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INSPIRED
MASS
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Hackett

Location: [CLASSIFIED]
Date: [CLASSIFIED]

Admiral Steven Hackett glanced around the grand office he sat in, if it could really be called that. There were houses that could have fit comfortably between these lavish walls. It had originally been a Noble's once, long ago. A quiet place for him to study or review decisions made by his subjects. At some point the entire estate had been left to languish after the fall of the monarchs, and the eventual collapse and restructuring of the European Union after the old United Nations fell apart. It wasn't until the Prothean cache on Mars was located and the Systems Alliance was formed that this estate was bought up and repurposed into an Intelligence center. Although, even after all the restorations and expansion projects that'd been completed to bring this old building and its surroundings up to what it had originally done, with modern day standards, Hackett had it on good authority that this place was much, much larger underground.

It was only his third time being in this room since he started his career in the Alliance Navy. Second since his rise to Admiral. Each time he came here he felt less sure of his view of things, less sure of his understanding of the galaxy, less sure of himself, in a way. So much of his time was spent in space as the years passed, that it felt more and more like he just couldn't find his feet when he was back on planet. Normally these briefings were done electronically, securly, but occasionally the man in charge wanted a face to face

When there were things that couldn't be risked over even secure communication lines.

He wondered what it would be this time..

While he sat in a comfortable leather chair at the ridiculously ornate table that rested in the center of the room, he glanced across the span of datapads and hand-written notes to the man who effectively ran the Alliance's spy network, or at least who was the secret face of it.

Each time Hackett had come here, Vito Huson always had a small tray of refreshments ready for these meetings, regardless of if anyone else wanted them or not, and the man was currently looking over a small stack of miniature cakes as if this were a meeting of old friends, discussing meaningless pleasentrie. He was a good-looking man, despite his receding hairline, with short blonde hair and thin features, and the lines in the corners of his eyes that should come from laughing too much, though Hackett had never heard the man so much as chuckle. He wore a suit that made it clear he was a man of means, and had a cane and hat of equally eclectic and expensive taste resting by the door, but was lacking in any other affectation of his profession.

Vito controlled the Systems Alliance Intelligence Agency, and seemed to be the only person in that organization that Hackett could say provided pleasant company for longer than a minute or two. From what Hackett could tell, Vitow was the son of a real estate broker, military training in Brazil, Bachelor of Arts degree before going on to get a Masters of Laws from the UNAS and then joined the AIS as a special agent. Worked his way up the ranks from there.

Hackett, as a man of similar humble origins, could relate to the man a bit more than most. Likely why Vito liked talking to him so much in the first place.

That assumed, of course, that the man's history itself wasn't faked, but down that rabbit hole laid madness, so the Admiral took it face value, and enjoyed the other man's company, real or manufactured.

The manin question finally decided on a small cake and popped it into his mouth as his eyes quickly darted back to the report in front of him. A minute of slow chewing later, followed by a brief glass of water to wash it down, and, from reading the reports so sensitive Hackett had to hand-deliver them, looked up at the Admiral with a raised eyebrow.

Hackett simply nodded in reply, before deciding to add, "From what we've managed to confirm, it's all true. Not everything has been fully vetted, but what is doesn't paint a very flattering picture."

Vito slowly shook his head, took another drink, and started to slowly think aloud, "You would think with the entire Turian military force at their disposal, the Citadel Council would be more than able to deal with a few pirates. I just don't understand how they can populate and build up all those colonies in the Terminus systems without building up their various militaries and pushing them into the region to secure them. The economic benefit alone from having all that space pacified would more than make up and offset the costs of expanding their militaries…" the man trailed off, suggesting something.

"It's going to be a large problem as time goes on," Hackett explained, finding it easier to deal with things plainly, and ignoring any implications from the head-spy. "The System's Alliance has claimed as much of the galaxy as the entire Council at this point, even if we've only explored less than a percent of it, thanks to those damn laws preventing exploration of the relays. The fact that they let us is still something my analysts don't understand, but our current military strength isn't sufficient to protect them. That's not to mention the few colonies that are being established in Terminus space explicitly so they can avoid Alliance laws. For all the Citadel doesn't care about our expansion, they've been clear on what isn't our territory."

Mindoir immediately came to Hackett's mind. What a clusterfuck that had been. A human farming colony in the Attican Traverse, the settlement had been raided by Batarian slavers just a few months ago. Those four-eyed bastards had slaughtered most of the colonists, and those not fortunate enough to die immediately were subjected to… barbaric acts. That had made for harrowing reading, least of all was those damn cranial implants that the Batarians used to control them.

The Alliance had dispatched troops to drive the Batarians out, but the defenses the 'pirates' had set up were too strong. Marines sent to save the colonists were forced to watch what the Batarians did at a distance, able to pick up the transmissions as the remaining colonists begged for help, able to hear the Aliens brag about what they'd do to those poor civilians, and completely unable to help any of them.

By the time an Alliance reinforcement fleet arrived, the Batarians had packed up and left, but not before trapping the ruins with mines and other surprises for any humans they missed, either as they crept out of hiding or for the marines that tried to save them. It was the largest single loss of life the Alliance had seen since the First Contact War.

Even with calls to rebuild, everyone knew that initial "innocence" of human colonization had been lost. Already, several planned settlements had been cancelled, a few too close to the Hegemony in the process of being abandoned. It looked like future colonies would need to be turned into Fortress Worlds like Earth was and Shanxi was quickly becoming, and that would both slow everything down, and cost a fortune, beyond the blow that humanity as a whole had suffered to their morale.

And watching the Batarian Hegemony praise the 'pirates' actions while denying having anything to do with "rouge actions of our otherwise faithful citizens" wasn't helping anything. There were already calls for war with the Hegemony, but so far Citadel diplomatic efforts were keeping the peace. Not that everyone considered that to be a good thing.

Hacket...wasn't sure on which end of things he sat on The FCW had been terrible, but, in a horrible way, understandable. This was evil, pure and simple.

"Yes, we don't have the forces to protect them all yet, but the Alliance has only been around for twenty years, Admiral. It's barely been ten since the First Contact War." Vito ran a hand through his hair as he added, "The Turians have been part of the Council for more than a thousand years. Hell, they were what ended the Krogran Rebellions. They are a highly militarized society that makes service in the military mandatory in some fashion. They have multiple client races, one of which helped create the unifying monetary system of the 'credit.' They've had longer to build up and emplace themselves than most of the countries that became the Systems Alliance have existed, and were building starships since Ghenghis Khan decided to take over Asia. So, with all that time, with the backing of the Citadel, why the hell don't they have the manpower to deal with rogue pirates and Batarian slavers? Tell me, Steven, what do you think?"

Hackett took a moment to reach for his glass of water and take a drink, the question having now been asked out loud, and ordered his thoughts carefully before he answered. "I think we both know the answer to that question, Vito. Besides the obvious issue of almost a thousand years of relative peace seemingly making naval expansion unnecessary, there were also the various naval arms limitation treaties that have required all Council species to not exceed. While I'm sure the Turians would love to have a navy large enough to blot out every star in the galaxy, the Asari and Salarians would never allow another power to become more powerful than themselves."

"That is what they claim, yes. And as we are the 'youngest race'," Vito continued with a humorless smile, "we can expect them to hold us to similar limits." After a brief sigh of frustration, the Director of the AIS added, "Sometimes I wish we had never opened that Relay."

"Charon, or 314?"

Vito smirked slightly, "Both. Neither. I don't know, Steven. Something about the Relays has always bugged me, but you have to admit that they have been useful." With a wave of his hand he changed the subject, "So, with the Council unwilling or unable, maybe both, probably not both, to keep the Batarian military, I'm sorry, Batarian 'piracy' under control we will have to find some way to do that on our own. Some way that doesn't ruffle Turian feathers, though give us a decade or three and I might not be adverse to doing just that." The spymaster frowned, and shot the Admiral an assessing look, and it was not a look that the Admiral liked.

"As always, the information we discuss here is classified," Vito started, which was never a good thing. "It has come to our attention that the situation that many things we have learned about the Citadel seem… incongruent. If they were all like the Asari, long lived but rarely reproducing, the time-scales would line up, but they aren't. With what we know of their technology, their biology, and their culture, Turians should outnumber us a hundred to one, at minimum. Instead, it's three, maybe four to one at most, and they are all like this. Following standard societal pressure, we should have been outmatched as, apparently, the Volus were. Standard societal pressures."

And here was the thing that required Hackett's personal presence. "You're saying they're not standard," the Admiral declared flatly.

"We know the Salarians self-regulate, only fertilizing ten percent of each clutch, but the other species have no such excuse," the spymaster revealed. "Asari numbers are roughly what they should be, as are the Drell, The Elcor, the Volus, and the Hanar, given their original numbers and biology. The Turians and the Batarians, though, are far too few in nature. One inherently lawless, their caste system making all below them acceptable targets and not protected by their culture's morality, the other inherently lawful, militaristic individuals who flock together. One has a breeding program with its slaves, one has it as a civic duty, of sorts. So tell me, Steven, why aren't we hip-deep in gizzards and eyeballs?"

"They're set up to grind each other down," the Admiral slowly stated in dawning horror. "Oceania and Eurasia. And we're Eastasia."
This time, Vita's smile was sharp. "Did you know what Salarians think of Orwell's work? 'A good attempt, but terribly unsubtle'. The Turians don't like the inherent distrust, but also believed that Winston was in the wrong for defying Big Brother. And if you can get a straight answer from an Asari Matron, I've got a bottle of cognac for you. As far as we can tell, they turned to the Krogans in desperation to fight the Rachni, but when the lizards didn't fall into line afterwards, the Citadel decided to remove them in a way that we would consider monstrously inhumane."

Dreading the answer, Hackett asked, "And what are they going to do to us?"

Vito clapped his hands together, opening them in a spreading gesture as he announced, "Nothing. At least as long as we act like the mammalian, Asarinoid Turians they expect us to be. In the future, who knows." The spymaster sighed, "For now, though, I'll put some pressure on the Parliament and let them know of the aliens' inability to maintain order. You can expect a significant push by our member-nations to bring our own military up to parity with the Council., whether they like it or not"

Hackett smiled ruefully. "I don't think that outcome was ever in question, sir. We are Human."

"Yes, yes, we certainly do enjoy our pointed sticks," Vito grinned with the Admiral, "and we can't stand it when someone else has more of them than we do. I have a feeling that's not race specific, no matter what the aliens claim."

"It will likely be a long time before we can claim the title of largest fleet in the galaxy from the Quarians," Hackett commented, before pausing. "Where do the Quarians fit with what we know of the situation?"

"Hmmpf," Vito grunted in answer, "they don't. Their situation is bad enough that they've been suppressed openly, but otherwise left alone. Why do you think a band of space gypsies has still survived since they've been on the move since 1985? They aren't thriving, but they have been growing, slowly, and in ways that are more aligned with our models of their biology and tech level, given their situations." The man smirked, looking at his old friend thoughtfully. "Speaking of Quarians, what happened to your pen pal?"

Hackett groaned tiredly in response. "Like I'm supposed to believe you don't have a hundred people watching our four alien guests right this moment. You're the one who told me to write back, after all."

They both knew those four Quarians currently had more protection hidden around them at any given moment than most heads of State. Despite the System's Alliance peace with the Citadel, the only aliens that had come to Earth itself had been diplomats, and only a few research teams had been to Mars, to investigate the Prothean ruins found there. The AIS didn't want to have to explain the murder of an alien on Earth soil to Parliment, and the number of protocols that had failed when the four 'pilgrims' had shown up had been a wakeup call to the Sol security forces.

Personally, Hackett hoped nothing happened as the man didn't want to have to tell Anderson that one of his few friends was dead. And neither man wanted to consider the possibility of the Migrant Fleet pointing their considerable firepower at Humanity.

At any given moment there were usually ten thousand aliens on Earth, all of them Diplomats or diplomatic Diplomats kept to themselves in and around their respective Embassies and the major capital cities they were erected in, warning the SA when they wanted to travel. Those areas tended to have more than enough local security forces to monitor for trouble, and the major diplomats had AIS agents and their own guards to protect them.

In turn, these Quarians had originally had none of that because they decided to go visit Oklahoma and turn that area into a 'home base' of sorts. Part of that made some sense to him, it was the relative geographic center of the United North American States, with a regional transport hub nearby that made global travel easy.

At the same time, he wondered what the hell were those Quarians thinking? Why Oklahoma, when all of the other Aliens were in the coastal cities?

...Hacket believed that he just answered his own question.

So far the Quarians hadn't stayed static, but had traveled mostly around the UNAS and EU, but they were making plans to visit some of the Independent States as well in the near future. Most of the time they aren't visiting obvious places, like museums and major landmarks, but instead wandering from local nature reserves or taking a tour of industrial parks for reasons their analysts couldn't understand. The lead Quarian had even visited an abandoned Pepsi bottling facility near Moscow of all places.

Their actions might have been off putting to some, but considering they were walking around without their helmets, and in some cases even without their exosuits, they were seen more like Asari: exotic beauties to be appreciated. Who would have thought that they were so...attractive, without those suits? It wasn't even the otherworldly beauty that you experienced around Asari, a feeling which couldn't be replicated through media, and had led to the first contact teams being quarantined for some kind of Alien toxoplasmosis.

No, the Quarians seemed to need to make themselves available and open to all species, except their own for some reason. Hackett had gone over his communications with his 'pen pal', but he, like his staff, couldn't figure out why. If Asari were almost Fey, using their attractiveness to extract favors, the Quarians were more like living art, desiring to be appreciated.

Or at least, that's what his analysts told him, after he'd read their first report, which described the Quarian exosuits with the phrase, 'like someone trying to put a cardboard box around Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Teresa or Michalangelo's David." He'd had that person sent for a medical check and psych eval, which came back clean, though the woman had apparently had a bad breakup, and asked the others to be a bit more… discrete.

What was confusing, and worrying, was that the Citadel extranet had scrubbed most visual records of the Quarians prior the emergence of the Geth. Some physical pieces of art depicted them existed, but his analysts had been unable to find pictures, only descriptions, to the point that the coverup became glaringly obvious. It was, among other things, something that was really starting to make his analysts give everything the Citadel Council provided them a much more stringent look, rather than just accepting what they received as was done after First Contact, as they were directed to by the civilian leadership to 'foster cooperation', and 'leave the suspicion to the AIS'.

With this blatant display of totalitarian and nonsensical censorship, enough politicians had been given enough ammunition to allow others to look at the information critically, instead of trying to 'not our problem' it as hard as possible.

Several Citadel 'laws' were already being pointed to in the media as bullshit as a result.

Worse, Hackett wasn't entirely sure that hadn't been the point when Zod'Rezh decided to visit a French beach and sunbathe with his fellows. Having two males and two females of their species in one place for everyone to see had been an excellent way to get people to stop using the term 'suit-rat.' Thankfully, the French, being French, had been fascinated, but had done their best to depict the 'casual, indifferent interest' that was a cultural trademark and had, if anything, become more pronounced in the last few decades.

Vito shrugged at Hackett's accusation, "I wouldn't say a hundred people watching them. There are only twenty or so agents on permanent detail to them while on Earth, each, but that just tells me where they are. Who they talk to. What they talk about…"

"So only ninety then," The Admiral interrupted. He resigned himself to having this conversation, which really wasn't that much of a chore. He just hadn't expected it to be today, but he had something else to ask first. "Whatever happened to that search to see who else he'd been 'pen-palling'?"

The AIS Director blinked, and then chuckled. "Oh, no need to be jealous, Steven. It looks like your friend was telling the truth. We confirmed he sent almost identical messages to almost two hundred people, but only maintained an ongoing correspondence with twenty for almost a year as people didn't or stopped responding. Currently he has only five ongoing correspondence, and you are one of them."

"I only did so because of your orders," Hackett reminded the man, before mulling that over, and eventually nodded. "Alright. I was initially concerned that someone would manage to blind-message several Alliance officers. After speaking with him, he seemed unlikely to be a spy, but perhaps we had a compromised security system."

Vito tapped his omni-tool a few times, reading the screen that the admiral knew the intelligence director had in his contact lenses, before the man smiled. "I wouldn't discount that quite yet, Steven. This 'Zod' managed to infiltrate our systems as soon as his ship reached Sol. We didn't catch it at first, but somehow he managed to get in and check our systems. We aren't sure what for, and he didn't actually do anything, but it was more than just our protocol for non-announced alien entry that he slipped through."

Hackett froze. "He hacked us? Why am I just now hearing about this?"

The Spymaster made a 'calm down' gesture. "Thing is, other than his point of entry, he left every secure system alone. All of them. And with the access he had, he could've found a few interesting things. About you, not us," Vito added. "He hacked the Alliance communications system to run a basic database search, several of them, but nothing that important, and we only found it entirely by accident, because of a test run of one of our systems." The man tapped the desk for emphasis. "A number of the systems he searched, however, were systems that haven't been hooked up to the extranet."

"He was looking us up, not trusting the Citadel?" the Admiral asked, and the AIS director nodded.

"Furthermore," Vito continued, "This 'Zod' originally 'blindly' sent messages to three members of the Alliance military, yourself included, as well as one of the unlisted private handles for a member of the Vatican who never responded, but otherwise none of the others were interesting. And for the life of us, we can't figure out why, though, personally, my instincts say there was a reason, but it wasn't hostile. If it makes you feel better, our people tracked down his other messages, as he wasn't nearly as careful as when he arrived here. They were to the daughter of a highly ranked Asari Matriarch, and two Hanar. One of which did respond until he realized Zod was male."

Not wanting to consider that too deeply, the admiral nodded and moved the conversation along. "And nothing we talked about was sensitive, just cultural differences. Mostly food, now that I'm thinking about," Hackett smirked at that. "I owed Anderson a hundred credits after Zod's little stunt at the restaurant. I didn't expect him to find a solution to their immune problem."

At the mention of that, Vito's genial smile dropped, revealing the ice-cold seriousness of a professional spy. "Yes. That. I'm going to be honest here, Admiral, that part is what worries me. I think someone on the Migrant Fleet fucked up. Badly," the man stated. "At least I hope they did. This kid if yours is smart, dangerously so. And given how much all four have physically changed over the past month, after what you reported that Anderson told him, I have an idea of how much. And I don't like it one bit."

The man's whip-lashing attitude made the Admiral frown. Anderson had told Zod about how the Alliance Navy used genemods to keep their members in fighting shape for the rest of the soldier's life, making corrections to the DNA to make them faster and stronger - with a side benefit of turning most soldiers physically into super models. That would explain why each of the Quarians had gained fifteen centimeters in height and put on thirty pounds of muscle since they arrived, more than his own analyst's ideas that it was 'good food, fresh air, and sunlight'. Or, more likely, those viral 'rations' that Zod had just handed them the recipe to, out of the blue.

Hackett knew genemods could do so much more, and used to do so. In the years before First Contact, genetic research was very advanced and even reached the point of being able to "uplift" animals that lingered uneasily on the borders of sapience. There were some serious ethical debates on that, and on 'blurring the lines of humanity', that had only just started to gain steam when the Turians had attacked.

Yet, after joining the Citadel, the conversation suddenly shifted about concerns over such modifications destroying Earth's 'unique biodiversity'. Lots of arguments and compromises eventually led to the Systems Alliance Parliament passing the Sudham-Wolcott Genetic Heritage Act in 2161, which set strict controls on genetic modifications for animals, which incidentally also put those same controls on human gene-modding. As the law currently stood, modification of natural abilities was legal, but adding new ones was not. For example, using gene therapy to increase muscle mass or remove your disposition to nearsightedness is fine. Adding the ability to have retractable claws or digest cellulose, not so much.

But Zod was not human, and the Quarians weren't members of the Citadel anymore, and thus the limits they had in place, which coincidentally mirrored the SWGHA fairly closely, didn't apply to him or his companions. Hackett was, not for the first time, glad his area of expertise was military concerns instead of public policy. Word was already getting out that the Quarians had made themselves able to safely consume dextro and levo proteins, and people started to wonder why can't they do the same. Telling civilians you already can' wasn't really working very well, especially as the Citadel was telling them they couldn't.

However, with how serious Vito was being about this, Hackett took a moment to consider the implications of what the spymaster was implying, and found he didn't care for it either. "You believe that Zod reverse engineered our military genemods, reworked them for Quarians, and applied them to his companions, in, what, a month?"

"A week, if that," The AIS directly replied flatly, before sighing himself and reaching for another pastry, picking it up and considering it. "My people have discussed it, and even with a bulk of the legwork done by our people, if he managed to get a sample, and he likely had, it's too fast." The spymaster glanced up at the Admiral, meeting his eyes. "We couldn't do that. Not with three months, and our entire discretionary budget. Not without running the kinds of trials that this 'Zod' didn't bother with. The kid knew it would work, and didn't hesitate."

Hackett, leaned back in his own seat, as his friend ate the pastry. The early genemod experiments had been… messy. Needed, but almost as inhumane as the Salarians. Almost, "Zod is smarter than anyone initially considered. Or thought possible," Steven mused, turning over the still-forming ideas in his head, comparing it with what he already knew. "It's likely that the Fleet just didn't suspect it, or no one thought to bring it up. From what Anderson tells me, he was fairly isolated on the Fleet - but from what the other three have let drop the isolation was mostly self imposed. He had ideas, would bring them to the Captain of the Fiwa, and then get put in a database somewhere because there weren't any resources to waste with 'experimentation'. That constant rejection likely wore him down."

"And now he's on Earth," Vito continued for him, nodding in agreement, "with a large bank account and a lot of popularity. That would explain why he purchased a ranch, with Anderson's help I might add. More laws that need to be reworked. The man did try very hard to get the alien to set up camp in London instead of Oklahoma, and they've been ordering all kinds of things."

He pressed the device on his arm a few times, and then started to read off; "Hydraulic Press brakes, Swing-beam shears, integrated ironworker, plate rolls, profile rolls, five hundred pounds of starcraft-rated steel, concrete, five miles of copper spools, and a lot more. There are even some odd requests for sensor modules that are rated for use in gas giants. What the hell is he building on that farm?"

Hackett smiled, joking, "Maybe he's working on the next generation of FTL." The intelligence director paused mid-sip, and the Admiral explained. "I'm joking. Though Anderson did say Zod thought it was odd that all the races don't really advance their technologies and that everyone is basically using the same stuff. Which, according to him, was all created by a precursor race and we merely adopted. Zod seems to believe that only what was built prior to finding the Prothean cache on Mars is actually human-technology, and that after that point we stopped innovating."

Vito finished his sip, and sighed, typing on his omni-tool. "He's wrong about that, at least, but not completely. Well, whatever he is doing he will likely be starting on it soon. The last of the random assortment of items he'd ordered before his current round-the-world trip is arriving at his farm later today. And since all the bugs we tried to slip in with the other shipments have all mysteriously vanished…"

Hackett didn't bother hiding his smile at that, it was always entertaining when the AIS got their noses harmlessly tweaked. It was nice to be on the other end of things for once.

"...I'm going to have to find some poor intern to sneak some more into the boxes," the spymaster muttered to himself. "How the hell are they finding them? The damn things are the size of a grain of sand, and the packages are the size of sedans!"

Hackett kept smiling as he casually pulled up his omni-tool, and sent the other file he had prepared on the way to this meeting to his friend. "Take a look at that for me. Should be informative."

Vito narrowed his eyes at the non-sequitur, but did as asked. After a few moments of reading, he said, "Okay, this looks like Hahne-Kadar's new A-61 Mantis Gunships. That was a pain to shepherd through the committees, but it'll be worth it. What are you expecting me to...wait, this doesn't look exactly the same." After a few more minutes of reading silently to himself, and getting progressively more confused, the intelligence expert finally asked, "Okay, what the hell is this?"

The Admiral took a quick drink of his own water, and then smiled, "That is an excellent example of why you're right, and Zod shouldn't have been made to take a Pilgrimage. He took one look at the A-61, and then made his own. It only looks superficially like the one HK is producing, but from everything my techs are telling me, that version you are looking at is better."

"Better how?"

"Better." Hackett smirked, "5% lighter weight, 12% stronger armor, 11% faster reaction speed, and the changes to the eezo engine mean it would be as fast as a fighter."

"Yeah?" Vito smirked back at the Admiral, with an expression that read 'do you think I'm an idiot?' "And just how much more would we have to pay for those improvements."

"Just ten percent-," Hackett started to answer.

"Really?" The AIS director replied, looking at the designs again. "If what you're saying is true, it might actually be worth it, once we test it. A ten percent increase is respectable for this amount of improvement, but with how many of these things we're ordering, I doubt it would be enough to sway the penny pinchers up top who approve our expenses, or explain why we only have ninety-one percent of the requisitioned ships."

"You didn't let me finish," the Admiral retorted, trying, and failing, not to be smug. "This design is just ten percent cheaper than what we're paying for the current model, counting materials, manufacturing costs, and everything else."

At his friend's blank, nonplussed look, Hackett continued, "The techs tell me that everything here, all the changes, were mostly just optimization of current manufacturing abilities. Things that could be done, but no one had thought to do before. Then there was the way the craft's interior was laid out to help maximize internal volume without sacrificing the structure. The single largest concern they saw was the changes to the vessel's mass effect core. They hadn't seen one in the configuration proposed there, but they did some simulations that proved it would not only work, but, after we've stress tested it to make sure there's no hidden problems, it should be immediately applied to all future vessels regardless of anything else we do. That recommendation has already been sent to HK, and they are desperate to find out who came up with it. So far, I've been able to keep Zod's name off it."

"You don't think he'll find out when they start to use his design," the AIS Director asked, incredulously, ignoring the technical ramifications to jump on the human aspect of the situation. Quarian, in this case.

"I honestly don't think he will care," Hackett replied easily. "I didn't say he sold it to us, he passed it to me to 'make sure it could be useful'. Anderson pointed the ship out to him online, and the kid seemed to find it offensive. Spent the next few hour working up that design. Told Anderson to send it on to his superiors and have them fix it. Also said to make sure we keep an eye on who buys the thing, because he suspects it won't be long before Batarians are using it against us in the Terminus."

Vito sighed in annoyance, "Well, he isn't wrong about that. HK isn't going to sell directly to the Batarians, but they don't need to. It won't take long for some PMC to buy up some and then resell them on to our enemies. That's the risk we take with every new weapon or defense developed."

Hackett just shrugged, as none of this was new to him, but the Intelligence Director, amusingly enough, liked to think out loud. The admiral wondered how much of it was for his benefit, but sipped his water, enjoying the show regardless.

"And he just gave it to us? That's… that's either stupid beyond belief, or equally dangerous." Leaning forward, Vito added, "And I want you to make sure that 'Zod' understands that too. He might be brilliant, but if he isn't careful he could end up giving advantages that could hurt the Fleet, or more importantly, us. And no one's going to care he didn't mean to."

After taking a moment to relax back into his chair, the Director of the AIS continued, "Thanks to that kid, there has been some interest in developing some kind of relationship with the Quarians and the Migrant Fleet. I recognize a psyop when I see it, and, again, that alien is stupid or dangerous. As for the others,I don't know if it is just stereotyping, but everything we could gather says that all Quarians are excellent engineers. It might not be something they all love, but it is something they are good at."

Vito waved a hand around, "There are currently some whispers around Parliament about trying to incentivize Quarian Pilgrims coming to Alliance space instead of risking themselves in the Traverse or Citadel. Now that people know they're attractive, some of them are looking back at the Citadel's actions and have been more than a little confused about why the Quarians were kicked off the list of respectable species for creating the Geth. After all, for the 'enlightened' and 'civilized' people that they are, they've done absolutely nothing to help the Quarians rebuild or do anything about the Geth that they feared so much to punish the Quarians over in the first place. Add in the 'collective blame' and 'sins of the father' aspects to the entire thing… that went badly enough with the treaty of Versaille. I'm actually surprised that the worse they did was invade a colony that was stolen from them. And, despite being kicked out, they were punished, but the Batarians?"

It was yet another damning fact. "From my point of view," Hackett agreed, "it looks like the Citadel left the issue at the Quarian's feet and then washed their hands of the whole thing. For three centuries. The Citadel allowed, what they claimed to believe was a hostile synthetic race, three hundred years unsupervised to build up and prepare. The Quarians had been a part of the Citadel for almost as long as the Turians. They helped fight in the Krogan Rebellions as well. That they were just kicked out like that…is beyond idiocy."

Vito gave the Admiral a faux-confused smile. "What do you mean, 'supposed.' Aren't the Geth violent and hate organic life? That was what the Council's codex said."

Hackett frowned sadly as he pulled up his omni-tool once more. "My father told me that in any story there is more than one side."

"Right, every story has two sides to it," the Spymaster agreed easily.

"Three," Hackett corrected simply. "There is my side, your side, and in the middle, is truth." With a few more presses of the omni-tools haptic interface, he found what he was looking for. "Something that I think your researchers should see."

Vito watched the screen on his arm as the video was shared, and was confused at the sight of a suit-less Quarian standing over what had to be a Geth unit. The machine spoke, it's optical camera flashing in time as it spoke just the same way that Quarian's helmets did: "Creator, does this unit have a soul?"

Hackett commented, "Another data dump from Zod, and one the others didn't know about. According to him, what happened between the Quarians and the Geth wasn't an AI uprising like we've been told. It was a civil war. Between Quarians who wanted to destroy what they created, and those who wanted to protect the new lifeforms. He told Anderson he liked to spend a bit too much time wandering around the restricted information vaults of the Fleet. Especially those files that no one had accessed in over a century. That's how he found that in the historical archive. And something that, when I had someone ask about even the possibility of, the others reacted badly to. Religious degrees of badly."

Vito shook his head in annoyance. "So this 'Zod' is a heretic on top of everything else. Sure. Why not. This… this is something that is very good to know - don't get me wrong, but dammit, Hackett I really wish you hadn't told me this. This makes the Council's actions even worse in some ways, but it fits. They didn't want to get involved in a civil war, that explains why they didn't try to help put down the fighting and attack the Geth. But it makes them look worse for then dumping all the fault on the survivors and not even attempting to help them rebuild at all," he frowned, before he blinked, realization dawning.

"Of course! They didn't hyper-specialize, like we don't, which the others took exception to. They're pretty like the Asari, smart like the Salarians, and I bet they're decent in a fight like the Turians. With that, they were probably a rising power, if not on the council itself. I'd say check the records, but we've seen how those are. No, several hundred years ago they were us, but leaning more towards Asari and Salarian, while we lean towards Turian and Salarian. And from what we can tell, the Asari are the cattiest of bitches."

Vito shook his head, letting out an explosive sigh as he looked into the middle distance, as if seeing the situation in full. It wasn't an AI uprising, it was an opportunistic political coup, which is why they don't give a rat's ass about the killer von-neumann machines for centuries! Less than a single percent of the damn species survives, and is then treated like shit by everyone else, and still somehow keeps on keeping on. Even the fucking Krogan, who plunged the entire galaxy into war right on the heels of the previous one, and who had to eventually be stopped with the kind of bio-weapon that should be an eternal black spot on the souls of the Citadel to unleash, are treated with more respect, and... Batarians, need I say more?"

Hackett nodded, not finding any holes in the other man's assumptions, at least not yet."We've treated our own enemies better than that. For more than two centuries our modus operandi in a conflict is to put the threat down hard, but then go back and rebuild so it won't happen again. It doesn't always work, but we all try. The more we dig into this, the worse the Council looks."

Vito sighed, "I suppose it was too much to ask for the ancient aliens that'd been at peace for centuries to have figured things out, instead of hitting corruption equilibrium. An equilibrium we're messing up every day. Damn, okay, fine, let me worry about this. In the meantime, continue to get closer to the kid. Spy or mad scientist, Anderson seems to be making for a good friend to him, but maybe you would make a decent surrogate father to watch over him? I don't know Quarians, yet, but this 'Zod' reads oddly human, so maybe that will work. So far it seems like you've been letting Anderson do all the heavy lifting gathering intel, and he has done a damn good job, but the kid's in contact with both of you. While you're on Earth, make an attempt to go see him, okay? Point out that, I don't know, our medical tech might have some room for improvement. That seemed to be his specialty, before today. Maybe he'll open up to you about what the hell he is building in the middle of nowhere. I don't know anymore."

Hackett stood, and nodded to one of the most dangerous men in the Systems Alliance, leaving the fortified castle with a smile on his face. Once again, the admiral had felt like one of the foundations of his world wasn't nearly as firm as he'd thought.

However, this time, he'd been able to return the favor.

With interest.