The Mass Effect Age

Prologue:

In the year 2233, one year after the Dilgar War, a great discovery was found underneath the sands of Promethai Planum on Mars. An ancient alien observation post with a malfunctioning Mass Effect Core and a number of alien ships buried there, finally giving an answer to the regions Bermuda Triangle reputation, mostly unexplained magnetic shifts that screwed up navigation. It took IPX and the Earth Force Corp of Engineers almost a year to excavate and explore the ruins and another year to fully translate the data from the still working computers in the alien structure.

It was a former observation and biosciences station built by an ancient race called the Protheans, set up to receive and process data from Earth as the Protheans studied Cro-Magnon humans. The starships found in the ancient ruins and a large cache of Element Zero gave the Earth Alliance a massive boost in technological advancement, the first being the discovery of Mass Effect physics which allowed Earth to build faster and more powerful ships.

The main advantage that Earth Force gained was a proper working knowledge of how to manipulate Mass Effect fields, making it possible for Human ships and installations to have artificial gravity and it also negated the effect of inertia, though not entirely, yet.

Two years after the discovery, following the information found in the Prothean data cache, Earth Force found the Sol system Mass Relay inside of Charon, one of Pluto's moons. Earth Force wasted no time in securing the relic, setting up several Orion Battle stations in orbit of it and permanently stationed a small fleet there to guard it, both from threats from races that wanted to take it and whatever races that could possibly come through, soon after it came fully online, as if awakening from a deep sleep. Following descriptions found in the Prothean data cache Earth Force sent a probe through and followed its progress using a tachyon data-link. The scientists overseeing the probe's progress were astonished; it had travelled several hundred light years in almost the blink of an eye and entered a system that seemed perfect.

It was a Trinary star system which were all G-type stars, the same as Sol, with six gas giants the size of Jupiter or Saturn, two in orbit of each star, and had dozens of moons each, several were the size of Earth and half of them had almost identical atmospheres to the human homeworld. Almost immediately survey ships were sent through to make sure of the probe's data was accurate and it was. Humanity had found another avenue of exploration and soon new colonies were beginning to spring up in the recently named Arcturus system. For the next eight years the Earth Alliance continued to explore the Mass Relay Network, finding more star systems to colonize.

However their peaceful exploration would inevitably lead to a meeting that would definitely give them a good kick in their complacency, and as usual humanity stuck its nose into something that ultimately came back and bit them.

AN: This is a new story I've been toying around with for a while and I thought it might be fun to try my hand at it. The early chapters are mostly just for setting up the new universe and blend the two story lines together, so don't expect to see Shepard or any of the other Mass Effect and B5 characters around right away, and I wanted to see how Earth Force would fare against the Turians when they try to muscle in on Earth colonies.