Mass Effect: Transcendence: Chapter Two; Two Councils
Author's Note: as first contact in this story is set a little before the time of mass effect one, Blasto Two: Blasto Saves Christmas will unfortunately not be a thing as the council will not know what Christmas is at that time.
This note will become relevant later in the chapter.
Codex: Unique Terran Technologies
Military Technology
Never forgetting the devastating ten-year civil war against the UEG, the UTF holds an extensive military to be used to defend against the occasional power-mad colonial governor who wishes to create their own personal knockoff of the tyrannical UEG.
Most of these war machines were taken out of mothball yards and began being refitted with modern technology at the Starforge upon first contact with the citadel council.
Fusion Jets: due to a lack of antigravity technology, the UTF has made tiny fusion torches known as fusion jets to allow for mechs, vehicles, and other things to be able to hover in the air.
PD-LTs: the UTF's version of GUARDIAN arrays, PD-LTs started out using microwave beams and eventually advanced to the point it is now where they use x-rays.
Pulse-Lasers: an evolution of the UTF's PD-LTs, pulse lasers are medium-ranged directed energy weapons that fire a beam of highly concentrated and high bandwidth x-rays
G-Ion Weaponry: g-ion weaponry is the main type of weapon used in the UTF that ranges in size from handheld pistols to multi-kilometer long cannons. These weapons fire a blue-white beam of hyperstimulated gallium ions at 98% lightspeed, inflicting a massive amount of damage.
G-Ion Blasters: G-Ion blasters are the weaker form of g-ion weapons ranging from handheld pistols to the main guns on smaller vehicles and ships.
G-Ion Cannons: G-ion cannons are far more powerful variants of the G-Ion Blaster. The strongest of these cannons, the Starforge-class g-ion cannon, each has the strength to vaporize an entire ocean in a single shot.
Hyperspace Technologies: these are technologies that utilize the manipulation of the strange higher dimension plane known by the Terrans as hyperspace.
Hypershields: these incredibly powerful shields send any incoming projectiles and/or energy into hyperspace where it is forcibly stripped down to electrons which are collected. In this way, firing on a Hypershield only makes it stronger.
That being said, these shields are useless against spacetime distorting weapons such as hyper bombs.
Hyper Bombs: Hyperbombs are bombs and warheads that when they detonate, create a highly unstable and destructive vortex of hyperspace that forcibly shreds anything it touches down into electrons while also releasing this energy.
Hypergates: Hypergates are devices that send objects through a tunnel bored through hyperspace, instantly linking two separate locations. These Hypergates range in size from the laser transporting generation two Hypercomns to the twin thirty-kilometer long projector pillars of the Supergates.
Class One Hypergate: better known as Powergates, these Hypergates transport electrons through hyperspace and were originally used for FTL communications. While only being relatively short-ranged and no longer being used for communications, they still transport energy directly from the ship's reactor to everything nearby such as vehicles, Prometheans, etc that needs it.
Class Two Hypergate: better known as Hypercomns, the Hypergates have a much farther range and are used to send information lasers through hyperspace.
Class Three Hypergate: best known as Hypergates, these gates can send small vehicles or anything smaller than them through hyperspace.
Class Four Hypergates: better known as Supergates, these 30km long gates allow for full-sized spaceships to travel instantly to another gate through hyperspace.
Class One Tactical Hyperdrive: The smallest version of a hyperdrive that is used in small vehicles, shells, and battle armor. This can only jump 100 meters at speeds of one light minute per second.
Class Two Tactical Hyperdrive: The second smallest tactical hyperdrive that is used in medium-sized vehicles. This can jump 1km at speeds of fifteen light minutes per second.
Class Three Tactical Hyperdrive: the largest-sized tactical hyperdrive that is used on ships up to the size of corvettes to allow for short tactical jumps of 1,000km at one light hour per second.
Class Negative One Hyperdrive: The class negative one hyperdrive is the first hyperdrive created by Terran hands and can reach nine lightyears per day. These hyperdrives no longer remain in active use and do not exist anymore beyond being exhibited in museums.
Class Zero Hyperdrive: The class zero hyperdrive is the second generation hyperdrive with a speed of eighteen lightyears per day. The class zero hyperdrive is used mostly on ships smaller than frigates but larger than corvettes.
Class One Hyperdrive: a significantly less advanced model used mostly on high-quality civilian ships frigate sized or larger. The class one hyperdrive can reach fifty lightyears per day.
Class Two Hyperdrive: class two hyperdrives are the most modern hyperdrives that can be fitted onto ships the size of a frigate or larger and can reach speeds of two hundred lightyears per day.
Shells: shells are the name of artificial bodies that a Terran can resleeve into. Some of these bodies are organic, some synthetic, while yet others are technorganic. That being said, only the tailor-made Prometheans can reproduce with another Promethean to birth what can truly be considered both your offspring.
Precogs: The Precognition Shell, commonly known as Precogs, are large stationary shells that boost a Terran's intellect to AHI levels. Pecogs, if they have all available information, can infer future events with a very good level of accuracy. These Pecogs can also use their massive intelligence to infer and fill in missing information to circumvent lies or unknown intelligence, at a significant drop in event prediction accuracy of course.
Precogs are used to strategize the enemy's next moves during an engagement in addition to coordinating and simultaneously controlling entire battle fleets from the group's command ship.
Warbody: The warbody is a fifteen-foot-tall cyber-flesh forged humanoid shell designed to allow for the same range of motion given by the human form while incorporating the strengths of battle armor, a shell, and a class one tactical hyperdrive. These are the standard issue Terran body soldiers project themselves into via telepresence during a physical battle.
Mechanized Soldiers: mechanized soldiers are machines collectively controlled by central control Terran and are designed to support warbodies in large numbers. While individually far, far weaker than their commanders, they make up for this since over a thousand of them in total are assigned to each warbody.
The Evader: the evader is an extremely fast and maneuverable but somewhat weak mech designed to perform hit and run attacks with its plasma claws, twin g-ion blaster pistols, and grenade droppers.
The Tank: The Tank is a floating weapon platform equipped with two heavy g-ion blaster rifles, an ultralight ion shield generator, a few fusion jets, and a PD-LT.
The Bomber: the bomber is a fusion jet-propelled disposable suicide bomber designed to quickly fly behind enemy lines and detonate explosives. These bombers are equipped with an ultralight ion shield generator for basic protection.
The Assassin: the assassin is a very fast and nimble drone equipped with a full spectrum cloak, a plasma blade, and a g-ion blaster pistol. As the name implies, it is meant to go behind enemy lines and assassinate key targets.
The Illusionist: The illusionist is a holographic projector and sensor scrambler drone designed to make it appear as if the number of mechs around it is much higher than they truly are.
The Recycler: the recycler is a drone designed to break down enemy equipment into its base molecules to be reused by the Terrans. It is equipped with an ultralight ion shield generator and a few fusion jets.
Two Hours Later: The Blade of Athame
Matron Alyssa was somewhat bored. Sure she was in the middle of a first contact scenario, the dream of every young Asari ship captain, but the most exciting thing going on in that department right now was the consistent schedule of these Terran's messenger probes traveling back and forth from their exploration cruiser and through relay 217 every five minutes.
Unfortunately, the council had restricted her and her crew from reading more of the Terrans FC package, something about 'citadel security' or some other stupid reason they pulled straight out of their azures.
In the meantime, she was just watching the latest Blasto movie, Blasto Two; Blood and Eezo.
Ha! If only her stuffy Turian father could see her now, he'd be scandalized that she was watching a stupid b-movie in the middle of a first contact scenario!
"This one has no time for this. This one will be taking back the biotic serum, one way…or another…" Blasto said firmly as he raised his four pistols and aimed them at the Vorcha mercenaries.
"You die now! You no get the eezo juice!" The lead Vorcha screeched.
"In that case, this one asks if you delinquents are feeling an irrationally elevated chance of good fortune?" Blasto asked before rapidly killing each of the Vorcha with incendiary rounds that had a terrible CGI flame covering each of the bullets, all while posing dramatically after each shot.
"This one's actions will teach you not to mess with the specters." Blasto declared to their flaming corpses.
Blasto then turned around and started floating away as the corpses exploded in the background for no reason.
"By the goddess! This stuff is so terrible, I love it!" Matron Alyssa giggled like a maiden did after melding for the first time. Sure it was kinda embarrassing that she liked this stuff, but it was just so bad it was impossible not to enjoy the ridiculousness of it all.
The Citadel: Meeting Room.
The council all had grim looks on their face, but they were determined to make the most of this startling situation.
Loglin was the first to speak up "Well, what are we going to do? We are outclassed in essentially every way except terraforming surprisingly."
"I think that's just a difference in ideology that led to them not delving into that tree of technology, these Terrans seem to be quite fond of building habitats and simply modifying themselves to suit new environments instead of resorting to exploration and terraforming." Sparatus supplied.
"Of course, the Terrans have far more experience in building such constructs compared to us as their only source of artificial gravity is centrifugal force," Loglin responded as he nodded in agreement.
"Not to mention their massive population ranging in the tens of trillions! That and the ease in which they can create new colonies by modifying themselves to suit the local environment or to simply live digitally while their bodies remain in pods…" Tevos said as she shook her head in utter disgust.
"Our personal opinions on the technology of the Terrans aside, there has been something that has been bothering me alot. How does the UTF have such a massive industrial capacity? Based on what we've seen in the FC information, they should have an industrial output equal to the entirety of the terminus systems at the very most…" Loglin said in contemplate concern.
"And yet they have the ability to forge their own relays!" Sparatus exclaimed in equal concern.
"Not to make you even more concerned, but they haven't shown us anything having to do with the numbers in their starfleet, soldiers in their army, ground vehicles, advanced readouts of their ships and other war machines, or even a single military vessel," Loglin stated. "Think about it, would you reveal your military numbers and secrets to some people you just made first contact with? No, of course, you wouldn't.
I think these Terrans are holding back a great deal of information concerning their military and industry." Loglin said as he poured even more fuel on the fire that was the council's fear and paranoia of the Terrans.
"Loglin, do you think the STG can keep these Terrans a secret?" Tevos asked, no begged the Salarian councilor.
"Unfortunately no, I don't think we can. Even the best secrets are revealed in time, be they in ten years or ten thousand years. No, if we shove this into secrecy then we will only be prolonging the inevitable. That and the reaction would be that much worse the longer we kept the Terrans out of the public eye." Loglin said in a resigned tone.
"We must learn how big their military is and what they are hiding that has boosted their industry so much!" Sparatus exclaimed. The fact the UTF's industry was what it was without them revealing everything was beyond frightening.
"And please, pray tell, how would you go about that? If we can't hack the Geth, how do you suppose that we gain information in such a manner from a post-singularity society?" Loglin asked while throwing his hand up in exasperation.
Sparatus had never heard of the term before, what was a post-singularity society? "What is a post-singularity society?"
"A post-singularity society was a previously theoretical society used in fiction where a species reached the point that they advanced so far that the line between man and machine became indistinguishable. These Terrans have reached this point in their advancement and have thus most likely developed technologies beyond anything we could even dream of." Loglin explained gravely.
"And how could they have reached this? They've only been spacefaring since a little bit after the Rachni Wars!" Sparatus exclaimed.
"Honestly, in retrospect, I blame the council's fear of AIs and augmentation. If we can't even develop AIs that listen to us, how do you think we could merge with them to become something greater than either?" Loglin asked seriously.
"I'm still a bit confused on how giving computers equal rights has allowed for peaceful coexistence…" Sparatus mused.
"When you look deeper into it, you will find the Terrans have a method to their madness. They aren't giving their VIs equivalents the same rights as a Terran after all." Loglin pulled up a document labeled 'the sapience threshold' and placed it on the holo table. "This is what the Terrans call the sapience threshold, it defines the level in which a specific entity is capable of being labeled as a sapient being," Loglin explained. "Below this threshold, the AI or organism in question is seen as a simple computer or animal, much as we see our VIs and how we also see animals. At or above this, however, they are immediately given equal rights and a nonsapient AI or organism will take their place as the new sapient is educated and then given a choice what they want to do with their life."
Sparatus pondered this sapience threshold and had to admit it made quite a good deal of sense. He would never consider a palavanian llgh bug equal to a Turian due to their utter simplicity, but he would consider an Eclor or other intelligent species as such due to their self-awareness and ability to make their own decisions beyond their mere survival.
"This… actually makes a good deal of sense. I think if we were ever to re-evaluate our AI laws, we would need to adopt this." Sparatus mused.
"We would have to change some of the language of course, but then that's just because of differences in terminology. What we call virtual intelligences they call artificial intelligences, and what we call artificial intelligences they call artificial general intelligences." Loglin added on.
"And then they have their artificial super and hyper intelligences…" Sparatus muttered quietly.
Artificial super and hyper intelligences were the things of nightmares, the things many fearful alarmists used to warn against the dangers of artificial intelligence…And yet, these Terrans considered them their kin and got along with them perfectly fine without a hitch.
"I think our biggest failure in this area would be seeing AIs as dangerous computers that needed to be constrained and controlled. In actuality, we were just using slave chips on a unique form of life…" Loglin thought aloud while shaking his head in sadness and disappointment. "We could have achieved so much if only we understood this before the Terrans opened our eyes, we could have been two or more times as advanced as they are right now, but instead we chose the path of ignorance and stagnation."
Tevos wanted to yell at her colleagues right now! They were supposed to be finding ways to get the Terrans to decommission their dangerous technologies, not sympathize with and think about repeating their actions!
"Need I remind you both that these technologies were banned for a reason?!" Tevos asked in anger.
The Asari had spent millennia trying to get the races of the galaxy to move away from such technologies, all because of the fact the Aeil'vyga had shunned such technologies and the athame beacon would fail in helping to uphold Asari supremacy if other races did what the Aeil'vyga did not.
…A supremacy permanently shattered by these damnable Terrans who had circumvented these well-laid machinations…
"Well I am of the mind that we should re-evaluate these laws, it seems they've done nothing but hold us back and enforce stagnation," Loglin replied in slight suspicion.
"I…I feel that the more I look over the Terran's FC package, the more I am slowly having a similar mindset…" Sparatus muttered quietly.
And wasn't that a surprise to him, he was always a good Turian who followed the law…That being said, maybe it wasn't so much of a surprise as he wasn't a mindless automaton who couldn't think for himself. He knew that unnecessary laws should be changed through legal means.
"I'm not so vain to be unable to admit when I'm wrong, and I speculate that the Union will feel similar to myself and you Sparatus when they learn of these Terrans." Loglin said.
While the various houses of the Delathrasses were to quote a Turian he once spoke to 'A spirits-damned labyrinthine minefield' He was quite certain they would very much agree with him, The Salarians had always had the same drive to improve themselves as the Quarians and now these Terrans have shown to have.
As for Sparatus, his hopes were lower but were still high as he suspected showing the Primarch and Imperial Council evidence of these fears being unfounded would change these minds.
"These laws had stood and had kept the council safe for thousands of years! We can't just change them!" Tevos exclaimed.
Loglin just narrowed his eyes at her, his suspicions of Tevos and the Asari government growing. "Define 'safe' Tevos." Loglin demanded. "The Turians are stretched thin defending against pirates and due to them being stretched thin, we can do nothing militarily against the Batarian Hegemony, the terminus systems, or the Geth a few hundred years back when they evicted the Quarians after killing the majority of their population.
We haven't had a major breakthrough in how many years? A hundred? While the terminus systems are having a few every decade or so and who knows how common with the Geth? And need I even bring up the possibility of investigating the enigmatic collectors, an advanced species we've officially dismissed as myths to discourage the panic that a species of rarely seen and mysterious slavers being a good deal more advanced than us would cause?" Loglin began ranting.
"Think about it, if we had other species help us instead of being so obsessed with control, we could defeat the hegemony and terminus systems in addition to creating new and exciting technologies to aid us in our lives."
"You…I think you may have a point, the treaty of Farixen has done nothing but hamper us…. That being said, I'm surprised that the Union would agree to such a thing, considering they were a major advocate of the treaty." Sparatus said.
"Oh they probably wouldn't, but I'm personally of the opinion that while the latest technology should be used by our militaries, it should not be to the point it dulls our effectiveness because it's so uneconomical like how it is to fit our UV GUARDIAN arrays onto each of our ships. That being said, I think that a mixture between UV and IR Arrays being outfitted on our ships would be the most economical and effective." Loglin explained.
Sparatus nodded at that, such a philosophy was one of the foundations of the Turian armed forces. In addition to that, having a mixture of GUARDIAN arrays between the two different EM wavelengths was an interesting idea…
Tevos, on the other hand, looked between her two colleagues. "We are getting off track right now, we're supposed to be discussing the Terrans."
"What we need is information, something they don't have on us either. I think it would be a good idea to invite them to the citadel and have a mutual exchange of information." Sparatus added in his own opinion.
'I'll need to have the Union move all STG assets onto servers entirely separate from the grid. If I don't, the Terrans will have all of our information by the end of the visit,' Loglin thought to himself.
"I think it would also be a good idea to give them a comn buoy to use to communicate with us. Comn buoys all have anti-AI countermeasures so I think that would be best." Sparatus said.
"Hmm, comn buoys technology is open source so they will make their own to use as an adapter for their Hypercomns eventually. That being said, this will at least buy us some time to increase the protection of our cyber assets." Loglin said.
Tevos sighed, it was going to be a long, long, and frustrating near future for her. "Fine, I'll inform Matron Alyssa to tell them to come to the citadel in two weeks, I'll go get the FC events planned after that."
"Good, good," Loglin responded. "If you'll excuse me, I need to debrief the Delathrasses." He said while he started walking out of the room.
"And I need to go debrief the Primarch and the imperial council," Sparatus added in while he also got up. And wasn't that going to be a fun experience, he would have to get them to understand how these Terrans could even exist, yay…
UTF High Council
Five real minutes later in the UTF high council, they were discussing their lack of intelligence on the citadel council and how to rectify this.
"Honestly, what we need is the schematics for one of their comn buoys and the eezo required to create it. Once we have that, we can create a suitable adapter." The Starforgian representative spoke.
"We would need to place it within the Janus system, according to the FC information, these seem to use the mass relays to extend their comn buoys range, a range that seems to be thirty lightyears each." The Martian representative added on.
"Having access to the council's hypernet equivalent, their extranet, would be a goldmine of information for Terran intelligence. In all likelihood, we will cut through even their most advanced cyber-defenses like a g-ion blaster through wet paper." The Nyxian representative added on with a smirk.
"Alright, onto the next order of business." The Martian representative said. "We've been putting it off for a while, but we think it is time for the construction of a new megastructure."
Now that got a significant response, groans and various sounds of annoyance mostly, the practicality of megastructures outside of being mere vanity projects was something that was semi-regularly debated upon by many advancement-focused colonies.
It was also mocked quite often with something usually along the lines of 'Why do we need to build a planet-sized Halo ring when we can just build a few dozen more twenty-kilometer-long Erebus-class rotational habitats or some of the similarly sized Zeus-class digital-pod habitats in a few months?'
"Yes, Mars has regularly advocated in favor of 'vain and impractical megastructures', but we have finally created the designs for a megastructure that isn't a vanity project or some recreation of some megastructure from some sci-fi series." The Martian representative began as he pulled up the schematics for a space station that looked very similar to the Starforge. "This is the Infinite Dynamo, it is designed to draw stellar material using technologies created for the construction of the Starforge.
From here this stellar material is channeled into a large pocket of reality within hyperspace. The QRPs holding this stellar material are then dropped and the energy created in this massive hyperspace reactor would be equal to the energy output of a blue giant over an approximately one week time period.
This process would then be repeated over and over again every few minutes while the energy itself could be beamed wherever needed through hyperspace." The Martian representative finished.
The high council was quiet, this…this was massive, the output of a blue giant over an entire week every few minutes indeed sounded like a worthwhile investment…
"Let us put it to a vote, all in favor of allocating the transmutation arrays in the Starforge needed for the creation of the infinite dynamo?" Andria Norman asked.
494 Ayes to 187 Nays
"The ayes have it, the construction of the infinite dynamo shall commence. How long is it estimated to be in construction for?"
"With all the warship upgrading going on after our first contact with the citadel council, I'd say maybe a year." The Martian representative responded happily.
It was then that prime minister Andria Norman got everyone's attention and spoke up. "Attention members of the UTF high council, I've just gotten a report from our drone in the Janus system that the council wants us to come to the citadel in two real weeks. That is all."
"We need to send scientists to the citadel alongside Andria, the chance to study such an old structure would no doubt help us both in terms of knowledge and technology." The Asgardian representative spoke up.
"Declaration; the scions of life would wish to send their representatives to meet these like-minded non-humans."
"This body has already chosen me as the representative of the UTF, therefore your request is denied." Prime minister Andria Norman declared.
"Accusation; the scions of life would find this body to be discriminatory against humanity." The semi-sapient AI declared robotically.
Andria Norman simply placed her palm on her face and sighed in resignation. "UNDINA-259, how many times do we have to tell you, this is a democratic body and the bioconservatives are in the extreme, extreme, extreme minority amongst the Terran populace."
"Outrage; the scions shall file their 18,535th complaint against this body for this transgression against humanity."
"Onto the next topic of discussion, I propose we send some expeditions to star systems with stellar remnants to look for places to mine this element zero. I'm well aware that the massive fields of gravity from neutron stars, black holes, and other types of stellar remnants effectively disables hyperspace travel by destabilizing local spacetime to the point a stable hyperspace rift cannot be created, but if we're going to mine this eezo we're going to need to find a way around this issue." The Saturnian representative spoke up.
"She's right. While our systems may be extremely dry of element zero, we could mine a good deal of this material directly from its source." The Martian representative agreed.
"That and we could negate the potential anti-hyperspace capabilities of eezo on our hyperdrives." The Nyxian representative added on.
"Huh, I didn't even think about that. With enough eezo you could create a local hyperspace jammer of sorts, we need to rectify this and by doing so, we would be killing two birds with one stone." The Neptunian representative agreed.
"Let us put it to a vote. All in favor of researching ways to circumvent the effects of extreme gravity on hyperdrives for both defensive purposes and to be able to mine eezo." Andria Norman asked.
681 Ayes to 0 Nays
"It is unanimous, we shall begin researching ways to allow hyperdrives to operate in areas of extreme gravity." Andria Norman declared.
"Onto the next order of business, I am happy to announce that Mars has just finally cracked how to make hyperspace bubbles!" The Martian representative said excitedly.
The UTF high council held their breath, this was massive, current hyperspace storage technology could only hold small objects held within a metal box equipped with a tactical hyperdrive and constantly moving a few hundred meters around.
A hyperspace bubble, on the other hand, was creating a stationary bubble of reality in hyperspace from a QRP that both created and allowed access to the bubble from our four-dimensional reality.
This was massive, the UTF could now build easily accessible habitats, storage spaces, and other such constructs within hyperspace while only taking up a few dozen meters of space in reality!
Meanwhile: The Hermes System
In the virtual office of the governor of the Argo colony in the Hermes system, on the edge of UTF territory and sitting 892 lightyears away from Sol, a somewhat excited aide barged into the room.
"Sir, an unknown object traveling at 1.23% lightspeed has just passed out of this system's Oort cloud. You might want to take a look at this…" his aide said as he pulled up a holographic image of a very familiar-looking purple tuning-fork-shaped object. That being said, it was also quite different as it seemed to be surrounded by some metal scaffolding. "We deployed a scout ship to investigate, thinking this was just the occasional large asteroid heading into the outer system when we observed the visual feed you see before you."
"A mass relay? With a bunch of scaffolding on it? Where did it come from?" The colonial governor asked in surprise. Based on the FC information given by the council, mass relays didn't just move around.
"Based on its angle, inertia, and velocity; we've calculated that it's coming from Sol." The aide informed him. "We can only suspect that these Aeil'vyga the council based all their tech off of pushed it out of Sol and into interstellar space for some reason." The aide continued.
"I need to contact the high council and inform them of this." The governor said.