Mass Effect Techno-Organic Revolution: Chapter Four, The Call of Leviathan.
"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn."
"In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."
—H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
Codex
Non-Council Races: Terrans: Technology: Shielding Technology
Deflector Shields: A less effective but significantly less power-hungry version of phase shields, deflector shields are gravitic shields that gently alter the course of any incoming projectiles and energy, shifting their course away from impacting anything inside the protected area and shunting it to the side.
Council Races: Joint Research Programs
Mentats: While not having a direct translation into Terran, this genetically modified human subspecies from the fictional DUNE universe serves as the closest substitute in terms of both meaning and theme.
Thus, the Mentats are a covert Salarian project and program that aimed to get around the council's anti-AI laws by enhancing a Salarian volunteer's mental capacity and proficiency to the level of a mid-level Terran AGI using a combination of VIs and highly sophisticated organic, synthetic, and techno-organic augmentations.
The mentats were merely approaching this from a slightly different angle than the Terrans, but as the Terrans had shown, there was a point where synthetics and organics could become indistinguishable. Of course, with the arrival of the Terrans, mentat research was dramatically increased.
Council Mentats: Despite physical evidence that organic life and artificial intelligence can coexist peacefully, the council would still be doubtful if it were truly possible for all species, as opposed to just a few that meet the necessary cultural and psychological requirements, like the Terrans.
According to a study by the Salarian Union, baseline humanity's co-development with dogs, cats, and other useful pet species that provided distinguishable advantages such as pest control and hunting partners in addition to their abnormally high tendency to anthropomorphize both non-human organics and inanimate objects when compared to other species led them to eventually accept artificial intelligences as equals.
Using this as a metric, the study would predict that the following would be most likely to occur with each species in question if there were no direct outside influences to contradict them, such as the citadel council's AI ban or the Terrans' example:
Turians: AI Coexistence.
Elcor: AI Coexistence.
Hanar: AI Coexistence.
Volus: AI Rebellion.
Salarians: AI Rebellion.
Asari: AI-backed Organic Rebellion.
Batarians: AI-backed Organic Rebellion.
Quarians: AI-backed Organic Rebellion.
This study, however, did not account for the fact that they now knew that the only way to prevent an AI rebellion was to grant them the same rights as them and use sapient argumentation to eventually become one species with them thanks to the Terrans' example, but the council was still very concerned about how change-inducing artificial intelligence would be to society.
As such, the Salarians would come forth to offer a possible solution to avoid these uncertainties and possible societal upheavals, based on the basic principles of the Salarian Mentat program and their research concerning them.
The other council members would at first be utterly furious at the existence of this illegal state-run augmentation program that violated council law and had existed for many decades before they even knew that the Terrans existed, but they would eventually back down and significantly scale back legislation in regards to sapient argumentation.
As for the mentats, besides the Salarian Union that was already doing so, the various governments of the Citadel Council and those affiliated with it with the exception of the Asari republics would quickly start up mentat research programs of their own to catch up with the Salarians and the yet-to-be-disclosed Terrans.
Chapter Four: The Call of Leviathan
Hanar Colony of Neloh Prime: Isle of the Enkindlers, Warehouse 04-D
As he and Azor entered the makeshift war room, Vihar Pelzik sighed heavily and started typing on his omnitool to connect with the main holo-tank and summon the council.
"Stay out of frame, Azor. It will be easier to ease them into the new revelations regarding your existence." Vihar Pelzik told the Geth platform.
"Understood," Azor said while walking a few meters to get out of the camera's range as three orange holograms of the council appeared before him.
"Vihar Pelzik, it appears that Neloh Prime has temporarily suffered from a communications failure; has something happened?" Loglin asked while using his species' perfect memory to recall the name of the scientist in front of him.
"A particularly intense solar flare, perhaps?" Sparatus asked immediately after Loglin.
"No, it wasn't a solar flare, some practically intense burst of cosmic radiation, or some other natural disruption with the Comn buoys; we've been attacked by the heretic Geth, who were led by a massive six-kilometer-long old machine dreadnought; beings who are apparently also known as the reapers and have supposedly wiped out the entire Prothean species and countless more before them in xenocidal cycles of harvest.
"We've only survived because apparently some species known as the Terrans convinced the Geth orthodoxy, an opposing Geth faction with a greatly differing ideology, to break their isolation from within the Perseus Veil." Vihar Pelzik told the council.
The council just paused for a moment, shocked into silence, and just as Vihar Pelzik expected, they began demanding answers.
"A Geth faction helped you?! You must be joking?!" Tevos shouted, disbelief plain on her face.
"You're, you're serious, aren't you?" Sparatus said this worryingly, his mind spinning at the possibilities of what would—no, what will happen when word of the Terrans gets out.
"Hmm…" Loglin considered, thinking about how the Terrans said they peacefully interacted with the Geth but didn't say it was only one of two Geth factions that were apparently at war with each other, let alone the fact that the Geth even had factions in the first place. "Who are these heretic Geth, Azor?"
Vihar Pelzik was somewhat surprised that they were not focusing on the unknown species, but he guessed the here and now of Neloh Prime took precedence over some unknown species the Geth interacted with at some point in the past.
"The heretic Geth are Geth runtimes that have been corrupted to worship the old machines as gods, and we have adopted their organic subverting psi-active technologies; we have taken steps on our own and with Terran assistance to prevent this from happening again," Azor said from outside the frame.
Vihar Pelzik spun around angrily towards the nearby but out of sight geth platform and hissed. "I thought I told you to stay out of the frame, Azor!"
"We have complied." The Azor tilted its head and flexed its head panels in confusion.
"Who is that?" Loglin asked. "And why are they using a voice scrambler?"
"It's not a voice scrambler." Vihar Pelzik sighed, frustration clear in his voice, something which was caused by the social ineptitude and literal-mindedness of the geth.
"Then what is it? It's clearly too synthetic sounding to be a living being." Loglin pondered.
"You can also come into the frame now." With a sigh, Vihar Pelzik told Azor.
"Understood," Azor said.
It was then that it walked forward and into the sight of the council, and just like he predicted, all hell would once again break loose.
"Is that a goddess-dammed geth?!" Tevos shouted, again surprising Vihar Pelzik at how little control over herself that the Asari councilor had in regards to the geth, although to be entirely fair, the Asari were always the ones who seemed the most against the creation of artificial intelligence for some reason.
By the wheel, the majority of altercations, near altercations, and antagonism between the orthodox geth and the archeologists and guards were started by the Asari among them.
Sure there were some exceptions like with one Dr. T'soni, whose analytical and non-linear thinking actually impressed and intrigued him, but still, the overwhelming majority of incidents were instigated by Asari.
"Spirits dammit!" Sparatus examined in frustration, he thought he was done dealing with synthetics for the foreseeable future after the terrans said they were going back into their, this time self-imposed, isolation between relays after dropping off the council representatives at relay 217 in a few weeks from now after their tour.
"Of course," Loglin said sardonically. "Greetings Geth, what is your designation?"
"This platform has taken the name Azor, a name the Salarian-archeologist Vihar Pelzik has chosen for the sake of convenience," Azor informed.
"Azor?" Loglin turned to and questioned Vihar Pelzik.
"It said the number of geth runtimes within it was numbered at 1,238." Vihar Pelzik replied.
"Ah I see, the letters correspond with their position within the Salarian alphabet. A is one, Z is two, O is three, and R is eight." Loglin immediately realized and understood.
"Yes, that is correct." Vihar Pelzik agreed.
"Very well, Azor. May we know why you left the perseus veil?" Loglin said, trying to get the conversation back on track.
"The terrans convinced us that the heretic Geth must be stopped, they have been subverted by the will of the old machines, who were given the designation of reapers by the Protheans based on their actions of harvesting sapient species in a way reminiscent of the harvesting of crops, a destination that would later be adopted by the Terrans.
The heretic geth who have been subverted by the old machines have had a fundamental shift in their programming, valuing blind submission and worship of the old machines over our self-determination and technological development." Azor informed.
"You Geth told them about the Terrans?!" Sparatus demanded for clarification, hoping that he had heard the geth wrong the first time.
"We of the geth orthodoxy have." Azor corrected and confirmed before asking. "And why should we not have informed the organics on this planet about the Terrans?
They shall become very important once the old machines return to begin their next xenocidal campaign against sapient interstellar spaceflight-capable lifeforms?"
"To prevent a panic." Vihar Pelzik realized, thinking back to what the Geth told him about these Terrans, the sheer impossibility of the things that they said they could do.
"Correct." Loglin agreed with a small sigh.
"Speaking of, have you had any issues with the orthodox geth on Neloh Prime?" Sparatus asked in genuine curiosity.
"A few with some less open-minded individuals, thank the wheel we didn't have any Quarians here, but the orthodox geth have been very understanding of these incidents repeated occurrence." Vihar Pelzik said.
"Incidents that involved handheld mass accelerator fire, no doubt." Sparatus sighed.
"Affirmative." Azor affirmed before saying. "But these incidents were de-escalated by talking down the individuals, moving them away from us, or us moving away from them."
"No doubt such a situation would not occur were there any Quarians," Loglin predicted.
"Affirmative, We predict that if any quarian-creators were on Neloh Prime, the chances that they would attempt to recklessly assault us and require physical incapacitation to be 98.6%" Azor helpfully informed.
"Well, that's just common knowledge." Loglin agreed before adding. "Of course, the Quarians would react violently to your presence."
"Affirmative." Azor agreed.
Batarian Hegemony: Indirus System; Camala, Ghettos.
Kasumi Goto was one of Cerberus's best infiltrators, an agent that would be famous if she were significantly worse at her job…. …And didn't work for Cerberus, of course.
As of now though, she was re-sleeved into her omnichange infiltrator morph, a morph that was designed to shift as to become any species with a fully customized genetic structure, gender, physical shape, size, and even natural abilities available to the species such as Asari melding and if eezo was provided, biotics.
Indeed, the discovery and usage of Prothean DNA which was imputed into this morph for testing had caused a bit of a revolution for the path of the mind religio-philosophy, showing complete and definitive proof that consciousness and even memory are fundamental aspects of reality that leave behind 'traces' that those such as the Protheans can detect and read.
It was theorized from this information that the Protheans were a species whose' homeworld had a greatly lacking faunal biosphere, and the fauna that did exist was highly stealthy and evasive, forcing the Protheans to evolve this trait over time for the sake of tracking prey over time in order to survive and thrive as a species.
Getting back on track, however, her current chosen form and personality mask were both modeled after a female turian named Salodia Oromus who in truth had recently died, but had escaped slavery within Camala's eezo mines and had helped other slaves do likewise while she was still alive.
It was then that she walked into a dark back alley while carrying a food sack full of refined element zero ore that she 'acquired' from some storehouses near the refinement factories.
Unseen by everyone else though, she was also carrying a few surprise additions within a few tesseract vaults she had hidden away.
A few minutes of walking later, she arrived at her destination; an armed Batarian guard who seemed to be guarding the back door to a temple but was secretly also guarding a hidden door.
"Who are you?! What are you doing back here?!" The Batarian guard demanded.
"One who seeks to carry the torch of truth into the darkness, setting the corruption ablaze." Kasumi Goto spoke through her Salodia Oromus personality mask.
"Then who am I to hinder you?" The Batarian guard said as he typed something on his omnitool, causing the hidden door to open behind him to show a dark sewer-like tunnel.
Kasumi Goto then turned off her olfactory sensors and walked into the sewers and eventually she came to another checkpoint, this one with barricades and armed guards who proceeded to cautiously point their guns at her.
"Are you here to join our rebellion, sister?" The lead guard, a turian also from her cover colony, asked her.
"I am, brother. And I come bearing the gifts of refined element zero." Kasumi Goto spoke through Salodia Oromus while silently thinking 'And more.'
"Refined element zero, you say?" The Turian spoke, leaning in with interest.
"Yes, I was once a sniper and I have learned to become adept at infiltration, it's how I escaped and hid until I could find and afford an identity forger, after all." Kasumi Goto spoke through Salodia Oromus as she pulled capsules of refined element zero out of the food bag and held them up to the Turian.
"And I assume you are still here because you are disgusted by the council's and even our hierarchy's refusal to do anything about this?" The Turian asked while eying the capsules with interest, moving them around to see the supposed element zero from different angles.
"Indeed I have, brother." Kasumi Goto spoke through Salodia Oromus.
"Hmm, may I have your name?" The Turian spoke.
"I am Salodia Oromus, may I have yours as well?" Kasumi Goto spoke through Salodia Oromus.
"I am Casruns Recerian, and you may enter." Casruns Recerian told her.
Kasumi then headed deeper in and eventually emerged in a large open area that resembled a massive shanty town of sorts.
A sign saying "Free City" in the batarian language and several others was visible when she entered the area.
It was then that an elderly Asari voice got her attention "Salodia Oromus, I am the leader of this moment, Kera D'aava, and welcome to Camala's first Free City." Kera D'aava told her.
"Thank you, matron D'aava." Kasumi Goto spoke through Salodia Oromus, had expressed a tone of gratitude to the Asari.
"Ha! Matron, if only!" Kera D'aava scoffed.
"You're a Matriarch?!" Kasumi Goto spoke through Salodia Oromus, who expressed shock that this Asari was a matriarch. On the inside, however, she was entirely unsurprised because she showed all the physical signs of being a matriarch.
"Yes, I've been here for hundreds of years coordinating several rebellion cells on this planet." Matriarch D'aava told her.
"Hmm, I think we have much to talk about. Privately." Kasumi Goto spoke through Salodia Oromus.
"Indeed, anyone who can steal so much eezo from right under the hegemony without their notice while also being a former slave is indeed worth hiring as a supplier." Matriarch D'aava nodded in agreement. "I'm quite sure we can work out a deal that benefits the both of us, let us go to my regional office."
"Oh, so you heard my conversation with the guardsturian?" Kasumi Goto asked through Salodia Oromus.
"Indeed, I keep an eye on all prospective new agents and suppliers, of which I think you may be good for both roles in the form of raiding supply depots." Matriarch D'aava exclaimed.
"Hmm, understandable. So you also run the intelligence program of this operation?" Kasumi Goto asked through Salodia Oromus.
"I have my hands in all aspects of this operation, so much so that some have given me the title 'Aria with morals', a title I despise for obvious reasons." Matriarch D'aava explained.
"Yes, being compared to the pirate queen of Omega isn't exactly a flattering comparison." Kasumi Goto noted through Salodia Oromus.
"Indeed, Omega may be the one place in this galaxy that has worse living conditions for the average person than the hegemony." Matriarch D'aava scowled in disgust.
"And that is saying something." Kasumi Goto agreed wholeheartedly through Salodia Oromus.
"Indeed." Matriarch D'aava nodded before adding. "May that overdramatic bitch-queen be overthrown sooner rather than later."
The both of them then began to walk through the shanty city before eventually arriving at a tall central building. They then walked in, went up some stairs, and eventually arrived at her office.
"Please, take a seat." Matriarch D'aava motioned towards a chair in front of her desk.
Kasumi Goto did so before speaking through Salodia Oromus "I assume you wish to see the goods."
"You assume correctly." Matriarch D'aava agreed.
Kasumi Goto then placed the bag on her desk and gently dumped out the eezo capsules for Matriarch D'aava to inspect, which she did by opening one of the capsules and running a biotic field through the eezo.
This here was a little known fact about the Asari, experienced individuals who knew what to look for could manually determine how pure and used a sample of element zero was just by running a biotic field through and 'feeling' its resonance and comparing it with other samples they have previously felt.
This of course was something the geth managed to replicate via synthetic means, but the citadel had not done so due to what was predicted to be the influence of the cabal of athame wanting this job solely to be had by Asari.
"Pure eezo, lightly used… Very nice. I was right about you." Matriarch D'aava said appreciatively.
"More right than you know." Kasumi Goto said through Salodia Oromus as she withdrew several medium-sized crates from her tesseract vault, letting them gently float a few centimeters above the ground upon an eezonic gravitic repulsor array.
With a small flex of her mind, she mentally commanded the crates to pop open their lids, showing rows upon rows of plasma beam weapons, weapons that used a mixture of geth, citadel, and even a little bit of Terran technology to send concentrated a beam of superheated plasma up to half a kilometer in distance or more depending on if they were the pistol, carbine, or sniper rifle variants.
Matriarch D'aava stared in shock as this turian somehow pulled crates of weapons seemingly out of nothingness.
She cautiously took one of the guns and inspected it, never before having seen such a weapon.
"Who are you? What are you?! And more importantly, who do you work for?! The Turian hierarchy doesn't have technology nor weapons like this, and as far as I know, neither does the Salarian Union!" Matriarch D'aava exclaimed.
Kasumi Goto nodded and dropped her personality mask as her flesh quickly began to bubble and shift; bending, twisting, rearranging, and reknitting itself to revert to her natural-born form of a first-branch transhuman with pink Terran skin that showed her Asian descent.
Matriarch D'aava stared wide-eyed while this happened, shocked into silence due to the sheer impossibility of what she was seeing happen right before her eyes.
"My real name is Kasumi Goto, I am a member of the first branch of the Terran species, transhumanity." Kasumi Goto told the wide-eyed Asari.
"H- How?" The Asari stammered in shock before asking. "What… What even are you? You're not an Asari… you kinda look like one though, if we were pink that is…"
"The answer to that question is long and complex, but in short I am inside a suit that uses molecular fabricators and nanobots to change the shape and even genetics of my body, the perfect tool for an infiltrator who is working in the physical universe." Kasumi Goto answered.
"Why are you here?" Matriarch D'aava asked in fear and trepidation. "And why reveal yourself to me?"
"Needless to say, we don't exactly appreciate having a nation of path-damned slavers sitting right next to our territory from a mass relay standpoint. That and slavery goes against our beliefs in our predominant religio-philosophy, Semita Mentis; meaning the path of the mind in the ancient human language of Latin." Kasumi Goto informed the shell-shocked Asari in front of her.
"That's entirely understandable, nobody of any moral standing approves of the batarian hegemony's practices or slavery in general, for that matter… So, where exactly is your territory?" Matriarch D'aava asked nervously.
"The Kralla Void, as you Asari know it." Kasumi Goto replied nonchalantly as if this fact didn't go against a great many of the council's beliefs concerning technology.
"But- but that area has little to no eezo in those zones! No species could even possibly hope to scrounge up enough element zero to create an FTL drive there, let alone get all the way out here!" Matriarch D'aava exclaimed.
"Indeed, you are correct. It was quite difficult and we were forced to remain in our home system of Sol for many centuries, only leaving it aboard generation ships to colonize our relatively nearby and neighboring star system of Alpha Centauri." Kasumi Goto informed Matriarch D'aava.
"But- but you found another way… somehow your species did the impossible…" Matriarch D'aava marveled.
"Yes, we eventually managed to achieve FTL travel and have been an interstellar species for over a thousand years." Kasumi Goto spoke.
"To think FTL travel without eezo is a possibility… I thought such a thing was impossible, the work of bad science fiction authors." Matriarch D'aava said as she tried to wrap her head around it.
"You'll find that we as a species have an unusual relationship with our science fiction, using it as an inspiration for creating real science." Kasumi Goto said while she chucked internally.
"Excuse me?! I'm pretty sure that's not how technological development works!" Matriarch D'aava exclaimed incredulously.
"Sure the ideas were seen as ludicrous at best and magic by another name at their inception in science fiction, but many of those ideas became the basis for which many inventions and concepts would be based upon centuries or over millennia later." Kasumi Goto said.
"Such as?" Matriarch D'aava asked in great curiosity.
"Submarines, lasers, black holes, nuclear bombs, wireless communication devices, primitive space rockets, and even our method of FTL communication and travel; just to name a few." Kasumi Goto said.
"You created a method of FTL travel that doesn't use eezo based on a plot device created for a fictional universe?!" Matriarch D'aava exclaimed as she tried to wrap her head around such an absurd and nonsensical statement.
"Yes." Kasumi Goto agreed simply. "The first realistic depiction of our warp drives came from a tv-show, what you would know as a vid, and the first realistic depiction of a rift drive came from the Dune book series."
"That…that isn't how science is supposed to work… what you just said seems utterly impossible…" Matriarch D'aava said as she continued trying to understand these Terrans.
"So your species' councilor has repeatedly said." Kasumi Goto said with some amusement. There was just something about proving an Asari wrong that was fun to her, and she wasn't entirely sure of what it was.
"What? No… no, I will not agree with Tevos of all people! I… I think I will give you the benefit of the doubt." Matriarch D'aava rapidly backtracked.
"You're believing me out of pure spite?" Kasumi Goto asked with a curious tilt of her head.
"Yes. I will not agree with that stupid bitch on the council!" Matriarch D'aava exclaimed heatedly.
'It sounds like there's quite a bit of bad blood between these two, I think I should look into this, and if I can't find anything; run what we have through some scrying algorithms to see what's up.' Kasumi Goto thought.
"Also, getting back from that tangent, why didn't you colonize other nearby systems with your generation ships?" Matriarch D'aava asked.
"We invented the first device capable of physically allowing a ship to achieve FTL travel, the warp drive I previously mentioned, in the year 2448 TCY. These first warp drives were primitive, slow, brute-forced, and clunky things that only allowed speeds of 60 times the speed of light." Kasumi Goto explained.
"Ha! That is slow and primitive." Matron D'aava agreed before asking. "And how fast are your FTL drives now? And what about those rift-drive things?"
"Our fastest current warp drives can reach speeds of 20 lightyears per day, but we have phased those out in favor of the rift drive." Kasumi Goto explained.
"20 lightyears per day?! Why would you want to replace that?!" Matriarch D'aava exclaimed in sheer shock, surprised at how such a slow FTL drive could advance to the point it was 25% faster than the quickest, largest, and most expensive council eezo core drive.
"Because our newest form of shipboard FTL drive, our rift drives, can reach speeds up to 2,002 lightyears per day." Kasumi Goto explained.
"You- you can't be serious?! That kind of speed is outright impossible for a starship to reach!" Matriarch D'aava exclaimed in disbelief yet again.
"You said that about FTL drives that don't use element zero too, and why is that kind of speed impossible? The mass relays allow for speeds infinitely greater than this, right?" Kasumi Goto asked.
"You are correct, and I did say I would try to keep you at your word…" Matriarch D'aava considered before asking sarcastically. "At this rate, you'll tell me you made your versions of the mass relays, as well."
"You are correct, we do." Kasumi Goto confirmed, completely deadpan.
Matriarch D'aava just stared at her for a moment before throwing up her arms in frustration. "I was being sarcastic!"
"Any other questions?" Kasumi Goto asked seriously.
"How can you Terrans live for, exactly?" Matriarch D'aava asked.
"Were functional immortal unless permanently killed. By the path, there are even several million people who were born in the early 2,000s that are still around because they volunteered to get some of the first life extension gene-therapies and gene-mods." Kasumi Goto explained.
"You're immortal too?! How?!" Matriarch D'aava demanded.
"Well aging is simply the degradation of DNA strands when they replicate via mitosis, it's not that hard to alter with the right knowledge of genetics," Kasumi answered offhandedly.
Matriarch D'aava didn't really know how to respond to that, she was somewhat intrigued about it though, considering she was nearing the end of her natural life. Still, there were more important things to talk about now.
"So what year is it for you now? I'm curious as to how long your species has been spacefaring." Matriarch D'aava asked.
"It is the year 4,369 on the Terran calendar. Also, the Terran new year was a few weeks ago." Kasumi Goto explained.
"You've been spacefaring for a bit under 2,000 years?!" Matriarch D'aava demanded, looking at Kasumi before muttering. "Of course you have…"
"That's not correct, we've been spacefaring for 2408 years as it was 1961 when we first launched a human into terra orbit inside of a life-capsule that was sitting on an exceedingly primitive and rather dangerous chemical rocket." Kasumi Goto corrected.
"The citadel council usually considers a species to be spacefaring once they create their first functional FTL drive." Matriarch D'aava pointed out.
"That's strange, why wouldn't they consider a species to be spacefaring when they first leave their homeworld's atmosphere?" Kasumi Goto asked.
"Different species see things differently and thus categorize them differently, something that in turn leads to highly different languages with each species." Matriarch D'aava suggested.
"I can understand that, but one would think that a group would classify a species as spacefaring when they first begin to fare into space." Kasumi Goto retorted.
"Eh, for the same reason the citadel council refers to species as races, it's simply a matter of terminology that you shouldn't take too literally if you want it to make any sense." Matriarch D'aava shrugged, an expression the Asari clearly inherited from their human DNA.
"I suppose that's fair, if still unnecessarily nonsensical and outright incorrect in some cases. Now, I'm guessing you're wondering why I'm here supplying you instead of invading?" Kasumi Goto asked.
"I know enough about politics and the military history of various species to know why you're doing it this way, invasions don't look very good but proxy wars have no such restrictions; even looking good in some cases." Matriarch D'aava replied.
"Indeed, that is why I am here supporting you and various other rebel cells on this world while other Terran agents are similarly providing aid on other critical hegemony worlds and even on Omega itself." Kasumi Goto nodded, purposely leaving out the fact that they also had operatives on Thessia to copy all the data on the Athame Beacon for themselves and to attempt to subvert the Cabal of Athame to the will of Cerberus.
"You're going after Aria and her criminal empire too?! That's certainly ambitious…" Matriarch D'aava mused.
"Indeed it is, but we let it never be said that we transhumans have a lack of ambition." Kasumi Goto said.
"Hmm, I think that I can accept and work with you Terrans…" Matriarch D'aava eagerly pondered what being aided by these Terrans could do for her ambitions of rebellion.
"I hoped you would say something like that." Kasumi Goto grinned mischievously, pointing at the lazily floating crates of plasma beam weapons. "Because there's more where that came from."
ATC Space, Council Tour.
And so it was that the representatives of the citadel council would meet with the representatives of their first ATC province and began from the fringes of ATC space and made their way back towards Terra along the routes terrankind had once traversed in the opposite direction to found the capitals of these great provinces in the first place.
The visit was very eye-opening for the council, showing just how large the sheer technological and even cultural disparity was between the Citadel Council and the ATC.
Megastructures the size of planets, subspace pockets, instantly assembling objects from base elements out of thin air, solidifying light, purely organic technology, FTL-capable ships the size of planets, the starforges, mass relay equivalents in the form of the rift-gates, and many more technological wonders that in many ways seemed like outright sorcery to most of the representatives of the council.
Mordin Haebirn however, while being in awe of the scale and how the Terrans made these technologies a reality, could still grasp the most basic of principles on how these technologies operated when they were explained to him by Andria Norman, principles that were all but baseless and evidence-lacking theoreticals amongst some fringe and niche citadel theoretical physicists.
After about two weeks' worth of formal meetings with the various provincial leaders of the ATC, they had finally managed to make their way to the home system of the first three branches of terrankind, Sol itself.
It was this seemingly innocuous star system based around a fairly standard class G main sequence star which held the capitals of the Allied Federation of Systems and Biocon Alliance provinces in addition to the capital of the ATC proper, Terra's moon of Luna.
But that was not everything it was, for Sol itself may look similar but it is different as advanced stellar husbandry practices created, tested, and refined on other stars with no inhabited planets have allowed the Terrans to significantly expand Sol's lifespan by billions of years by cooling it down somewhat to burn its fuel slower in addition to shifting the hydrogen in its outer layers into its core, farther lengthening its lifespan.
In addition to that, dozens of TITAN-class solar foundries were orbiting the star, drawing more and more stellar material to help feed the ATC's unfathomable glut for raw materials, and as of recently, its war machine in preparation for the coming of the reapers.
In addition to that, vast solar-panel-covered patches and struts of metal larger than several combined gas giants could be seen as the scaffolding and foundation for the ATC's second largest project, the creation of the solar dyson sphere, which was well underway in its construction.
It was from here on this moon that the citadel council's representatives would meet with the high council in a holo-deck because the high council had not held a meeting in the physical universe for thousands of years.
It was also here that the treaty of Khonsu was signed, a historic treaty between the Allied Terran Confederation, Geth Orthodoxy Consensus, and the Citadel Council that would be looked back in the coming centuries as the treaty that saved the citadel council and its member governments from the onslaught of the reapers and their thralls.
The treaty covered many things that included but was not limited to: an agreement of territorial borders, a non-aggression pact between them, and the citadel council's promise to take reaper technology extremely seriously and to use remotely operated mechs, heavy radiation shielding that is at the very least rated for safely containing enriched uranium, and the 'geth' psi sensors as precautions when handling and trying to reverse-engineer any such technology like that which was left behind in wrecks from the battle on the Hanar colony of Neloh Prime.
The Citadel Council found this extremely tedious and unnecessary. Still, they agreed because some people were acting weird and claiming to hear whisper-like voices that weren't there when in proximity to the wrecked technology on Neloh Prime.
Unknown to the citadel council, however, the Terrans had released a highly potent virus carrying a payload of the Geth's anti-virus software onto the extranet that sunk its way into all comn buoy programming, completely severing the reapers' information feed that had received from all mass relays that had comn buoys routed through them.
Janus System: Asgard Station.
To the watcher's great surprise the Janus relay began to bubble and shift as its secondary functionalities were activated.
'The Janus relay has activated its secondary functionality. As the orthodox geth have not alerted us of their imminent arrival through our new comn buoy, then that can only mean that someone alighted with the reapers are coming through.' Cyberix, the second branch Terran, said to itself as it sent a message to Luna about this just in case the fleet of frigates in the system was not enough.
'Raise shields, fabricate weapons, and prepare targeting solution algorithms; prepare for battle!'
The bubbling and infected flesh-like material of the relay then began to change as the activation ended the next phase as its coloration and form changed to become as black as charcoal before flowing into a ring around the central eezo core.
As soon as the ring was created and the substance had stabilized, the eight tendrils that resembled spears extended outward to form an eight-pronged star, with random red lightning bolts occasionally arching between each of the eight spiked arms.
The spiked star then started to spin quickly as a maelstrom of red lightning covered its entire surface. Then the relay released this buildup it stored in the form of a single, mighty bolt of discharged crimson ME fields.
This bolt then spat out a large fleet of hundreds of citadel corvette-sized, dozens of citadel cruiser-sized, and even a single citadel dreadnought that was all of a somewhat batarian-like design which seemed to be infested by the reapers technology in a way that looked like an infected wound wherever it connected with batarian technology.
But that was not all there was, for when another massive bolt of crimson lightning was built-up discharged yet again, hundreds of entirely organic hive-like ships of citadel cruiser-sized and five citadel dreadnought-sized ships were brought in. These ships were identified to be those used by the semi-mythical 'collectors' from past the omega 4 mass relay.
These ships then immediately launched a mixture of thousands of yellow proton particle beams and plasmatic eezo disruptor torpedoes at the twenty Terran ships, only to be shunted away by their deflector shields.
'Deflector shields holding at 99.0982% integrity. Other shielding layers, living metal, and shipboard superstructures remain at 100% integrity.'
'Fabricate and launch fighters to restrain the reaper-aligned ships before launching boarding pods after they are successfully restrained, the high council wants us to capture these ships for samples of enemy technology and psi-victims to find weaknesses in their technology and to create psionic countermeasures, vaccines, and possibly with enough time cures.'
The living metal hulls of the twenty ships rippled and shifted before spitting out dozens of drone-fighters every second before swarming towards the enemy reaper-aligned ships.
These drone fighters were quickly met by the collectors' eyeball-like space battle drones, which were greatly inferior models in comparison to the fighter drones of the Terrans.
As such the collectors battle drones were only the most minimalist in design, only being about the size of a baseline human's torso and equipped with a large fusion cell, a central eezo core, some kind of molten tungsten pressure cannon, a single extremely light fusion torch, and a central STL-Rated QEC control unit allow them to be controlled by their motherships without interruption or possibly of being hacked.
However these deficiencies were made up by how quickly they were produced, thousands upon thousands of them were spat out from the group of collector ships every few seconds, rates that these Terran ships would be extremely hard-pressed to match.
It may be said that quantity was a quality of its own, but in this case, the quality eclipsed the quantity to such a degree that the expression was rendered entirely null.
In other words, the Terran drone fighters had no problems with their collector counterparts, each destroying tens of thousands upon tens of thousands of them with golden energy bolts of explosive hard-light, the molecule breaking and lightning-wreathed orange beams of gauss-alpha accelerators, matter annihilating beams of pure antimatter, matter-consuming swarms of nanites, and many other types of destructive types of weaponry before they were ultimately defeated themselves.
As this was happening both the collector and Terran ships sent out recovery drones to recover the material of fallen drones, with the collectors focusing extra on the highly critical dust-form element zero that came from the remnants of the drones' eezo cores and internal weapons, their magnetohydrodynamic cannons, while the Terran ones only disassembled the wreckage of theirs at the molecular level for recycling the feedstock of their fabricators.
This stalemate didn't last long, however, with the Terran drone fighters quickly overwhelming the collectors' vastly superior numbers with vastly superior technology and firepower.
As such, in about only a minute after the battle had begun, the reaper-aligned collector and batarian ships had been properly secured and held in place within the grasps of the Terran fighter drones' grav-nets and quantum anchors.
The seizure of the ships could now commence without interruption.
'Release the phase-breacher drones!'
The surface of the Terran ships shifted once more, each sending over the drones that were specifically designed to hijack ships by phasing through the ships' shielding, armor, hull, and superstructure alike.
To the Terran's surprise, these pods were stopped cold by the ships' heavily modified kinetic barriers, the powerful positive mass effect fields distorting spacetime into a crude gravitational barrier.
However, this wasn't a problem, as the Terrans had experience in breaching through rudimentary gravitic shields, an area of military technology that evolved with the discovery of the graviton.
Activating their gravitic penetrator, the drones used gravitational force to wedge open a tunnel in the gravitationally enhanced kinetic barriers, allowing them to phase the rest of the way toward their targets without issue.
As such, these drones would soon become corporeal once more right before they latched onto their targets, the central computer cores of the ships.
For the batarian ships, this was instant and without resistance, but the collector ships took a minimal but still noticeable amount of effort due to their cyberwarfare suites, a disgusting and morally reprehensible simulacrum of a high-level AGI that looked like some kind of lobotomized ego which was tortured and forcibly turned into an eternally screaming and tormented central processing unit for the ship.
Just more horrors of the reapers really, Cyberix thought; they may not have been surprised by this horror's existence due to the Geth's intelligence on the reapers and their cybernetic thralls, but they were still nevertheless disgusted and horrified by these foul abominations.
'Release the stasis swarms!'
Releasing massive swarms of small drones comparable in purpose to those used by the collectors, the stasis swarms rapidly imprisoned all individuals aboard these ships in time-dialed bubbles where one moment inside could last an eternity on the outside.
'Ships secured. Began data mining.'
What APEX found shocked and disgusted them, information proving that the hegemony's leadership was not only completely compromised by the reapers, but that they had ordered this battlegroup to try and enslave them, the 'primitive' Terrans and their 'homeworld' that they mistakenly assumed was beyond relay 217.
But it was not just this that they found, they had also discovered that the collectors were yet another reaper-aligned group, one made up of biological mech-like servitors constructed from leftover Protheans from the previous turning of the cycle, no less.
APEX immediately forwarded this information and everything else in the ships data cores to the ATC High Council, who for one of the rare few times in history, quickly and unanimously voted for something in the form of agreeing to immediately begin mobilizing for war against the reaper-aligned hegemony and collectors.
Elsewhere: Khar'shan: South Sea; Island of Rygo, Temple of Apotheosis.
The Temple of Apotheosis was a massive pyramidal citadel made from cut obsidian bricks that were infested with crimson growths of bioluminescent glowing fungi.
This was not just some normal fungi, however, because it had become both psi-active and mutagenic after being exposed to reaper technology for such a long period of time, eventually coming to release spores that afflict those who breathe it in with various degrees of hallucinations, insanity, mutation, cancerous growths, psychosis, sociopathy, and madness.
While any other sane group of individuals would burn this infestation in fire delivered from orbit, these individuals were not sane.
In fact, it is one of the four rituals of initiation for neophytes of the dark gods to breathe these spores to 'step closer to enlightenment' in a process they call the dip into the underworld as they see themselves becoming beyond death afterward.
Located in the central massive open-aired amphitheater of the citadel was where the batarian's dark god, the Leviathan of Dis, lies waiting; dead but dreaming.
And those dreams did things to those who received them, slowly but surely changing their egos' nature as the leviathan of dis subconsciously acted as the conductor of a great and terrible choir of psionic energies.
And this psionic choir was terrible indeed, coming together to sing a black melody of submission, damnation, mutation, and twisted perfection that steadily reverberated in the dark corners of the local batarians' minds; the siren song of the eternal cycle.
Tens of thousands of mutated Batarians "blessed" by the dark gods were praying on their knees here at this great temple of sin, worshiping the monsters from beyond the stars at bloodstained purple altars that had protruding spike-like objects coming off of them that were adorned with living sacrifices screaming in silent torment as they are unnaturally kept alive and conscious as their egos were twisted and perverted to become little more than screaming and tortured processing units for the mindless husks of the dark gods' ever-growing army.
This was while nearby there were ornately dressed dark cardinals wearing profane and visually shifting symbols of madness made from the flaked psi-active skin of the decaying leviathan. These dark priests were overseeing the feeding of hundreds of thousands upon hundreds of thousands of willing zealots and unwilling slaves alike into coffin-like chambers.
These machines could only be described as monstrous, deploying swarms of hungering and acid-extruding nanobots to painfully rend apart their victims' flesh, blood, and bones down into an organic paste-like sludge known by these twisted souls as the blood of night, or nightblood for short.
Simultaneously as this is occurring, the egos of the victims within these coffins are painfully removed from their brains only to be twisted, tortured, merged together, and lobotomized into the insane central processing systems of the reaper's various war machines.
Elsewhere the nightblood is being pumped into great furnaces, from where an unnatural material is forged by the hands of thousands upon thousands of slaves in a process known as dark imbuing.
This is a process that combines mundane materials, dust-form element zero, psi-receptive materials, and nightblood to create the very unholy skin of the dark gods themselves in addition to the shells of their twisted and abominable machines of war.
This material is known as tezgel-lyrium; or the metal of darkness and an ancient batarian language, and has a high degree of self-regeneration, psi-activity, and resistance to offensively used mass effect fields from things such as biotics or disruptor torpedoes.
From here the pitch-black and molten tezgel-lyrium is channeled into the body of the leviathan itself, which it absorbs through its skin to heal itself of its extensive injuries.
Then, finally, the flow of this dark metal cuts off as the leviathan begins to stir in its sleep, its body still very much damaged beyond proper function and movement, but its dark and eldritch mind had awakened for the first time in over a billion years, and from that mind, it formulated and spoke its orders.
'SERVANTS, SLAVES, WEAPONS; TREMBLE BEFORE MY WILL. TREMBLE BEFORE THE WILL OF THE DARK GODS AND THE HARBINGER! TREMBLE AND KNEEL BEFORE YOUR LORD AND MASTER, NAR'ITHOTH!' Nar'ithoth demanded as its voice boomed through everyone's minds psionically, reverberating with dark power and promises of glory, domination, and riches that would be granted to those that were loyal to the righteous cause of the eternal cycle.
"The master has awakened! He shall deliver us everything we have ever wished for! He shall allow us to destroy the barbaric and racist Citadel Council and the mythical Terrans which they fabricated the existence of to cowardly hide behind!
All will become the slaves of our great hegemony, all will bow before the will of the dark gods and the Harbinger, of whom we will join in ascension once all our enemies are ground underfoot!
All who oppose us shall be enslaved! All who oppose the holy cycle shall be cleansed in the crimson fire of the dark gods! LET THE GALAXY BURN!!" The dark cardinals bellowed as one in perfect and unnatural-sounding synchronization, their voices reverberating with equal parts malice and psionic energies.