Chapter Three: The General
The doors opened with a whisper. Behind them was the familiar bright briefing room, the hemicycle of seats surrounding a cluster of holographic projections. The back wall windows allowed the entire facility in the middle of the rust-red Martian vista to be seen clearly, the fifty-thousand years old Prothean Ruins sitting in a pit surrounded by structures built by the Alliance that were fifteen years old at most. Mars was just as inhospitable as ever, despite the huge technological achievements of humanity, yet it remained special.
The collection of operatives and analysts rose from their seats and saluted, the Army's grey uniforms occupying one side of the room and the Navy's blue dominating the other. A single person in grey waited at the rostra, datapads held up against her with one hand as the other fixed her short strawberry-blonde hair.
"Atten-tion!" called the sergeant at the door, "Major-General present!"
The entire room saluted towards the door.
Karla Haider swept her eyes over the room, acknowledging every officer with her gaze, before saluting herself. The rest stopped their salute as she did. Everyone looked engaged with what was about to happen, even though it had happened weekly since the end of the Eden Prime War nearly two years earlier. Good, she thought, no one has forgotten what they were all there for. Not that she ever expected that they would be.
With the formalities out of the way, she descended the gentle stepped slope to the rostra, as the officers returned their attentions to getting their own houses in order as best they could, in case they were called upon later.
"Major Sullivan," Karla said in greeting, taking an offered datapad, "Is everything prepared as we discussed?"
"Yes, ma'am," Sullivan replied, "But Anderson's operation commenced later than previously thought, and we do not have information on its outcome yet."
Karla's head whipped around to look at the Major. That wasn't the news she wanted to hear. She wanted to have answers for the politicians. There was a good deal of whining in her near future, she knew. The politicians only ever wanted results, and didn't care about the method of getting them provided nothing came back to bite them in the ass.
Which was why Jack was gallivanting about the galaxy with Anderson, rather than being under the close watch of her step-mother.
She grit her teeth, and nodded her head. "Very well, Major," she said, "We still have much to get through today."
Sullivan responded by tapping on the datapad she had kept to herself. The windows polarised, blocking off the Martian vista and darkening the room. Lights turned on in response, dim ones. This signalled to all that the operations meeting was about to begin.
The Major always thought and acted lock-step with Karla's own intentions, which was why she was being groomed to be her eventual successor. Lisa Sullivan had two degrees from King's College, in psychology and strategic studies. She had joined the Alliance military in the final year of the Second Verge War, and had served in intelligence ever since. She had only middling combat scores, but more to the point, she was capable of reading people, regardless of species, with the same supernatural capability as Karla herself. Perhaps to an even greater degree. As an analyst, she had no equal.
Another daughter-figure, Karla had thought on meeting the young woman for the first time, and not without a certain exasperation. On the other hand, Sullivan had cut through Jack's walled personality so cleanly that the latter did in fact regard the former as a sister.
It was for these reasons that Karla remained silent, sitting down on one of the available chairs, and allowed the Major to start proceedings.
"Tomorrow is the Consular Briefing," Sullivan began, "Both Dennison and deBankole have requested additional information from all sections. They expressed their displeasure at last week's briefing leaving out news of a possible route to capturing Cerberus' leader, which we felt had to be kept under wraps until the last moment. So, this week, we will indulge them a little."
Sullivan tapped her datapad again, and a representative map of the galaxy fizzled into existence in the middle of the air, where both those on the rostra and those seats in the hemicycle could see it.
"We will start with the Reapers, as usual," she continued, looking up at a specific crew, "The Reaper Taskforce identified several possible enemy actions last month, and investigated. Could you summarise your findings?"
Another Major stood up, Johanna Gardner, whom Karla knew to be the most meticulous of the analysts, never letting a key piece of information go unexamined by less than three separate teams. Luckily, she was an excellent organiser as well, and so her work was never delayed by her thoroughness either.
"The resistance to Alliance moves to build up against the war in the Asari Republics and the Salarian Union are viewed to be the most likely candidates for classification as enemy action at this time," Major Gardner reported, "Some matriarchs and dalatrasses behind the political and military elements moving against our interests have no economic or political interest in doing so. Some of the matriarchs were previously judged to be supporters of humanity, but have since switched their allegiances. We are getting a great deal of intelligence out of the Republics, and what we are seeing increasingly worries us."
Karla became uncomfortable, as if itching all over. She crossed her hands on her lap, as if to soothe the need to move about. The Salarians could be dealt with. They only ever planned for a war in which they launched the first blow. The Alliance, sitting right up against their borders, could react to any such blow with absolute fury. But the Asari Republics were more wealthy, deadlier as individuals, possessed a larger fleet, and their territory was on the other side of the Turians' own. To say nothing of Illium or Aria T'loak.
"Indoctrination," she said, "You have finally pieced together information that suggests that Sovereign indoctrinated more than Saren and Benezia's direct subordinates."
Major Gardner hesitated, betraying a certain resignation about her coming answer. "We have information that suggests that some of the asari and salarian leadership are acting contrary to the interests of their species, and in the case of the asari, their own personal interests. But without testing them, we cannot know for sure. However, their behaviour is beginning to fit with patterns that were reported from the batarian leadership before our liberation of Khar'shan. The asari and salarians are also the most vulnerable to this sort of subversion, as they are the two oldest spacefaring species and their societies would not filter out mentally compromised persons as the Turian Hierarchy does."
Karla thought that was an optimistic view of the turians' meritocracy. After all, Saren had risen through its ranks to a certain height before becoming a Spectre. However, the turians were the only Council race other than the quarians considered to be cooperating to a satisfactory degree on the Reaper problem. Perhaps the Major was right. She bit her lip, wondering if a miscalculation on this could be the end of humanity.
"What about the other possibilities?" Sullivan asked, "The pirate attacks in the Traverse on Cerberus colonies?"
Major Gardner shook her head. "Motive remains a problem for declaring them an act of the Reapers," she replied, "Although the abduction of so many civilians is most definitely unusual, abductions in general are not. It does not fit with the known modus operandi of the Reapers to capture rather than kill, for one. For another, the economic rewards in capturing thousands is obvious to any Terminus pirate. If it was some play to provoke the Alliance into declaring war with the Terminus, they would attack Alliance colonies. Instead, they have kept to the Cerberus and independent worlds."
"I would not be so sure, Major," Karla said, "Consul deBankole is very willing to go to war over this. Cerberus or not, those colonies' rightful government is the Systems Alliance, whether they like it or not. Consul Dennison does not share the view, however, nor does the opposition in Parliament. The Reapers could mean to provoke a war, but will accept the continued division of humanity as a consolation prize."
"With respect General, we thought of that," Gardner said, "The Terminus warlords and pirate barons have sold a large number of captives, we know that. Their increased wealth is showing on the market, especially on Illium. If it was the Reapers, would the pirates be getting paid? After the attack on the Citadel, would any pirate fail to recognise a Reaper for what it really was?"
Karla wondered about that. After all, they had only two Reapers as samples; Sovereign and the broken remains of the Leviathan of Dis recovered from under the Great Ziggurat of Khar'shan. The latter was too broken, and the former had been looted for technology before the Alliance got a chance to look at everything. Comparisons couldn't be made. One Reaper may not have been the same as the next.
"What about our own people?" Sullivan asked, "Any evidence of indoctrination in Alliance or Pact space?"
"None whatsoever," Gardner replied, "Any erratic behaviour reported to us has been investigated and not a single case has returned with a positive result. Our neurological tests based off of Matriarch Benezia's brain chemistry are crude, but combined with good background work, we are confident we can catch Reaper thralls if they exist."
"Our working theory is that we are too new to the galaxy for any indoctrinated person to have risen to high enough rank to warrant scrutiny. Getting to those already highly ranked is simply too difficult, and humans are still suspicious of aliens. Rannoch is even more secure; the quarians always have kept a close watch on their own, and report no cases similar to what we have seen from the asari or salarians. Combined with our own counterintelligence and security measures, even lower ranked enemy agents will be unable to do significant damage to the war effort."
"Good," Karla said, "Speaking of Counterintelligence... Commander Kukic, your report. "
Gardner sat down, and the dour Croatian Major responsible for sniffing out enemy intelligence operations stood up, sweeping his hand down his blue Navy uniform before speaking. "We have repelled thirty seven major hacking attempts since our last briefing," he said, "Seventeen salarians have been arrested in connection with them, including three of the salarians' embassy staff. In addition, one volus and a private military contractor he paid off were arrested for financial irregularities relating to security on Terra Nova. We don't know if this was a turian operation or a purely volus one."
"That's more attempts than last month," Sullivan noted aloud, "And almost double from the month before."
"Is that rise connected to the Reapers?" Karla asked.
"The opponent is likely the STG in the case of the salarians," said Kukic, "The volus' motives are unknown at this time. The STG are known to be very worried about our fleetbuilding programme, and our voting bloc on the Council with the turians and quarians. More so about the turians, for the obvious reason that they are possess the single most powerful navy. The salarians do not consider the Versailles Pact to be a single force."
Karla nodded, finding nothing surprising about the information. If someone was hacking into military and civilian networks, the STG was always the first suspect. She envied their electronic espionage techniques, and was very glad that humanity's own comparatively hardened electronic practices allowed reasonable defence against them.
"Forward me your full report," she said, turning to Sullivan, "We'll move on to the Terminus. Tell me about Illium."
Fucking Illium, as Jack would say. Karla smiled. Nothing summed up that world more than that phrase.
"The matriarchs are stalling on the latest round of inspections," came the reply, "Our inspectors have been held up at the ports."
Karla clenched her right fist, cold anger settling in her stomach. "I-Sec are detaining our people?," she said, "Why was I not informed? That is a clear violation of the agreement we made on withdrawing from the system."
"It isn't I-Sec," Sullivan replied, "It's the Eclipse. They've occupied areas around the spacedocks and check all human or quarian passengers. The matriarchs have not claimed responsibility, but it is clear from their inaction that they are the ones pulling the strings."
This was far more problematic, Karla realised. Eclipse wasn't just present on Illium, but on Omega and the entire 'western' Terminus too. Messing with them would have meant a galactic scale war, albeit a smaller one than even the Verge Wars had been.
"They must have put a lot of money on Sederis' desk," she said, "But I don't believe she did this purely for money's sake. Do we have any leads as to Eclipse's motivation? Is it an internal power play or do they want to expand their influence in the Terminus at our expense?"
"We have no intelligence on that yet," Sullivan replied.
Karla sighed, seeing that the Consular Briefing was not going to be an easy one. Especially if Anderson didn't succeed in his little plot against Cerberus. The Consuls would likely disagree on the appropriate response to the matriarchs' defiance, leaving the decision hanging in the balance. That would benefit no one. This problem needed to be gotten in front of.
"What about T'soni and Section Greif," she said, "Are their covers still intact?"
"Yes, General," Sullivan responded, "But they're spread out over the planet. T'soni's still working as a Prothean architecture consultant, and T'nara-Khan is a bartender. Most of the useful intel on the matriarchs' possible hiding places for Reaper tech has come from them, moving about Illium society."
"Order them to gather all their assets," Karla ordered, "And prepare to check out the most promising target themselves. Quietly. If we can catch a company working on Reaper tech behind closed doors, we can bring larger guns to bear than the Eclipse will be willing to face down." By convincing the turians to join in, Karla thought with no small amount of savage pleasure. The old blue bitches would kneel, if she had any say in it.
"Mercenaries," Sullivan sneered, "Cowards all."
"Not all of them are cowards," Karla mused aloud, "Many are ex-military, remember."
Sullivan opened her mouth to respond, but the omnitool on Karla's wrist began to buzz an alarm. An incoming priority one call. From both Anderson and Jack. A joint call from two of the four people who could ever made such a call.
Karla's heart soared with pride and hope. Did it mean that Anderson's ploy had worked? Whatever the news, it had to be hugely significant. A failure on Anderson's part would have only merited a textual ping, nothing more.
"Sullivan, take over," she said, "I need to take this."
After receiving a confirmation from the Major, Karla walked up the stairs on the other side to that she entered on, and went into a small comms room across the chamber opposite the entrance doors. It was also a circular room, with the holographic projectors in the centre. With a few quick taps to her omnitool, the call transferred to the main system.
The figures of Anderson and Jack fizzled into existence, blue outlines of their true selves. Both of them looked almost shellshocked...
Karla's breath stuck, and she had to clear her throat to be able to speak. This was not how she had imagined the state her foremost colleague and her stepdaughter would be in.
"What is it?" she demanded, "Why do both of you look like you've seen a ghost?"
"Bad news first," said Anderson, regaining his usual composure, "The Illusive Man was not aboard the Anubis. It appears Cerberus has developed QEC technology. Their marching orders flow through the ship, but it's not the source."
"We did capture Lawson, and the ship is intact except for the engine pods," Jack added sheepishly, "But not the head honcho."
"So it was still a success," Karla replied, "Bring the Anubis into the Crossroads and we can debrief Lawson." At least the Quarians couldn't complain about being excluded if it was all done at the intersection of human and quarian space.
Anderson shook his head slowly. Karla shook her head more rapidly in response. What was wrong with that plan?
"We had to leave the ship," said Anderson, "And release Lawson."
Karla couldn't believe her ears, her eyes widening.
"You what?" she said, "You released an enemy of the Alliance?"
She was going insane. This could not be happening. Anderson was going to get dishonourably discharged for this, and it looked like her own daughter would be going down with him. And that was the best case scenario. Aiding terrorists tended to get you charged with treason.
"We had no choice," Anderson said, "The Illusive Man has intelligence of greater value."
"Greater value than a dreadnought and his own right hand woman?" Karla retorted, "It better be pretty damn great!"
"Mutti..." Jack said, "Shepard's alive."
Karla wished Jack was physically in front of her, not just a hologram, so she could shake some sense into the woman. She'd do much worse to Anderson. Shepard being alive was certainly possible. Shepard being in Cerberus hands was either impossible or a complete political and media disaster.
"I cannot believe you fell for such a lie," she said, rubbing the bridge of her nose in complete disbelief, "If Cerberus had Shepard, I would have heard about it. We've been getting great intelligence on the terrorists for months now. You even discovered the Anubis' role, which was the whole point of this operation."
The Admiral seemed to scowl, his features tightening up. Not at Karla, but at himself. Or perhaps, the circumstances they all found themselves in.
"Your contacts are compromised," Anderson said, "Mine too. The Illusive Man knows what sections of his organisation we have spies in, and he quarantined the more sensitive projects. Besides that, what they say matches up with what we know happened. There was an attack by the Blue Suns on Cerberus facilities recently. There was a firefight between the Blue Suns and Cerberus on Omega about a year and a half ago, serious enough that Aria had to get involved. The former was the Blue Suns trying to find Shepard in a medical facility. The latter was Cerberus rescuing Shepard from her kidnappers."
"Except everyone and their dog knows about those events," Karla said, "Cerberus don't have to lie about them, just provide an alternate explanation about why the Blue Suns would be fighting them."
"They had her clothes," Jack cut in, "Bloody clothes. I didn't believe them until they showed us that. The DNA matched too."
Karla examined her stepdaughter's eyes more closely, surprised to hear such a thing said from such a person.
If there was someone who would not trust Cerberus, it would be Jack. The terrorists had torn her apart and rebuilt her as a killing machine. Much of what Karla had done to earn her trust was to rebuild her again as a human being. But the young woman never forgot what had been done to her, even after the facility she had been 'raised' in was destroyed by an Alliance nuclear strike. Cerberus would be made to pay.
Yet here she was, saying Cerberus had saved humanity's hero. If Jack believed it, then it was worth investigation.
"So, are they going to hand her over?" Karla said, pivoting straight, "And what's the price?"
"The Shadow Broker had her," Anderson replied, "But Cerberus had a mole in his organisation, and apparently a mercenary contact they could leverage to help too. They broke her out. She's on a shuttle flying to Omega right now."
The Major-General put her hands on her hips. The Shadow Broker wasn't someone you crossed lightly, and it would be verifiable if Cerberus had in fact did so. By the time Shepard reached Omega, the truth of the matter would be concrete or not.
"Omega..." Karla thought aloud, "That's as close to a neutral location as you can get out there. Good move on their part. I would have the First Legion do what they do best if it was anywhere else."
"And the price is that Cerberus will try to recruit Shepard," Anderson continued, "The Illusive Man wants to use the Batarian Commonwealth and our lack of response to the attacks on the independent human worlds as proof that the Alliance has lost its way."
"But he's still allowing us the chance to talk to her on Omega..." Karla said, "Why?"
"To humiliate us," Anderson replied, "Increase support for Terra Firma within the Alliance, and solidify the Confederation of the Terminus into a real nation. That's been his goal for the past few years now. Thanks to the new Alliance presence right next door in the Traverse and the Quarians in the North-East Passage, the population feels threatened enough to go along with that to an extent. With this, he could succeed."
"Then we better stop him," Jack growled, "Right?"
Karla opened her mouth to agree, but paused.
"We have to try..." she said, "But we have to keep the Reapers in mind too."
"A united human nation in the Terminus and Traverse would be a good ally against them," Anderson agreed, "The next election is two years away. If we can convince Shepard to play along with Cerberus' agenda for a year, a year and a half, we've got a chance to bring them on side. If the Reapers take longer than that to arrive, we can flip Shepard and divide the Confederation, maybe even integrate parts of it into the Alliance."
Jack grumbled at that, loudly, but held her tongue as to the specifics of her distaste for that idea. Not that it wasn't obvious anyway. Karla smiled, disliking the idea too. The necessities of war were not always tasteful.
"All of that means getting someone we can trust in Omega," Anderson concluded, "Not easy. The Navy doesn't have anyone there right now."
"Nor do we in the Army," Karla replied cheerily, "But the civvies do. I'll talk to Langley. They'll lend us Chambers. She's living on Omega right now."
"Kelly Chambers?" Jack asked, blinking, "My shrink?"
"She's not just a psychologist, Jack," Karla said flatly, "She's CIA."
And someone Karla trusted implicitly.
Codex: Human Civilian Intelligence Agencies
The formation of the Systems Alliance in 2150 and the adoption of the Army Legion System in 2165 formally merged all human military intelligence agencies into one; the Defence Intelligence Directorate. As those organisations were a part of their militaries, the member states were obliged to amalgamate them by the treaty that established the Alliance, even though this took fifteen years to fully accomplish.
However, those nations with civilian intelligence agencies retained them, and the most significant of them continued to exist. Foremost among them are the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States of America, the Federal Intelligence Service of the European Union and the African State Security Agency. These giants are joined by police intelligence agencies ranging from the national to the municipal level of government, and the agencies of smaller nations like Japan or Australia for protecting their colonies.
Typically, these agencies do not directly engage in military operations, covert or otherwise, despite the history of many of them in doing so. This is due to the influence of the DID, which seeks to monopolise all covert and special operations capabilities throughout human space to its own command. This does not prevent the civilian operations from using mercenaries to carry out their own actions, especially outside of Citadel space where the DID's presence is far more limited. The civilian agencies are considered to be experts on intelligence gathering and sabotage in the Terminus, where their lack of overt military acumen allows for the greater flexibility required.
The relationship between the Alliance's DID and its member states' own agencies is friendly, but the latter often asserts their independence to the chagrin of the former. There have been attempts to merge some of the agencies into the DID itself, but these have been fiercely resisted by a cross-partisan group within the Alliance Parliament wishing to preserve member states' identities in the face of cultural and political homogenisation.
Codex: Hero-class Guided Missile Destroyer
First conceived of in 2180 alongside the Normandy-class frigate and the Churubusco-class deterrence frigate, the Hero-class is to be humanity's next great contribution to naval warfare.
With careful analysis of naval conflict across the galaxy for the five centuries preceding its entry into galactic politics, as well as the conflicts of the recent past, the Alliance has long sought an edge over the other navies of the galaxy. For the early years of its contact with the Citadel, the carrier was that edge, but with the development of asari drone carriers and batarian suicide attacks, the dominance of that class of vessel is less than it was during the Second Verge War. This was an eventuality that the Alliance foresaw, and the development of a guided missile destroyer with stealth characteristics equipped with trans-relay ballistic missiles was deemed to be the solution.
Development of the ship proceded at pace from 2180 to 2183, but the problem of armament remained. How to target enemy ships from beyond the range of even the best sensors, how to guide missiles to targets through relays when their orbits were not static, and what sort of ordnance the missiles themselves should carry, all of these were issues that were not resolved until after the Eden Prime War. By then, two ships of the class were already being built.
The solution was the Charybdis missile, a development of the Scylla missile TRBM used by Alliance deterrence forces for the delivery of eezo-enhanced nuclear ordnance. The Charybdis instead uses an up-sized disruptor torpedo warhead, and is guided by quantum entanglement communication derived from Reaper technology. Normandy-class stealth frigates attached to the same wolfpack as a Hero-class destroyer are used to guide the missiles, using their ability to close in with targets undetected to do so. The QECs allow three-missile sorties to be launched from the other side of the galaxy and still hit their targets with an error margin of centimetres, although the longest ranged test firing conducted by the Alliance was only conducted at one sixth of the distance of the most lengthy possible set of relay jumps.
This development came just as the Alliance began looking for a Reaper-Killer weapon, and production of Hero-class destroyers, Normandy-class frigates and Charybdis TRBMs was given the highest priority from 2183 onwards. In addition, existing Churubusco-class deterrence frigates were outfitted with QECs and now fly with both Charybdis and Scylla missiles.
In addition to its hyper-range attack capabilities, the Hero-class is also equipped to fight multiple frigates at once, having eight point defence batteries, three spinal mass accelerators and eight disruptor torpedo tubes. Although it lacks the Tantalus Drive of the Normandy and the Churubusco, its internal emissions sink is superior and the Hero-class can lurk in stealth mode for greater time periods than either of the stealth frigates.
The Hero-class vessels are all named for great warriors of human history. The first was originally planned to be named SSV Kublai Khan, but was renamed SSV Jane R Shepard in honour of the first human Spectre after her alleged assassination on the Citadel in late 2183.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Sorry for all the delays, the holiday period is a real bitch.
Any suggestions for future codexes are welcome, as are your reviews!
Enjoy!
