifteen cruisers, and forty frigates with which to protect one of the most populated colonies in Coalition space. Those damn politicians had decided that Earth, Terra Nova, and Eden Prime were higher priorities, and so had only left a picket defense at Shanxi. Now they might suffer for that decision.. The Coalition Council of Leaders had decided that the aliens were likely to launch an attack on Shanxi. Because of that, it was Cortez's job to defend the colony until reinforcements arrived. Unfortunately, the nearest fleet was three weeks travel away from Shanxi, which meant that Cortez was on his own.
"Contact!" yelled the sensors officer of the CSNS Indestructible, Cortez's flagship (a dreadnought). "Alien ships have appeared at the artifact! A hundred ships and counting!"
Cortez watched as ship after ship poured into the system.
This,he thought, is not good.
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"Enemy sighted, sir." Phinintus Lithius, Admiral Kerussan's tactical officer, said. "I'm counting forty cruisers, fifteen ships larger than those, and... my god... one ship four kilometers long, and one ship about three kilometers long. The smaller one appears to be a support ship, by its position."
"What kind of species builds a support ship three kilometers long?" the com officer asked.
"I don't know," the admiral responded, "but they clearly put all of their resources into making them, because they don't have much else. The larger ship is to be designated Bogey one, and the smaller ship is Bogey Two. Bogey one will be our first target. It's clearly the primitives' most important and most powerful ship. I want all four of our dreadnoughts and their screens to focus on taking that ship out as quickly as possible. Other ships are to engage at will, but to maintain formation. Once we've taken out bogey one, they shouldn't be able to put up much of a fight."
Kerussan waited as his ships continued to enter the system, when suddenly...
"Sir, they're hailing us," called the com officer.
"Put them on the main display. Let's find out what these primitives look like."
"Onscreen," said the com officer, turning on the main display.
An pink alien, bearing a striking resemblance to what the admiral imagined a male asari would look like if it had fur on its chin, appeared on the screen.
"Unknown fleet," the alien said, and Admiral Kerussan was surprised to hear that it was speaking in passable Turian, "this is Admiral Frank Cortez of the Coalition Space Navy. You are violating Coalition space, and have already attacked an unarmed research vessel and several military ships. This alone is enough to be considered an act of war. However, if you power down your weapons now, we are willing to negotiate peace."
"Admiral Cortez, your ships were found breaking Council law, and their destructions were a necessary legal recourse. However, since your race is clearly new to space, and unfamiliar with Council regulations, we will give you a chance to offer your unconditional surrender, and allow you to become a client race of the turian Hierarchy. If you do not surrender, your ships will be destroyed and we will begin occupation of your world."
For a moment, the alien didn't respond, and then he scowled and, with five words, the war officially began.
"Nuts." In the background, Kerussan could hear one of the aliens burst into laughter.
"I'm sorry, my translator seems to have malfunctioned. I heard 'nuts.'" Kerussan said. "Is that a negative, or a positive?"
"Nuts is strictly negative," answered the alien. In the background, the laughter intensified, and the screen went blank.
Kerussan stared in shock. He couldn't believe it! The primitive couldn't possibly think that his tiny little fleet could win, and yet he'd refused to surrender!
"Sir! Enemy ships have opened fire! Bogey two is deploying thousands of fighters!"
"Activate the GARDIAN systems," said Kerussan lazily. This is going to be even easier than we expected,the admiral thought to himself. What kind of an idiot devotes that many resources to building fighters of all things? The GARDIANs will tear straight through them, and since the fighters seem to make up half their fleet's firepower, the primitives will be helpless after that.
Then something happened that made Kerussan blink. Each fighter fired three missiles, all at the exact same time.
"Sir," asked Ephan Vakarian, his navigations officer, "how can ships that small fire three missiles at once?"
"They can't. I don't know. It's impossible," stammered the turian admiral.
A few seconds later, he was snapped back into his senses as several frigates and cruisers abruptly exploded.
"Open fire!" He said. "As I said, focus on Bogey one. Activate the GARDIAN systems, and all ships are to release fighters. Fighters are to remain within support range of the GARDIAN systems and engage enemy fighters."
His men obeyed, and after a few moments the hangar doors on each ship opened to reveal a total of 450 fighters and interceptors. The fighters flew from the hangars to form a protective screen around the larger, more important ships, with the interceptors scattered in front of them.
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Cortez watched in amazement as a handful of fighters came out of the enemy ships and spread themselves out in front of the bigger ships. Was that really all they carried? In a fleet this size, they should have had at least a few thousand. Unless... was it possible that they'd never thought to use fighters on a large scale? That certainly seemed to be the case. Whatever the reason, it provided his navy with a major advantage- one that he didn't intend to waste.
"Roger," he asked, "have you managed to hack their communications yet?"
"Yes sir," responded Roger, the ship's AI. "I've also managed to figure out their command structure. This," a specific ship on the hologrid, towards the middle of the enormous fleet, highlighted in red, "is their commander's flagship. These," a large group of ships highlighted in blue, " are other important ships in their command structure."
"Good. Designate the flagship Enemy One, and have fighter squadrons one through ten work on taking out that ship and its screen. Cruiser Squadron One is to help them. The rest of the fleet is to focus on the command structure and their screens."
"Yes sir, transmitting orders now," answered the AI.
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Kerussan swore as yet another group of fighters descended on his ship. How the hell had the primitives managed to figure out his command structure? It shouldn't have been possible!
But clearly they had, because the primitives were focusing on his ship and the other ships carrying high ranking officers, completely ignoring everything else.
"Sir, the engine's down! That last fighter run has us crippled. We're sitting ducks, now," said Lithius.
The fighters were another issue. The whole situation was very confusing. There were fighters everywhere. Far more than it was physically possible for the enemy ships to have launched. Sometimes, they would shoot down one of the fighters, and it would be as if nothing had been there at all. Other times, a fighter would fly straight into their ships, and nothing would happen.
The worst, though, the absolute worst, was whenever they started to take out a ship. As soon as it was obvious that an enemy ship was going to die, it would turn on its engines and ram the nearest turian ship, finishing with a nuclear blast. That had been terrifying, at first- the idea that these people were so committed to a losing battle that they would commit suicide in order to harm their enemy rather than surrender was unbelievable.
Kerussan sighed. This was supposed to be simple, dammit!He thought to himself. We come in, we show our fleet, they put up a token defense, and they surrender once it becomes clear that they can't win. Instead, they're actually putting up a fight! They still won't win, and they know it, but they're inflicting far more damage than they should.
On some level, he respected the primitives for not giving up their world without a fight. Mostly, however, he just found them to be an annoying, upstart little race that didn't know when it was going to lose.
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It took hours, but eventually the primitives did lose. Admiral Kerussan even managed to survive and save nearly half of his command structure by putting the most important ships inside large clusters of cruisers and frigates (the fighters and interceptors all died within minutes, so he couldn't use them.) Overall, the casualties hadn't been too high- there just hadn't been enough "Coalition" ships, but the ships they haddestroyed had all been carrying their most skilled and experienced commanders. Kerussan still didn't know how they'd managed to find out which ships to destroy, but CIC's estimation was that the primitives had somehow found a way to hack the turian communications. Now he could finally deploy the shuttles with the army and marines, and then the fight would be in General Desolas' hands.
"Sir? We're detecting a large number of defense satellites around the planet," Vakarian said. "CIC's estimate is that if we try to land the shuttles without taking out at least a third of the satellites, the landing force will suffer at least seventy percent casualties."
"Spirits damn it!" Kerussan finally lost his temper. Couldn't these primitives just die already?"Fine," he growled. "Move to engage the satellites. Attack from maximum effective range."
"Yes sir. Moving to engage."
It took another hour, and a quarter of his remaining force, but Kerussan's fleet eventually tore a big enough hole in the satellite net that the ground forces could safely land.
"General Desolas," he said, once he'd opened the com. "You are clear to launch your forces. Show these primitives what happens when they pick a fight with the turian Hierarchy."
"Yes sir," the general grinned. "Launching shuttles."
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Interestingly enough, Desolas wasn't the only general who grinned at this command. General Williams of the Coalition Army was listening in to the enemy communications, and he was looking forward to kicking some alien ass. Yes, the turians had managed to destroy the defense fleet, but that had been expected from the moment they saw the size of the enemy fleet, and the loss of life had been low, thanks to the teleportation gates found in each ship. The land battle, however, was expected to go completely differently.
Thanks to the Coalition's teleportation fields, the civilians had all been evacuated as soon as it had been announced that the turians were likely to attack Shanxi, and the remaining time had been spent reinforcing the army and preparing for the attack. Military bases were fortified to hell and back, and cities had been turned into veritable death traps. There were barriers at every corner, mines throughout the roads, waiting to be armed by a signal from HQ, snipers in every building, explosives in every car. And that was if the turians even managed to enter the cities and military bases. Most cities and all military bases had large forests of omicrons around them, and that was possibly the deadliest trap yet. As many omicrons as could be equipped had an octuple -barreled shotgun, with a tiny juvenile who had been trained to aim and load it, or an antipersonnel turret mounted on its back. Male Thesi, mostly members of the Snake Corps*, but also volunteers who had just wanted to fight the enemy, were hiding in the omicrons' branches and in tunnel networks**, ready to attack the turians from above and below (they could only pray that thesus poison was as deadly to turians as it was to nearly every other living thing). Guerilla units of warrior thesi and humans were deployed, and teams of omibadgers*** had been placed in burrows near the edge of the forest.
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Makgureth Oktur grinned and hefted her shotguns as she (technically, she wasn't a she- as a warrior thesus, she was a member of a separate gender, but the English language doesn't have a pronoun for that) watched the turians pour out of the smoking dropship. It was the first one in her area to get past the anti-air turrets and missiles, which meant that she was finally going to get a fight.
As soon as the shuttle had landed, her platoon had been deployed to the edge of the omicron forest to harass the turian troops. She looked at her warriors, and nodded to Hank, the squad's sniper, who was perched on the back of an enormous juvenile omicron some ways away. Hank had spent the past ten minutes watching the turians to figure out which ones were the commanders, and he had his targets all picked out. As soon Hank caught her nod, he began eliminating those targets.
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Lieutenant Octus Korel jumped as the captain's head exploded in the middle of his sentence.
"Sniper! Get down!" someone yelled, and Octus dove for cover as another officer fell. He found himself and three other turians behind a pile of crates, and listened to the sound of gunfire, trying to figure out what to do. The soldier to his left peered around the corner and opened fire for a few seconds before pulling back into shelter.
"I spotted him, sir," the soldier said. "He's sitting on top of one of those weird trees at the edge of the forest, in that general direction," he pointed.
Before Octus could respond, a small, green egg bounced over the crates they were hiding behind. Realizing it was probably a grenade, Octus scooped it up and threw it back over the crate in the direction the soldier had been pointing. There was some yelling, and the shooting stopped for a moment, and then there was a large explosion. Grabbing his assault rifle, Octus stood up and opened fire.
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Makgureth swore as she saw her grenade head back towards them.
"Get down!" She yelled to her squad, taking cover behind the trunk of an adult omicron before the grenade exploded.
"Did anybody get hurt?" she asked the omicron, knowing that his link to the other trees would give him an accurate status report.
"I'm afraid," said his slow, deep, synthetic voice (omicrons couldn't speak naturally, and so relied on electronics to communicate with other species), "that Private Jensen has joined the soil."
Makgureth swore again, and then a third time as she heard enemy fire begin in earnest. Her platoon wasn't meant for sustained combat, they were a harassment team, meant to strike fast and withdraw before the enemy could get their bearings.
"Okay, people, time to fall back," she said into her helmet com. Then, to the omicron, "Give 'em hell, buddy."
"We fully intend to," the tree said, waving it's smaller claw in farewell as she slithered away, followed by the humans, warrior thesi, and juvenile omicrons in her platoon.
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The omicron waited, still as only a tree can be (although Samen, the adult in charge of this group of omicrons, did have to stop some of the more eager juveniles from moving their claws), as the turians entered the forest. Then, at a signal from one of the adults, it let loose with all eight barrels of its shotgun and lashed out with its claws. Its bigger claw grabbed onto a pair of turians and quickly cut them in half, while its smaller one cut through the neck of a third. At the same instant, every other omicron in the forest attacked as well.
"Attack!" the adult bellowed in its deep, synthetic voice. As soon as they heard the command, dozens of thesi jumped from branches and limbs onto the turians, and dozens more came out of the tunnels they had been hiding in. Thesi climbed up the bodies of the turians, coiling around their unprotected necks (can anybody explain why the hell they don't wear helmets?) and slitting their throats with the sharp hooks lining their bodies, or simply biting them and injecting their deadly venom. Omicrons lashed out with their claws, cutting Turians in half, or picking them up and using them as weapons. Whenever an omicron could get a shot without risking harm to a thesus, he would let loose with one or more of the barrels of his shotgun, and a turian would fall.
The turians fought valiantly, but their weapons couldn't harm the tree-like omicrons, and they couldn't shoot the thesi climbing all over them for fear of hitting an ally.
Eventually, these strange new enemies, combined with their inability to effectively combat them, were too much for them to handle, and for the first time in centuries, the turians broke ranks and ran. They ran as fast as they could towards their shuttle. As the edge of the forest came in sight, omicrons sent the signal to the omibadgers to attack. The vicious creatures burst from their burrows, and tore into the turian ranks, body armor deflecting bullets, and claws eviscerating their enemies. All over the planet, omicrons cheered as their brethren harassed the turians all the way to the edge of the forest, while the slow moving thesi fell back into their positions to await the next attack.
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*The Snake Corps is a specialized military unit composed of male thesi. The Snake Corps soldiers are equiped with metal sheaths on their fangs (although they lack a tip so that venom can still be injected), and the hooks on the sides of the thesi's body are coated in metal, strengthening and sharpening them. In addition, many Snake Corps members have light armor on their backs. It's not enough to protect them from a gunshot, but it does a decent job of keeping enemy melee weapons from harming them.
**The thesi and omicrons quickly formed a close bond, and many thesi live in apartment complexes located underneath the omicron forests. These complexes are divided into two sections- one section with large rooms for warriors and echidna (and any human who chooses to live there), and another, smaller section for the males. The latter section also has many tunnels to the surface, allowing the males to visit their arboreal friends without having to go through the main entrance to the complex.
***Omibadgers are creatures native to the omicrons' homeworld. Since the omibadgers posses slight telepathic powers, the omicrons are able to exert some level of control over them through a psychic link. The two species have a symbiotic relationship the omibadgers build burrows under adult omicrons, and the omibadgers help protect the omicrons' seedlings and younger juveniles. Since they are just as vicious as the Earth creatures they resemble, trained omibadger teams are often part of the military, similar to K9 units.