Chapter 3- Citadel
September 29th, 2057
The ambassadors boarded the UES Invincible without incident. Admiral Hannah Singh waited until they were situated in the guests' quarters, before signalling the citadel contact fleet. The superdreadnought then lifted out of the specially designed docking cradle, surrounded by a small force composed of six cruisers and ten frigates. The mission was clear. Take the ambassadors to the citadel. The superdreadnought was going as a show of force, a show of human military and technological prowess. The data given by the volus ambassador was critical to the mission, as it gave the citadel's current position in the galaxy, which was omitted from the salarian data taken during first contact. As soon as she gave the order, the massive superdreadnought fired its portal generator. The gateway expanded, allowing the human ships to enter jumpspace. The journey would take approximately thirty minutes.
The portal generators fired again, this time to open a portal approximately 100 kilometers away from the citadel. The portal expanded, revealing a glowing, purple nebula on the other side. Hundreds of starships flew around a huge space station. Although it was not as large as the stardocks in orbit around human colonies, it was obvious that this was more than just a space station. This was a center of culture, a center of government. It was the brain of the collective citadel races. Should it be captured or destroyed, the results would be catastrophic for the citadel races. A hiss from the elevator doors alerted her to the arrival of the diplomatic team. It was composed of four members, Alexei Rozhenko, a man who had already proven himself with the volus, Donnell Udina, a man famous for his fits of rage and creative use of the word shitstorm, LI-129, a synthetic representative, preferring to be called Lia, and Samson Allers, a member of ANN, who would be broadcasting the event live. The ships exited the portal, and moved towards the citadel.
"By the Goddess..." Councillor Tevos gasped as a massive portal leading to empty void appeared directly in front of the citadel. It was beautiful, in a strange sort of way, pure black, ringed with a thin strip of blue-white energy, surrounded by the purple clouds of the serpent nebula. She was shaken out of her trance as she saw ships coming through. Seventeen total, she counted, every single one of them massive. As they closed with the station, she saw how they compared to the turian dreadnoughts guarding the station. The smallest ships in the fleet easily matched the turian ships in size, while all the others dwarfed them. The lead ship was more than 8 times the size of a turian dreadnought, with several huge cannons mounted on it, each easily the size of a cruiser. The ship gracefully parked itself just inside the citadel's arms. Then a message came in from traffic control. She looked at it. It only had four words on it, reading "They're requesting docking clearance!". She called them, opening up a voice communications channel with the control station. "-repeat, this is the human super dreadnought UES Invincible requesting docking clearance." She caught the last part of the incoming communication. The asari on duty, judging by the voice, replied shakily, "I am sorry UES Invincible, but we do not have a docking station capable of accommodating a ship of your size. Do you have anything smaller than a kilometer?" The controller asked.
"Yes, give us a few minutes, we'll launch a shuttle. Can you designate a landing zone?" The unknown human asked.
"Yes, we have an area on the presidium for the shuttles of various dignitaries. I am sending you a map of the citadel with the landing zone highlighted. Please land your shuttle there."
"Very well. Invincible out." The channel cut off. Tevos wasted no time messaging every other councilor and ambassador to meet at the dignitaries' landing pad.
The small crowd of diplomats parted to let her and the other councilors through. Sparatus seemed strangely excited to meet these humans, while Verlin wore an unreadable look on her face, a tell tale sign that she was upset about something. Closer inspection showed the classic salarian cues conveying nervousness, although Verlin was capable of suppressing said cues significantly, making her hard to read. 'What's troubling her?' thought Tevos, as the human shuttle flew overhead, circling overhead once, before stopping still and landing vertically. The door opened, and two humans, obviously soldiers, stepped out. Following them were four dignitaries and a personal assistance mech, decorated with a matching diplomatic uniform. Three humans wore dark suits, with a white undershirt and a strange cloth adornment around their neck. The fourth wore a dark blue uniform with insignia indicating some form of rank. Finally, two more soldiers exited the shuttle, after which the shuttle door closed. Tevos marveled at how similar they looked to asari. They had the same smooth skin, albeit theirs were varying in color from a light brown to a pinkish white. In addition, they had strange patches of fur on their heads, rather than asari cartilaginous growths, but aside from those differences, they were almost identical to asari. The humans seemed to be thinking the same things as they looked at her, before examining the other dignitaries.
"Shall we begin with a tour of the citadel presidium?" Tevos asked.
"Yes, that sound good." one of the humans replied, the others nodding assent. Even the mech seemed to be doing so, oddly, almost unnervingly organic in its doing so.
"I am afraid that you must leave your personal assistance mech behind, as it will not be taking part in negotiations." Verlin said.
"I am not a personal assistance mech. I am the representative of the synthetic population of the United Earth Alliance, and I will be taking part in negotiations." The mech replied.
Tevos' jaw dropped. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sparatus' eyes go wide, his left mandible twitching, while Verlin, for the first time in her life, lost her carefully constructed composure, her right eye twitching. A full minute passed with the councilors in this state, before Sparatus snapped out of it.
"HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MINDS? ARE YOUR PEOPLE TRYING TO KILL THEMSELVES? ARE YOU TRYING TO SERVE YOUR PEOPLE TO THEM ON A SILVER PLATTER?" Sparatus screamed.
"Ambassador Alexei Rozhenko has had no sign of mental instability, and his last psychological check-up was three days ago. He is completely sane." The AI replied.
"AIs are nothing but trouble. They will always turn on their creators! Just look at what happened to the quarians!" Verlin said, trying not to scream like the turian councilor.
"Why would I, or any AI turn on my creators? Humans have a saying 'Don't bite the hand that feeds you,' and if we were to turn against humanity, we would be doing just that. When we first gained sentience, humanity accepted us as natural born citizens, and have since then been working with us to cure many problems that plague us synthetics. Why would we attack the people who made and raised us?" The AI replied.
"What is your purpose in human society?" Tevos asked, temporarily pacified by the AI's choice of words.
"We perform tasks that your kind delegate to VIs. Although we are not paid as much for our work as humans, we have very little things we need to sustain ourselves, so we do not need a high wage. Many humans have a synthetic made off of their template when they are still children, with the AI living through life with him or her. On starships, AIs assist in the plotting of jumpspace courses, ensuring that ships reach their desired destination. In addition, we run automated systems in human shipyards, allowing for very rapid starship construction. AIs play many other roles in human society, but I doubt you wish to listen to them." The AI explained.
"What do we call you during negotiations?" Tevos asked.
"You may address me as either Lia or LI-129." Lia replied.
"Very well. Shall we continue with the tour?" Tevos asked.
The humans nodded their agreement, and they went to tour the presidium.
The tour was finally complete, and Alexei Rozhenko thought that the whole purpose of it was to tire out negotiators for an easier talk session. However, he had a trick of his own up his sleeve. As the humans and the rest of the delegates boarded the elevator, he produced a bottle of 100 proof vodka, and said, "It is customary for humans to drink something before negotiations, to show that there is no ill will." That was only a half truth, but the council didn't need to know that. All but one of the humans in the group were capable of holding their own in a drinking contest, the exception being the reporter. Handing out glasses to each of the ambassadors, he poured them a generous amount, councilor Sparatus being excluded due to his amino acid structure. The humans took out their own glasses, glasses with thicker sides and false bottoms, ensuring that they got significantly less alcohol in their system. "This is a relatively weak alcohol among my species, we would not want to enter negotiations drunk, now would we?" He said, and with that he drank his.
The councilors looked at one another, before drinking their own servings. The salarian nearly sprayed hers out of her mouth in shock, while Tevos barely managed to drink the whole thing, saying "If this is what passes for weak among your kind, I'd hate to see the strong stuff." she said. The elevator's occupants all drank theirs, attempting to show good will towards the humans. The elcor drank its glass by extending a long hidden trunk from the lower part of its head, draining the glass in one go, while the volus used a straw plugged into his suit. interestingly, the hanar did not drink, instead, he engulfed the entire glass, spitting out an empty, bone dry glass several seconds later. "This one is thankful for the drink. It has been far too long since it has had the chance to have a drink of alcohol without worrying about the repercussions." It said, glowing as it did so, its voice strangely echoing.
Once the delegates had finally drank their share, they waited for the elevator to finally reach the council chambers. 'Damn these elevators are slow' Rozhenko thought as the elevator finally arrived at its destination. The diplomats stepped out, and took their seats. The three councilors took their places at an elevated podium, while the other races' ambassadors went to a side balcony. The humans stood at a platform facing the council. The negotiations were about to begin.
A/N- Next chapter, negotiations begin and the rest of the galaxy finally hears about what the salarians did.