ABOARD DASCS BELISARIUS
WIDOW SYSTEM
SERPENT NEBULA
SEPTEMBER 1, 2003
"Citadel Control says we're cleared fo' landin'," the helmsman reported over the shipboard intercom. "ETA to dockin' is fifteen minutes."
Helene Renston stood at the Belisarius' primary viewport, staring out at the enormous space station that served as the cultural, economic, and political center of the galaxy. From here, several thousand kilometers away, it resembled a five-pointed star: a quintet of long, thick arms extending out from a hollow central ring. She could see her own transparent reflection when she focused her attention to the armorglass in front of her: violet eyes and yellow hair pulled back in a loose ponytail framing the regular and somewhat angular features that were the hallmark of a drakensis.
Helene marveled at its sheer size; the middle ring was ten kilometers in diameter, while each arm was twenty-five kilometers long and five kilometers in breadth. Great metropolises had been constructed along each arm, entire cities built into the station's multi-level interior.
"The Hyperion's nothin' compared to that thing," a voice said behind her. The drakensis turned to see Dietrich Pope, her superior in the diplomatic team sent by the Foreign Affairs Directorate to the Citadel, approaching the viewport. He was far older than her own thirty years, around the same age as the Archon. But unlike the four-time decorated Eurasian War veteran, Pope had spent his life in service to the Domination within Foreign Affairs and was one of the few Draka alive to still remember dealing with numerous nations instead of just the old Alliance—a distinction deemed invaluable in dealing with the multi-species Citadel.
The elder human walked up the viewport next to her, his cane clicking on the floor, and stopped to gaze out at the Citadel and the surrounding nebula. He rested both hands on the ivory handle carved into a dragon's head with emerald eyes, topping a gleaming dark tropical hardwood cane with an engraved silver tip. The lights from the nebula shone on his shaven skull, and hazel eyes of disconcerting shrewdness stared out from a wrinkled face, giving him somewhat of a reptilian aspect. Gives yo' an idea why the Yankees call us Snakes, she thought.
As the Draka frigate approached the Citadel, they flew past the numerous ships of the Citadel Fleet, a joint force of turian, salarian, and asari warships that were always on patrol in the vicinity. Helene pursed her lips slightly as she considered. The Citadel's located at the heart of a major mass relay junction deep inside this dense nebula cloud. This place is damn near impregnable. It had several layers of defense: the nebula was difficult to navigate—it would slow any enemy fleets and make it difficult for them to launch any sort of organized attack. The several dozen mass relays in the vicinity also meant that reinforcements from virtually every region of the galaxy was only minutes away.
The ships of the Citadel Fleet weren't the only vessels in the area. The Serpent Nebula was the nexus of the galaxy's mass relay network—all roads eventually led to the Citadel. Traffic here was constant; congestion was particularly heavy at the free-floating discharge stations. Generating mass effect fields necessary to run at FTL speeds caused a powerful charge to build up inside a ship's drive core. Left unchecked the core would oversaturate, resulting in a massive energy burst being released through the hull—a burst powerful enough to cook anyone on board who wasn't properly grounded, burn out all electronic systems, and even fuse the metal bulkheads.
To prevent such a calamity most ships were required to discharge their drive cores every twenty to thirty hours. Typically this was done by grounding on a planet or dispersing the buildup through close proximity to the magnetic field of a large stellar body, such as a sun or gas giant. However, there were no astrological bodies of sufficient size near the Citadel. Instead, a ring of specially designed docking stations allowed ships to link in and release the energy in their drive cores before continuing on using conventional sub-FTL drives.
Fortunately, the Belisarius had discharged its core when it had first arrived in the region over a half hour ago. Since then it had been in a holding pattern, waiting for the clearance they had just now received.
The silence lengthened as the two Draka, human and drakensis, took in the view as the Citadel drew slowly closer, looming ever larger in the viewport. The lights from the cities along the arms twinkled and shone, their piercing illumination a counterpoint to the hazy, swirling brightness of the nebula cloud that served as the backdrop to the scene.
"You know why you're here?" Pope asked suddenly, his eyes still turned towards the view.
Startled, it took Helene a moment to gather her thoughts. "I assumed it was because of mah drakensis heritage, mixed with my havin' the longest service record of anyone of the New Race in Foreign Affairs."
Pope turned his head to regard her for a moment. "That's part of it. Those pheromones of yours might work on the ferals, the Yankees, but it's likely they'd be useless against an alien species." He turned his face back towards the view. "Yo' here, Miz Renston, because yo' goin' to be the senior diplomat fo' our negotiations."
The drakensis' eyes went wide with surprise. "Me? Ah'm honored, o' course, but..."
A thin smile creased the senior diplomat's face. "Yo' skill is part of it, but you were right when yo' mentioned yo' drakensis heritage." He turned to look her square in the eyes. "Miz Renston, you are the face of the Domination that's goin' to be joinin' into the greater galaxy. The New Domination is made up of you drakensis, of the ghouloons, even the servus. The genetically hardwired Final Society we, yo' human forebears, have been seekin' since the Land-Taking, if not exactly in those terms.
"Yo' not human, not Homo sapiens," he continued. "That's the Yankees that the Council went and dug up from under the rock they went an' crawled under. We makin' it clear, right off, that the Draka are a different species from them. Othahwise, who knows what notions them asari and salarians might get in they head-tentacled, bug-eyed heads? Demands that we an' the Yankees form a single government before we join Citadel space?"
A laugh, unexpected, barked out of Helene's throat before she could stop herself. A wry smirk twisted her mouth as she considered the possibility. "Yeah, ah could see how well that would turn out."
The smile on Pope's face got a bit wider as he shared in her amusement. "Yeah. But these are aliens we're talkin' about. They don't know 'bout the history we and the Yankees shared even befo' the Final War. Wotan, we don't even know if they really think like we do. We and the Yankees had a hard enough time understandin' one anothah, and we were the same species! That's why yo' goin' to be representin' the Domination. I'm heah just as an adviser, lendin' you mah experience. We human Draka will be gone soon enough. We're just goin' to set y'all on yo' way befo' we go."
Helene considered, then nodded firmly. "You can count on me. I won't let the State and the Race down."
A proud smile stretched across Pope's face at the determined expression on the young aquiline face. "With Citizens like you, Miz Renston, I get the feelin' we goin' to be leavin' the Domination in good hands."
Helene felt a flush of pleasure spread on her skin, and consciously throttled it back before it could reach her face. Touched, she nodded silently to her... Aide, she had to remind herself. They both turned back to the viewport and shared the view in companionable silence as the Belisarius slowly approached a dock and landed.
About ten minutes later, Helene and Pope strode through the frigate's airlock and into the tunnel that connected the ship to the Citadel's dock with two armored ghouloon troopers marching at their backs. The transgenes peered about as they exited the tunnel into the wide space overlooking a spectacular view of the cities along the station's arms, hooting softly in amazement.
"Ooh," one of them burbled, slapping a hand at his chest for emphasis. "Big big. Big."
An asari clad in a high-necked grey and black dress with sleeves to her wrists approached them as they emerged, accompanied by a salarian, one of the amphibian species that shared the Council with the asari and turians, and another asari. They were both clad in blue and black armor, the uniform of what they had learned was the station's law enforcement arm, Citadel Security. The two C-Sec officers eyed the two ghouloons with both curiosity and caution. The ghouloons, for their part, blinked slowly as they took sight of the unfamiliar species, and the wet black noses ruffled slightly to take their alien scents.
As the asari approached the two Draka, a shadow fell over them all. Helene found herself looking back instinctively, and took an involuntary step back in surprise. Her ears wanted to lay flat against her skull as she looked up at the massive ship floating past the dock, a sleek blue shape with lines of residential lighting running along the main circular portion of the hull and the four arms that extended in the cardinal directions from its rear. Shitfire, that's big, her mind gibbered. It was easily at least four times larger than the Domination's Charlemagne-class dreadnoughts.
The asari followed their gazes. "That is the Destiny Ascension," she informed them. "The new flagship of the Citadel Fleet. It was completed recently and arrived less than a week ago from its launch from the shipyards at Thessia, the asari homeworld."
Pope, for his part, remained stoic as he watched the asari warship drift by. Before it was out of sight, he turned back to the asari in the dress and inclined his head. "An impressive ship," he remarked, his voice carefully neutral. We can't let ourselves be intimidated, he thought. It was an old tactic, trying to overawe the ignorant foreigners. Helene had given away more than he would have liked, but she was recovering quickly and in fine form, nodding in her turn to the asari diplomat.
"Ah'm Helene Renston of the Foreign Affairs Directorate, fo' the Domination of the Draka," the drakensis said. "This is mah aide Dietrich Pope."
The asari bowed her head forward respectfully. "I am Benezia T'soni, of the Asari Republics. I am to be the mediator of the summit meeting between your people and the Samothracians."
Benezia felt regret as she saw the involuntary reaction the the younger Draka, the one whose species was known as drakensis, to the sight of the Destiny Ascension. Such intimidation tactics were crude to her way of thinking; the asari rarely found themselves forced to resort to such.
But from my studies, it is the sort of gesture that these Draka will respect, she thought. She had spent the few months since she had volunteered for this position studying the two societies on the opposing sides for the coming summit. Histories, geographies, statistics. And she had also read the works of literature that were said to provide the underpinnings for the Draka society: Thomas Carlyle's Philosophy of Mastery, Friedrich Nietzsche's The Will to Power, George Fitzhugh's Imperial Destiny, and Arthur de Gobineau's Inequality of Human Races. She had finished with the work that seemed to guide their society the most, the chillingly alien Meditations of Elvira Naldorssen.
The asari matron suppressed a shiver as she recalled one passage: 'The Draka will conquer the world for two reasons; because we must and because we can. And yet of the two forces the second is the greater; we do this because we choose to do it. By the sovereign Will and force of arms the Draka will rule the Earth, and in so doing remake themselves. We shall conquer and beat the Nations of the Earth into the dust and reforge them in our self wrought Image; the Final Society without weakness or mercy, hard and pure. Our descendants will walk the hillside of that future, innocent beneath the stars, with no more between them and their naked will than a wolf has. Then there will be Gods in the Earth.'
Such a ruthless and... primal people, Benezia thought. They were unlike any other known species in the galaxy, though they seemed to have minor similarities to the krogan and the batarians. And they are the only species besides the krogan to stand up to the turians in battle, while the Samothracians have been clearing the Attican Traverse of pirates despite their small numbers. The extraordinary military capabilities of both sides were one reason why the Council was so interested in this summit. They both had the potential to provide great contributions to Citadel space, as well as the potential to wreak great amounts of havoc if their perennial feud wasn't brought under control.
You always felt the asari should have a greater role in shaping galactic events, she told herself. This has the possibility to shape the galaxy in a way unseen since the turians joined the Council after the Krogan Rebellions. A bleak smile. No pressure.
"If you will all follow me, I'll show you to the residences we have set up for your stay at the Citadel," Benezia said aloud as she headed for the elevator. She hoped she wouldn't have to make too much conversation; the elevator rides were notoriously long. Perhaps the music won't be so bad, or there will be an interesting news report, she thought optimistically as the doors to the cylindrical space slid close behind them.