Councilor Galathor entered Primarch Henedrian's office, where he'd been summoned. The Primarch gave a beleaguered smile.
"Galathor, it's good to see you."
"Likewise, sir. Were you needing clarification on my report?"
The Primarch shook his head. "No, I just wanted to speak in person, get a better read on how things are really going."
Galathor gave a tired smile of his own. "Poorly, as you can likely imagine."
The Primarch nodded. "I can. This business with the economy, and the corruption, I must admit I was hopeful we'd be able to move past it. The more we dig up, the more it becomes clear that no one was clean. T'Noiro and her predecessor had their dirty fingers in every single member government. Even ours."
The Primarch's face had a dark look as he said that. The very idea that a senior official of the Turian Hierarchy would be susceptible to...bribery...made him ill to think about. The perpetrators had been caught in the relentless house-cleaning that had followed the revelations of the corruption, and of course they had made a full confession the moment they were caught, as any turian would, but it still spoke of dark tidings to the Primarch. Had the Hiearchy really fallen so far, had its values really eroded away to this degree?
Galthor grimaced. "I may have had some harsh things to say about my fellow Councilors, but...I will admit that I also still held onto the hope that things could be salvaged. We all had our share of the guilt, the asari might have been the ring leaders, but they were hardly alone in their corruption. But, with that leak to the press, about this beacon business...things are different. In a better time, we might have been able to whether the storm, we and the salarians could publicly dismiss the rumors and then deal with the asari treachery behind closed doors. But we were already at each others throats, on the verge of collapse. The Council as we lnow it is finished."
The Primarch looked defeated. "...Was all of it a lie, all along? All that talk about cooperation between the races, and then the biggest champions of that cooperation turn out to have been out for themselves all along. Was it really all an act, from the start?"
The Councilor shrugged. "Hard to say, but I don't think so. The only people more angry than the rest of the Citadel races are the asari themselves. The asari public is furious. They're supposed to be a free and open democracy, they were supposed to have left the Matriarch shadow governments in the past, and then it turns out that the single most important decision in the history of the asari was made behind closed doors by a handful of Matriarchs. Their republics are all at each other's throats, blaming each other. "
The Primarch chuckled bitterly. "A microcosm of the Council itself, in a way."
Galathor shook his head dejectedly. "I thought the Council was on its last legs before, but now we're truly done for. No matter what the aftermath of this is, we can never return to the status quo again. The asari...well, they're the asari. A political catastrophe like this could take decades for them to come to grips with. Even centuries. The salarians are in almost as bad a shape. I'm convinced their surprise isn't an act, they really were blindsided by this, the same as we were. It's got them jumping at shadows. They pride themselves on knowing everything there is to know about the goings-on of galactic politics, so for a secret like this beacon to evade them, for millennia? They aren't taking it well, to put it mildly. If the asari, of all people, were hiding something, then what about the rest of us?"
The Primarch held his hand to his face. "I'm not willing to give up, not yet. We still stand strong, the Elcor and Volus will still stand with us, surely. The salarians will eventually get over themselves and the asari will eventually knit themselves back together. We'll never return to the status quo, that is for certain. But we can at least keep the galaxy in one piece. And I would not consider a galaxy with an ascendant Batarian Hegemony to be in 'one piece'."
Galathor smiled, but there was still some hesitation in his voice. "I'm pleased to hear you say that, but are we really in a position to intervene? The economy is still in freefall."
The Primarch dismissed it with a wave of his hand. "We've got a tidy little war chest tucked away. Even if we didn't, if there's any species in the galaxy who can handle austerity measures to keep the military running, it is ours. And whatever the cost, it will be far, far cheaper than the price of letting the Hegemony run roughshod over the galaxy. I'm holding an assembly of Primarchs and the cabinet on war preparations later today, I would like you to attend. I want you on the same page, so you can go back to the Citadel and scrape together whatever foreign resources you can get your hands on."
Galathor nodded. "I will be there Primarch."
Councilor Galathor sat off to the sides of the Hall of Primarchs with the other non-Primarch attendees of the meeting, mainly consisting of the countless high-ranking generals, admirals, and cabinet members of the many sectors of the Hierarchy. Primarch Henedrian was in the finishing remarks of what had turned out to be one of his better speeches.
"And so, my fellow Primarchs, once again the burden of responsibility for the galaxy has fallen to us. The peace and security our ancestors forged for us is crumbling, our alliance is being torn asunder, and it seems all we hold dear is going into the fire. But take heart! Our allies may be content with this...negligence, this refusal to act, but we are not. Many things have been said about this Hierarchy, but none have ever said that we failed to do our duty, and, with the spirits as my witness, none ever will."
There some very muted and very turian applause at that. But by the standards of stuffy politicians, it might as well have been a rapturous uproar. Any turian who paid attention to politics that watched this meeting would likely feel the same way. The Primarch's use of the term 'negligence' was not incidental. In the turian collective psyche, the crime of negligence was regarded severely enough to be viewed in the same light as murder, rape, arson, treason, and - worst of all - mutiny. The turians had spent the better part of a millennia being held back from dishing out the justice the Hegemony so richly deserved. Held back, by the other council races. To hear their Primarch denounce this for the first time, in no uncertain terms, was...cathartic.
"It for this purpose, for our duty, that I have gathered the Primarchs of our Hierarchy here today. It is the solemn duty of this Hierarchy to defend law and order in this galaxy, and in the current era there is no more obvious threat to law and order than the Batarian Hegemony and its unprovoked and illegal attack upon the newly discovered humans and their United Nations. And so, it is my duty to inform you that this Hierarchy will be intervening directly in the conflict between the United Nations and the Hegemony. The humans will no longer fight alone!"
It was perhaps fortunate that the speech was not being livestreamed, as the reaction to this news was decidedly more mixed. The audience was, of course, not shy about the prospect of war - they were turians, after all. This was the sort of fight they spent their entire lives training for: An all out war with an enemy of such obvious moral inferiority that none but the most blindly pacifistic of galactic citizens would question it. However, turians trained under the assumption that they wouldn't be fighting such a war while their economy was in total freefall.
The Primarch had obviously anticipated this reaction.
"I understand your concerns, but rest assured that the situation we find ourselves in is not one we are completely unprepared for. We have a substantial war chest that has been set aside for situation such as this one. Our representatives from the banks will be sending out a summary report after this meeting, but suffice to say: we can sustain operations for some time before we'll start having to tighten the belt."
Handen Tan struggled not to fall into a fit of hysterical giggles at the Primarch's words. It was all just so perfect, so very, very...turian. Somehow, the idiots still believed that a fiscal conspiracy of this magnitude could transpire without the Volus noticing. The reality was, the Vol Protectorate - and, more importantly, its banks - were just as rotten and corrupt as every other galactic institution. The Volus banks weren't some incompetent fools who had missed what was right under their noses: they had been in on it. It was the most obvious answer to the galaxy's biggest question: How had the conspirator's gotten away with it?
And yet, it was a conclusion that few seemed willing to reach. After all, how could the stubby little volus possibly have helped bring galactic civilization to its knees?
There was a time when such sentiments towards volus would have filled him with bitterness. It was that very same bitterness, that hatred for the status quo that had driven him to join the Organization. However, as he had risen in the ranks, that feeling had begun to fade. When he'd reached the upper echelon, when he'd learned of the Purpose, he'd found that he didn't really feel it any longer. Truth be told, he didn't feel much of anything, anymore. A small part of him felt a flare of concern when he realized that, but it quickly faded.
His old friend and colleague, Aretten Naqlan, peered it him, amusement present in his voice. "What are you snickering about, Handen?"
Handen shook his head. "Oh, nothing. It's just...they're so confident. They can hardly be blamed for that, of course. It's not as if they have any way of knowing."
"Of knowing what, Handen?" Aretten pressed.
That this 'war chest' of theirs is fictional. It doesn't exist. When the Organization had tasked him with undermining the Hierarchy's 'secret' war chest, he hadn't expected someone else to have already done most of the job for him. Ninety percent of it had already been liquidated decades ago. In hindsight, it made sense. The legion's worth of grifters that had made up the original Conspirators were not the sort of people who would let a large sum of money sit around when they could funnel it into their own pockets. Handen had dumped what was left of it into the army of front companies and other fictional entities that made up the Organization's funding, but it was mostly a formality at that point. The 'warchest' had already been diminished to the point where it couldn't serve it's intended purpose, Handen's action had simply been the final nail in the coffin.
Still, funneling billions of credits into the Organization's accounts had gotten him noticed by the higher-ups. It had given him an in. He'd been recruited for a leadership position, and with it he had also learned of the Purpose, and things got...things got a little fuzzy after that.
"Ar-...are you alright, Handen?" Aretten asked, his voice growing concerned. Handen looked into his friend's eyes, and for the first time in a while, he felt something. The flare of concern that small part of him had felt earlier flared up again, even stronger. Why am I so afraid? It's...hard to remember.
"No...no, I don't suppose I am ok." Before he'd even finished the sentence, he felt a familiar weight in his mind press against him. It was...reassuring.
"But, it doesn't really matter, in the end. One thing I've learned in my time is just how small, how insignificant one single, solitary life really is. All life is like this, in the end. We claw away at the void for meaning, using the brief moments that make up our existence to search for it, vainly."
For a few moments, Aretten sat, stunned. The only sound was the droning on of the current speaker, and the steady beat of his respirator. Nearby audience members were starting to look at him and Handen with concern.
"I...didn't take you for a nihilist, Handen." Aretten finally managed to say something.
Handen shook his head vigorously. "No, no - that's just the thing: if I were a nihilist, then I would believe that life had no meaning, but it does. The universe speaks it to us, as clear as the day. We need only look at one of the most fundamental realities of the universe to understand. Entropy. The inevitable death of everything. The purpose of life, and of the universe, is to die. It's so obvious, we just don't want to see it."
"I...don't know what to say to that, Handen." Aretten said. Their neighbors in the audience were looking at them like...well, like one of them was a raving lunatic.
The Weight pressed against him, stronger than ever. "Don't worry about it, Aretten. It doesn't really matter, in the end. Everyone in this room is about to die."
Aretten looked at him for a moment that barely lasted a second, yet felt like an eternity. Their fellow audience members were on the verge of panic.
"...What? Why would everyone die here, Handen?"
Handen, or what was left of him, found himself at something of a loss at the question. I...don't know why, myself. Why is everyone going to die here-
The Weight pressed against him, enveloping him. It was everywhere, it was everything, it was everyone, including himself. It burrowed deep within him, and Handen felt a white hot agony that sent him to the ground as the Weight found what it was looking for. Then, abruptly, unceremoniously, it cast him aside like garbage. The Weight abandoned him, and all of Handen's feelings suddenly returned, hitting him like a speeding bus. He heard what sounded like Aretten calling for a guard. He still felt the burning in his chest, but he was coherent enough to make out Aretten's words.
"Handen! Handen! Please, you've got to tell me what you meant! Why would everyone in this room die?"
Handen looked up at him and cocked his head in confusion. With the Weight gone, his memory wasn't quite as fuzzy. Everything made sense again. He knew the answer to Aretten's question:
"Because of the disrupter bomb lodged in my body cavity."
You are watching Citadel News Network's ongoing coverage of the Hierarchy Crisis. If you're just joining us now: the Turian Hierarchy is currently in turmoil after a series of bombings on Palaven killed thousands, including the highest ranking members of the Hierarchy. Efforts at investigation have been hindered by the succession dispute sparked by the almost total decapitation of the Hierarchy government. Several high-ranking military and political figures have stepped forward, each claiming to be the legitimate successor. With the ongoing chaos inherent to the situation, verifying which claim holds legitimacy has been marred by confusion and disinformation. Tensions are high as supporters rally around the various claimants, and some analysts have even suggested that full-blown civil war may be on the horizon if a legitimate successor is not-
Star Marshal Planta turned off the television, and threw the remote across the room. She sat on the edge of her bed, rubbing her face with her hands. Due to the mind-devouring stress that was inherent with planning for an impossible military situation, she had received a less-than-favorable report from her doctor at her most recent physical. Secretary General Molefe had demanded that she use the lull in the fighting to take a vacation, before she had a stress-induced heart attack. It seemed the universe was not inclined to grant her five minutes rest.
She felt a weight settle down next to her, and a comforting hand on her shoulder. She looked up at her husband, and sighed.
"Oh, Leon. I have no idea what to do."
He wrapped his arm around her. He didn't really have any words of comfort to offer her, but she didn't begrudge him that. What was someone supposed to say, when faced with this? She leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder and closing her eyes. She murmured to him softly.
"We are so fucked."