17 November 2183, T'Soni Analytics Offices, Nos Astra/Illium

Day 109. T'Soni Analytics was one hundred sixteen million, five hundred and thirty-eight thousand credits in the red.

I felt about ready to strangle someone.

The day had not begun well. I slept poorly, troubled by bad dreams that I could barely remember after I awoke. Not even a hot shower and a good breakfast made me feel alert or ready for work.

In the elevator, one of the new computer technicians, a male human, ogled me for a moment before trying a pick-up line. He didn't know me; he simply saw an attractive asari who he deduced must work somewhere else in the firm. Then one of his friends whispered frantically in his ear, and he broke off with huge eyes. I gave him a cool smile and assurances that I took no offense, but to this day I still think he reported for duty in a state of mortal terror.

The morning staff meeting crawled along, prickly and difficult. Aspasia behaved as if distracted, not as crisp or efficient as usual. Yevgeni brought the meeting to a halt while he tried to recover information he should have had at his fingertips. I did not reprimand them out loud, but a moment's icy stare made my feelings clear.

Then the day's analytic work seemed positively cursed. Somehow three of the analytic teams got into a priority conflict, pushing mutually contradictory tasking across to the Collection department. Our tasking system should have prevented such a conflict; it took me almost two hours to locate the subtle error in business logic that had caused the problem. That put me far behind on the day's editorial work. Then I found weak analysis, unsupported assertions, and even poor grammar in report after report. Back the reports went to be re-written, black marks piling up in the system for twenty analysts and their team leaders. I had to re-task a number of analysts to finish our top-priority reporting for the day, which meant that the day's Galactic Overview fell behind by still more hours.

Somehow, somehow, we managed to finish the day shift's assigned tasks only four hours late. By which time I was exhausted, ravenously hungry, fighting off a fierce headache, and seething.

"Aspasia, could you come into my office? I need a reality check."

Even Aspasia felt it, I could tell. She wasn't in her usual high spirits when she appeared in my office doorway. In fact, I thought she looked slightly apprehensive.

I shook my head at her. "Come in, sit down, and take your shoes off. I'm not going to shout, scream, or throw objects. At least not at you."

She obeyed my instructions, removing her shoes and sinking onto one of the soft couches with a sigh of relief. "I think half of the team leaders in Analysis are expecting you to do it at them."

"I'm tempted. Goddess, what was wrong with them today? I had to restrain myself from walking out on the watch floor and beating people senseless with a style guide."

She sighed and stretched her legs, wiggling her bare toes to ease the tension. Her voice recovered some of its usual vivacity. "Liara, when you were traveling with Commander Shepard, didn't you ever have a day when absolutely everything went wrong at once?"

I shuddered, remembering Rayingri. "Yes. We walked into a geth trap and almost got ourselves killed, every one of us. Shepard and I were both badly hurt. The only reason we escaped was that I managed to telekinetically pull a building down on top of the geth."

Her eyes went wide. "A whole building?"

"I was desperate. Especially since we were inside the building at the time. Are you saying that today was just a random statistical fluctuation? The business equivalent of a bad scalp day?"

"Well, no. I think we do have some systemic problems. The statistical fluctuation is that those problems were much worse than usual today, but they've been brewing for a while."

I leaned back in my chair and massaged my temples. "Explain."

"Well, on paper we're doing very well," she said. "Our daily balance sheet has consistently been in the black for weeks now. Right now we're making a little over two and a half million credits a day in profit. Money is simply not a concern anymore. If my projections are right, you'll have your initial investment back in a few more months."

"I know that. I've been getting subtle hints from various extremely wealthy asari who would be only too happy to buy a share in T'Soni Analytics. If I were inclined to look for other investors. Which I am not."

Aspasia nodded, her eyes closed as she melted into the soft chair. "The problem, Liara, is that we're getting too big, and we're doing it too quickly."

"I thought we were on track," I said, confused. "You said yourself that we were still in line with the projections we made at the beginning."

"We are . . . but think about it. There are over three thousand people on your payroll right now. To be sure, most of them are paid informants, out in the galaxy and many of them not even knowing that they work for you. Here in the central office it's over two hundred, and we're still hiring new personnel almost every day. You don't know them all. They don't all know each other."

I remembered the male human in the elevator that morning. Thinking back, I realized that he must have been no more than twenty-five or so.

Very good, Liara, you've terrorized an infant.

I realized I still did not know the man's name, and he was one of my employees. I shook my head. "You had to know this would come, that right about now we would grow too large to be . . . a family any longer."

She nodded in vigorous agreement. "Oh yes. In fact I expected it weeks ago. I suppose it's a tribute to the automation and business rules we set up at the beginning, that things went so smoothly for as long as they did."

"What you're saying is that we've grown so quickly – we had to grow so quickly – that we haven't had time to establish a positive corporate identity. Until we do, our people will keep stumbling over each other."

"Liara, you're a gem. That's exactly right." She shifted her position, sitting on the edge of her seat, almost vibrating with her eagerness to make the point. "Corporate identity. Corporate culture. All the unspoken expectations, habits of thought, social systems that glue an organization together. Positive culture can give everyone purpose, drive them to excel even when the boss isn't there to look over their shoulders. Negative corporate culture can be a weight on everyone's ankles, dragging them down into the mud no matter how hard they work."

"All right, Dr. Lehanai. What is your diagnosis?"

She stared at me, her face gone suddenly sober. "You won't like it."

"I like what happened today even less."

"All right. The thing about corporate culture is that an organization's leaders can't impose it from the top. Not consciously. Everyone in the organization takes part in deciding what the corporate culture will be like. The most leadership can do is provide a positive example, a model for others to follow . . . and Liara, I'm afraid you haven't been doing that."

The criticism stung, no matter how mildly it was delivered. I forced myself to remain calm. "What do you mean?"

"Think about what you spent today doing. You spent hours chasing a logic trap with Arin's people. Then you spent more hours checking reports for misplaced commas, and making people's lives miserable when you found them." She pointed accusingly at me. "You are micromanaging."

"That logic trap could have cost us thousands of man-hours if we hadn't corrected it," I pointed out. "And the reports are our most important product. They have to be as close to perfect as we can manage if they're going to earn top credits."

"That's all true, but it's not as relevant as you seem to think. Look at it from the point of view of one of our line workers." She held her hand down low, to indicate something at the bottom of a pile. "This person doesn't supervise anyone directly; we just hired her to do a job. She has an immediate supervisor to whom she is accountable. She has policies and procedures to follow. All of this is good. It makes her feel secure. She can follow the rules, she can get to know her supervisor and adjust to her quirks and foibles."

I nodded to show I was with her thus far.

"Now what do you suppose you look like to our line worker?" Aspasia raised her hand far over her head. "The great Dr. Liara T'Soni. Attractive. Glamorous. Brilliant. Famous. Fabulously wealthy. Controversial. She's so young and yet she deals with the galaxy's foremost leaders every day. She was involved with that fascinating human, Commander Shepard. She's trying to save the entire galaxy from Goddess knows what. She's an asari on a quest. It's just amazing to work for her."

"Oh, stop it," I said uncomfortably.

"Ah, but wait! The great Dr. Liara T'Soni is in the habit of swooping down from her mountain heights." She made her hand swoop down. "Right past the department heads, right past our line worker's immediate supervisor, right to her very desktop . . . to demand that she correct her comma usage."

"Your point?" I demanded.

"My point is that every time you do that, you rob our line workers of the security they need to be effective. They need to know that the rules aren't going to keep changing whenever you have a whim. You also demonstrate to them that you don't trust their management chain. You don't trust your department heads to solve problems and get things done properly on their own. You don't trust the mid-level managers to keep their subordinates on task. You diminish the leadership structure in the eyes of the workforce; you rob managers of the respect they need to be effective. And what's worse, you diminish yourself. It's hard to be an inspiring figure when you look exactly like every other demanding, unreasonable boss they've ever had."

"I never wanted to be an inspiring figure."

"Too fucking bad," said Aspasia harshly. "That's what you've become. It's what T'Soni Analytics needs most from you. It's what I would have thought your time with Commander Shepard had taught you to be. So are you going to search your areté and figure out how to do it well, or are you going to watch this corporation – your brainchild and mine – founder in the mud?"

I sat, somewhat shocked by her sudden vulgar language. We stared at each other for a long moment.

My desktop chimed.

We both glanced at it in surprise. No one should have been able to reach my private code, not this late in the evening after my secretary had gone home.

I touched a control to respond. A holographic window appeared over my desk. Aspasia moved aside so as not to appear in the field of vision.

An asari face appeared. One I recognized immediately.

"Dr. T'Soni. I've been hoping to speak to you for some time," said Matriarch Pytho.

The owner and CEO of the Illium Defense Force.

Before the Reaper War, Illium's system of government was almost unique among asari worlds. Illium's citizens liked to claim that the planet had no government at all, but this clearly stood as an exaggeration. Not very many laws bound every citizen, but a few did, and those laws had to be created, interpreted, and enforced by someone.

All law on Illium rested in a single document: the Compact. It was a surprisingly short document to serve as the governing charter of an entire world. Indeed, the only reason it was not shorter still was the extraordinarily precise high-asari dialect in which it was written. Legislative authority resided in the Illium Development Commission, a board of the owners or CEOs of the planet's twelve wealthiest corporations. These "Twelve" had to be in unanimous agreement to create any new law – that is, to modify the Compact. As a result, the Compact had been amended only eight times in over five hundred years.

The Commission was the only purely political institution that existed on Illium. Private organizations handled every other function of government on a contract basis. Private security firms enforced the Compact. Private arbitrators dealt with legal disputes and contract enforcement. Private industry carried out the building and maintenance of infrastructure. These services were most often funded by general subscriptions, negotiated with all of the corporations which used them. Illium's corporate citizens willingly paid four or five percent of their revenues to ensure the maintenance of good order.

It was a form of government that humans called anarcho-capitalism. Among humans it was a purely theoretical form; the few times it had been tried on a large scale had all failed dramatically. Why humans had never managed it, whereas Illium had enjoyed stability and prosperity for over five centuries, I hesitate to guess. There are significant differences between human and asari psychology . . .

I should probably state for the record that I didn't entirely approve of Illium's social structure. It may have been stable and prosperous, but that prosperity was not for everyone. The wealthy and powerful had great skill at maintaining the system for their exclusive benefit. If you were not born to wealth and privilege, you would probably spend most of your life fighting for every scrap of affluence you could get. If you were sick or disabled, and you had not been able to afford expensive insurance, then Illium was only too happy to leave you to starve to death in the streets. It was the only asari world in the galaxy that legally permitted chattel slavery – pardon me, indentured servitude. And even if you came to Illium wealthy, you could very easily lose that wealth – and even your life – unless you developed skill in reading the very fine print of contracts.

At that time in my life, I had lived on Illium off and on for about forty years. In youth I had seen it as a place to escape from the rigid social expectations of Thessia, of my mother's household. It had served as a convenient place from which to plan scientific expeditions, and now it provided a convenient place to establish a new information brokerage. None of that meant I was unaware of the dark places where corruption festered.

I once heard an asari Spectre describe the planet as "Omega with expensive shoes." She was very insightful. I found it very ironic when she later became one of my worst enemies.

As you may imagine, when Matriarch Pytho called me directly in my office, casually demonstrating her ability to smash through very good security, I took notice.

She had come to Illium with the first wave of settlement, establishing the Illium Defense Force in the first year of the colony's existence. She had spent most of her life as the foremost provider of defense services for the colony. She had grown with Illium: first she commanded a company of commandos, then a battalion, then a regiment, then a squadron of corvettes, then frigates, then cruisers. Now a Matriarch in the last century of her life, she was one of the Twelve, commanding annual revenues of well over a hundred billion credits. When she spoke, Illium listened.

When she appeared on my screen, haughty and dignified with age, her piercing eyes and deep-blue headdress reminding me uncomfortably of Benezia . . . I listened.

"Matriarch Pytho," I responded with a deep bow. "How may I be of service?"

She bestowed a glacial smile. "Courtesy. It is an unexpected gift in one so young. It is possible that you and I might do one another a service, Dr. T'Soni."

I sat down at my desk, leaned back and steepled my fingers. "I'm listening."

"I am aware of your agenda. You seek to convince the galaxy to prepare for the onset of these Reapers."

"That is one of my goals, yes. Have you read my papers on this subject?"

"I have indeed. Very impressive work. I am prepared to be convinced, especially since my friends on the Citadel have privately informed me of the truth behind the defeat of Saren Arterius."

I smiled slightly. "You don't accept the Council's version of events?"

"Pah. Lying comes as naturally to the Council as breathing oxygen. If they informed me that matter possessed mass, I would perform an experiment to verify their assertion."

"I'm certain they have their reasons," I said mildly.

"Liars always do. Never mind. You assert that these Reapers may return at any time and attempt to eradicate our civilization. Do you know when?"

"We have no way to know, Matriarch. My instincts tell me it will be soon, perhaps no more than a few years."

"Why?"

I shrugged. "It seems likely that Sovereign was some kind of forward scout or vanguard for the Reapers. I speculate that they leave one such behind after each cycle, to watch over the galaxy and call for the next invasion when organic life has reached the proper level of development. Clearly Sovereign was making every effort to open the Citadel mass relay and summon the rest of the Reapers. Whatever conditions it watched for have already been fulfilled. It would be foolish to assume that the Reapers have only one way to know that the time for invasion has come, or that they have only one way to reach the galaxy from dark space. I think we can expect another attempt at any time."

"Sound analysis, Doctor. I agree. Illium must be prepared, if it is possible to prepare for such a disaster. I may be able to implement your agenda, at least here on Illium, and what Illium does others may imitate."

"Thank you." I smiled at her. "You haven't said what I can do for you."

"You may assist me in keeping my position as one of the Twelve," said Pytho. "After all, I cannot prepare Illium for Reaper attack if I am no longer its leading provider of military services."

"I find it hard to believe that you could be displaced so easily."

"A year ago I might have agreed with you. Now I am not so certain. Several others of the Twelve are seriously considering cutting off their subscription payments to the Defense Force. Where they lead, many others will follow."

I shook my head, still trying to process what she was saying. "What could possibly convince them to do such a thing?"

"I'm certain you have noticed recent trends in piracy."

"Of course. Attacks on Illium-registered shipping into the Terminus Systems are up about ten percent from this time last year."

"Correct. Even merchant convoys which purchase IDF escort are preyed upon. I believe someone is attempting to discredit the IDF and me. Thus far they have been quite effective."

"Who?"

Her eyes held mine. "That is what I want you to discover."

I glanced over at Aspasia, who was nearly bursting with excitement. She nodded vigorously at me.

"Are you offering T'Soni Analytics a commission to seek out this conspiracy against the IDF?"

"That is correct. If you succeed, if you can bring me proof, then I should be able to retain my position and I will begin to prepare Illium for the Reapers. I'm also prepared to purchase a gold-tier subscription to your firm's entire product line." She hesitated for a moment. "I have intelligence assets of my own, of course. They have been unsuccessful in solving this problem. I suspect I may have been infiltrated. I am gambling that you and your firm are more worthy of trust."

I reached a decision. It wasn't all that difficult. "Of course, Matriarch. We will do all that we can for you."