Relay 314 Expedition incident
From FABT
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Date: |
31 October 2157 CE | ||||||||||||||||
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Relay 314 / Remembrance / Starry Steppes | ||||||||||||||||
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Outcome: |
Hierarchy victory
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- "Alliance Parliament didn't know what to think of it. There was total silence in the chamber save for breathing. The audio was...disturbing. Finally, we had proof of first contact with an alien race. No attempts at contact were ever made except for gibberish we couldn't understand...they just fired at us. And thus began our first bloody foray into the galactic community. Turian bastards."
- — Fleet Admiral Kastanie Drescher.
The Relay 314 Expedition incident, also known as the Relay 314 Massacre to the Alliance, was a heavily one-sided exchange between a turian naval patrol and the 16th Alliance Colonization Fleet and marked the beginning of the First Contact War. Prior to the incident, the Systems Alliance was still in its infancy, humanity's rapid and unstoppable expansion across the surrounding systems continuing unimpeded whilst protected by the fledgling Systems Alliance Armed Forces as their growing naval forces provided modest protection to their many colonization fleets. At the time, the Alliance military had reached the zenith of its growth, with the Alliance government, and the Terran nations that funded and supported it, believing that the lack of any active warfare between nations and any other exterior forces meant that a military was largely only needed to protect expeditions from celestial elements and to police the colonies themselves. Many in the brass argued that the potential threat posed by aliens calls for a further expansion of their forces, and that their meager army and fleet they were maintaining was stretched too thin and unable to properly project its strength where it was needed as their frontier continually changed: Arthur Williams was the largest to argue for this increase in funding, but as time passed and the possibility of aliens existing became less likely in the eyes of the Alliance public, Williams' quickly became alone amongst a see of skepticists. In order to shut him up AND alleviate his concerns, Williams was put in command of the 1st Alliance Army and placed on the frontier colony of Shanxi, given charge of protecting the colony against the threats he was afraid of, but largely with the mandate to maintain the security of the colony and police it as it developed.
As human colonization fleets swiftly began unlocking mass relay after mass relay, it was only a matter of time before humanity finally came across a relay that fell within the territory of the Citadel Council, namely as the government closest to the Alliance's borders was the Turian Hierarchy, who took their peacekeeping duties very seriously, having naval patrols at every relay linking to their territory, especially uncharted relays, as per the Reckless Relay Activation Countermeasure Act (54). As was likely inevitable, the Alliance, principally their 16th ACF that was charged with their northwestern expansion, finally came across a relay that was patrolled by one of these fleets. As the turians did not have ships positioned at the relay, having their ships docked at a nearby fast-response station with long-range sensors monitoring the relay, the 16th ACF was left unaware of the alien force protecting Relay 314. The 16th ACF was protected by a modest escort of seven frigates and a destroyer, largely intended to protect against asteroids. As such, when the large expedition force arrived and activated the relay as per routine, the activation immediately alerted the nearby Relay 314 Patrol, which consisted entirely of a 15 ship force consisting of two light cruisers with an escort of ten frigates and three destroyers. The turian patrol, as per their orders, broadcasted the usual warning to the ships they had spotted, ordering them to begin backing away from the relay or they would open fire. When the 16th ACF, unable to decipher the broadcast due to it being a language they couldn't understand, "ignored" the warning.
What happened next is hotly debated by historians. Some human historians, including some survivors of the massacre, argue that their ships did not proceed to activate the relay, as their priorities changed to attempting to triangulate the source of the transmission they had received, and whether it was a) celestial white noise or b) an alien transmission. When it was decided the latter was true, attempts were made to ascertain whether it was directed at them or had been intercepted. These discussions led to the fleet remaining stationary next to the relay while they attempted to contact Arcturus Station to confirm first contact. However, turian historians, including the commodore in command, insist that the Alliance ships proceeded to activate the relay, thus justifying the next course of action he took: ordering his ships to detach and intercept the fleet before they moved through the relay. However, it was also later found that the commodore had failed to follow established first contact protocols upon successfully identifying the ships as alien, and instead moved to fire without provocation, an action that the Turian Hierarchy would later justify as warranted, citing the Reckless Relay Activation Countermeasure Act as sufficient precedent for the commodore's actions.
Regardless of the exact circumstances, the possibility of a peaceful first contact were ruined within an hour. Storming through the relay, the turian destroyers took the Alliance escort by surprise. The Alliance captain in charge of the fleet was quick to act, immediately ordering all of his ships to open fire upon the lead alien warship, allowing the fleet its first and only hit. The turian frigate in question sustained light damage and damage to its port engine, but it was the only "victory" the escorts enjoyed. Within minutes, the rest of the turian patrol popped through the relay and opend fire, obliterating four of the seven frigates in their opening salvo alone. When the commodore's flagship, one of the two cruisers, blitzed through the relay, he identified the lead ship as the Alliance destroyer and quickly destroyed it, killing the captain in command of the 16th ACF. The rest of the escorts were able to fire one more salvo at their aggressors, only for the turians to destroy them shortly afterwards. The turians then turned upon the civilian ships, who had already been attempting to escape the system. The result was a one-sided massacre, the turians suffering no casualties while all the Alliance military forces were wiped out while 21 out of 23 of the civilian vessels were destroyed, only two managing to escape due to being at the rear of the fleet, and thus furthest away from the relay.
The conclusion of the massacre resulted in the beginning of the First Contact War between humanity and the turians. Following the massacre, the turian commodore secured the relay and reported the incident to his superiors, who then reported straight to the Commune of the Armed Forces on Palaven. The commodore called for reinforcements, arguing that he did not know the extent of their new foe's military forces and that he could not secure the system without sufficient backup. Meanwhile, the repercussions back on Earth were massive: aliens were confirmed to exist, and they were hostile. All remaining expeditionary missions were called off and ordered to return to Alliance occupied space, both to protect their remaining civilian fleets from further slaughters and so the Alliance could begin a large-scale buildup for war. Alliance Parliament held an emergency session and was able to appropriate emergency funding in excess of 4 trillion Alliance dollars, ordering its use to be immediately funnelled into the military. In just one night, the attitude and view of the Alliance vanished over night: for the first time in human history, they were at war with a non-human enemy. At once, Kastanie Drescher took her Second Fleet and was ordered to ascertain the strength of the alien force and its composition. Drescher did this and more, taking matters into her own hands when she accurately surmized the superiority of her own force and went on the attack, obliterating the alien force in turn and sending the survivors retreating back through the relay, but not without losing the majority of her own force and acquiring a pyrrhic victory at best. While Drescher was heralded as a hero for avenging the 314 massacre, all this did was further galvanize the turians, who had already dispatched the Twelfth Fleet to reinforce the patrol. When they linked up with the survivors, Didact Septimus Oraka received permission to go on the offensive, which would inevitably lead to the Shanxi campaign.