Chapter 2
Shootout at the 314

Twilight was in her quarters with Spike, her “little” brother dragon. He was not little anymore, he was big now, larger than a Muton, and he was just growing into his early teens. Looking over at his gently sleeping form she smiled as memories of the old days came, when she was not a Princess and just a student.

She remembered when she first hatched him, earning her cutie mark and being taken on as Celestia’s personal student.

Then she reminisced that fateful Summer Sun celebration where she met her friends for the first time and redeemed Luna.

Then when Spike ate so much ice cream he got a horrible stomach ache. When he became an indentured servant to AppleJack. And when they went to the Crystal Empire for the first time.

Smiling to herself she realized she was getting lost in her memories once more.

Spike was occasionally billowing some smoke as he was receiving some well earned rest after being up all of last night making sure no pesky reporters snuck into her room to give her a, “Surprise interview”.

After that interruption from composing her report to Princess Celestia, she sent it via an encrypted channel to Earth, where she was currently participating in talks about future colonization, and to hopefully convince the Humans to ease up on Military requirements and participation. They had enough ships to comfortably patrol an area of space twice their size after all, and have a full five Divisions of marines in each colony 24/7.

By the time she sent it, she noticed it was 2:07 PM Lu’an standard. A chirp came from her com-link, Colonel Perry’s voice rolled out. “Princess Twilight. We have arrived at the relay, our support Vessels are already getting to work activating it. We should have it activated in a few hours.”

“Thank you Colonel. I’m coming to the bridge to oversee the process.” Standing up, Twilight stretched her sore limbs not unlike how a cat would, and giving one last look towards Spike she shut the lights off in her room.

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Arriving in the bridge an upbeat tune was playing. One Twilight was unfamiliar with. Raising a questioning eyebrow at Colonel Perry he shrugged, “What? Never heard Colonel Bogey’s March?” Twilight took note of the Human whistling in the background along with the rhythmic sound of marching feet and a full orchestra playing.

‘Hey, better than techno……’ The thought came unbidden as she went to her seat.

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Serius Octanis was on the bridge of his dreadnought Spear of Romultion, having been alerted that they were nearing the inactive relay. In preparation the Hierarchy had sent a scout through the relay to scan. Finding the immediate space outside uninhabited they prepared the fleet and deactivated the relay.

Now reactivating it, the feeling left a bad taste in his mouth. Breaking Citadel law was something he did not want to be made a habit of at all, and he hoped his superiors knew what they were doing.

Instantly his patrol was zapped to the other side of the relay. Gripping the railing tight as his ship was accelerated many times faster than light he closed his eyes.

“All clear sir. No contacts. And the static has gotten noticeably thicker.” His navigation's officer reported like any Turian worth his blood. Letting out his breath naturally he nodded.

“Excellent, send the frigates forward. Flotilla pattern, sensors on max. Time to Relay 314?” Moving his arms behind him, his claws grabbing one another to stop their fidgeting. This was unknown territory. The final frontier.

“Estimated time is three hours in standard patrol drill.” His 2IC reported below. Nodding that was good. His men and woman were tight, no cracks and no signs of nervousness. Good, these were the best of the best of the Turian fleet.

“Then lets begin. All ships, move out to scanning point Alpha…….”

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Twilight Sparkle had found the whole activation process fascinating. The necessity to exit the support ships and move to the relay manually made the process difficult, but it was eased by the use of Cyberdisc technicians interfacing with the relay themselves.

Of course the crew got rapidly bored of the amazing spectacle and nothing was needed to be done other than standard course corrections and keeping an eye on the sensors. So the main viewing screen was instead replaced by some Human comedy called “Freeman’s Mind 2.” All Twilight heard was some annoying hypocrite, who cared only for himself and complained profusely over architecture and spouted some interesting scientific phrases which made her ears twitch.

After several hours the view screen was taken up by one of her captains, a large Dragon named Stuphieus. “Princess Twilight, Cyberdisc teams are almost finished. In a minute the relay should be activated.” Twilight nodded in great satisfaction.

Unbeknownst to her, she had a large excited grin on her face, “Excellent Stuphieus.” The Dragon nodded and cancelled the link. “Call up the Highest Honors and tell them to get ready to go through.”

The communications officer began transmitting via hyper wave. The Manta Ray like stealth ship, painted purple black like night, began to move towards the relay one kilometer in front of the Enterprise.

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“Sir! Static spike from that cruiser! It looks like they’ve activated the relay!” The comms officer shouted. He was a new recruit, fresh from training and it showed.

Captain Ultoria Vitadas was no fresh faced recruit, so his response was more controlled. “Fire a warning shot one kilometer in front of that large cruiser. Let’s get their attention.”

His cruiser shuddered slightly under the strain of firing a 15 kilo shell into the empty space, the gun shaped cruiser leading a wolf pack of frigates who formed a vee behind it.

What happened next was unexpected as his weapons officer’s mandibles twitched in confusion, “Shot has impacted sir….. Expanding debris field one kilometer in front of the unknown cruiser- Sir their frigates are returning fi-”

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The Sefu’s experienced and prepared crew acted fast at the destruction of Highest Honor. Firing with its Fusion lance as soon as it could after the unknown contact fired. The mass effect barriers of the leading cruiser did nothing to stop the light speed beam from gutting the cruiser, its mass effect core imploding spectacularly, sending debris into its wingmates who were stunned at the display of such powerful technology.

“Princess Twilight! Seven contacts have appeared from FTL and fired upon the Highest Honors!” Twilight could see that as the expanding debris field from the once Sabillian controlled ship, as the ship's momentum meant it was still drifting towards the relay as nothing but a dead hulk now. From the magnified camera view she saw a neat hole piercing its center mass, with impossible accuracy it seemed, the ship's fusion cores had been destroyed perfectly, incinerating the ship from inside out, immolating the crew and making it an empty hulk.

‘How could they have known?’ Twilight was left to ponder as her escorts began to return fire immediately. Looking to the X-Com operative for guidance he nodded and stepped forward.

“Princess Twilight Sparkle, I am assuming control of this mission until the threat passes. Do you have any objections?” Twilight shook her head numbly. She felt like she was kicked in the gut, one of her ships gone in an instant.

‘I should have been more prepared! This is all my fault! We should have been prepared for this!’ She thought in a panic as she stepped down from the commander’s pulpit and Colonel Perry began his work. Then she kicked herself, ‘No! I was prepared, we all were. This was just an unfortunate coincidence.’

“All support ships, retrieve any crew outside your vessels and retreat! Jotun, Sefu, keep up that fire, I think they are wondering what happened to their wing lead. Comms, send out a distress, Code X-Ray.” Moving his hand to the intercom button he talked to the entire ship.

“Attention crew of the Enterprise. We are under attack by unknown craft. Chance of X-Rays one hundred percent! All combat teams assemble to your designated marks, PSI offense teams, report to your amps immediately. All civilian crew move to your quarters and wait for the emergency to end. That is all.”

Ending his prepared speech he looked to the weapons officer, “Fire the mass cannon at the farthest ship on the right, and target the ship next to it with our Fusion lance. Gut the fucker you hear me?”

Turning towards the AI pedestal Dr. Vahlen flickered on. “You know what to do ma’am. Scramble their comms and get what you can.” Vahlen smiled her trademark sadistic smile, and disappeared.

Finally it was Twilights turn to be asked something, “Princess Twilight. You are currently the most powerful Psionic here. I know you have been trained creating shields. Can you protect our ships?”

Twilight swallowed. She had been in fights before. On ground, in an atmosphere, and with her friends. But she had been in fights before. Nodding she went to a view screen, with timers and numbers, distances and lines. She already knew what she needed to do, not even noticing the suddenly aggressive noise in the background, made by the ship’s speakers.

Summoning her power, horn lighting up with purple energy, she closed her eyes, then opened them to reveal brilliant white light. Suddenly secondary shield generators activated on all the ships, projecting the psi energy being fed into them by Twilight.

Normally such a feat is accomplished by dozens of psi users, but Twilight was no ordinary psionic, crowned the Princess of Friendship, and before that the Princess of Magic. She was a living near immortal deity. And she would help avenge the Highest Honor, and ensure no more lives were lost on their side in this unprovoked attack.

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Commander Vibiana Orinia was a lifelong soldier, fighting pirates of all species, even participating in mock battles with every citadel species. And she was in a panic. A calm, suppressed panic, but panic all the same as she saw two more of her wing get annihilated by those green beams.

The whole operation seemed to go sour as soon as they dropped out into space and Vitadas fired a warning shot. They must have accidently hit something, but she couldn’t confirm her suspicions as everything on her ship seemed to be failing at once.

Her sensor officer said he was seeing nothing but white static on his screen. Her weapons officer was complaining to the sensors officer about not being able to target the enemy ships. Navigation was currently trying to combat the enemy’s cyber warfare VI with their own ships VI. And her Engineering officer was trying to yell something at her. Her comm officer was saying something about not being able to communicate with the rest of the patrol and all the radio channels were being filled with the SAME SPIRITS DAMNED SONG!

Over the ship’s intercom some song was being played loud enough to make her bridge count as a nightclub, by some unknown band, and somehow in perfect Turian, “Born to raise hell! Born to raise hell! We know how to do it and we do it real well…….” It was almost enough for her to shoot someone to stop the panicking.

Looking out the viewport, ignoring the electrical static from holo screens she saw another one of the wing get destroyed, only because the green beam of death went up like a flare.

“Warning, warning!” It came out with the song, as it was entering some kind of instrumental part, “Ma- ma mass effect core dis- dis- discharge imminent-nent-nent-nent! Enemy C- ceeeee-CWS has accessed all in-internal files.” The VI was now starting to panic and glitch, as the alien’s VI started to corrupt her own irreparably.

This was a disaster. From what she could see, only her ship was left. As she had counted 6 beams of light now. Leaving her ship alone floating dead in space, slowly tearing itself apart without the enemy having to do anything beyond applying more pressure with their accursed VI. Suddenly the music stopped, the VI crashed, and the entire crew went silent as the lights went out.

“This is Princess Twilight Sparkle, representing the Terran Species Alliance. Your people have engaged in an act of war. Surrender now and prepare to be boarded.” The voice came through the speakers in perfect accented Turian, “Refusal to comply will result in death. You have 30 seconds to comply.”

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Twilight was psionically translating the message, using a standard translation matrix while the AI was appending their translation software with all the new languages acquired from the gold mine that was this frigate’s internal data banks.

Waiting for a reply she had convinced Perry to allow her to try and convince the last ship to surrender. It wouldn’t hurt since it was over 50,000 kilometers out and dead in space, its mass effect core prepared to vent all its built up magnetic energy into the ship and fry the Aliens.

The surprise attack had turned to a slaughter for the attackers. Despite the advantage of the element of surprise, the Sefu’s crew had been prepared. It typically took the unaugmented mind of a sentient creature 30 seconds to 3 minutes to regain their wits in a tactical surprise attack. The Zebrican crew had done it in half the minimum time.

As the aliens sent their reply the sensors officer sputtered, “Captain! Over 40 more ships have entered space at least 100,000 kilometers out! One of them is over a kilometer long and leading the fleet with approximately 25 Cruiser equivalents, and 19 frigate equivs’.”

Perry stepped up once more. “Dr Vahlen target ECM against that big bastard! Code named Battle-Cruiser-1! Comms tell those scientists to move their asses and leave as soon as possible, and tell Shanxi that we got a fleet here. Weapons, hit that large one and have the escorts destroy their cruiser Equivs’.”

“Psi teams target enemy leadership. Ship plans are coming on screen now courtesy of Dr. V. Get those captains to either fire on their allies or send them to hell! Incite panic in their comms net. Buy us as much time as you can.”

Twilight could see that most of the support ships had left, only a handful were still gathering up their teams. She redoubled her shields but was worried at her ability to hold against the one kilometer battlecruiser.

“Captain, enemy battlecruiser has launched fighters along with cruisers. I count over 150 targets. Shall we launch fighters as well?” Dr. Vahlen reported, a stray strand of hair over her features representing the AI was under stress, trying to fight off over 25 ships CWS, while trying to disrupt communications and do all the other necessary things an AI must do. Even she was having difficulties.

The Human ships opened up, their Fusion Lances cycled. The Enterprise fired its own at the enemy battlecruiser. This produced a visible disruption in the foes rank, as the ship over 100,000 kilometers away was damaged by the Fusion Lance almost instantly.

Twilight saw Dr. Vahlen automatically note that the ship was suffering loss of atmosphere, structural damage, and several flight hangars were compromised completely and the ship was trying to get farther away.

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Captain Serius Octanis was visibly shocked. Before him lay one of his ships dead in space, and an expanding debris field of what used to be six proud Turian spacecraft. He was about to open a channel to the surviving ship and had ordered fighter launch as soon as possible. That was when he received a barrage of reports from his various officers and the VI, reporting minor system malfunctions.

Activating counter CWS and ordering the same from all his ships made things better, but they were still having trouble.

At this aggressive action and the loss of his forward scouts he assumed the Aliens were hostile and gave the order to attack. As the Turian ships began to do just that, a sickly green beam shot out as fast as light, and speared his own ship, which was a hundred of thousands of kilometers away.

No one had seen such a weapon in action, and as the reports came in of moderate damage being done so suddenly and at the loss of two cruisers, things had went oddly chaotic as a dozen of his own ships just drifted in space doing nothing and the comms net was filled with unsettling screaming and screeching.

Then somehow his worst fears came true.

He was on the bridge, looking out the viewscreen as he saw Palavan burn, thousands of alien ships hung in orbit, bombarding its cities with the sickly green beams.

Turning around to order the attack he saw his crew dead, in various states of dismemberment and others burned black. And their killers were of various alien species, all gleaming with awesome armor, with green glowing weapons.

He blacked out, and upon waking he was on the Iron plateau overlooking Palavan’s capital, Cipritine. Looking down a desperate street battle was being fought, the aliens scything down the Turians like grain, running in pure panic ignoring their training of setting ambushes, traps and-

‘No! Thats not right! Turians, under no circumstances have failed such a basic thing as falling back orderly, even engaged in hand to hand against Krogan!’ He snapped out of it.

He was restrained by two of his officers and one of the MPs. He let go of what was in his hands and saw the blood on the weapons officer’s bulkhead.

He could hear the reports coming from the intra-net, the captains of those dozen ships had all gone berserk, ordering their ships to fire on allies, shooting their bridge crew when they refused, and some of them falling to the ground gibbering wrecks crying like newborns.

“Wha- what happened?” He stuttered, tears falling from his irritated eyes eyes, mandibles twitching in confusion and despair.

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What had happened was chaos. The Terran Alliance ships bought themselves a minute of confusion, allowing the Enterprise to hurt the Dreadnought further, damaging its secondary cannons, and melting its forward prow so it looked like a mutilated bird of prey.

In those 60 seconds a vicious dog fight played out between the opposing fighters. The vastly superior Human ships broke off and pulled the Turians into high stakes maneuvers and devastating engagements near their own frigates and cruisers, using the enemy’s own allies as a shield.

But only being ten ships against over 15 times their number they were vastly outgunned, but they still inflicted horrific damage against the enemy fighters, destroying one frigate and inflicting wounding shots against half a dozen more ships. But even they were unable to dodge the dozens of simultaneous attacks from the hundred plus fighters and the few GARDIAN shots that received a lock.

For the Sefu and Jotun, they dodged dozens of shots at them, and took a fair share as well, their mass effect barriers and psi shields taking the brunt of the damage from the enemy force. They returned the shots toe to toe, each Fusion lance beam crippling a cruiser or outright destroying a frigate. But being only two ships, fired a grand total of four shots, crippling the Turian cruisers Sword in the Sky, Hierarchy's Finest, and Lucky Metal, while also destroying the Frigate Belltus.

The Enterprise’s mass accelerator cannons did their best to keep the frigates back and physically shielded the few vulnerable support ships left, taking over twenty impacts from the Turian fleet with Psi shields barely able to hold under the deluge. Twilight Sparkle, the venerable Princess given multiple awards from Human and Equis scholars, powerful psionic, leader of the Shanxi expedition, was nearly unconscious with the strain of trying to hold back so many shots.

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Orinia looked on with undisguised relief. Reinforcements had come just in time to save them. But even she was surprised by what her view screen was reporting. Her VI was broken, destroyed by an aggressive computer virus, and her Engineering officer told her that it would take a full overhaul just to fix the ship’s mass effect core. But comms had returned and so had sensors.

Her ship may be dead in space but they held valuable intelligence, although admittedly limited, about enemy leadership and capabilities. And on what happened.

Unfortunately the reports from the fleet were disturbing. Half the channels were jammed the other half flooded with alien songs about hell raising and destruction, and while the Turian inter-ship comms network was holding, she could not contact the flagship.

“Captain, it looks like their freighter ships have all left by some form of portal.” Her sensors officer reported.

What he said was true, the cruiser had been shielding them with its own bulk, its secondary shields having proven remarkably resilient to bombardment from over twenty ships. It was the dreadnought shots that actually pierced it, sending the purple haze surrounding the craft to dissipate like interrupted static from a Van Der Graaf machine, as the 38 kiloton explosion resounded off. It was strange it took the Spear of Romultion so long to fire.

What ever the aliens made their ships in mind for was scary indeed, as the armor underneath the ship began to chip and pock mark under the barrage of cannons, and it seemed only the Dreadnought did any damage, renting and piercing the armor where it hit every two seconds. It was moments later that the entire ship was engulfed by a portal and its two supporting frigates joined it after firing parting shots at their pursuers, impacting the flagship and forming two red hot streaks on its side like bloody tears in flesh, deliberately targeting the hangers and causing resounding secondary explosions from fuel and ammunition going off.

The once proud flagship of the Turian hierarchy was laid low in two shots, bypassing its mass effect fields with no discernable effect and destroying its hangers and damaging large portions of the ship.

Orinia could only shudder as she finally got a link with Serius.

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Terran Alliance Codex
Voidstorm Multi-purpose Fightercraft

The Voidstorm is the premier counterpart to the Firestorm fighter interceptor. While its atmospheric cousin is the king of the skies, the Voidstorm is the most highly advanced fighter craft made by the Terran Alliance. Its maneuverability increased ten fold by its creative use of mass effect fields, and the inclusion of full pilot integration with the craft, the ship literally becoming an extension of the pilot’s body. It can also be used by remote, by its pilot, an AI, or commonly by Cyberdisc entities.

It is armed with a variety of modules to increase its combat effectiveness. It can scan enemy weapons systems and judges with a near 100% accuracy when and where they will fire, informing the pilot and giving them optimal routes. Advanced weapons targeting systems also scans enemy craft detecting weak points and directing plasma fire and blaster launchers to max effectiveness.

The ship is equipped with a light armament despite this.
1 Plasma cannon.
2 laser cannons.
Optional EMP cannon for disabling craft.
And an optional rack of blaster launcher torpedoes.

Relying on friendly warships to disable enemy shields with mass accelerator cannons, when down they can deliver devastating torpedo volleys, made to destroy outer compartments and target weapon systems, effectively making the ship’s dead in space and allowing X-Com and Marine teams to board and capture such vessels. Blaster Launchers are extremely difficult for defense systems like lasers to intercept, the warhead’s integrated evasion systems able to detect when the shot will be fired with a 99% chance, and specially armored with a casing of Vahlenite. However it is still possible for GARDIANs and other point defense weapons to counter it, especially if they are operated manually and have no charge times to detect.

Equestrians
The Equestrians were the most advanced race on the planet of Equis when they were discovered in 2045.

Their country is about the size of france, the continent it lays on the size of North America. It is made up of great mountain ranges, beautiful beach fronts, rolling hills, and thick European style forests.

Having known peace for hundreds of years at a time and allowing their society to grow at an easy pace, the nation is unscarred by war and pollution.

While many species call Equestria home, its native inhabitants are the three Equestrian tribes. All Equestrians with few exceptions are small, pony like creatures. Short, 4 feet tall at the head, with large eyes giving them excellent vision unaugmented. They are all stronger and faster than the average augmented Human and come in a wide variety of colors and patterns and all but the foals have marks on their flanks called “cutie marks”, representing their special talent and occupation. They have enlarged empathy glands, in nature this makes the herd animal much more able to connect with their peers, understand pain, work together, and combined with their enlarged eyes makes them even more endearing to other species.

The first of the three tribes are the flying [Pegasi], who can control the weather and are the nation's soldiers in times of need. Next are the [Earth] ponies who are the nation's premier farmers and engineers. And finally the [Unicorns] who embody the species’ psionic capabilities and form most of the gentry.

Pegasi have traditionally formed the bulk of the military, their wing feathers opposable enough to make use of primitive tools and weapons and their wings themselves able to mount blades to attack foes while flying. Their history and cultural traditions support this and encourage a strong sense of duty and loyalty. The tribe is proud to be the host of the elements of Loyalty and Kindness. Their major cities are Cloudsdale, Las pegasus, and Upper Manehatten.

Earth Ponies actual name are untranslatable, and the closest approximation in English is earth, ground, or dirt. Earth ponies historically were the serf class, poor peasant farmers. They are renowned for their astounding ability for growing things, able to directly link with the latent psionic energy in plants and influence them to grow stronger. This ability is passive as just being around a plant will make it grow stronger. They are also larger than their Pegasi and Unicorn cousins, naturally being farmers nature has granted them more robust frames and higher muscle mass. The tribe is glad to have the Elements of Honesty and Laughter. Their major towns and cities in Equestria are Ponyville, Lower Manhatten, Appleloosa, Dodge Junction, and West Fillydelphia.

The Unicorns currently form the bulk of the nobility and fulfilled the role of knight errants in the turbulent times before the emergence of the Celestial Diarchy. Unicorns are divided into ancestral houses, the largest being Heart, Crystal, and the Shield houses. They fulfill a variety of roles like the other two tribes in modern days. Their chief ability is fine manipulation with their magic making them excellent scholars, scientists, and crewponies for both terrestrial and planetary shipping. Able to perform telekinesis, teleportation, shields, enchantments, and more. They are happy to have the elements of Generosity and Magic as their flag bearers. Their major cities are Canterlot, Baltimare, East Fillydelphia, the Crystal Empire capital, and Yanhoofver.

NOTE: It should be cited that the species is frighteningly similar, almost to the T of the popular show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. As it turns out Lauren Faust was found to have been extremely active Communications psion, estimated to have been unknowingly active long before the invasion.

Author's Note

I never got why so many fanfictions deliberately made the Turians to be either A: Incompetent, B: Criminal C: Ridiculously hidebound to law or some combination, or D: Some combination thereof.

While not all stories did this, which i applaud, this opening reflects my own headcanon on the First contact war started.

The Turians are too professional and have way to much oversight to be warmongers, they wouldn't be the galactic police men if they were. Then they would be bullies considered little better than the Krogan by most peoples.
Instead my headcannon was always that it was a huge misunderstanding, and the first shots were fired by inexperienced Alliance crew members, whether in panic or in response to a warning shot.

And so the rest is history. I hoped you liked this chapter, the next one is coming up very soon as soon as i can edit it into FIMFiction format.