Chapter 8: Trap

15 June, 2398; 1600 Hours

London, Earth

Premier Ansel quietly signed off on an order proposed to her at the latest CENTCOM briefing: the evacuation of Shanxi Outpost. For the past two weeks the Second Fleet had stubbornly held onto the Shanxi System, but Turian attacks were increasing in both number an intensity every day, probing the heavily outnumbered Terran fleet for weakness in the wake of the Terrans' own deep strikes. What little intelligence Cerberus had managed to gather had indicated that they had done a number on the Turians' ship building capability, but now eight-hundred Imperial Navy ships were displaced and the remaining ships have been overextended in an attempt to defend all of their space which ties into the real issue the Terrans were facing: numbers. New intelligence derived from the translated codex indicated that the Turian navy numbered at least ten thousand ships, most likely reaching twenty thousand. Meanwhile, the Terrans had around twenty-five hundred.

Ansel wearily sighed, "At least I was right about one thing," She spoke sullenly to herself, "this will be nothing like the Ethernian War."

Now that she was alone in The Lookout, Ansel allowed herself to regale on the past war with the Ethernians. They were a slaver species, much like the Batarians that she had read about in the Citadel Codex, and they had saw themselves as the apex species, holding the belief that all others were worthy of nothing more than being slaves, so when they came across a Terran colony, Gaea, in the middle of the 24th century, they attempted to enslave the inhabitants. The battle for Gaea was the first and last time the Ethernians threatened a Terran world. Though powerful, the Ethernian military was synonymous with corruption and nepotism, with commanders that had no clue what they were doing. The only reason that the war dragged on for six long years was because the Imperial Navy was still inexperienced in large-scale space warfare and had to fight in a trial by fire. In the end, the Imperial Fleets carved a path deep into Ethernian space and tore down the majority of the Ethernian military and civil leadership.

In the aftermath of this devastating campaign, the Ethernians were brought to the brink of societal collapse which rapidly devolved into civil war. During the midst of this, the Terrans annexed much of the former Ethernian state and implemented the Xeno Relocation Act, forcefully relocating billions of Ethernians to a few core worlds where they were placed under strict quarantine. The conditions were and still are terrible on these worlds, but they received very little sympathy from the vengeful Terran population. A death toll estimate revealed that around three million Terrans had died during the war, most during the first few years. The Ethernians suffered much more, though, with a death toll an order of magnitude larger than the Terran one. It seemed that the general populace liked to forget that fact.

Ansel rubbed her eyes, finishing her mental retelling of the Ethernian War, "And now they've finished fighting amongst themselves..." She shook her head, "Never mind that. If they try something we'll just bomb their few remaining worlds into dust. The Citadel are the real threat right now."

"A threat that I'm not sure we can beat..." She left unsaid, the thought blaring into head nonetheless.

"Heh, now I'm talking to myself..." She murmured, inclining in her chair, "Maybe I need more sleep..."

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16 June, 2398; 1200 Hours

Shanxi System

Shanxi was in a situation which could roughly be considered controlled chaos. Hundreds of shuttles and heavy dropships flew from ship to ship and from surface to orbit, ferrying supplies and people off-world, small corvettes armed with copious numbers of CIWS turrets flew screening operations and frigates took up positions several thousand kilometres away from Shanxi, acting as pickets, waiting for the growing Turian fleet on the other side of the Mass Relay to make their move.

The last probe sent into the system on the other side of the relay had detected at least six-hundred ships before being blasted to pieces by a picket and, if their manoeuvring was any indication, it appeared that an attack was imminent. And, thus, the Terrans were back where they started: outnumbered five to one.

Luckily, Drescher has a solution, albeit a drastic one: wait for the bulk of the Turian fleet to make it through the Mass Relay then nuke the fucking thing. She had suggested the idea after reading through the translated codex torn from the captured Turian ship. According to its section on Mass Relays, destabilising the core would wipe out everything in the solar system. This, of course, meant abandoning Shanxi never to return, but that was deemed an acceptable loss. The only thing Shanxi had going for it was the resource rich asteroid belts which led to the establishment of Shanxi Outpost as an ore refinery, but, ultimately, it provided a resource that could be acquired from quite literally billions of solar systems across the galaxy. The only reason the Terran Navy even responded to the original Turian attack with such force was to protect Terran lives and technology and now it was just more of a liability, being the only Terran system known to their new enemies.

To complete this task, Drescher had requisitioned a pair of specialised minelayers upgraded by Cerberus a few years back. The minelayers were now just finishing up deploying modified HADMs around the mass effect core of the relay. The HADMs had been equipped with stealth generators and surrounded in a casing to prevent radiation leaks being detected. An active scan would still find the mines, but it was hoped that the massive amount of interference from hundreds of ships exiting the relay would mess up the Turians' sensors. After all, hiding in space is extremely hard and the sophisticated equipment required to do so was better used on dedicated spyships rather than disposable mines.

For now, though, the Terrans had to continue to provide a tempting target to warrant an all-out attack on Shanxi. The real evacuation had actually ended half a day ago and the civilians had all left by now, everything else being transported to the warships in orbit was just extra, designed to draw the five-hundred Turian ships into attacking the much smaller number of Terran ships. And it seemed that time was now.

"Admiral! The Mass Relay appears to be activating!" Came the call of one of her officers.

Drescher nodded, "Get all of the dropships onboard their motherships and order the fleet to form up into their battlegroups! Power up the Demonstrator." She ordered firmly and watched with satisfaction as the fleet split up into three distinct groups, two built around the terrifying three-kilometre long Fuji-class battlecruisers and the last built around the titanic Lake-class, Erie.

During the time that the Second Fleet had formed up, dozens of Turian ships had been coming through the giant bottleneck called a mass relay. Without a moment of hesitation, Drescher ordered the general command to fire at will and, immediately, dozens of beams of light shot out across space. The Erie herself scored a dozen kills in the opening barrage, but the Turians kept coming, seemingly intent on breaking the blockade with shear numbers. And it was working.

Despite the casualties inflicted on the Turians, more kept coming out of the relay, more than the Terran fleet could handle.

"Admiral, the X-Ray fleet is now at full strength!"

Hearing this, Drescher gained an almost demonic smirk, "Alright. This is it, they've fully committed. Power up the Einstein-Rosen drive and order the battlecruisers to do the same. We all jump on my command."

A few seconds later, Drescher heard back from the comms officer, "Admiral, both Battlegroups are reporting green for jump!"

The Admiral nodded, "Wait for them to draw away from the relay. We don't want to give them a chance to escape..." Drescher stared at the tactical map, displaying the hundreds of dots that made up the Turian fleet. They were still losing numbers from the continuing barrage of energy weapons from the Second Fleet, but still had around four-hundred ships.

The Admiral watched as the Turian fleet suddenly drew away from the relay at superluminal speeds, utilising their strange method of FTL in realspace. In a matter of moments they appeared near the Terran ships and Drescher shouted "NOW!".

Almost immediately, three massive tears in realspace formed and the smaller and more vulnerable Terran ships accelerated rapidly into them, escaping the incoming kinetic slugs. The Erie lurched slightly as she was hit by over a dozen of these slugs, the state-of-the-art shields shrugging off the hits with only a one or two percentage dip in integrity.

"Helm, ahead full!" Drescher called before feeling the familiar sensation of the ship accelerating, "Detonate the HADMs now!"

As the Terran ships disappeared into their wormholes, all of which promptly collapsed after the last Terran ships were through, the Turians were left confused at the sudden retreat before detecting hundreds of massive nuclear detonations across the Mass Relay. Almost immediately the same warning appeared across all of the computers onboard the warships: WARNING! MASS RELAY COLLAPSE IMMINENT!

The Turians were completely defenceless as the purple core of the Mass Relay fluctuated and lashed out at the surrounding space with beautiful streaks of amethyst fire. A few seconds later, the core suddenly and rapidly expanded. From just a few kilometres in diameter, it grew to ten, then a hundred, and eventually several million, engulfing the entire Shanxi system and destroying everything within it before subsiding, leaving a lifeless and shattered husk of a world, hundreds of vaporised Turian ships and a star borderline supernova.

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AN: Boo! Did I scare you? I am so sorry about the month long wait for this chapter. Unfortunately, I am a lazy fuck and wrote half of this chapter in May before side lining it for a month!

Anyway, hope you enjoy the chapter! Given the exponentially increasing times between chapter updates (first just a day, then a week, now a month), I'll see you all in 2021!