Tevos considered herself a pragmatic individual. She was not the sort for hyperbole, or to jump into a situation without at least a few years of thought on the subject. She had, in her wisdom, realized that the Terrans had no desire for war any more than the Citadel Races, and thus kept the private sector from antagonizing them beyond what had been done by forces that were beyond her control.
In the two decades since the Titan War, she had single handedly diffused a dozen situations, sometimes sending in SPECTERS where they'd do some good, and tried to rein in those who were openly hostile to the newcomers. She'd even seen to curbing the worst of their excesses, assigning the most…active to postings far away from that particular border, to keep them from becoming future problems.
It was easy to see her as passive. After all, the galaxy as a whole was seemingly breaking on the hard rock that the Federations represented. Krogans, once the thorn in the side of every planner in the galaxy, had been folded into the Convexity. While the Father and Mothers claimed it had nothing to do with the Terrans, her sis…Aria T'loak had confirmed they'd been seen on her station shortly before their emergence on Tuchanka, and the Mothers arriving in a Terran transport, and all of them leaving with them.
Tevos should have seen that in a worse light, but chose not to. Her sisters were not so sure, however. The krogans had all but declared they would go down fighting in that last attack by the gathered clans on the Shroud tower, cut down by the turians defending it. Each one had thrown themselves into the assault, not stopping until their mass was reduced to so many bloody chunks, and sometimes even those still trying to drag themselves towards that impossible goal.
It was her word to her sisters that had allowed them to gather once again, rather than, say, an unexploded bit of ordinance going off and taking out the six around whom the rest gathered. Under the banner of 'Convexity', a term she knew came from the Terrans, as the krogan would never be so…ostentatious with their new state's name. It fit with the Terran ideals. A convex lens, wider in the middle, and thinner along the sides, to focus the disparate krogan together into a tighter whole than they ever had been.
And it worked. The krogan leaving the galactic stage had lessened, rather than increased, conflicts the galaxy over. The Blood Pack existed as only a name on a sheet somewhere, a few small companies claiming to be the remains, but none with any real authority to it. The Blue Suns, well, they were too expensive for most people to hire, and took jobs at seemingly random intervals, never the same client twice in a row, and oddly well trained in their efficiency for a mercenary company, and able to pull off seemingly impossible jobs.
The only major merc company left, the only one that wasn't local, was Eclipse, and they worked for Aria. Everyone knew you had to face the self titled 'Queen Bitch' of Omega anytime you wanted a contract with them. And since she had claimed a 'salvaged' Terran capital ship, she'd been keeping them close to the vest, using them as a full on private army, rather than the mercenaries they had been.
Without those three, or worse the batarians, keeping trouble going, the galaxy had been quiet. The Citadel had been quiet. That last should have been a joyous thing, giving her more time for her hobbies like sculpting, and keeping in touch with her daughters. But it did rankle a little. A century ago, a wave of her hand would have seen fleets sent to action in minutes. A decade ago, an army would have formed at her word.
Now? She barely commanded C-Sec…no, that wasn't fair. Her voice carried the weight of the Council behind it, and even in a galaxy where they weren't the sole power, they were still a Power. Everyone knew the Titan War for the fluke it was. A battle too soon, against an enemy unknown, and a populace that barely fought back. She'd seen the recordings, and the strategic maps given by the salarians.
The batarians, for all that, on paper, had seemed to have the third(or perhaps even second!) strongest military, it had been…well only a paper tiger. The ships barely functioned, most had not been maintained for decades, if not full centuries, and the majority were equipped not for full scale combat, but instead for…cultural missions they liked to go on. No fleet had been fully deployed, and none of them armed even to the degree the Citadel would have considered minimum.
The STG report had actually pointed out that, had the turians been allowed to operate as they'd requested against them more than once, the war would have ended equally quickly. Perhaps less cleanly, as the Citadel charter had laws regarding the treatment of prisoners, and the wholesale slaughter of the batarian command chain was, if not warranted by their actions, then at least done far too brazenly for her comfort.
She had known some of those men, or at least their forefathers, who had been crushed under the heel of the Terrans. They were not good, but they were better than the scum the Terrans painted them all as. Some had been fighting against their peoples' worst excesses as they could. Cold comfort to the slaves in the pens, but still, they were not all the same style of monsters, and seeing them burned to ash alongside the rest was hard to think about.
Worse, the Terrans seemed ignorant of their own weaknesses. Thinking, for even an instant, that their fleet movements had not been observed, that the people in power were not aware of their fight against the 'Leviathan of Dis'. She had had the recording scrubbed, obviously. That thing was a horrifying reminder that there were things beyond the ken of any race known yet.
One of her sisters had seen fit to tell her the scans of it had matched certain data forms they would get, occasionally, from the Goddess' Own Cathedral on Thessia. That…it was disturbing. She, like most of her people's leaders, knew just what that temple contained. If the data matched…she was not sure what she would do, beyond perhaps praying for salvation, and waiting for the end to come.
Then today happened. Over the past years, her efforts to slowly reconcile with the Terrans had finally started to bear fruit. She'd gotten data, research projects, even some tourism started up. Never obviously with her backing, but still, if Prime Thinker Exedore looked, he'd find every one of the scientists contacting him through back channels had been on one or another grants she personally oversaw at some point in the past, though not into today for obvious reasons.
The Terrans had nearly been to the point where she might open a Citadel Embassy for them, and they one on Gloval Station. So close…and then this happened. Their colony on Eden Prime had uncovered the unthinkable, an intact prothean beacon. The readouts said it was smaller than the one she knew of, so likely not a full cache, but still, a functional one, something that hadn't been seen in this galaxy since their fall.
She'd thrown her full support behind the idea of retrieving it, and bringing it to a specialist in Citadel Space, along with whatever experts or equipment the Terrans wanted to bring with it. The Citadel scientific community had reams more data to work from in regards to it, and she might have let slip to the Federation's spies here on the Presidium that they had a working Prothean cypher from way back when…and while it was incomplete, it was more than they'd have.
She'd sent Nihilus along. He was already familiar with Garrus, who had been attached to the Gearbox Project for some time, and so, they'd work well together. That he also happened to be nearby when all this was found out was merely happenstance as far as she knew, though she wouldn't doubt her turian counterpart might have been having him keep an eye on the joint project, just in case.
They'd been careful not to let anything else leak out. The Prothean beacon was still unknown to the populace at large, though several concerned interests were aware of something. That was why the Citadel was abuzz today. Everyone who was anyone knew something was up, and some even knew a detail or two, and so, for the first time in a decade, this place was the center of activity for the galaxy again.
She sighed to herself as the elevator finally opened. She'd had time for all of that to go across her mind in the ride up. She'd complain, but that ride kept most people humble, since, if they caused trouble, they'd have been forced to stand there for nothing. She did, however, mentally note that she still wanted a chair installed in there. Something that folded out from the wall and hidden, so no one else could use it. It would never happen, it wouldn't do to appear weak after all. Still, standing in that space for a few minutes, followed by hours on the Council Dais was murder on her knees.
She still managed to smile as she exited, the C-Sec guarding the door trying to look like they hadn't just had their guns pointed at the door, just in case, as they stood at attention by them now. She saw a few petitioners standing back and away from them, ready to pounce the moment they thought she was free, so she ran her fingers over her head tendrils, getting them to undulate a little, before pulling out her omnitool and appearing to read a huge block of data, keeping them from coming closer.
Said block was gibberish, a gift from a dalatrass a few…centuries ago. Goddess but she felt old, knowing that woman, kind and sweet, had been dead for a dozen generations. Still, the gift served its purpose of LOOKING quite important as she moved easily through the people who had hoped to catch her alone for some personal beseeching. She kept an eye just turned upwards on them, observing them as she made her way to the dais, and then around it.
"You're late again. Some nice young maiden keeping you up all night again?" jibbed the turian Councilor, the third since the Titan War. She had been an unknown before that event, but since had come to be a leader amongst her people, earning her merits in battle and at the negotiation table enough that her predecessor had personally selected her for the position, finding her gentle enough to work with allies, and hard enough to break enemies.
"Now, now, our esteemed colleague was likely busy last night with the goings on in the Terran space again. It seems one of her projects has accomplished something major, if the data flow is any indication," said the salarian Councilor, a male. Not the first, to be fair, but odd that one of the dalatrasses didn't claim the seat for herself as they normally did. It showed how seriously they were taking this generation, to send a male, a former STG member at that, to represent their species on the Council.
Regardless, they took their positions, and the first petitioner took their spot on the stage. A hanar, representing the Church of the Enkindlers, requested, again, for them to open up a site on the turian colony on Feros for their people. It was, truth to tell, one of the more blatant ruins left by the protheans they worshiped, after all, and only recently opened to colonization by the Council due to circumstances in the galaxy, namely the need for more space, and information on their predecessors.
The previous turian Councilor had been behind that particular project, promising, of course, to share anything they found with the Council, as was right. Though other than an oddly large scale flora, something that seemed to cover a good chunk of the planet's crust, it was as empty as scans from orbit had said it was. The empty husks of a once thriving city planet, similar in layout to Illuim, but quiet and covered in dust.
They, as they had done at least once a month since the colony was founded, reminded the hanar representative that, until such time as the planet was deemed 'clean' no one save the original colonists, who'd signed all kinds of waivers, could be allowed to settle. It wouldn't take much longer, a few months at most, but still, the hanar were ever impatient when it came to the protheans and their ruins.
It was during the fifth petitioner that someone rushed up to them, an adjunct of the salarian Councilor, who showed no sense of decorum at all as she ran along the side of the dais, and then came to him, whispering something quickly in a coded language, designed to keep whatever was being spoken of a secret. Tevos knew whatever it was, was important, however, by the simple fact that the salarian's eyes drifted to the sides, showing they were trying to take in everything around them, a nervous tick she'd observed in many of them over her lifetime.
When it was over, the salarian turned to them, and conveyed two words with a set of handsigns they'd practiced for just this sort of occasion. There were several of them, some less useful than others, but when she saw his fingers bend in a way to indicate 'Terran' and then the word 'Attack' a moment later, she felt her spine go almost straight, as she wondered what could have happened to cause…whatever it was.
"Apologies to all petitioners, but an urgent matter has come to the attention of the Council. This supercedes all other business today, as it could impact the entire galaxy if not dealt with swiftly," she explained, and watched a ripple of concern pass over the crowd before her, but she held up a hand to silence them.
"There is, hopefully, no reason for concern. We already have agents in place to deal with any crisis, and we want everyone to know that their issues are important to us. As such, I would ask that you take written versions of your petition directly to my embassy in one hour's time. I will deal with them all personally, at the earliest moment I can," she said, and that calmed the crowd.
Tevos was, after all, pragmatic, and not one for hyperbole. If she said it was urgent, it must be, and if she said she'd make sure their concerns were heard, she'd make sure they were. That was the trust Tevos had with every race, and so C-Sec soon helped usher the numbers out into the elevators, leaving the Council to wait until the room was cleared to deal with something she hoped was a misunderstanding. And if not…well, all in the fullness of time.