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(Extract taken from Codex, English edition, revised version accurate as of 2185 CE, Alliance Standard Calendar)

Codex Entry- Relay 314 Incident

The Relay 314 Incident, referred to by most humans as the Shanxi Massacre, marked Humanity's first contact with a Council-aligned species, the Turians. At the time of the incident (*2157 CE, Alliance Standard Calendar), Earth's International Space Exploration Agency (ISEA) allowed for registered survey vessels to activate any dormant Mass Relays that were discovered. The practice of of activating dormant Mass Relays has been, and still is illegal in Council space since the Rachni Wars, which began approximately in the year 1 CE, as defined by the Alliance Standard Calendar.

The Relay 314 Incident began with a Turian patrol fleet entering the local star system of Relay 314, where they discovered several Human ships attempting to activate the Mass Relay. These ships were unarmed research and exploration vessels owned by the Magellan Foundation, a non-governmental volunteer exploration group registered with the ISEA. The warships of the Turian patrol fleet were designed with partial stealth in mind, and their approach was not detected by the Human ships. Without attempting to communicate with the Human vessels, the Turian fleet opened fire, destroying all but one of the Human ships. The surviving Human ship, the RV Aldrin fled to the nearby colony of Shanxi, where a warning was sent onward to Earth, unbeknownst to the Turians.

The Occupation of Shanxi

The Turian fleet, having called for reinforcements, followed the Aldrin to Shanxi, where they occupied the planet in a manner of hours. At the time, the Human Systems Alliance was little more than an interplanetary police service, enforcing the laws established by the member nations of Earth's United Nations Security Council (In contrast with its modern incarnation as a united Pan-Human governmental and representative body). As such, the forces that the Systems Alliance had deployed on Shanxi were incapable of mounting any meaningful resistance against the Turian fleet, which had already ensured both orbital and aerial dominance. Not recognizing a distinction between the colony's armed forces and its civilians, the Turians indiscriminately destroyed much of Shanxi's infrastructure with orbital strikes. Targets included power plants, communications centers, and media hubs.

Conditions on the ground

Without power, water treatment facilities and hydroponic farms ground to a halt. Though the Turians attempted to import rations of both food and water for Shanxi's populace, the difficulties involved with the procurement of Levo-amino based food resulted in mass starvation on Shanxi. The mood among Shanxi's civilians was one of fear, desperation, and anger.

The Shanxi Massacre

Events on the ground finally came to a climax 57 days into the occupation, when several young Humans at a crowded rations-distributions center set up in a major city by the occupying Turians were shot by Turian security personnel while attempting to steal extra rations. The crowd of hundreds, who had gathered to collect their rations, were outraged by the shooting of the youths, who were unarmed. This manifested first as shouting and throwing small objects at the Turian personnel, but quickly developed into a violent riot as the Turians attempted to retreat in an armored ground vehicle, taking the remaining rations with them. The riot spread quickly through the city, with Turian ground forces being overrun by sheer force of numbers, as roughly 2500 Turian soldiers attempted to pacify or neutralize nearly 40 000 rioting Humans. Eventually, General Desolas Arterius, the commanding officer of the Turian occupation force, ordered that the entire city be bombed, with Turian soldiers instructed to take shelter in their ground vehicles. In total, 629 Turian Soldiers were killed, while over 31 000 Humans were killed.

Earth's counteroffensive

Finally, 73 days after the initial conflict at Relay 314 and after 72 days of Shanxi's occupation, Earth launched a counteroffensive in the form of the First International Fleet. Though Earth's most powerful nations had long possessed their own fleets of military spacecraft, they were invariably designed solely as a means of maintaining orbital superiority and protecting key installations such as space stations from attacks by local insurgents using small, private spacecraft in ramming attacks. As such, the First International Fleet consisted mostly of government-owned FTL-capable transport spacecraft that had undergone emergency weaponization modifications. Lacking shields, and armed only with weak point-defense lasers and short ranged missiles, these ships were inferior to the Turian warships in every measure save two: Cost and numbers.

Each of these ships, measuring anywhere between 100 to 300 meters in length and 30 to 100 meters in height and width, consisted of an armored, airtight box covered in RCS thrusters and weapon hardpoints with a single hybrid Fusion Rocket/Mass Effect core mounted onto the back. Tens of thousands of similar ships had been used to ferry goods and travelers between Earth, Luna and Mars for decades prior to Humanity's discovery of the Prothean ruins on Mars. Converting these cargo ships into rudimentary warships was simple compared to the effort required to make them FTL-capable in the first place.

In total, the First International Fleet consisted of 7500 of these improvised warships. The Turian fleet over Shanxi consisted of only 432 warships.

Next Page- The Battle for Shanxi

Author's note: Sorry for the long delay, but rest assured, this fic is not dead. If it dies, you will all be notified of its death. For now, let's just say it's resting. I admit, I'm having trouble writing the next chapter in an entertaining manner, especially the fight sequence. So for now, I'm being more informative and fleshing out the more AU elements of my story. The next proper story chapter could be a few weeks, leave a review to let me know what you though of this and if you'd like to see more infodump chapters like it. Some people like that kind of thing, apparently.