Relay 314 War

First Contact did not go smoothly.

The surviving ship from the relay activation expedition returned with scans of the alien - the Turian warships involved. Correctly deducing that the fleet was only a patrol squadron that happenned to be in the right place at the right time, Alliance Command came to the conclusion that their naval forces were woefully insufficient for dealing with a hostile alien race, and the same day, unlimited spending was authorised.

Shipyards went into overdrive. Weapons systems were lifted from Earth into orbit, new mass-effect colony ships and passenger liners hastily outfitted with armour and kinetic barriers, their interiors stripped and replaced with hangars. Fighters launched from spaceports by the thousands, everything from the newest prototypes to century-old reserve craft dragged from their boneyards. Mining vessels were recalled and mounted with everything from prototype mass accellerators to railguns and nuclear missile launchers.

When the Turian fleet came out of the relay at Shanxi, they were met by every warship the Systems Alliance had before first contact - by Citadel standards, fifteen frigates and two light cruisers. These were the ageing battleships Phobos and Deimos, constructed in the 2130s to protect Martian interests in the face of cislunar expansion, and refitted with mass effect drives only few scant years ago.

The First Battle of Shanxi left twenty hulks venting fuel and atmo, human and turian both, drifting in space near the system's mass relay.

The battered remnants of the First Fleet retreated to Arcturus to repair under the massive guns of the station, while the ships of Second Fleet were hurriedly brought to battle readiness. That thirty-seven days were enough to transform a civilian flotilla into a jury-rigged battlefleet capable of smashing a Turian occupation fleet is a testament to the dedication of all those who worked through that month.

The Second Battle of Shanxi left the shattered remains of hundreds of aerospace fighters in the planet's orbitals.

The Second Fleet kept station near the relay while defense stations were towed into place and engineers raced to salvage the Turian wrecks and reverse-engineer their technology. Two scout squadrons vanished without a trace later, the Hierarchy sent a full battlefleet.

Having secured the 314 relay, the Turian fleet confidently came out of transit only to be met with weapons fire from  hundreds of satellites and the reorganised Home Fleet. Fifty-three transports refitted specifically to counter observed Turian tactics and vessels: Just enough armour to withstand GARDIAN fire, no direct-fire weapons, high speed, kinetic barriers, and missile launchers. A great many missile launchers.

Lacking cruisers and dreadnoughts, and fighters having suffered high casaulties at Second Shanxi, the Home Fleet was armed with a stopgap solution: Nuclear lances. Short-ranged but powerful weapons, Earth's old strategic reserves were emptied to refit into lance missiles. Deployed en masse at short range, enough survived the turian GARDIAN fire long enough to reach effective range and initiate. The Turian fleet was plunged into disarray as its dreadnought and cruisers were impaled by brilliant spears of nuclear flame, and the surviving frigates rapidly routed under heavy missile bombardment.

Between the first shot fired in anger that day, and the withdrawal of the last of the surviving frigates through the relay, scarcely five minutes had gone by.

It would be the last battle of the war, for the Hierarchy could not hide the loss of a dreadnought and five cruisers. The Asari stepped in with an olive branch, and the Alliance was only too happy to accept the favourable ceasefire terms they offered.

Alliance military archives of the period remain highly classified.