Intermission Part 3: Visiting the Unknown
Author's Note: Okay, there were a lot of comments about the last chapter. First, to all the people who made appreciative comments, thank you very much. To those who made critical comments, thank you as well. For those who aren't interested, the rest of the bold is responses to the critical comments. You are, of course, free to skip it, as the story does not depend upon this explanation. Reviews are always welcome and I'll do my best to address them.
First, I should say that a lot the confusion is the result of me not being clear and me choosing to write the last chapter from the perspective of the Council reps. This had the advantage of introducing us to the Combine through the eyes of people who didn't know what was going on with it, but also meant that they weren't likely to rock the boat by asking questions which might cause the Combine to change their mind. Perhaps (note to self when going back through at the end) I should add in a rather more blunt question or two, though much of this isn't stuff the Combine would admit at this stage. The best way to do this might be a private internal debate within the Combine (maybe a Zorah family meal), but right now I don't think I could do justice to both sides.
The critical comments basically boiled down to three questions:
1) Why would the Combine want to join the Council, without being offered a seat on the Council, at least?
2) Why would the Combine give up their technological advantage?
3) Why would the Combine sign the Treaty of Farixen?
Before I get to those questions a note I may not have made sufficiently clear. The Combine is very unhappy with this situation. Their hand was forced, twice. First, the Admiral intervened and introduced themselves as a representative of the Combine, revealing their existence. Second, Wrex goes rogue. That radically limits the options which don't lead to war. And the Combine very much does not want a war.
1) The Combine wants to join the Council because its businesses want access to Council markets, its people want access to Council worlds and it because its military wants allies against the Geth-Slaver, Geth-Genocidal and any other enemies.
The businesses which might be nervous all believe they have an initial technological advantage which will permit them to expand to a position of market dominance, or at least competitiveness on a much larger scale then before. It may be a smaller slice, but the larger pie will make them all richer.
A large plurality of the Combine's population has been for initiating first contact before this, however there was never an impetus to take the risk until their hand was forced. With the risk of losing the secrecy of their existence gone, the anti-open-contact groups have lost their best argument.
The Council are not great allies, as we've seen repeatedly in their history, but they're also absolutely terrible enemies as the Krogan and the Rachni can attest. The Combine military tends to think its better to have them inside the tent pissing out…
Especially given the complete absence of any external multi-world or multi-system powers. There's some mention of the Terminus Systems, but we never see any actual sign of them being anything but individual groups that might pull together if invaded. In millennia nothing else grew there? Or did other things grow and then get kicked apart by Spectres because the Council does not abide external threats?
And it should be pointed out that with the Quarians, the Council failed to come to their aid, that's not the same as attacking them. With the Krogan, the Krogan started a war of expansion inside Council Space. The Council tends towards failing to act against internal issue, not acting maliciously, even though it can have terrible effects. As the Combine is confident they can handle their own internal problems, they aren't too worried about that.
Though theoretically the Combine's giving up some sovereignty, the only real sign of that are a handful of mostly ineffectual and unenforced laws, the Treaty of Farixen (discussed below) and having to let Spectres operate in your territory. That last is a major concern, but the Combine isn't particularly worried about that because they're confident X-Com and their own military forces can handle them if they become a problem. Psionics make security a great deal more…secure, if properly deployed.
On the topic of the laws, as many people have pointed out, the Council isn't good at enforcing their laws (see the Hegemony and slavery), that's because they're more like the UN then the US and rely on their members for any major forces or enforcement. The Combine wants and gets explicit exemptions for the things that truly matter to them and if future issues come up, they're not above telling the Council to stick it, just as the Hegemony has done.
Finally, the Combine isn't bargaining for a seat on the Council because they don't want one. A seat on the Council makes everyone who doesn't have one think you're an upstart and everyone who does have one think you're the new kid on the block. The Combine wants all of the perks of membership without any of the responsibilities of leadership, because they think that leadership is hopelessly incompetent and intend to ignore anything they say or do which interferes with internal Combine operations.
The Council has proven very good at destroying people who attack them, but terrible at handling internal crises. The potential exception to this is the Hegemony, but I don't know that we have any canonical examples of the Hegemony (openly) attacking a Council world. The closest we come is the bombardment of Mannovai (Salarian, but affiliation unidentified) and the annexation of the independent colony of Esan (Asari) and a single skirmish on Enael (no information). What we don't get is any information about what the response was, or if those were even Council worlds (except Esan, explicitly not). Those are also three incidents, none within a century of the others, suggesting to me that the consequences of those actions were…unpleasant if they were anti-Council actions.
From the perspective of someone worried about Council interference, their complete unwillingness to stop the Batarians from enslaving their own populace and raiding outside Council Space is actually a good thing. They won't stop the Batarians, why would they interfere with us? The one thing that might prompt that, concern over the AI/Geth threat, they get explicitly addressed.
2) The Combine is willing to give up some of their tech advantage because there's no way to get what its people want without doing so. There are societies which are sufficiently closed that they could trade and travel amongst each other without giving anything away, but the Combine is not such a society. What they're giving up is what you could find on the extranet (and for the person who asked about the Admiral sharing the marine complement of his dreadnought, take a look at what Wikipedia has on US ships, there's a lot of information it's just not feasible to keep secret in an open society). The one exception to it being publically available information is the information about the ship Wrex stole, which is its capabilities, not how those capabilities have been achieved. Classified, yes, but not particularly helpful for R&D purposes except in demonstrating that something is possible.
Also, their hand has been forced. Wrex is running loose with their top-of-the-line tech and, as far as they know, he is more than willing to start a war. Which they really don't want. Partly because they'll lose.
They have a tech advantage, but, as the Ethereals demonstrated, that can collapse very fast and the Council is just too big for rapid conquest. They've been colonizing space for thousands of years, to the Combine's hundred (and yes, the Combine is expanding slower than the Alliance did, though it's certainly not suffering from a lack of population, merely from greater bureaucratization and greater expenses in expansion due to serious defenses being necessary).
Also, wars are incredibly expensive and damaging, which would interfere with their ongoing hunt for the Geth-Genocidal and the Geth-Slaver, as well as damaging their economy and killing a bunch of folks. If I was emperor of the Combine in a game of Total War: Mass Effect-X-Com I might engage in a first strike (after all, I can always load a save if things go wrong and all the casualties are virtual), the civilian elected leaders of the Combine are not going to do so.
The Combine might be able to successfully genocide the Council before the Council could find them, but they don't want to do that. Both because it would be immoral and because there would still be fleets of warships floating around with nothing to do but search for the Combine homeworlds to glass them in turn.
This also explains why they didn't take Wrex up on his suggestions, because they believe that absolutely would have started a war.
The only option to keep their tech advantage is to avoid all contact, which they don't want to do, so they give it up as a gift, rather than having it leak out, or be sold by some opportunistic trader/traitor. Or, you know, Wrex himself giving the tech to various other powers in exchange for support in his crusade.
Also, it creates massive markets for their businesses, at least until other businesses can adapt to the sea change in technology (which none of them have any experience doing, due to the relatively slow and incremental nature of technological advancement in the Mass Effect universe).
3) The Combine is willing to sign onto the Treaty of Farixen because their dreadnoughts are only really intended to serve one purpose (they also act as giant troop transports, but that's just because someone saw an opportunity to economize), namely mutually assured destruction. Anyone attacks the Combine looking to commit genocide, the dreadnoughts avoid all combat and seek out the enemy worlds to glass them first. Think MAD with reusable ICBMs.
For that, they don't need a giant fleet of dreadnoughts and that's all the Treaty of Farixen limits. In point of fact, they don't have a giant fleet of dreadnoughts, though they do have a large fleet. They'll need to mothball one dreadnought to become compliant, but will do so in such a way that makes reactivation a breeze.
Moreover, they've recognized that in the current tech environment, dreadnoughts are horribly vulnerable to suicide attacks from smaller ships. A dozen shuttles with jump drives and nukes on board can destroy a dreadnought, if they can identify its location and get within jump range.
The treaty doesn't limit their construction of smaller vessels (or larger vessels which are not dreadnoughts, e.g. carriers), which they have in abundance. And they've got an entire historical model, the Washington Naval Treaty, of how to game that system.
They don't want to get sucked into an arms race with an economy dozens of times as large as their own, so they offer a concession which costs them nothing.
Indeed, throughout the negotiation, they give up nothing except that which they didn't want, or would inherently have given up by getting what they do want. The Council's lack of information regarding the Combine's capabilities and interests put them in a horrible bargaining position.
Finally, I don't want to leave you with the impression that the Combine wouldn't fight a war if they had to, but they certainly aren't going to begin a war of choice with a vastly larger enemy who's done nothing to them. The negotiation is not a zero-sum game and they don't want it to be.
Thanks again for the reviews.
Councilor Tevos glanced around the table. Only six of the matriarchs had managed to make it to the Citadel, but with Benezia and the Consort at the table, she couldn't ignore them for the hundred matriarchs who were joining this conference by comms buoy. Every major Republic was represented by at least one matriarch. They weren't official leaders, but they had the influence to sway the voices and votes, even of other matriarchs.
"I assume none of us speak for rejecting this offer?" Tevos asked the group. That was, in fact, a plebiscite that had been put forward to reject the deal and another to attack the Combine immediately, but neither was receiving any real support. The more relevant plebiscite was one focused on the question of the practicalities of admitting the Combine and handling the information that was to be passed over.
A circle of nods ran around the table and each of the screens.
"I reserve the right to change my position once we've updated our fleets, depending on what else we discover about this Combine. For if this is what they admit to, who knows what they conceal?" Matriarch Nuest said. Centuries of life on a colony bordering the Terminus and the Hegemony had made her hard and paranoid. The paint on her face, in the shape of tears, the color of blood, was unsettling.
"We all have the right to change our minds when the situation changes," another matriarch said, somewhere between soothing and snappish.
"And right now we need to understand the situation. What's this business with the Geth? I understand there are various factions, which the Combine has been fighting for almost seventy years? What information do we have regarding the Geth factions' capabilities and intentions towards us?" Nuest said, most definitely snapping.
"Based on our discussions with the Combine representatives, the situation differs substantially between the various factions," Matriarch Lan'asi explained from the new Asari colony. "The Geth-Isolationist have staked out a cluster which they're mining for materials for a single ship capable of sustaining their entire population in any star system. The ship is apparently going to be…very large."
"Do we have a location?" Nuest asked.
"The Combine does. They report that their external security agency, known as X-Com, has eyes on the ship at all times."
"We'll need that location for ourselves, but my concern is more with the genocidal and slaver Geth," Nuest said, in a tone which suggested the other matriarch should have known that.
"The Geth-Genocidal have apparently mostly been destroyed and the remnants are being pursued all over the Terminus by X-Com. They prioritized the Geth-Genocidal for obvious reasons."
"We all know how easy it is to destroy a planet, that's why the Citadel Conventions exist," Matriarch Cavius said, subtly drawing attention to the fact that it was her mother who'd created them and her father, a high ranking officer in the Hierarchy's military who signed for the Hierarchy. Cavius wasn't much of a force on her own, but her bloodlines made it difficult to ignore her on matters like this.
Matriarch V'Dova interjected, "Based on what I was told," she less subtly reminded the others that it was representatives of one of her affiliated families who made first contact (at least amongst the Asari who were still within the bounds of the Republics), "there is ongoing conflict with the Geth-Slaver, but it generally occurs as the Combine attempts to claim a new system, or sector, due to the heavy defenses the Combine places around its worlds."
"Indeed, though X-Com also attacks external sites to ensure that the Geth-Slaver cannot build up sufficient force to overrun any Combine worlds," Lan'asi added, suggesting that V'Dova's sources were out-of-the-know about X-Com. "They are far more numerous than the Geth-Genocidal, but not a major threat at this point, not with the Geth-Unity working hand-in-glove with the Combine."
"Until they turn on one another," Cavius said bitterly. Her world had bordered Quarian space and weathered the initial rush of refugees and subsequent combat between Geth and Quarians. The matriarch, like everyone else in the conversation was more than old enough to remember the fall of the Quarians.
"Which will be long after we've gained technical parity with them," Lan'asi pointed out. "If it happens at all."
"Yes, yes, nothing now. But we can't stand down either."
Tevos looked around the room and at the faces on the screens, seeing nods of agreement. "Agreed."
"I agree that the Geth are a problem for the future, but what's this business about psionics? Are we truly supposed to believe in something so ridiculous?" Matriarch Atevo asked. She was a theologian focused on the mystic nature of melding, with obvious concerns about anything with implications for that.
"It was demonstrated, most effectively," Lan'asi said. "They were able to induce panic in everyone except the Asari, which is the good news. Apparently psionic abilities don't work so well on us."
"And the bad news is?" Atevo asked.
"There are no indications that any Asari have psionic abilities. Now, they don't have a large population base to test, but they have done some examinations of genetic databases and Asari developmental patterns and haven't seen any indications that we have such abilities."
"You have the criteria by which they make that determination?" Atevo asked.
"I will when we make an agreement," Lan'asi said.
"Good. Make sure it reaches me as well."
"All information will be shared with everyone at this conference, that will be part of the plebiscite. You all can distribute the information thereafter as you see fit," Tevos said, slightly irritated, as Atevo should have known that. It was hardly surprising that the theologian hadn't bothered to read the plebiscite being discussed, as she didn't really care about anything except the impacts of psionics on her theories of theology of melding.
"Good," Atevo said, relaxing back into her seat.
"The final matter at hand is the Asari who have lived within the Combine for the last several decades. There's almost a hundred of them, with a great deal of knowledge about the Combine's technology and its people. Sixty-four are from the Republics, the rest are from the Terminus. We need to decide what we're going to do with them, after we debrief them," Tevos said, gently eliding the fact that said debriefing would need to be…candid and thorough.
That provoked a lot more debate. There wasn't anything to be done with the citizens of the Republics, except release them, the Terminus residents, however, were a harder question. The final answer was to offer them citizenship. An offer that would be accepted, as there would be commandos standing behind them to make sure of it and to make sure no one kidnapped and forcibly debriefed them. Once the technology leaked out, they would be free to go where they wished. Probably. Only the citizenship offer would be put to a vote.
When that debate finally finished, there was the usual post-conference pleasantries and several attempts by individual matriarchs to bring up additional topics they thought needed discussion, but Tevos managed to quash those. Eventually everyone else dropped off the line, or trickled out of the room, leaving her alone on the line with Lan'asi.
The ambassador flipped a switch and entered a higher level of encryption, causing the screen to go blank until Tevos could dig out the physical chip which was mated to the one she'd given to Lan'asi before sending the other matriarch on the mission. The paired chips created pseudo-random codes on a unique pattern which was, at least theoretically, impossible to crack. More realistically, anyone who could successfully crack it should already know what they were going to discuss.
"The Krogan. I didn't say anything, but I need to know it's being handled," she let the 'or else' go unsaid, but it hung in the air regardless.
"Each councilor is sending three Spectres. The matter will be handled."
"Good enough."
"I'm glad to hear that, ambassador."
"As glad as I am to say it. But I should give you a warning of another matter. There will almost certainly be trouble between the Combine and the Hegemony."
"There's trouble between the Hegemony and everyone," Tevos said, careful to keep her tone questioning, not dismissive as dismissing the concerns of a matriarch as skilled as Lan'asi would be very foolish (as well as insulting to an ally).
"Not like this. They were trying to be polite, but reading between the lines, it seems obvious that their original enemy was seeking to enslave them and succeeded in enslaving two of their constituent parts. The war with the Ethereals was a defining event for the Combine and it was, very much, a war against slavery. Ever since, they've been fighting a war against the Geth-Slaver. They are not going to get along with the Hegemony."
"I see. I'll keep that in mind."
XXXXX
"There are almost five hundred warships gathered at the rendezvous point. The supplies on the depot ships and the ships' internal supplies are already running short. None of the rest of the powers are prepared to feed a standing fleet that far out for a long period of time. There have also been raids on supply convoys, though not on our supply convoys. However, I'll have to redeploy ships from internal and external trade to supply the other ships of the expeditionary force, if this conference chooses to do so. I recommend that we do so on a reimbursable basis."
Antosia Recegatus, Primarch of the Apien Crest of the Turian Hierarchy nodded politely to the Praetor Kaknar Tar, the Volus logistics officer assigned to support the expeditionary force. With six Hierarchy fleets deployed and almost as many other ships joining them, that was a horribly complicated task. Antosia and Kaknar were the only ones actually in the room, as the other primarchs were attending this conference by comm laser.
"What are the impacts if you do redeploy the ships?" she asked.
"It will depend how long they're needed. Short term costs to send other goods by hired ships and the impacts of some shipments being delayed will be limited. Long term, we'll do serious damage to the economy, unless we get more transport ships built. If we need them for more than a month, I'll recommend pulling all of the Kilnar class troop transports out of mothballs and refitting them as cargo carriers. We'll need to reinstall element zero cores in them, which will be expensive, but not on the order of a Hierarchy-wide shortage in transit capacity."
"Understood. We should know shortly."
"Complete backup plans are in the contingency files."
"Good. Assuming any course of action except war with the Combine, we will need to redeploy additional forces to provide protection against action by the Geth, strengthen the forces around Tuchanka and massively increase scouting throughout the Terminus and all areas around Combine space. I have proposals sent to all of your staffs, I expect responses by the end of tomorrow and we'll debate and vote the day after."
A chorus of agreements met that statement.
"The other matter on the agenda is increased funding for R&D and ship building, design and refitting to modify ships and equipment to take advantage of the new tech. I recommend three hundred percent increase, broken down as detailed in the funding file. Comments and votes on the same timeline as other topics. Any questions?"
There were no questions and everyone signed off with a brief exchange of military courtesies.
XXXXX
The Salarian drummed his fingers and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Finally the STG operatives arrived with the samples, Quarian, Viper and psionic, as well as the one member of the ambassadorial team who'd been exposed to Meld as a child. Scans were easy enough, but Allin didn't want to know how they'd acquired blood and tissue samples without anyone noticing. It didn't matter for his project.
He started with the Quarian, as the STG files had baselines for pre and post-exile Quarian physiology which should explain the changes…which consisted of a supercharged immune system and an entirely new organ which recreated the inputs which had managed the Quarian immune response on Rannoch.
That was…astounding.
But there was no sign of the Meld which made this possible. Not surprising as it would have been given to the Quarian's grandparents, or great-grandparents (Allin always got generations for the slower species confused).
The Viper's physiology and sample were fascinating due to its unique genetic plasticity and flexibility.
That was…interesting.
It suggested several interesting experiments, but didn't provide anything relevant to his current mission.
The psionic's samples weren't even that interesting. Without a larger Human baseline, there was no way to extract any real utility from that sample and it completely lacked any signs of this Meld substance.
That was…useless.
That left the one person he knew had Meld in their system in amounts sufficient to be worth recycling her corpse to reclaim it after death. There was nothing visible in the scans, or the blood sample, but in the tissue sample, there were nanomachines, no, there were nano-organic machines.
That was…impossible.
Dr. Allin Solus smiled more broadly than he ever had in his life. Understanding that, cracking the links to find a way to clone the organic material and connect it to new nanomachines, that was the work of a lifetime. It would be the work of his lifetime, but he was sure he would succeed.
Codex: Dr. Allin Solus, Unlocked.
He was wrong.
XXXXX
Matriarch Lan'asi ignored the wink one of her guards threw to the Combine Marine who was guarding the ship's engineering section. It was obvious that at least one of her dozen commando guards was melding with at least one of the ten marines who was onboard to make sure the pilot didn't slam the ship into the planet. If she'd known that was true, she'd have had to ask questions. As it was, she would just listen to gossip and not be responsible for young people and their hormones.
Though some part of her did note in passing that the marine's pale skin flushed in an automatic reaction to the commando's wink, which was an interesting reaction she might have liked to explore at some length with the exotically pale man, if she hadn't been in charge of a large group of people even younger than her own guards, whose hormones she was, in fact, responsible for (at least to the extent of stopping them from doing anything visibly stupid).
The fifty children who'd made the trip out from the Citadel to Earth were children of the elite on the Citadel, though carefully selected to ensure that all of the governments and species of the Citadel were represented.
This was Lan'asi's (and any representative of the Citadel's) first time on Earth, or even central Combine space, as the Combine had put off revealing information about their location until they'd been admitted as an associate species. Obedient to her orders, she'd spent much of the leisurely trip from the Mass Relay to the planet viewing the other planets in the system, while her ship's sensors produced a rather more useful record. Still, she could see that the entire system was full of ships, with the largest number running between the moons of the outer gas giants and the asteroid belt which was full of Quarians, but massive numbers still ran between Earth and Mars, the first colony of the Silicoids, and Venus, the first colony of the Vipers.
The defenses they'd had to pass through on their trip had been impressive, at least to a laywoman. The fleet defending the system was large, the station sitting at the relay was massive and the ship orbiting Earth, the so called 'Temple Ship' captured from the Ethereals, was simply absurdly large. An entire squadron of fighters had been sent to escort them from the space station orbiting the relay to the planet and her commandos estimated that the station could contain as many fighters and bombers as most fleets.
But now they'd arrived at Earth and her work really began. Well, once she'd managed to herd fifty teenagers off the ship. Fortunately they didn't much want to remain, as it was a standard Citadel personnel transport, the true exotica began now, with the slender Combine shuttle, piloted by a gracefully built Human, who greeted them with cordial amusement and dropped them through the atmosphere with a smooth skill that belied her youth.
Her voice came over the loudspeaker, "All right folks, we're landing in the ruins of old London. The station in geostationary orbit over old London is the center of the Combine government, which is why we're keeping our distance. The guards have absolutely no sense of humor."
Lan'asi glanced around as her charges tried to decide if it was appropriate to laugh or not. "If you look down, you'll see a vast sea of glass and melted metal. That's what was left of the city of London and about eight million people after the Ethereals were done with it."
They decided it was not appropriate to laugh as the shuttle continued its descent. Lan'asi agreed with them.
"And if you look to your left, you will see the Memorial of the Fallen." She looked out the window, which permitted the children on the other side of the shuttle to cluster around their classmate's windows and look down, seeing a massive mound of black rock, a barrow with grey decorations over it. A single thinner, elongated mound burst from the center forward and several smaller bumps lined the top of the main hillock. "Yes, it does look like a giant hand giving the finger to outer space, I notice that every time I fly this route."
Lan'asi didn't know what in 'giving the finger' meant and made a mental note to look it up, or follow up with someone from the Combine.
"And if you look to your right, you'll see the Monument of the Risen." This was also made of black stone, but shot with silver and gold, rising towards the sky in a single spiraling tower.
"We're putting down on the main shuttle-pad. No one was warned that you were coming, so there won't be any protesters, or assholes, but everything is open to the public. I know you've your own security, but otherwise this whole area is a protected site, with no one but authorized guards allowed to carry weapons. There are a couple of squads of the Death Guard on duty securing this facility, if there's any trouble, they'll handle it. You'll know them because they're armed, scary and dressed all in black."
Codex: Death Guard, Unlocked.
She dropped them onto the landing pad amongst a dozen airbuses suitable for other school trips, a few other shuttles and individual aircars of varying qualities. "I see your guide just outside, already waiting for you. Thanks for flying with me today and have a pleasant stay on Earth."
Indeed, a tall man, with dark skin and loose, wavy grey hair awaited them on the path leading away from the landing platform. He had a calm reserve which suggested he would continue to wait patiently until they either arrived, or the universe ended, whichever came first. He wore loose clothing in greys and blacks, the mourning colors of the Quarians who'd escaped into the Migrant Fleet and most of the local Humans, if Lan'asi recalled correctly.
As they spilled out of the shuttle, the throng of teenagers (or the equivalent for their species) broke into social groups and beginning to chatter about the ride down, comparing it with various other shuttle rides and Earth with various other planets, as this was a widely travelled group (for their age). Lan'asi gave the commander of her escort a gentle signal and the commandos separated and began to herd the teenagers towards the guide with the quiet firmness of sheepdogs.
When they arrived at the edge of the shuttle pad most of them quieted down as they realized that the pad was built atop the glass and melted metal which formed the base of everything here. It truly was an ocean of the stuff. Only the path, constructed of asphalt, gave them any chance to walk without slipping. The man waited until they quieted down, then spoke in a gentle, carrying voice, "I am Frederick Anderson, the senior attendant here. It is my privilege to guide you and answer any questions you may have. Before we begin, do you have any questions?"
Coslio Caepnus asked the obvious question about what giving someone the finger meant. The Turian youth was determined to rebel against the stereotype of the Turian as disciplined, polite and incurious.
Shockingly white teeth flashed in Anderson's face and he raised a hand, folding in all the fingers save the middle one, "That is a reference to this gesture, which," he tilted his arm to the horizontal, "is similar to the appearance of the Memorial of the Fallen when viewed from above. It is a very rude gesture of defiance and insult. The architect who designed the Memorial apparently intended it to appear as such when viewed from above, as any potential future invader, or our political lords and masters in the Parliament might see it. It is widely believed that she slipped this in without anyone else involved in the planning knowing until the foundation had already been laid. There is no evidence to support this urban legend."
Lan'asi mentally slapped herself and was extremely grateful that of all the species present, only the Asari actually could make that gesture and they weren't particularly likely to, except for the few who went out of their way to be nasty (to prove they weren't soft, diplomatic talkers like their mothers), but that group had been left behind. That hope went out the window when Coslio followed it up with a question about what the gesture meant and the attendant explained that it meant 'fuck you.'
The Asari (lacking a cultural predisposition to view fornication as shameful or insulting) almost instantly took it up as a suggestion, or invitation, and the other species decided that three fingered hands had a middle finger as well. So there was nothing for it but to be prepared to endure the storm of 'giving people the finger' until they got bored with it. Hopefully before they made it back to Citadel Space.
Still, with a sufficiently stern reminder that this was a graveyard and a memorial, she managed to squash it for the moment and gesture for their attendant to begin the tour. Her commandos were mixed in with the group, though she'd directed one to keep an eye on the only Elcor in the group, Risha, as most places weren't built on the right scale for even a teenaged Elcor. Fortunately for the young woman, everything was built on a scale to be accessible to Vipers, which gave her some clearance, though she still had to walk alone on the path, as there wasn't much room on either side.
*Surprised Utterance* "WHAT?" Risha boomed, tonelessly as always. Lan'asi started forward, as the holograms appeared around her, as she stepped onto the path, turning the barren wasteland that surrounded them into a lively cityscape, with large terraced buildings rising on either side of an impressive width of road filled with vehicles and Humans, dozens, hundreds of them in the streets.
"Here, it is always the moment before the Ethereals attacked. The moment before this city was killed in a futile attempt to break the alliance of Humanity and the Migrant Fleet. These are holograms constructed from the last known recording of London, a live broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation," Anderson waved a hand at the signs many of the people were holding. "As you can see, many of the locals turned out so their voices could be heard, or their signs could be seen, at least. There were as many views then as there are now about the right thing to do. We can see from where the camera was, signs proclaiming that we should never surrender, that we should give peace a chance and that this is all a hoax, amongst others."
They walked in silence for a moment, through the eerie, still holograms of people a century dead, seeing the emotion on their faces, in their bodies, even if their signs did not speak to those who could not read the Human languages they were written in, still a message was conveyed.
Before them they could see the barrow of black stone rising like a storm cloud over the holographic projection as the camera had been shooting straight down the street towards where they were coming from and produced no background, but when she turned, she couldn't see the shuttle, just rising tiers of tenements where the street dead ended and above them a dot that must be the Temple Ship in high orbit.
The kids whispered to one another, then spoke more loudly to prove they weren't scared. Her commandos bunched up somewhat, chivvying the teenagers along more sharply to get them all out of this creepy place. Lan'asi let herself feel it, the loss and fear which permeated this place and which they were trying to share. That was why she was here, to truly understand the Combine.
Chatter died away under the pressure of silence from their attendant and, after a glance at Lan'asi, their guards. The silence couldn't survive an advance at the pace of an Elcor either, but before it could die, there was movement in front of them. Lan'asi couldn't see what was happening, but her guards reacted in a way which said someone was coming. Quick steps brought her to right behind where Risha was blocking most of the path.
Over one massively muscled shoulder, stood a pair of half-grown Vipers, a midget Viper (ah, no, her first sight of a Viper male, smaller and lacking the seam along the front of his scales which females possessed and could open to consume/unite with a male) and a scrawny Human male, probably barely post adolescent given the nature of his fellows. Their path was blocked and they were trying to figure out a way around. One of the larger Vipers (still small, but twice the size of the Human male) slithered swiftly through Rishan's legs, almost making the Elcor flinch, though she controlled the reaction.
Before anyone could say anything, the other Viper snatched up the male Viper and flicked him over Rishan's back with a single, powerful movement. The Human male followed, making a sound somewhere between a shriek and a giggle as he flew into the arms of the second Viper, who caught him somewhat more gently than she had the scaled Viper. Three Human fingers came together into a claw and he ran them along the inside of the hood of skin which framed her face (which must be a gesture of affection, given the Viper's reaction). She chuckled and put him down, at which point he realized he was surrounded by teenage (analogue) Asari and other species, not merely one giant Elcor.
Lan'asi could see the thoughts flick over his mind as he went right through panic to teenage male opportunism. He swept a graceful bow towards every Asari in sight, with special attention paid to the more mature and developed Lan'asi, with a hand gesture that seemed to include the others in the group, though his eyes never made it that far. "Well, hello, ladies," a brilliant smile flashed over his face as the other Viper followed her (sister?) fellow through the Elcor's legs and out into the throng.
"On your way, Mr. Vega," Anderson put in, quellingly, before anyone could say anything.
"Ah, but—"
"Jenny's waiting," one of the Vipers put in, which took the wind out of the young man's sails.
"Oh, right…well, see you later," he said to Anderson, though his eyes had never managed to make it to the older man. The locals swept away quickly, a Viper keeping a firm hand on the boy's shoulder until they were out of sight.
"Sorry about that, usually they'd have been more…somber. Well, all of them except Mr. Vega. However, since the visitor warning was disabled, they thought you must be more staff and didn't know to be properly subdued," Anderson explained over Rishan's broad back.
"I see. Is that sort of thing common?" Lan'asi asked.
"Flying men? Not really, at least not without the aid of technology or biotics," Anderson said, though it was awkward to hold a conversation over the breadth of Rishan. Fortunately, he got them moving again, as the students were getting antsy.
"No, sorry, I meant interspecies groups that are that…affectionate," Lan'asi said, letting him draw his own implications for what she was referring to when she said 'affectionate'.
"Not that unusual, but it depends on the species. Human-Quarian romantic, familial or interpersonal relationships are quite common. Due to their nature few such bonds exist with the Silicoids, but there are a lot of lingering familial ties with the Vipers due to the history there. We'll get into that at some of the exhibits."
Lan'asi nodded as they finally cleared the short path and stepped out from the holographic city into the real ruins. It was an effectively poignant moment, as if the city around them, so recently made real had just died.
Anderson stepped forward onto a set of steps flanked by ramps before the cavernous mouth of the barrow. "This is the Gate of the City, leading into the Memorial of the Fallen. The Memorial is constructed of basalt and took more than five years to build. After that, it took a thousand workers another five years to carve the name of everyone who died in the Ethereal War into that basalt and pour metal, melted down from the hulls of the Ethereal ships, into those carvings, forming these inscriptions," his hand ran over the silver decorations they'd seen on their descent, which were lines of Human and Quarian script rippling over the black of the rock.
"Surrounding the Gate of the City are the names of those who died in the destruction of London. Those names cover almost three quarters of the entire body of the Memorial," Anderson went on. "Eight million, two hundred and thirty seven thousand, three hundred and four. The Memorial will not be complete until every name is added and researchers discover more all the time. In the fifty-two years I've been working here, one thousand and seventy three names have been added."
He spun on his heel and led them through the open gateway. It was wide enough to let others slip past Rishan and join them in the museum. There were figures on either side of the door in matte black armor, one Quarian, one Human. Their feet slammed to the ground and weapons rose as they snapped to attention with robotic precision as the group entered into the atrium, which consisted of a large circular room with half a dozen displays and no obvious exit (which didn't thrill the commandos).
The attendant nodded politely and guided them to the first set of displays, which lit up at their approach. "The Ethereals came to the world of the Sectoids and destroyed them," the display showed the small grey skinned aliens who the Ethereals had enslaved and destroyed and what little information they'd been able to pull about the creatures from the Ethereal's database, including a single image of a city of glistening crystal. "As best we can reconstruct, the Sectoids were psionics even before the Ethereals arrived and were able to resist their psionic domination. And so they were exterminated to the last, their bodies recycled to create Meld. New ones were not born until the Ethereals reached their next destination and decided they needed additional troops and so cloned them, empty of mind and will to resist, bodies which moved at their command and died in stillness and silence without command."
The next set of displays were of Silicoids. "The Silicoids were next. On their homeworld, they were almost impossible to defeat, for they could manipulate the very ground beneath your feet and their gestalt minds were difficult to even touch. But the Ethereals had as many clone troops as they could grow and found a way to shatter the gestalt into individuals they could enslave. They bound individuals to drones, ignoring the damage they did to the psyches of those lonely people, but they also bound gestalts into cyberdiscs. That was what permitted some of the Silicoids to return to themselves when the Ethereals fell. And so the Silicoids rose, despite having fallen."
The third display showed Floaters, twisting things of metal and flesh and the original underlying creature, hollow boned and with wings which would have to be twisted away to fit into the armor of a Floater. "The Floaters lived in vast flocks on their homeworld, darkening the skies with their numbers, but the Ethereals came and seized the central nests. With their young under threat, the flocks bowed and submitted to the experiments which twisted their bodies and minds until they served without expectation of freedom for themselves, or their children. Freed, they died to the last at their own hand, but their self-proclaimed masters proceeded them to oblivion."
"Then came the Chryssalids, uplifted insects which never rose above their nature and had to be exterminated when they lacked any external force to control their appetites," this display consisted of a Chryssalid and the various stages of the effects of its venom on Humans, which made several of the teens flinch, though none vomited, which put them one up on most tour groups in Anderson's experience.
"They arrived at the world of the Vipers and conquered. We do not know how. Only that it was done and they used the Vipers flexible natures to twist them into any shape which suited their fancy," this display was brief, showing only Vipers, and the twisted mimicries of Humanity which were the Thin Men and a mockery of a Muton which they'd discovered in the database. "That flexibility let the Vipers escape when the fog was finally lifted from their minds. But unlike the Silicoids, there were young Vipers, children, on the Temple Ship, being trained to be soldiers for their putative masters. Their fellows had no experience in child-rearing, but there was a world full of Humans below who had raised children before and a Fleet of Quarians above who had done likewise and so, together, all three races ensured that the Vipers rose from their fall." In fact, it had been almost entirely Humans, both because Vipers couldn't eat Quarian food, and because there had been a lot more Humans than there were Quarians.
"Last were the Mutons," this display was the largest, revealing a world covered in dense plant life. "They lived in a state of constant war with other tribes of Mutons, and constant peace with their world, as they'd evolved in symbiosis with the plants which covered their world." The display showed massive plants with…teeth. Lan'asi was definitely going to have nightmares. Those same plants have resisted any landing by our explorers as this was the only world touched by the Ethereals we were able to find. The plants are constantly at war with one another, allowing only those Mutons which emitted the proper pheromones to exist within their domain and, in turn, the Mutons aided the plants in their civil wars. After failed landings," an image of a large Ethereal ship acting as a planter to hundreds of massive plants, "the Ethereals cleared areas from space with plasma fire. But that gave them no prisoners. So they chose to strike the weak point and engineered a disease which shifted what pheromones the Mutons emitted. Separated from their symbiotic protectors and hounded, they were left with nowhere to go but the clearcut area, where the Ethereals offered them sanctuary from the disaster they had created. And so the Mutons fought for their masters, their alleged saviors, until the last of them fell, repaying a debt which never truly existed."
Anderson was a consummate showman and let that sink into his audience before he continued.
"These are the species who fell to the Ethereals' lust for power and control, these are the Fallen Peoples. But one more fell." He walked towards a wall and a skylight opened revealing there was no wall there, merely darkness so dense none of the light had penetrated it. Now the skylight revealed the figure (whether impressively skilled sculpture or taxidermy, Lan'asi couldn't say) of an Ethereal, towering over Anderson and anyone else in the room. "The Ethereal Ones, conquerors, slavers, murderers and monsters. They are fallen, but unmourned and unforgotten. This memorial is a monument to their arrogance, their folly and their failure. Unlike the Silicoids, unlike the Vipers, we will ensure that they never rise again."
Silence stretched for a moment after that fierce announcement. Then his fury went away as suddenly as if he'd flicked a switch. "Any questions before I release you into the main body of the Memorial?"
The single Volus student spoke without bothering to indicate he had a question as was the Volus wont, "*HSKT* How much did all this cost?"
Lan'asi winced at that, but Anderson merely tilted his head, "Converting for inflation, approximately eight billion pounds to construct, with an annual budget of about five million and major renovations or improvements budgeted separately."
"And what does that mean in credits?"
"Conversion rate hasn't been set yet, but you could buy a new dreadnought for about the same amount."
"Ah. Thank you."
"Any other questions?" Silence greeted that. "Then you're free to explore the main body of the Memorial. I'll be making the rounds answering questions and you can ask anyone dressed like me if you have other questions. Any of the guards can assist you as well. Bathrooms are labelled with this symbol," he brought up his omni-tool to project the English letter 'B', "and are for the use of one person at a time. The café has dextro and levo food, do be sure you tell your waiter which you need. Tell the cashier you're with the Citadel Expedition and your bill will be handled. Feel free to sample as much of the food as you like, though the food here is no better than adequate. From the Combine's perspective you're free to interact with anyone here, but they have not been prescreened, they're just the people who happened to be here. That does include a class from a local elementary school," he realized that didn't mean anything, "made up of pre-adolescents. It also includes some graduate students, some tourists, volunteers like Mr. Vega and his cousins and a local government politician," that last was said with an eye flicker of warning at Lan'asi, which she caught, drifting closer to him as the group of teenagers exploded out of enforced idleness and observation into movement and conversation.
The matriarch stuck around. Absorbing the atmosphere of this place was part of the reason she was here and speaking to a random cross-section of the populace would help with that (and if they turned out to be not-random, despite Anderson's words, well that would be interesting as well), but for the moment, she'd start with the one person she knew was there to handle the Citadel folk.
"I hope Ilk Nak's question was not insulting to you. To a Volus, it certainly wouldn't be."
Anderson smiled slightly, "I've seen people break down weeping when they find a relative's name; I've seen this place trigger PTSD episodes in old veterans; I've seen the conspiracy crazies come in and denounce this whole place as lies, the Ethereals were patsies of the Quarians so that they could conquer us without our resistance; and I've seen the victims of con men who believe that they bought a place for some deceased loved one in the Tomb of Heroes. The kid asked the question in good faith. Trust me, he didn't offend me."
Her eyes lit up at that comment about 'conspiracy theorists' it was the first sign of any real disunity amongst the species of the Combine on anything except standard political lines. "Are there lots of these conspiracy theorists?" she asked innocently.
"Oh, sure. You'd need to ask someone else for information about all the 'someone is about to overthrow the Parliament' or 'someone else is secretly controlling the Combine' stuff, I don't keep track of that, but the historical ones come up a lot in my line of work. I spend quite a lot of time debunking ridiculous claims about the Quarians, Vipers and Silicoids."
"Not Humans?"
"Not so much in the historical arena. We only had the one planet and it was plainly visible from space, so hiding what our technological condition was really isn't on. There's other historical conspiracy theories if you go back farther, but they don't usually come up and when they do they aren't something that can be debunked because their only evidence is the lack of evidence. The story about the Illuminati secretly controlling the Ethereals, because the Temple Ship looks like a pyramid is my favorite."
Lan'asi's eyes narrowed in confusion. "Unless my translator isn't working, the Temple Ship doesn't look anything like a pyramid."
"Exactly! They were too smart to make it look exactly like a pyramid. It's only to the discerning eye that you can make it look like a pyramid through that ancient and mystical technique of declaring arbitrary things are not actually part of the ship."
"Ah. Yes, we have those as well," she laughed slightly. He did as well.
She glanced around the larger room and saw no difficulties, though several clusters of Citadel teenagers were talking amongst themselves instead of properly mingling and amongst the minglers, there was a certain awkwardness (perhaps caused by the presence of her guards, or the black armored 'Death Guard' which was not an encouraging name).
"Do you have any kids of your own?" she asked after a moment.
"Looking for advice on handling your swarm?"
"Just curious, but if you've got any advice, I'll take it. My children are all reaching Matronhood these days."
"Well, I've got eight, but I don't know that I can give you any helpful advice. My main tactic during their teenage years was either avoidance or hard physical labor until they got tired."
"Eight? Sheesh. You're braver than I. And on such a short time scale," Lan'asi said.
"Eh, but the timescale on childhood is similarly compressed. Besides, I didn't have them all at once. Followed the usual pattern these days, a couple when we were young, then a couple more when we were older and the kids were all grown. Modern anti-aging and fertility treatments have really been a godsend, especially given how many empty worlds there are in the galaxy, just desperately needing some Brits on them."
Her eyes flickered for a moment as the translator mangled Brits badly enough that it took her an embarrassingly long time to decode. They chatted about children for a moment, he was clearly irritated that his youngest was 'getting back to nature' at a Viper kibbutz on Venus. Her own youngest was a notably terrible poet, so she could commiserate.
Eventually it occurred to her that for a Memorial, this place was remarkably short on uplifting victories, being instead focused entirely on the dead, the injured and the horrible ways they got that way. She said as much.
"You want the Monument of the Risen for that. Through the main hall, out the Gate of the Soldier and down the path," Anderson explained.
"How many gates does this place have?" Lan'asi asked, teasing him.
"Three, you entered through the Gate of the City, surrounded by the civilian casualties of the war; the Gate of the Soldier leads to the Monument of the Risen and is surrounded by the names of the military casualties of the war; and the Gate of Secrets, surrounded by the noms de guerre of the X-Com agents who died in the war, leads to the Tomb of Heroes," she glanced over at him, "containing the bodies, or at least remains of, every Commander of X-Com and thirty three other persons, each admitted by Act of Parliament. It is the highest honor in the Combine and only awarded posthumously."
"Are we allowed to see the Monument?" she asked.
"Oh, sure, the whole place is open to the public. Come on, I'll show you," Anderson led the way. Despite his grey hair and obvious age, for a Human, he was still vigorous and moved through the Memorial with the certainty of a queen moving through her subjects. Not coincidentally he also evaded a woman whose bearing screamed politician (it helped that she was being trailed by a pair of camera drones).
The rest of the day passed in study and absorption of the Combine's national myths, which was actually quite pleasant. The only fly in the ointment was the discovery that Anderson was in constant communication with the Geth, which was how he'd known the exact cost of constructing the facilities. That had led to an important, but horribly dull conversation about the effects of Geth and automation more generally on the Combine economy. Especially since in the end it boiled down to 'me and mine are doing fine but really what can you tell from one anecdote' which wasn't exactly helpful.
Codex: Combine Economy, Effect of the Geth-Unity, Unlocked.
It was irritating that that ate so much of her otherwise pleasant day, as the next day had her meeting with the Combine Parliament and then meetings with yet more politicians. Though theoretically a cultural exchange program, for her, besides this one stop, it was going to be politics, not culture. Irritating, but she'd known what she signed up for.
XXXXX
Codex: Dr. Allin Solus:
Dr. Allin Solus specialized in the study of Meld. A graduate of the Sur'Kesh School of Genetics, he spent a career attempting to figure out a way to create Meld which didn't require the nano-deconstruction of a psionic's corpse. Especially after the discovery that Salarian psionics were the rarest of any species who actually possessed psionics.
After almost two decades of failure, Dr. Solus was jailed for unethical experimentation, after it was discovered that he'd given up on more standard techniques and was attempting to clone psionics in order to break down their corpses for Meld.
He was discovered after his original attempts did not work (cloning psionics does not work well, in addition to being illegal) and he realized that more than mere genetic potential was needed to awaken a psionic. The Ethereals had gotten around this by forcing that stimulus directly into the minds of their Sectoid slaves, an option not open to him. So he went in search of a psionic in the grey economy to forcibly awaken the psionic potential he believed he'd bred into his clones. He found one, only to be promptly turned in by her.
He did not live to see trial. It is unclear who assassinated him, with common suspects being the STG, for betraying them, Spectres, for bringing Citadel Space into disrepute, and X-Com, for engaging in behavior similar to that of the Ethereals.
Codex: Death Guard:
The Death Guard is made up of retired Combine soldiers. Shen Industries has funded it since its founding with a percentage of its profits, as required by the company's charter. It is said Dr. Shen felt some guilt over the difficulty X-Com soldiers had reintegrating into society. The other source of funding is dues paid by members and donations from members and the public.
Originally intended as essentially an international veteran's organization, in fact it rapidly became a nonprofit security company. The Death Guard provide security to museums and parks with connections to Combine military history. Famous for the military surplus equipment they insist on painting a depressing black and their absurdly strict discipline, the Death Guard accepts veterans of each of the Combine species, though the majority of the members are Human or Quarian.
The Death Guard attempts to ensure that each post has members from each of the races, to ensure that all are represented in each guard group. This practice has put them at odds with the various supremacist and segregationist groups, but otherwise it has avoided any political positions. Most members are part-time, dues-paying members who treat it as a social club, but it still has almost thirty thousand full time armed soldiers.
Codex: Combine Economy, Effect of the Geth-Unity:
This entry is five hundred and thirty three thousand words. The executive summary reads as follows:
The effect of the Geth-Unity on the economy of the Combine is ambiguous at best, though the GDP has more than tripled. Though there were significant increases in production of materials and goods, that didn't produce any value for most people. Since the Geth did not particularly care about money, an accord was reached where approximately ninety percent of the value the Geth created was distributed to the local population, with the remainder being used to build and maintain Geth-Unity servers and mobile units.
However, most colonies also choose to retain sufficient independent capacity to feed themselves and maintain some semblance of an economy, even if the Geth-Unity were to be overridden, or destroyed. In order to do this, quite high wages must be paid to those workers.
Similarly, a small but significant number of colonies have requested that the Geth-Unity not come amongst them. Though the Geth-Unity have every right to go to those colonies under the Combine Treaty, these requests have uniformly been honored. More standard economic structures, though with minimal automation, dominate those colonies.
Some areas have proven extremely resistant to automation even by the Geth-Unity. These include the organic sciences, medicine, psychotherapy, law, law enforcement, art and most forms of research beyond pure mathematics.
The rest of this article addresses the precise ways in which the Geth-Unity have affected the Combine Economy and how successfully various economic models have predicted those affects.
The cultural impacts of large numbers of people not needing to work are beyond the scope of this entry.
Author's Note: This chapter was mostly about the fact that I felt a little bad about killing a city in a sentence and then moving on.
This concludes our intermission. Next chapter we jump ahead again. Reviews are always welcome.