Dar Volutus – Dar Mindon, Vol Protectorate
I met the former Turian councillor, Sparatus Stultius at his apartment. It's a newly constructed 30 storey prefab. It stands out against the smaller and less imposing flats just outside of the city of Dar Volutus, on Dar Mindon, a planet of the Vol Protectorate. Dar Mindon was fortunate to be one of the least populated of the Volus colonies, it was largely spared, and like most volus worlds the planet contains high levels of Ammonia and higher than normal pressure for most non Volus to survive, so the apartment has a three step process to enter. The newly constructed prefab was built to house the large numbers of Turian refugees, Sparatus is one of them. A Volus inside of their environmental suits greets me at the door, he apologizes for not having any Levo -Amino based food to offer me. He brings me to a bedroom towards the back of the apartment, there is a small bed surrounded by medical equipment. Years of political and diplomatic experience have not failed Sparatus, he swings his legs off of the bed, grasping a cane he shakes my hand in the commonly accepted human greeting. He gestures for me to take a seat, and he sits in a well worn green chair across from me, and I set up my holo recorder. I cannot help but notice the formerly towering Turian, is now a frail shadow of his former self.
So you were one of the first people to learn of the Reapers?
You say that like what we learned was obvious, but yes, Commander Shepard reported some evidence of a highly advanced, ancient, artificial intelligence from dark space after the destruction of Saren's research base on Virmire.
You didn't believe the Commander?
[Sparatus shifts himself in his seat, twisting the cane]
Listen, what kind of precautions should we have taken at that point? We got some hearsay from an overzealous, newly minted Specter who was under tremendous stress.
But there was other evidence, ruins, the Prothean records?
Yes, more hearsay. Ancient texts talk about the end of the world, doesn't Earth myths have those too?
But the council saw more than hearsay during the Battle of the Citadel?
Yes.
Publically, the story was largely blamed on Geth, with Saren Arterius as the leader?
Yes, that was the story we went with. It seemed to largely coincide with the facts.
Privately, you had doubts?
Privately? We [the Council] never agreed on anything, sometimes I thought 90% of my job was arguing with Councillor Valern. We were unanimous that the public story wasn't completely accurate, there was something about that ship. But we couldn't have the entire galaxy in a panic and the extranet spiraling into chaos over misinformation.
But you could have started preparing-
For what? An invasion that could maybe happen? We're elected officials, we are beholden to our constituents and we have every credit, every chit checked for expenses(1). You can't sharpen your claws without some military brown-noser asking if you bought the file with their tax dollars. We did what we could, we created a secret task force that investigated anything that might lead to information about the Reapers.
We found close to nothing, some vague conspiracy theories, a few crackpots and a handful of information that we didn't know what to do with.
Like what?
We came across information on an ancient ship out in Batarian space. I think it was called the Leviathan of Ur(2) The Batarians are tight-lipped about it, but they would deny the colour of the sky. The rumour was that it was a Reaper ship, it certainly seemed to match descriptions of Sovereign. That was probably the most fear inducing report we came across, our team we sent to investigate never returned, in fact any research team who went to investigate the ruin never returned. We had chalked it up to the Batarian Hegemony(3).
We also sent a team to investigate the reports of a strange massive ship orbiting some brown dwarf(4). They came across heavy fire from Cerberus agents and Geth, so we never got any good intelligence from that. Still, it was enough to send chills down your carapace.
What happened with the information that your team uncovered?
Nothing. They wrote a report, we filed it and sent it to some of the top brass in the Council Command and Intelligence Agency. I don't think anyone even looked at it, we send out hundreds of special reports every month.
You still had your doubts about the Reaper threat?
It was an election year, and I was already becoming unpopular on Palaven(5). I was viewed as too "human centric" and ignoring Turian affairs. Maybe that part was true, there are still some conservative elements who never appreciated how quickly the First Contact War was resolved and were too uncomfortable with how fast Humans were being accepted into the galactic community. There was a lot of rumbling about the number of humans being accepted into the Turian military, and joint training exercises with the Alliance military. Reaper threat or not, I wasn't about to start spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a private plan on an invasion that we couldn't let the public know about.
What did you think?
About the problems on Palaven? I thought there was merit in the arguments, I mean I'm not against Humans, I like humans. I agreed with making a human a spectre, I felt it would help to repair some of that remaining damage from the First Contact War, but I understood the sentiment, Humans went from nothing to demanding council status and the respect that comes with it in a few decades, that rubbed people the wrong way. So I shelved the report. It's not like the other council members disagreed with me. They were up for re-election too, and we weren't just getting enough evidence to keep sending out teams and spending so much money on a... what do you humans call it, a wild bird chase.
Even though you had a feeling that something was coming?
[Sparatus looks at his cane, then outside]
Yes. I should have done more. I didn't. Those billions of lives are on me. On us.
I lost that re-election anyway, it was all for nothing.
Sparatus then says he is too tired to continue this interview and calls for his aide to walk me out. Before I leave I see that his head is visibly slumped over to one side and his hands covering his eyes.
Notes:
1 - While an exaggeration, all Citadel elected politicians are subject to Freedom of Information requests for budgets and expenses.
2- Correction: Leviathan of Dis
3 - The Leviathan was discovered by Dr. Garret Bryson, who was killed by his indoctrinated assistant. All mention of the discovery of Leviathan was only recently declassified. Batarians viewed any alien race encroaching near the crater impact as hostile and often open fired on any ship or crew.
4 - The Reaper ship was in orbit around Mnemosyne in the Thorne system in the Hawking Eta Cluster
5- Sparatus' favourability poll by Khalisah al-Jilani for Westerlund News, reported only 38% of Turians approved of his policies