Scars 2
Every species saw the Citadel in a different way, Vasir reflected.
To the salarians, who had been the second people to walk on the station since its rediscovery, the Citadel was first and foremost a scientific mystery. Perhaps the ultimate mystery left in the galaxy. How had its builders - the mysterious and long-vanished Protheans - constructed it? How had it survived the Protheans' sudden disappearance when so much else of their civilization had not? From where had the strange lifeforms who maintained the station first come - were they some mutant offshoot of the Protheans, a client species, or something altogether different? How did the Citadel maintain its artificial atmosphere; what secrets were hidden away in parts of the structure as yet unexplored? What had the Protheans used the Citadel for? Had it originally been designed as an observatory perhaps, or as an experiment, or a military outpost, or even as a weapon? The salarians had many questions, and - for all the generations of salarian lives that had passed since those first visitors had arrived - very few answers.
The volus saw the Citadel as an opportunity. True, the air was full of poisonous, unbreathable oxygen and the atmosphere was so thin as to be barely noticeable. But that didn't matter: what was uninhabitable to a volus could be home to somebody else. And that meant it was valuable to everyone. The volus spent most of their lives in exosuits, but the possibilities for advancement that the galaxy offered made that all worthwhile. When the explorers and the adventurous and the dreamers came to the Citadel, they would do so backed by Vol-clan loans, and when they stayed they would buy merchandise from the volus who came to the Citadel to sell it. Anywhere there was people, there was profit to be made.
The krogan had seen the Citadel as a prize, before the Rebellions. Something that could be won if they fought hard enough, whether against the rachni or the turians or anything else the galaxy had to throw at them. Accepted as a gift from a grateful galaxy, or wrested out of its owners' unwilling hands. After the Rebellions, of course, the survivors had had other things than dreams of the Citadel with which to be occupied. If any krogan Battlemasters still dreamt of sitting on a throne in the upper chambers of the Citadel tower, they were smart enough to keep those dreams to themselves.
To the turians, the Citadel was primarily a key military strongpoint. Sitting at the nexus of dozens of major and minor mass relays, control of the Citadel would give a fleet almost immediate access to hundreds of populated star systems.. Military control of the Citadel meant almost unchallenged control of the relay network itself, and that meant that the turian fleets could stand watch over most of the galaxy. Turian ships defended the Citadel, and turian recruits made up most of C-Sec. The turians, Vasir thought sadly, were not particularly inventive thinkers.
The elcor saw the Citadel as a refuge, a quiet sanctuary in a galaxy that was all too often fast-paced and bewildering. For a people who hated change and noise, the quiet constancy of the Citadel was a welcome oasis of calm and solidity, almost as welcoming and dependable as the gentle plains of Dekuuna. While the other species fretted and strutted across the galactic stage, the elcor could rest easy on the Citadel. Here, at least, each day that passed would be much like the thousands that had come before.
The batarians saw the Citadel as an insult, or perhaps a threat: A den of iniquity, where species and orders of all kinds mingled together like animals, with no respect for how things should be done. This was no place for decent batarians who respected the old traditions and turned their eyes respectively away when the priests walked by. This was an unholy place, where casteless troublemakers, political dissidents and escaped slaves would come to hide from justice and plot treason against the enlighted order of the Hegemony. A place full of aliens who had largely abandoned the batarians to the unprovoked military expansionism of the turian threat on their borders. The few batarians who still visited the Citadel these days walked about in groups, looked around suspiciously at the turian guards and muttered to themselves about the turian ships in orbit.
And so on, and so on.
The hanar had seen the Citadel as a holy site; a testament to the glory and splendor of the Enkindlers. That was exactly how the hanar had seen all of the surviving Prothean relics they knew of, as well as anything sufficiently novel or impressive that they had decided could also be credited to the Protheans. The hanar had been even less inventive thinkers than the turians, Vasir reflected. Still, the hanar were mostly gone now, and so much for their misplaced devotions. Their opinion of the Citadel mattered as little now as that of the quarians or the humans or the vorcha or the drell. The galaxy belonged to the living, and not to the dead.
Nobody had grasped the true essence of the Citadel as fundamentally the first asari explorers who set foot on it almost three thousand years ago.
Whoever sat at the top of the Presidium Tower, waiting to greet each new arrival as they disembarked and stared about, was making an unstated but undeniable boast. A boast that said simply: We were the first. We were the first to discover this place. You may explore it to your hearts' content, for we are a generous people. You may study here, shelter here, work here and live here, for we are happy to share what we have with the rest of the galaxy. Are you impressed, are you awed, are you humbled? Yes, this is an amazing place: a place of secrets and opportunities, a place of strength and stability. And we were here first.
The Citadel was many things to many people, but it was above all else a symbol. The Protheans had built it, just as they had built the mass relay network and - wittingly or not - sowed the seeds for all the intelligent space-faring races that would come into the galaxy after them. Whoever sat atop the Citadel Tower announced themselves to the galaxy as foremost among all the inheritors of the vanished Protheans.
The Protheans had constructed the physical shell of this place, but the asari had taken it and made it the heart of a civilisation that stretched across a galaxy. The Protheans had built a station, but the asari had named it, repurposed it for the modern age. The asari had made it the Citadel.
And yet after all these years, the Citadel felt like more than a symbol to Vasir. As her shuttle set down and she strolled across the familiar bridges and walkways of the Presidium, she'd felt herself relaxing for the first time in months. Coming back to the Citadel felt almost as good as visiting Thessia.
It felt like coming home.
The Spectre Offices were quiet today. She was glad of it. Vital though the work of the Spectres was to defending the civilisation her people had built up, she found the company of most of fellow Spectres to be tedious, if not downright unpleasant. Particularly the turians. Arterius hadn't been back to the Citadel in a while, but she'd been bracing herself for another run in with Kryik.
But it seemed as if she was in luck. According to the office records, only three other Spectres had so much as set foot on the Citadel in recent weeks, and neither Arterius or Kyrik were among them.
Lonar Maerun was another turian, but not one she'd ever interacted with much. The records showed that he'd logged in a few days ago, spent an hour or so in the shooting range, then left for the Wards with that salarian he was always hanging around with. Vasir glanced at the scores he'd posted, unimpressed, and decided he'd have been better off spending more time practicing how to aim and less time getting drunk in Archos.
The salarian Spectre was Jondum Bau, who was almost painfully harmless. Vasir suspected his nomination owed more to internal salarian politics than any particular merit on his part. For all that the salarians had inspired the creation of the Spectre program, their most talented and dangerous operatives still tended to prefer to stay with the Salarian Union's own Special Tasks Group.
And then the third Spectre was young Vakarian, who was … hmm.
Just what was the young turian doing visiting the asari embassies? Hadn't the Council decided that Vakarian's talents were better suited to keeping that rich idiot Kumun Shol happy? She frowned irritably. There was something of an unspoken convention that Spectres tended to stay out of each others' local politics. A convention that she herself had arguably broken with first, by agreeing to look into the Cerberus affair. Not that she'd expect anybody to have bothered to let Vakarian know about such things.
Perhaps she'd go and find out for herself, if there was nothing more pressing to be dealt with.
Vasir skimmed her messages quickly. Nothing new on the Cerberus investigation, she saw. A few personal messages from home that she'd look through later; some old contacts reaching out to see if she was looking to buy intel on some low-level local crimes. Corruption, some piracy, a little kidnapping - nothing that caught her interest. And a message from Barla Von, she saw, which she certainly wasn't going to reply to.
She paused for a few seconds, fingers tapping idly on the desk, then deleted the message from the volus unread. One could never be too careful, after all.
She could probably have found out everything she needed to know about Vakarian's visit without leaving the comfort of the office. But sometime it paid to be a bit more hands-on.
That was why she'd made the short trip out of the Spectre offices and over to the asari embassy. The asari embassies were some of the oldest on the Citadel; a large complex of offices sprawling across the Presiduum. The buildings themselves weren't unchanging, of course - nothing on the Citadel was, or could be. Not with the keepers always underfoot and rearranging things. But the buildings' location, and their function - that was almost as old as the Council itself.
Visitors were sometimes confused by the asari embassies. Surely the Asari Republics did not need an ambassador to raise their concerns with the Council? But of course there was more to the job of an ambassador than speaking with the Council.
The elcor, the volus, the batarians and the rest sent their representatives to beg favours from the Council, yes, but also to talk to one another: to threaten, to bluster, to charm and to befriend. There was no need to involve the council in every minor trading discussion or border dispute, after all. And so it was for the embassies of the asari, salarians and the turians. At the embassies, representatives to other species could mingle and compare notes, and trade delegations could meet to discuss details of commerce too insignificant to bother the Council with. Curious local residents could learn more about the scientific and cultural achievements of the asari people, and diplomats and spies could have somewhere safe to lie low.
The asari embassy also served another crucial purpose: it gave young, inquisitive asari something to do.
"Oh, hey Vasir." One such asari greeted her brightly as she made her way up to the stairs. "Are you here to see the Matriarch?"
In truth, she hadn't known any Matriarch was due to be visiting the Citadel. Not that she had any intention of admitting that, of course. She had a reputation to maintain.
"Keri," she smiled back, not entirely insincerely. "You know you're the only excuse I need to visit this place."
Keri T'Vessa was a regular presence at the embassy - although perhaps not for much longer. Her mother was ambassador to the elcor; which wasn't the sort of role people stayed in for life. In a few years, a few decades at most, Keri's mother would be moving on to bigger and better things. Or, if things went sufficiently badly, she'd be quietly promoted sideways - shifted out of the way for somebody with more potential, more hunger.
And Keri was a trouble-maker: just the right sort of age to be mildly rebellious, but without any real target to rebel against. She wasn't considered a security risk, of course, but Vasir thought it was only a matter of time before she got bored of embassy life and decided to strike out on her own. She didn't seem the sort of kid who'd head off to Omega or join a mercenary gang, but … well, people could surprise you, if you let them. Vasir preferred not to give them the chance.
"Benezia's in a meeting with the Councillor right now," Keri continued, still fishing for potential gossip. She didn't actually work in the embassy herself, but she generally had a good idea of what was going on.
Vasir just raised an eyebrow noncommittally. She knew Keri didn't need an excuse to keep talking.
"Her daughter," Keri began. "She - well, you know she's a pureblood, right?""
The young asari lowered her voice conspiratorially on the last two words, glancing somewhat self-consciously around in case anybody else was listening in. Matriarchs were supposed to be exemplars of the best of asari traditions and values. They were supposed to inspire and impress the younger generations. They weren't supposed to have barely-acknowledged, half-hidden pureblood daughters. And yet that was precisely the daughter Benezia had. The only daughter she had, despite living for almost nine hundred years.
Vasir knew all about Benezia's daughter, of course. Though truth was that there wasn't much to know. Circumstances of her birth aside, she was really an incredibly dull young woman, in Vasir's opinion. Studious, self-effacing and more interested in digging around in the dirt of the dead Protheans than anything of real importance.
"I've heard she was supposed to be staying on a planet out in the Artemis Tau cluster," Keri whispered. "Away from any other asari, if you know what I mean." .
There were always rumours about young, famous pureblood children, of course. How could there not be? Whispers of a name so old the language it was taken from was no longer spoken aloud; a creature out of childhood nightmares. Scandal, sex, madness and death - it would be more intriguing if people didn't speculate. But the rumours meant nothing.
Besides, Vasir had heard a few things about Keri's mother … enough to be suspicious of the official story that her co-parent was a elcor dignitary who'd chosen to stay back on Dekuuna. Not all mothers of purebloods had the nerve to flaunt it the way Benezia had done, after all.
"But now she's gone missing," Keri finished, in the same hushed tones. "And now Benezia is looking for somebody to help to find her. Before anything bad happens … to her, I mean."
Despite Keri's hints, Vasir knew for a certainty that there was no chance of Benezia's daughter carrying the taint of the Ardat-Yakshi curse. Children were tested for that, after all, and the results of those tests were less secure than the children's parents probably assumed. Now that would have been a scandal. Despite what people said, most purebloods weren't at all dangerous. A symptom of weakness on their parents' behalf, but not any sort of threat in themselves. Still, the rumours helped encourage people not to have pureblood children, which was probably for the best.
Vasir's own father had been a salarian dalatrass, or so her mother had told her. Vasir didn't remember much about her father, of course; she'd died of old age while Vasir had been only a young child.
"I thought the turian looked awfully young for a Spectre," Keri continued, "But then all turians look young to me, I guess."
Vakarian and Benezia? The Matriarch must be desperate, Vasir reflected. Benezia had spent centuries cultivating links with the Hierarchy, not to mention with other species like the elcor and the hanar before that.
She chatted idly with Keri for a few minutes more, barely paying attention.
Perhaps I should have a word with Councillor Tevos, she thought.
Vasir had been waiting for almost an hour before Tevos emerged from the embassy.
The Councillor seemed distracted, Vasir thought. Or perhaps annoyed was closer to the mark. In any case, Tevos didn't notice the Spectre trailing her down the gentle marble stairway that led away from the asari embassies.
By long-standing custom the Councillors almost always travelled the Citadel without bodyguards. So Tevos made her way down the steps leading to the Citadel Tower elevator alone, and waited at the base of the Tower alone, and when the summoned lift arrived she strode through the doors alone. Or at least, she must have thought she was alone, until the elevator started rising upwards and Vasir deactivated her tactical cloak.
No asari leader would risk something so extravagant as walking around without an entourage on Thessia - at least, no asari who wished to keep being a leader. Between the petitioners, the fanatics, the journalists and the desperate, she'd never be able to get anything done. Not to mention the threat of assassination attempts. But then the Councillors weren't quite leaders, not in the way most people meant the word. At least not officially. They were representatives of their species, nut rulers over them. And in fact, the Councillors had surprisingly little power in their own right, once you stripped away all the pomp and theatre. You just had to look at who the Council races sent to fill the Council to realise that.
Councillor Sparatus wasn't one of the Primarchs, the handful of citizens who had managed to struggle to the upper levels of turian society. He had a honorific military rank, grand enough to seem impressive, but he commanded no fleets and led no legions. Ever since the Unification Wars, the Hierarchy had been a firmly centralised government, and that centre was on Palaven. In truth, the turian Councillor was little more than a glorified ambassador: And the current office holder clearly knew that all too well; venting his obvious frustrations at the limited nature of his role through sarcastic asides and occasionally territorial squabbles..
The current salarian Councillor wasn't even female, which told you all you needed to know about how little importance the dalatrasses placed in the position. Vasir hadn't bothered to learn his name yet; wasn't sure if she ever would. He said little, contributed less, and when the Council was split almost invariably voted against Sparatus.
And as for the asari Councillor Vasir was now sharing an elevator with..
"Vasir," said Tevos, relaxing slightly when she recognised her fellow traveller. "What brings you back to the Citadel?"
Tevos was all right, in Vasir's opinion.
"Just checking in," Vasir shrugged.
She didn't think there was much to be gained in reporting on the progress she'd made in the Cerberus case; not until she'd really managed to get to the heart of things. Knowing that President William's granddaughter's remains weren't where the Systems Alliance said they were was one thing; the Council would want to know - and Vasir herself wanted to know - where they actually were. Assuming that the girl is actually dead, she thought. That was an assumption she wasn't sure it was safe to make.
"I hope the Matriarch hasn't enlisted you too," said Tevos, an irritated expression briefly visible on her face before she quickly suppressed it.
Councillor Tevos had ended up on the Citadel the hard way; a victim of the constant high-stakes internecine political maneuvering to which so many of the asari on Thessia devoted their lives (just as they loudly insisted to outsiders that Thessia had no political class to speak of). A century ago Tevos had been an aspiring politician, working her way rapidly up from regional administrator through a series of increasingly grander titles. The young Tevos had had firm ideas about the future of Thessia; they tended to involve her being one of the asari to shape it.
And for a while it had looked as if those ideas might become reality. For decades the young asari's rise had been as smooth as it was rapid. She'd been the youngest person to take office on the Serrice Council in decades; the youngest to speak on the floor of the Grand Assembly on Thessia in centuries. Her rise had seemed inevitable.
But finally she'd overstretched - backed the wrong faction, or attempted to double-cross the wrong Matriarch. Perhaps she'd just been unlucky - Vasir had never been able to ascertain the precise details, which was a failure that still rankled sometimes. In any case, things had gone badly wrong.
In ancient times, before the asari had set foot on the Citadel, before their homeworld had been united under the common flag of the Republics, the victors of a high-level political struggle might have had their vanquished foes killed. The old histories were full of macabre tales of would-be leaders who'd met with grisly ends: blinded, tortured and left to rot in some dark forgotten oubliette, hacked to pieces on the battlefield, or eviscerated and left hanging from one of the great trees that grew up and around the great marble plazas of Serrice. But things were different in this civilized age; the cruelties more subtle, though just as real.
So they'd promoted her, instead. Exiled her from her home world, in all but name: sent her far away from her allies and her political support. As Councillor she could be useful to Thessia and the future of the asari, but never again would she be able to dream of shaping that future.
"Enlisted me?" Vasir replied, as blandly as possible. "To what end?"
It might have surprised Tevos's enemies to see how well she had adapted to her new role in life. How she'd transitioned from the role of a politician and activist to that of a galactic diplomat . How well she dealt with the every changing demands on her time and resources; how she steered the other Councillors; how she'd coped with the fallout of the batarian and turian border skirmishes, and with the political and social ramifications of the fall of Kahje.
The reality, of course, was that they probably didn't care in the slightest. What did the Council matter, after all, in the ever-changing games of the Matriarchs? The Citadel was a symbol of asari greatness, but only a child would confuse a symbol with the thing itself.
Tevos narrowed her eyes slightly, unimpressed by Vasir's response.
"Benezia's lost her daughter," she said. "As I'm sure you were already well aware. She's been going behind the Council's back, trying to divert resources to find her."
The strange thing was, as far as Vasir had been able to work out, before her fall from grace Tevos had been a ardent supporter of Benezia's program; one of the minority of asari who thought that Thessia should play a greater role on the galactic stage. They'd been … not allies, as such - Tevos had never been quite that important - but certainly fellow thinkers. Not that an observer would have been able to work that out now. Well, we all grow up eventually, I suppose.
"And now she's dragged Vakarian into things," she said sourly. "Apparently he ran into some trouble on Omega and she was able to come to his aid. And she's calling in the favour."
Vasir didn't like Vakarian much, but she almost felt sorry for him at that point. Spectres were supposed to solve problems for the Council. They weren't supposed to bring in more trouble. She wondered if Tevos had dragged Vakarian up to the Citadel Tower for a dressing down yet, or if she was waiting for all three of the Council to meet first.
Tevos looked at her without speaking, as the elevator continued its silent progression upwards.
"You seem to have some time on your hands," the Councillor said thoughtfully.
Vasir half-shrugged. She didn't have any urgent business, it was true - and even if she had, she had the feeling that the Councilor's remarks could have been phrased as an order just as easily as an observation.
"Vakarian will be heading off the Citadel soon," Tevos said. "Benezia has called on the Council to provide him with a ship, and I'm sure Sparatus won't mind obliging."
Vasir kept her face carefully blank, but inwardly she smirked at that: they both knew that Sparatus would be indignant about being imposed upon. But ultimately Vakarian was a turian Spectre, and so it was up to the turian Councillor to see that he was properly equipped.
"Vakarian's had a difficult few weeks," Tevos said thoughtfully. "This business on Omega is just the most recent trouble. The Council feel he could benefit from the support of a more experienced agent. Just to help him find his feet."
'Good luck finding somebody to volunteer for that', Vasir would have thought, if it wasn't painfully clear just who was being volunteered.
The Councillor flashed her a polished politician's smile, and Vasir sighed inwardly. This was what she got for poking around in things that weren't supposed to be her concern. She wondered if her sudden appearance in the elevator had given Tevos the idea, or if she'd only brought this particular fate forward a few hours.
"I'd be grateful if you could keep an eye on things," the Councillor continued. "Make sure that our young friend Vakarian doesn't get into too much trouble."
What else could she do but agree? They'd reached the top of the tower now, and Tevos was on her way up to the central chamber, pausing only briefly to check that Vasir had the details of when and where to meet Vakarian before his new ship departed.
"And Vasir," the Councillor paused, looking back over her shoulder thoughtfully. "Do try not to kill anyone."
Somebody was waiting for Vasir when she got back to the Spectre offices. Somebody she recognised at once.
"Vasir, we have a problem."
And she'd really been hoping to avoid Barla Von this visit.
It was an open secret that the financier had a second life as an agent for the Shadow Broker. And that caused problems for those on the Citadel whose employment by the Shadow Broker was less overt. Spending too much time in his company would be seen as suspicious, and yet ignoring him entirely would have been almost equally strange.
("Von goes out of his way to ingratiate himself with us in the hopes that we'll let slip something his employer can use", she could imagine Kryik drawling in that grating way of his. "Yet apparently he doesn't want to talk to you. What could he know about you that we don't?")
She should probably let him pester her more than she did.
But the fact was, she just didn't like him.
"Let's take a walk," she suggested, leading the way before he could object.
In theory this whole level of the Citadel was covered by C-Sec's security cameras: . In practice though, there were certain dark spots: places where, for one reason or another, the cameras wouldn't pick things up. Such failings were blamed on the keepers, usually, or on criminal gangs. Sometimes they were the result of C-Sec's own tampering - even turian investigators could see the virtue in knowing a few places where suspects could be interrogated a little more firmly than regulations allowed
And Vasir knew they were heading towards one such dark spot now. She'd written and uploaded the virus which corrupted the feed from those particular cameras herself, after all. So she smiled politely and counted under her breath as Barla Von scurried after her. One, two more steps around the corner, and now they were out of sight of the working security cameras, and now she could spin around, lift the volus up by his chin and slam him against the wall.
"What in the goddess' name do you think you're doing?" she hissed, furiously as Barla Von struggled feebly. "We're not friends. You're not a Councillor. We don't have any reason to been seen together."
"He's here!" the volus wheezed, voice even more strained than usual. "Vakarian! On the Citadel! He must be after me. He must know -"
For a moment or two, Vasir was too puzzled to be angry. She let Von slide down the wall, just looking at him. He dusted himself down as he scrambled up from the floor, voice wheezing heavily through his respirator.
"Why would Vakarian be after you?" she asked.
"Because I tried to kidnap him!"
She blinked. That had not been one of the answers she'd considered. Von was normally a bit less directly involved in hands-on operations than that.
"Not personally, of course," the financier clarified hastily. "I hired a mercenary group, out on Omega. I should have known things were going wrong when they were slow to report back."
Even hiring mercenaries was a bit more than Von would normally be expected to do. And yet, something about the way he'd frame this bothered.
"You hired," she said, flatly. "On your own initiative?"
"I may have been … indiscreet," the volus admitted. "But I saw an opportunity."
Tevos had said that Vakarian had got into trouble on Omega, Vasir reflected.
"You can't just kidnap a Council Spectre," she snapped. "Even on Omega. People notice that sort of thing. People ask questions."
Her biotics flared up around her, almost without conscious thought. She loomed over the volus, who staggered back onto the floor. His face was invisible behind the mask, of course, but his eyes seemed wider than they had a few minutes ago.
"I don't like it when other people ask questions," she murmured, voice pitched low and menacing. "They could start looking for answers in all the wrong places."
You were worried about Vakarian? she thought. There's only one Spectre you should be afraid of right now, and you're bothering her.
"The Broker wants to know … what was on that beacon," Von stammered. "I thought …"
The beacon? Vasir hadn't known that the Broker had any special interest in Prothean matters. Maybe she should have let him know about her involvement, but it had hardly seemed a priority. And how would kidnapping Vakarian help anyone understand what was on the beacon? It was the human that they'd want for that, surely? At least, Vasir assumed she was still alive; her injuries hadn't seemed life-threatening according to what the doctor on the turian ship had said.
She smiled coldly to herself, letting her biotic aura die back down. Working for both the Council and the Shadow Broker could be awkward, sometimes, but this was beginning to look like an opportunity to get paid twice for a single assignment. Besides, anybody tracking her movement the camera feeds was bound to get curious if they didn't walk past a working camera soon.
"Don't worry about Vakarian," she said, offering the volus a hand back up. "I'll soon have things under control."