"I tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around,
Then I pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday…"
– The Who, Won't Get Fooled Again
A. S. V Normandy-II, En Route to the Arcturus System
20:36, 15 January 2185 ASC
The sex ended as it usually did for them: Garrus Vakarian sprawled on her bunk, utterly exhausted; Elizabeth sitting up wide awake beside him and holding him until he could move properly again. Even disregarding the Commander's substantial edge in cybernetics, genetic augmentation, and simple conditioning, there wasn't a lot they could do to change the fact that turians were simply not a species built for stamina the same way humans, krogan, or even asari were.
None of it particularly mattered to her, though. Elizabeth had always found his scent, his conversation, and the simple warmth of his presence far more enjoyable than the physical pleasure they shared- that, and while she'd never say as much to his face, she'd always enjoyed listening to the quiet, rhythmic whistling sound he made while gasping for air and the purring of his cheekplates shifting when he finally caught his breath.
She left him to recover for a moment longer and shrugged back into her usual loose, dark-blue Navy fatigues. By the time she finished he too was sitting up, plating splayed out away from his dorsal hump and the bony keel that ran down the center of his chest. Without the ability to sweat, his only means of venting heat was to expose as much soft, blood-vessel-rich skin as possible to the cool cabin air. "I just- need a few more minutes- before I head back down," he said between breaths.
"Take your time, I'm not going anywhere." She laughed, briefly. "Of course, you could just sleep up here."
He shook his head once, a human gesture he had picked up sometime during his stay on Omega. "Negative- Commander… Wouldn't- be proper." With Miranda Lawson back on Earth Garrus had taken over her position as XO, and with it the small cabin aft of the main lift. Elizabeth had tried no fewer than eight times to convince him to move up to the captain's quarters full-time and failed miserably, despite the fact that their… involvement was now common knowledge among the crew, Alliance Command, and at least one Citadel tabloid publisher.
Rather than press the issue once more, she left the big turian to recover in peace and walked back over to her desk, pulling up the section reports she'd been reviewing before his arrival. Their circuit through the interior of Council Space had been as close to a milk run as the crew would likely ever get: coordination of the burgeoning relief effort for the Migrant Fleet, meetings with the CDEM forces negotiating with Urdnot Wreav over Tuchanka, memorial services on Mars, Arcturus Station, and the Citadel, then a string of diplomatic functions and firepower demonstrations to accompany the victory celebrations on Thessia and Sur'kesh. It had been the perfect opportunity to shake down the substantial modifications they'd received six weeks ago, when the resolution of the Reaper Crisis had finally allowed the Normandy-II an extended refit at Arcturus Station.
They had been able to leave the spaceframe largely intact, but very little else of the original Cerberus design remained. In between the multiple starboard hull breaches they'd sustained while engaging Reaper-seized defense platforms in the DMZ, electronic failures incurred during the assault on the Heretic Geth over Rannoch, and the comparatively minor damage suffered during the assault on the Collector base of operations nearly two months before, much of the rest had required substantial repairs and Shepard had taken the opportunity to run the vessel through a complete overhaul. While the ship had started life as a hastily-assembled Cerberus experiment built into the superstructure of a commercial luxury yacht, the Normandy-II was now a proper warship- faster, better-shielded, equipped with a wider array of weapons ranging from an upscaled forward battery to wing-mounted close-action turrets, and boasting a prototype ship-scale Infiltrator mesh that served as the central component of the new third-generation stealth system. All of which, of course, meant a fresh heap of paperwork for the unlucky commanding officer.
Suddenly disinterested in her intel briefings and technical minutiae, she set her terminal to filter them out and looked over the personal messages that remained. The first was an image without any attached text, showing Ash Williams, Zaeed Massani, and James Vega in casual civilian dress sharing a table at a human-style bar somewhere with drinks in hand; after that a brief update from Kolyat Krios informing her that Thane was responding well to the experimental treatments he'd been offered by the Collector Research Initiative and would be beginning physical therapy in a few weeks; then a clot of seventy-three images showing a beaming human woman and a blonde-haired infant not yet old enough to do anything other than goggle vacantly at the camera, each one sent within five minutes of the previous and equipped with a subject line identifying the child as none other than Elizabeth Shepard Verner. After that there were a few updates from various officers on Arcturus Station and Earth, and an extremely long and dauntingly technical report from Tali describing her various new responsibilities in coordinating the Council relief and reintegration efforts on board the Migrant Fleet. Some small part of her was growing increasingly concerned about the continued lack of contact from anyone or anything on Tuchanka, but she told herself not to worry- the last message she had received from Wreav had been terse, yes, but it had also been generally positive towards carrying on his brother's work to unite the surviving clans and make sure the Citadel came through on its promise to provide a cure for the genophage.
Some minutes later a soft electronic tone drew Shepard out of her thoughts. She banished the shakedown reports with a keystroke and summoned EDI's holographic avatar, remembering this time to prompt her by name. For privacy reasons, the AI's nearly omniscient sensor nets could no longer extend into the living quarters or medical bay without manual authorization, and even then the interface was limited to pure audio.
"Commander, I've just received an urgent video message- encrypted for your eyes only."
"Really. Who from?"
"There's no information provided."
"Can you trace it?"
"Working… Negative. However, that fact in and of itself tells me that whoever sent this message enjoys access to security systems well beyond the reach of anything save a government agency or major corporation."
"Thanks for the science lesson, EDI." She tucked a few errant strands of red hair back into her usual short ponytail. "Go ahead and put it though."
"One moment, Commander."
EDI's avatar blinked out, immediately replaced by a high-definition video of an older turian male seated at a desk in front of what appeared to be a number of blanked-out display screens. His facial markings consisted of an orderly series of horizontal, gently curving green lines, so thin that they barely appeared on screen; his eyes were a pale excuse for yellow that against his pewter facial plating and light greyish skin seemed somehow colorless. Shepard would have considered him almost aggressively unremarkable if it wasn't for the scars: thick, dense clusters of them, a spray pattern almost, that stretched across the exposed skin of his throat before abruptly vanishing beneath his left mandible. The plates there shone a bit too evenly where the rest were dull and pitted by late middle age, and it took a moment for her to realize that much of the left side of the turian's head was in fact composed of some sort of high-quality medical prosthetic.
"Shepard! It's an honor. I wish we could've met sooner, but this'll have to do."
He spoke in a smooth, even baritone, much deeper than Shepard had expected and utterly lacking the characteristic overplay produced by even the most expensive translation software- whoever he was, he knew perfect, unaccented English and had put enough time into it to make good attempts at the several consonants his species was physically unable to pronounce.
"My name is Gul Rillek. That may or may not mean anything to you, so rather than waste time with a dissection of the upper echelons of Hierarchy politics I'll simply say that I occupy a position that exposes me to a great deal of very highly classified information. Sadly, with the current state of our military being what it is, I also lack the ability to act on much of it. Hence why I've contacted you."
He paused for a moment, adjusting the neckring of his crisp and immaculately-tailored officer's uniform- adorned with a General's rank glyph, no less, and a truly impressive number of honorary clips. Shepard recognized several of the more prominent ones- including a First Contact War combat medallion and the prestigious Order of Valekian- but many more were lost on her, and more importantly she was fairly certain turian military uniforms didn't usually come in perfect, undecorated black.
"It's no secret that next in line for a seat on Turian High Command is Fleet General Tacitus Rexa. If you've heard of her at all it would be as an outspoken opponent of the Systems Alliance, but I never thought that was particularly fair- having spoken to her at length I can tell you that the Fleet General hates everyone more or less equally. That doesn't matter to a group of humans who've decided that the best way to keep Rexa out of a position of power is to kill her, and given the current… deterioration in turio-human relations, there's a lot more at stake here than just the life of one officer. I don't think I have to remind you that if knowledge of this communication were to become widely available, the consequences could be… nasty for both of us."
"The plan goes down during a ceremony she'll be attending on Janus to honor the troops killed during the First Contact War- for maximum irony, I'd assume. That gives you a little over forty-eight hours. Good luck."
The video abruptly cut to black. Elizabeth sensed Garrus step up behind her, and felt his bare hand on her shoulder a moment later. "XO? Thoughts?"
"I'd tread lightly here, Shepard. That man was wearing a Blackwatch uniform."
"So, we're dealing with a tip directly from the turian answer to Cerberus." Everyone who had gone through officer-candidate school in the Alliance Navy knew what Blackwatch was, by reputation if nothing else, even if the best human intelligence operatives had effectively no insight into the inner workings of the Turian Hierarchy's intensely secretive black-operations and intelligence division. David Anderson had told her in some confidence the story of Desolas Arterius's Reaper-mediated psychological breakdown; but even though that put her above ninety percent of Alliance officers in experience with Blackwatch, it wasn't exactly informative.
Garrus noded. "Only thing anyone knows for sure is that Blackwatch only has one General. We're dealing with a tip directly from the head of the turian answer to Cerberus. That has me more than a little suspicious."
"Do you think we should contact this Rexa person directly?"
"Wouldn't advise it: Her memoirs were required reading at the Academy; Rillek wasn't lying about her politics. She's not just a Contact War vet, she's an ex-POW. Pulled out of the wreck of a light cruiser, interrogated and… experimented on for about four months." Shepard felt him tense up almost imperceptibly, blunt talons digging into her uniform. "A human officer warning her to back out of that memorial ceremony would probably just make her more determined to see it through."
"So, what, we do nothing? What if his tip's genuine? We both know turian counterintelligence is… well, it's a sad joke."
"I said I thought we should tread lightly, Shepard, not that it wasn't worth pursuing. Could give us intel on Blackwatch if nothing else.. That, and I've always wanted a chance to see Janus firsthand."
"What's on Janus that's so important?"
"Smugglers. Pirates. A damn land border with the Systems Alliance."
"What?"
"After the Relay 314 incident your people managed to slip an entire cruiser into Council space and hit a turian shipping base. We dropped our own troops to try to take it back, and when the treaties were being drawn up nobody was willing to give away a strategic position so the Citadel had it split down the middle."
"I've… never fucking heard of this."
"It never really amounted to anything. Originally the place was supposed to be a central hub for trade with human colonies, but that fell through pretty quickly when the big commercial relay routes opened. We still kept a presence there, though, first because of the risk of hostilities with the Alliance and now mostly just because of the Ossuary- it's a… a sort of war memorial, I guess." Garrus pushed his chest forward in his species' version of a shrug, his exposed keelbone bumping into the back of her chair. "We don't like to forget our history."
"Then it's settled." After pulling on her boots, she tabbed open a channel to the Normandy's bridge. "Joker? I want you to turn us around and head back to Relay 208. Best possible speed. We need to make a couple of stops near the Alliance border."
...
"In business news today stock prices are rising for Terminus shipping and passenger lines as the Citadel Defense Force reestablishes regular access to the most remote of the independent colonies…"
"The Council Industrial Regulatory Commission has recommended a fine of nearly four trillion credits for heat-sink manufacturer Helexia-Grant, as part of an ongoing anti-monopoly complaint submitted jointly by the Citadel Defense Liaison Office, Quarian Marines, and several leading arms manufacturers. Hegemony State Arms has also declared an interest in the matter, but lacks legal standing to bring matters before the Citadel Council.
Helexia-Grant, which manufactures close to ninety-five percent of military-grade heat dissipation components for firearms and spacecraft, is alleged to have deliberately ceased manufacture of reusable heat-sinks in order to force manufacturers to adopt inferior disposable thermal clips; to buy up stocks of older permanent-sink weapons; and to actively sabotage the development of hybrid 'clip-boosted' weapons systems; all as part of a nearly three-year operation to secure long-term demand for replacement clips. Should the fine be approved it would be by far the largest levied in Council history…"
"… as another insider account emerges from the failed Andromeda Initiative. In a one-hour interview with Citadel Nightly's Thalla T'lis, project engineer Rory Graham discusses events leading up to the collapse of the project, citing major failures in top-level planning, significant technical oversights, and what he called 'a massively unprofessional soap-opera mentality' among both senior project staff and expedition leaders. I'm Only Human After All, Don't Put The Blame On Me, the full interview that Captain Ryder doesn't want you to see, will be available for the first time tonight at 11…"
"Private investigators are continuing the search for freelance journalist Balthus Shul, who was declared missing two weeks ago by the Volus Security Combine. Clan members are offering a fifteen-thousand credit reward for information leading to her safe return, and state that Balthus was last headed to Omega as part of an investigation into the T'loak crime syndicate..."
"… a Universal Entertainment spokeswoman announced today that Blasto Reborn will be filmed on location aboard the Migrant Fleet by acclaimed director Nell'ketho vas Tonbay. Blasto Reborn will be the breakout director's first major studio film following his critically-acclaimed reboot of the early human television series Battlestar Galactica…"
"… two Systems Alliance Marine Corps servicemen were seriously injured yesterday during what Alliance sources describe as a batarian-instigated pirate raid on the independent Attican Traverse colony of Saweore. The raid was halted successfully without civilian casualties and with minimal property damage, leading several members of Parliament to question the efficacy of turian patrols and draft a diplomatic resolution calling for the Council to further expand Alliance military jurisdiction to engage threats beyond colonial borders…"
"… as a new Serta Foundation poll finds that sixty-two percent of humans, forty-nine percent of salarians, fifty-five percent of quarians, three percent of turians, and eighty-five percent of asari support an immediate cure for the krogan genophage without further negotiation with the United Clans of Tuchanka…"
"… Dan, the impact of tonight really is not coming from the fact that these genophage protests are in any way violent, just like the ones on Thessia they're really quite peaceful, as you can see behind me the police in attendance are really at a loss for anything to do and some of them are even singing along with the protesters, but it's really incredibly rare for salarians to take to the streets at all like this and I'm sure a lot of the Inner Cabinet are watching these events extremely closely…"
"Gatatog Pran, star and director of the controversial Extranet series C-SEC Green, defended himself in a Film Cycle interview amid accusations that his inclusion of a romantic relationship between the characters Urdnot Vokt and Palkia Merlassian constituted 'fetishization of imperialism'…"
"Really, Tallo, the sentiment among those with an inside line on the Council and- we believe- among the general krogan population is that the negotiations are a… are just a polite diversion while the asari work to bring the salarians onboard without alienating the Systems Alliance. Really, the sense is that a cure is just around the corner and it's only a matter of time."
"Wreav refused to fight for the Citadel until he got a genophage cure. We took down the Reapers without the krogan lifting a goddamn finger, so as far as I'm concerned the whole deal is off. Wreav can throw as much of a stink as he'd like; what's he gonna do, come to the Citadel and punch us?"
"Lav, please-"
"I see people with no clue about foreign affairs still think that warm and fuzzy feelings should matter in the post-Reaper era. At least the turians have a goddamn clue…"
"… as research into recovered Collector technology promises groundbreaking new drugs for Vroleg's Syndrome, Kepral's Syndrone, and Quarian Immune Attenuation Disorder, sparking a surge of investment despite Helos Medical's previous development of a treatment for Corpalis Syndrome having been abandoned as unprofitable…"
"… the Council Reconstruction Board today rejected accusations from an organization claiming to represent the families of Citadel Defense Force personnel killed in action during the Reaper Crisis that salvage and cleanup teams inappropriately disposed of turian remains as 'organic residue' during the Council-sponsored cleanup of the Widow Nebula, calling the accusations 'baseless' and 'clearly motivated by anti-quarian sentiments'…"
Alliance Operational Command Compound, Earth
02:33, 16 January 2185 ASC (08:33 Local Time)
In a dark, tastefully wood-paneled office suite on the 83rd floor of the Diplomatic Office in Vancouver, Admiral Steven Hackett and Foreign Secretary Donnell Udina sat watching a real-time feed of a short but heavyset quarian male in an Admiral's gold-and-burgundy suitwrap addressing the full assembly of the Citadel Council.
"… but that doesn't take away all the times our Fleet's been refused protection from Terminus raiders by your military," the quarian was saying in a soft, lightly-accented voice that was somehow drawling and melodic at the same time, "how we've been frozen out of all the big decisions… we're harassed, called thieves and scavengers, hundreds of pilgrims and Fleet workers are jailed and beaten by those animals you call C-SEC officers… It's a good day for everyone when you let us come back here and speak our minds again, but these are old conflicts and a lot of quarians have lost a lot of dignity and hope because of what you did. But now that the geth are no more and we're all moving forward, if the Council supports our Fleet when we rebuild and settle we can start to move forward…"
"Hmm." Udina took a measured sip from the tumbler of scotch in his hand and consulted the chronometer display on his omnitool. "Three minutes without stopping for air. Impressive."
"I thought you'd recognize a kindred spirit." Hackett shook his head. "You know, when I first started getting reports from our embassy ship I thought this was all some sort of psychological tactic- throw us off our guard. Now I'm worried the man actually thinks like he talks."
Udina nodded in agreement. The Quarian Conclave's election of Dano'lev vas Seliq to replace the late Admiral Rael'zorah vas Neemah had come as a bit of a surprise to the both of them, and for that matter to nearly every pundit and state official in Citadel Space. Dano, as he insisted on being called, was a bit of an odd duck politically. As Udina understood it the 'vas Seliq' demonym was more of a polite courtesy than anything else, as the man spent hardly any time onboard the ship he supposedly captained or for that matter on the Fleet at all. Instead, he'd spent most of his life bouncing from one part of the galaxy to another attempting to secure trade and safe-passage deals for the Fleet, to what he claimed was great success- not that anyone had ever given him much thought as a leader until after the Reaper Crisis he'd suddenly gathered himself a groundswell of popular support with his never-ending exhortations to take the fight to what remained of the Geth Collective deep inside the Perseus Veil.
"Wonder if he gets extra oxygen pumped into that helmet of his?" the Secretary asked, awkwardly fiddling with the jacket of the crisp tan suit he'd long ago gone back to wearing in place of his awkward, uncomfortable asari-inspired ambassadorial robes.
"The Systems Alliance agrees. We've faced down possibly the greatest single threat in galactic history, and for perhaps the first time the galaxy really is in our hands." The cam drones immediately refocused on the Councilors' podiums up above, specifically on the one on the far left where David Anderson stood. "We've recovered and rebuilt, and now it's time for the elder races of the Council to come clean about their past mistakes. There needs to be an accounting for everything the Citadel's done these last two thousand years, good and bad. I am more thankful than anyone that this Council has become so much more open, so much more tolerant of change and progress, that they've moved away from seeing the Systems Alliance and now the Migrant Fleet as threats to their supremacy and recognize us as equal partners," Anderson shot a brief but pointed look at Tarren Sparatus on the other end of the dias, but if the bronze-plated turian noticed he gave no sign of it, "but the peaceful, democratic galaxy we've made can't exist without justice for all of these old abuses."
"Funny how all this discussion of togetherness and unity features us, but all the blame is placed on them…" Udina started, then quickly silenced himself after the Admiral sighed and shook his head.
It was no secret in Alliance political circles that Donnell Udina and David Anderson didn't see eye to eye personally, and there were even sill some who thought Udina would have done a better job of filling the Alliance's Council seat. Over the last two years they had settled into a sort of metastable equilibrium mediated by Hackett, a mutual friend- Udina had been content to remain largely out of the public eye where his acerbic nature often got him into trouble and Anderson had been content to more or less follow his lead strategically, especially when it came to their shared goal of confronting the xenophobic, fiercely militarist 'Earth-First' wing of Alliance politics that had fouled more than a few diplomatic initiatives in the thirty years after the Contact War.
Then the Reapers had come, and the Alliance civilian government had turned itself inside out and upside down. The newly-minted Prime Minister Kaiqi Roth was a decorated Marine combat veteran who'd promised an eager Parliament that he'd first and foremost consolidate humanity's newfound strength in the galaxy at large, but in practice he deferred to the military brass on nearly every issue appropriate or not. In theory that made Udina- as a close and trusted adviser to the Navy's most senior Admiral, and certainly the only such figure with actual expertise in civil policy- the most powerful civilian in human space, but with the gradual decline of the Earth-Firsters the Councilor and Secretary had been drifting even farther apart on nearly every issue. It was no secret nowadays that the Prime Minister preferred Anderson simply because of his Navy credentials, and among other things that imbalance was playing holy hell with Udina's continued attempts to counter the claims from Citadel talking-heads that the Alliance was slipping back into de facto military governance.
If Councilor Sparatus was at all bothered by Anderson's jab he gave no sign- instead, he continued looking down at vas Seliq and spread his hands and mandibles in an accommodating gesture. "Unlike certain others in this body, the Turian Hierarchy won't dodge responsibility for the mistakes of the past. Instead, we will do whatever is in our power to put them right. To that end, we are willing to offer the Quarian Conclave exclusive rights to an uninhabited dextro-amino garden world we have scouted for colonization. Even after the Reapers this Council possesses more than enough resources to support resettlement if we pool our-"
"Now now, I… don't think that's going to be possible," vas Seliq cut in rather abruptly, earning more than a few glares from the assembled Councilors. "Our people need a place to breathe fresh air, a place where we can grow and settle and start families without the Turian Hierarchy staring inside our helmets every day. We don't just need a place to live, we need a homeland… history and pride… we need you to let us take back the veil."
Udina looked over to see Hackett staring at the screen with his mouth half-open. After a moment, the Admiral gave a low whistle. "He turned down an entire colony. A quarian! That has to be-"
"Political suicide?" Udina finished for him. "Maybe not. The hard-line Reclaimationists have been part of quarian policy for decades… and vas Seliq's their champion. This may make him more popular, with his core supporters at any rate." He scoffed. "I suppose that's what you get for holding these negotiations in open session."
Although the Citadel Council typically lauded its open nature, one of the nastier consequences of that policy was the degree to which its decisions tended to revolve around public opinion. Then-Ambassador Udina had tried to exploit that fact to mixed success in the years just before the discovery of the Reapers, but was increasingly finding himself no longer pushing but being pushed. The asari followed poll numbers closely for fairly obvious reasons, of course; the salarians were facing a popular movements that, while minor in absolute terms, was still something neither society was necessarily accustomed to; he didn't have a good handle on exactly what was going on within Turian High Command but with old wardogs like Tacitus Rexa involved it likely wasn't good; and the situation in the nominally democratic Alliance was arguably even more precarious. Constitutionally, Hackett and his fellow technocrats were subordinate to the Prime Minister, and while the public impression that the Alliance military could effectively do no wrong currently kept Parliament in line Udina had needed to remind his colleagues on more than one occasion just how quickly that support would evaporate if they came out in favor of an unpopular policy like the genophage.
The quarian Admiral was still speaking. "… I… ahh… we are really more in need of funds and basic supplies for the Fleet, at least for a while. If you could loan us food for our people, raw metals and eezo for our workshops, and of course direct funding that we can use to buy whatever we need… new ships for our families to live on… we'll sit down with the individual Captains and work out a list of who all needs what and how urgently… and we'll… we'll make a deal to get everybody the space they need on the Fleet."
Udina closed his eyes as vas Seliq, Tarren Sparatus, and Erdat Valern descended into a detailed financial discussion. He wasn't an economist like Valern or a naval logistics officer like Sparatus, but the proposed financial support package was shaping up to be substantial- somewhere between ten and twenty trillion credits awarded to the Fleet awarded in installments over the next 50 years to a century. He recognized a play for pork when he saw it, and would have bet his right arm that the list of captains selected to receive new ships would coincide more than a bit with the 'yea' column on the Conclave vote to promote Admiral Dano'lev vas Seliq. Some things didn't change much even on the Migrant Fleet.
The Secretary snapped back into focus when he heard Anderson speaking up once again. "… understand better than anyone that some CDF and C-SEC forces have been given a blank check to unfairly target politically underrepresented species in Citadel Space. I agree with Councilor T'sael that the burden of reparations should be assumed first and foremost by those who carried out the purge of the Quarian Conclave. An accounting must be made."
"And, Councilor," Tarren Sparatus shot back, his voice disturbingly level, "Will this 'accounting' indeed reach all involved? Not just the troops who carried out potentially unlawful orders, but also the officials who helped shape our policies towards the Migrant Fleet? Are your people mature enough to face that level of scrutiny?" It wasn't an empty threat. During their brief years in power the Earth-Firsters had done quite a lot to poison relations with the Migrant Fleet - contingency plans to forcibly repel quarians from Alliance space, support for anti-synthetic militias in the Terminus, and a whole host of other things - and most of it was still buried in Parliament and military records. Anderson had to know that.
"We'll do as best we can," Anderson responded. "However, the Prime Minister's position is very clear that we will not be turning over human officers for investigation when the incidents in question occurred before our species even had a voice on the Council."
"Unacceptable. If you need a politician to hold your troops' hands and keep them in line, then you've failed as an officer. This transparent attempt by the Council to dodge responsibility for your mistakes will not stand."
"That's pretty rich coming from you of all people, Councilor. The Alliance citizens I represent are getting tired of your attempts to dodge responsibility for everything from the mistreatment of quarian pilgrims to the krogan genophage. If we're going to move forward as a Council this refusal to accept the consequences of your military overreach is going to need to end, the sooner the better."
Looking over at Hackett, Udina saw the Admiral had already downed the rest of his scotch and was currently massaging at the ache building up behind his temples. It was no big secret that many in the top levels of the Turian Hierarchy felt their own position on the Council and galactic security in general were threatened by humanity's newfound gains, but typically Sparatus kept a better lid on such sentiments in the name of the Citadel good- or at least he had back before the Crisis. Udina didn't quite know what had happened to the turian during the Battle of Palaven or for that matter what he even really wanted any more, but if anything his dislike for the Alliance had grown since the Battle of the Citadel.
It probably had no small part to do with the fact that underneath a thin pretense of Council-wide unity it was no big secret that most of the Alliance government considered the Turian Hierarchy to remain their number-one political and military rival. Part of it was simply a mix of competition for influence with the two elder Council races, part of it was a string of disagreements on policy points ranging from the genophage to the declassification of Reaper-derived technologies, and part of it was just good old fashioned military one-upmanship, but with the urgency of the Reaper threat past there were more and more voices materializing in Parliament and -more alarmingly- among the military brass suggesting that turian pride simply would never allow them to accept humanity as an equal capable of challenging their military dominance. Udina couldn't count the number of times he'd heard the phrase 'hereditary adversaries' bandied about by Extranet talking-heads in overly expensive suits- or, for that matter, in top-level strategic briefings. Whatever was good for the turians was bad for humanity, the theory went, and vice versa simply because the spikies were too damn stubborn to have it any other way. Udina knew Hackett didn't exactly approve of that sort of thinking, but he had to admit it had gotten the Alliance to reach out to the Migrant Fleet to a degree they never would have when the Earth-Firsters had been in charge and typically Valern or T'Sael intervened before the situation in the Council chamber got too acrimonious.
That seemed to be the case now. The asari Councilor half-turned so that she was facing Sparatus and spoke in a low, measured tone. "Tarren. If… when it comes to a vote, I fully expect the Council of Matriarchs to favor Anderson's proposal, and will act to carry out their wishes."
Then Valern spoke up. At some point during the back-and-forth he had activated his omnitool and entered a not inconsiderable amount of data; judging by the narrowing of his large, ovoid eyes he didn't like what he saw on the holographic display. "I don't mean to interrupt my fellow Councilors, but we all must understand that if it must fully cover these reparations, and I cannot see this investigation resulting in any other outcome, the Turian Hierarchy won't be in an economic position to maintain its patrol fleet over Citadel Space over the next century."
It was an oddly candid statement from the salarian, although Udina had been hearing more and more like it as of late. From what he knew of the labyrinthine politics of the salarian Circle of Dalatrasses, Donnell suspected that Valern's time on the Council might have been running short and apparently the Councilor knew it.
Then T'Sael spoke up again. ""Tarren, the Reaper Crisis was a difficult time for us all, and we understand that if your Navy is currently unable to meet your obligations under the Citadel Defense Treaty, the asari republics would be willing to offer a loan."
Sparatus fell silent for first ten seconds, then twenty, mandibles clamped tight against his jaw. Then, "That won't be necessary." he shot back. "If it is the will of this Council that these measures be enforced, we will carry them out to the best of our ability. The Hierarchy will pay what we owe."
Udina had to admire the coordination between the other three Councilors. Valern and T'sael knew just where to hit the former logistical officer, effectively insulting the Hierarchy's economy and industrial capabilities. Due to their outsized military the turians imported a goodly chunk of their civilian goods and services from the other Council species- and being somewhat poor negotiators, they rarely got their money's worth. Having the effectively infinite line of credit that came with their position as a Citadel power they could in theory keep up that way indefinitely, but the Turian Hierarchy still technically ran a massive trade deficit and remained deeply in debt. It was a bit of a sore spot for the honor-bound species, and Udina had noticed the other Councilors weren't shy about bringing it up in delicate negotiations.
Vas Seliq continued on, seemingly oblivious to the delicate power play going on above him. "… as long as our families have somewhere to live, and as long as we're guaranteed the same freedoms as everyone else on the Citadel I can go back home after this session and tell my fellow Admirals 'this was a job well done'."
Tapping the control panel on his armrest, Udina muted the audio and brought the lights back up. It wasn't as though there was any great suspense in his mind about how the vote would turn out.
Hackett poured himself the rest of the bourbon and stood to dispose of the empty bottle. "Donnell, please tell me this isn't going to come back around to bite us."
"What do you mean?"
"Sparatus didn't concede to that investigation out of the goodness of his heart, obviously. What's he planning?"
"I don't think it's like that. The best way to go after a turian is to tell him he's not pulling his weight Obviously the rest of the Council has that figured out and I think your man Anderson is learning fast. Nobody wants to face up to what happened to the quarians, so they got Sparatus to take the fall. I wouldn't read anything more complicated into it than that."
"Hm, you're probably right. Anderson… how would you put it in a speech… I don't know, 'tirelessly advocating justice for the Migrant Fleet' might give us an inroad with the quarians that we can use to get past vas Seliq's blather, at least. Thank God for stupid politicians, I suppose."
Donnell stood, brushed down his suit jacket, and turned to go. "Remind me again why we want our allies to be fools?"
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Author's Notes:
Don't expect a great deal of "Shekarian" in Palaven's Dogs. The primary reason why is simply that I have precious little interest in writing relationships for their own sake and Palaven's Dogs is not a romance (holy fuck is it not a romance). However, as part of my activities at Library of the Damned I do regularly trawl through the Shekarian side of the fanfiction community, and it's a fairly terrifying place- therefore, I wanted to… maybe not explore but at least present what I would consider a more functional relationship between the two that it actually based on shared responsibility and mutual respect and doesn't interfere with their ability to function as a team or result in Garrus getting special treatment and Shepard becoming effectively worthless- gosh, imagine that!
On another note, yes I am still pissy about Andromeda. Hell, as the prologue indicated I am still pissy about ME3. However, I highly doubt anything related to Andromeda will ever show up in the 'fic again. I considered doing some additional deconstruction/satire of it here and elsewhere, and then realized that I simply do not care enough to bother.
Admrial vas Seliq was originally supposed to speak extremely similarly to Donald Trump- very aggressive but very clear, shorter phrases, lots of repetition of specific points. However, as I started writing his dialogue I decided I wanted him to project a more sympathetic image to the Council that didn't really fit that sort of very confrontational tone. What emerged was this odd sort of folksy, lower-key Jimmy Carter style of political mannerism where he kept the simple vocabulary but spoke in these longer, kind of rambling sentences and avoided confrontational language. I thought it was interesting and different, so I decided to make him talk like that all the time.
Having just no end of trouble with the formatting of this thing, specifically the scene dividers. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to when the document manager preserves horizontal lines, which is why some scenes are separated by ellipses and why the chapter end uses a divider more similar to something out of My Immortal. Hopefully I'll be able to fix it soon.
