Chapter 21
After a two week shakedown cruise around Alliance space, the Normandy rendezvoused with the expeditionary group comprising ships from the first fourth and first fleets in a system a hundred light years out from the Widow system. This system being comprised of a red giant star that had millions of years ago devoured any planets it may have had in orbit was of little interest to anyone outside of the sciences, and provided a great staging port for the Alliance "Coming out" party. In the lead was the MSV Mayhem, with the Quarian Admiralty, Admiral Steven Hackett, and Prime Minister Hannah Shepard.
All ships were undergoing last minute checks, and were coordinating with Rothschild's help to avoid comm chatter being picked up through conventional radio chatter. The gig would be up if some Citadel Defense Force cruiser stumbled upon all of them before the big reveal. After an hour or so had passed, Admiral Xen said,
"Prime Minister, all ships report ready."
"Excellent. Rothschild, Please open a channel to the fleet." She said. For once he complied without a sarcastic rebuke.
"Ladies and gentlemen, today we turn the page and open an exciting new chapter in the history of the Alliance. It is our intention to make peaceful contact with these species, while at the same time demonstrating that we will not be cowed, and make no mistake, we will NOT be forgetting their treatment of our Quarian brothers and sisters. The next few hours will mark a dawning of a new era, whether it's one of peace and prosperity, or war and bloodshed lies in the hands of our soon to be hosts. When we arrive, I want barriers up but weapons cold, and listen on all frequencies for any communication from them. Admiral Hackett, the fleet is yours." She concluded.
"All ships, Forward!" He shouted, and with a deep rumble the Mayhem's FTL drive activated, hurling them and the entire fleet of hundreds towards the Widow system.
"ETA?" Hackett asked.
"Two minutes." the pilot responded.
"Are you all ready?" Hackett asked the Quarian Admiralty.
"As ready as possible. I am both excited and nervous." Admiral Raan said.
"Understandable, these people treated you like garbage for hundreds of years, it's hard to confront a bully even when you bring your family along." he said.
"Family.. Keelah, we well never tire of expressing our thanks to you and your people." Admiral Korris said.
"Our people." Hannah Shepard corrected.
"Three races, One Alliance, One people. You are our brothers and sisters, never forget this." Hackett contributed. Meanwhile on the Normandy, Captain Anderson was ordering status updates for all stations, all reported green.
"This oughtta be fun." Shepard said.
"ETA one minute." Joker announced over the intercom. All non-vital staff were gathered at the CIC standing behind the seated officers. Tali was seated at a console to Shepard's right that was set up specifically to allow her to monitor engineering status from the CIC.
"Keelah, I'm so nervous." Tali said.
"Why?" Shepard asked, Anderson looking over, interested in her input.
"When I came to the Citadel on my pilgrimage, everyone was so hostile. You couldn't ask for directions without someone spitting at you and calling you 'suit rat.'" Tali explained.
"Suit rat? Seriously that's the best they could come up with?" Shepard asked.
"It probably makes more sense before it's translated." Tali said.
"I expect we're probably going to be hearing that and worse until we've sufficiently... made our point." Anderson contributed.
"I bet they call us naked monkeys or something dumb like that." Baxter suggested.
"Well us monkeys and rats gotta stick together." Shepard said, wrapping a reassuring arm around her girlfriend. Tali said nothing but felt an enormous amount of gratitude towards Shepard for that gesture.
"Aaaaaand showtime!" Joker's voice announced as they dropped out of FTL.
Meanwhile on the Citadel, a relatively young Asari flight controller was just sitting back down to her station after retrieving a cup of tea. Scrolling through a log, she noticed an anomaly with a Salarian freighter trying to secure space at the docking bay. Their actual mass was 1.2% above their reported mass, and any discrepancy over 1% requires cargo inspeciton. She brought up her omnitool and began placing the order when the high pitch shriek of an alarm on her console and a few hundred contacts appearing on her proximity monitory resulted in the screen being sprayed by the tea that was previously in her mouth.
"GODDESS!" she yelled, opening a channel to the council's office in the presidium.
"This is Flight Controller D'Venna we have hundreds of signals that just appeared out of nowhere twenty million kilometers beyond the Citadel!" She reported.
"What do you mean 'Just appeared?'" an Asari with vivid face markings asked.
"Councilor Tevos! Forgive me. They were not there before and a second later the screen showed hundreds of contacts. Oh my, one of them is four kilometers long!" she reported.
"Confirmed. Goddess, Most of them match no known specifications, but some of them show... Quarian designs? What the hell?" she said.
"Orders Ma'Am." D'Venna asked the councilor.
"Close the arms! I'll contact c-sec and inform Councilors Spartaus and Valern." The counselor said.
"Acknowledged. D'Venna out." She said and began issuing the orders to close the arms.
A station-wide alert went out all over the citadel sparking of a panic that had everyone tripping all over each other trying to find shelter. C-Sec it appears, were not very effective at crowd control, though that makes sense they're not used to huge panicky groups of people fearing for their lives. Eventually one young Turian C-sec officer got up on crate and using an amplifier in his omni-tool addressed a crowd in the wards.
"Everybody stop what you're doing!" he shouted "The station is not in imminent danger, a number of identified ships have been spotted but weapons are powered down. Proceed calmly down the corridor and follow officer T'Kenno here into the commercial area, that is the safest place on the citadel. Keep an eye on your omni-tool for news updates. Now come on let's go." He said, and surprisingly everyone complied, getting into line and slowly following the Asari c-sec officer leading them out.
"Good work, Vakarian." a deep, Turian voice said from behind him.
"Councilor Spartaus sir, Do you know what's going on?" he asked.
"It looks like the Quarians found some new friends. We're not sure who they are but they have some serious hardware parked about 20 million kilometers away. The defense fleet is readying now, but so far they haven't made any moves. They just appeared out of nowhere apparently." Spartaus explained
"Serious hardware? What kind of ships? I thought the Quarian ships were generally in rough shape." Vakarian asked.
"These ships aren't of Quarian design, but they feature a lot of commonalities with known Quarian ship design. Too many for it to be coincidence. Dozens of frigates and cruisers, at least 10 dreadnoughts, and three ships of unknown class that make the dreadnoughts look minuscule. Their flagship is a 4 kilometer monster with multiple accelerators going the length of the hull.
"Spirits, where did they find enough eezo to move that much ship?" Vakarian asked.
"We have no idea, but we're detecting very little Eezo from their ships. They must have a way to hide it, but it isn't perfect." the Councilor said.
"Sir, you should find the other Councilors and hunker down, if they land you're going to be a prime target." Vakarian said.
"You're right. Excellent work here Vakarian, keep doing what you're doing." he said, an headed off towards the Presidium.
"Do you know what they're doing there, Admiral Xen?" Hackett asked aboard the Mayhem.
"They're closing the citadel, standard procedure for when they come under attack. It's been millennia since that happened last though." She said with no small amount of smugness.
"Interesting. Have we picked up anything on comms?" He asked the room in general.
"Nothing heading our way sir. Plenty of comm traffic but it's mostly panicked section heads and pilots asking for status updates." a comm officer piped up.
"Ok. Do we have all the council languages loaded into the translation matrix?" she said. When a comm officer confirmed, she continued. "
Let's introduce ourselves. Please open a channel." she said. Within a few seconds a nervous looking Asari's face appeared above a holographic projector.
"Goddess, they look so much like us." She muttered before catching herself. "Forgive me, I'm Ania D'Venna, flight control officer aboard the Citadel." She introduced herself.
"Hi sweetie, are the Council in?" Hannah asked, smirking. It's fun to have the upper hand.
"Uh, yes, Um Let me see." She stammered, working the controls on her console.
"I will transfer you to Councilors Tevos of the Asari Republics, Valern of the Salarian Union and Spartaus of the Turian Hierarchy." She said.
"Thank you so much sweetie." Hannah said. The Asari didn't know how to respond so she just transferred them forward.
Once the call was transferred, Hannah Shepard didn't give them the chance to say anything, instead she introduced herself.
"Hello Councilors, I am Prime Minister Hannah Shepard of the Earth Systems Alliance. I hope you are having a pleasant day." She said.
"Greetings, Prime Minister. I beg your forgiveness, but why is it that you decided to bring a war fleet to the citadel?" Spartaus asked.
"War fleet? Oh this little thing. This is just my personal escort. The war fleet is back in our home system... preparing." She said. This of course was a bit of a bluff, more than half of the Alliance's operational fleet were present at the citadel.
"Goddess, preparing for what?" Tevos asked, fear evident on her face.
"That depends. See a little while ago, we were exploring the systems around our planet when we stumbled upon the Quarian migrant fleet. They traveled through what we now know as the Arcturus relay and appeared in rather rough shape at our doorstep." Shepard continued.
"Then, we talk to these Quarians who tell us a story about how they were exiled from their home planet 300 years ago by AI who went rogue, and your response to that was to expel them from the citadel and shun them." Hannah said, all pleasantness draining from her face.
"Four hundred million escaped Rannoch 300 years ago, and by the time they found us they were but 17 million, starving, their ships in ruins." She said.
"Then come to find out they all but disappear off the face of the galaxy. Barring the few who chose to live permanently amongst your people, they recalled their pilgrims and disappeared. We have more than a year's worth of intercepted comm logs, and yet the only ones looking for the Quarians were debt collectors."
"They experimented with AI, a direct violation of citadel law, and now we find out they activated a dormant relay, and you expect us to spend our resources helping these criminals?" Valern spouted.
"They were dying. Thanks in no small part to your self-righteousness and greed." Shepard responded
"The suit rats brought their ruin upon themselves and came begging to us for help, of course we left them to their fate." Spartaus replied.
"Hold your tongue, Spartaus, or I'll tear it from your head. Those 'suit rats' are my brothers and sisters." Hannah growled. The Quarians were stunned by her vehemence, and also touched. Raan smiled and wiped a tear from her eye. The Councilors were equally taken aback by her change in pace.
"Now if you're done showing my people just how callous and ignorant you are, the next point on our agenda is the Batarians. A short while ago we were off in our system doing our own thing when all of a sudden one of our stations was attacked by a group of people who insisted that they were not acting in an official capacity on behalf of the Batarian Hegemony. The same Batarian Hegemony that has an embassy and is engaged with diplomacy and trade with the Citadel Council."
"And?" Tevos asked. "As the Batarians were not acting in Citadel space, they have broken no Citadel laws." She explained.
"And your characterization of the Quarians as outlaws for activating the Arcturus relay?" Shepard demanded.
"Irrelevant, they knew of the law and they broke it. It applies to the entire relay system." Spartaus said.
"That's cute. So back to the point, what do you plan on doing about the Batarians?" Shepard inquired.
"I don't see how them attacking your station is our problem." Tevos sneered. Shepard's grin turned predatory.
"Steve, if you would please?" She asked Hackett.
"Yes Ma'am." Admiral Hackett said, issuing orders to his tactical officer. The ship very slightly vibrated as an antimatter torpedo shot out of its tube at a thousandth of the speed of light, exploding seemingly immediately off the starboard side of the citadel close enough that the entire station shook, knocking councilors Tevos and Valern off their feet. Shepard gave them a few minutes to regain their footing.
"That, esteemed councilors, was a Mark 4 Antimatter warhead. We consider that one to be of "medium" yield. Now, as I was saying, what do you plan on doing about the Batarians?" Shepard asked, her false jovial tone returning.
"May we have a moment to confer?" Tevos asked.
"By all means." Shepard responded. The councilors then muted the feed and began an animated discussion.
"You guys need anything? Drinks? A snack perhaps?" Shepard asked the Quarian admirals. Xen started snickering while Raan commented,
"Keelah, I can't believe in the face of this force they would still act like that. And to think we actually hoped to have a Quarian councilor some day."
"Honestly I've only known them for a few minutes and so far I'm thoroughly unimpressed." Shepard remarked.
"Reload torpedo tube 1, tubes 7-12 stand down and unload." Hackett ordered to weapon control. Prime Minister I think we should consider deploying Rothschild's 'Birthday Present' now while they're distracted." Hackett continued.
"Yes, good idea. Rothschild, would you please?" She asked seemingly nobody
"Right away Ma'am!" The AI Responded. It was too small to see from a distance, but at that point a tiny unmanned probe launched from the Mayhem and attached itself to the outside of the Citadels hull. Rothschild monitored comms and sensors on the Citadel and determined after a few minutes that it had not been detected.
"Package is installed and awaiting deployment." He said.
"Excellent thank you very much Rothschild." She said.
"My pleasure!" Rothschild said as he disappeared and resumed whatever horrors he was committing in the mainframe.
"What was that?" Raan asked.
"Oh that's right you were getting your suit therapy when we discussed this." Shepard said. "So we knew coming in that the Council was likely to be... disagreeable. We figured a bit of saber rattling might get them to get off their asses even if a little bit, but we also know that they're not likely to forget it any time soon so we left a little something to help us keep an eye on things, and maybe keep them on their toes." She said.
"It's a mobile projector and standalone fab unit that's going to build a tiny fusion-powered mainframe completely independent of the Citadel's systems, but tapped into it. It will transmit their comm traffic via QEC to Earth where Rothschild will be waiting to devour it and let us know if they decide to get belligerent. It will also allow Rothschild to hijack the station's holo emitters and project his presence aboard. That's actually a birthday present to Rothschild, he wanted to be able to "terrorize jerks" as he put it." Hackett elaborated. Raan laughed so hard she snorted.
"We have come to a consensus." Valern announced.
"Of Course, Councilor." Shepard said.
"We will... Investigate the Batarian situation. We will ask them to leave Human space alone." Valern continued.
"Alliance space, Councilor. The alliance belongs to Humans, Quarians and Rothschild." Shepard corrected.
"What is a Rothschild?" Tevos asked.
"DON'T YA TOUCH ME POT 'O GOLD YA BLUE-SKINNED HARPY!" Rothschild in his Leprechaun form leapt out of her omnitool and started dancing a jig atop a projected mountain of gold coins. Tevos screamed and cowered in terror as the AI finished his dance, bowed, then exploded into a shower of holographic coins.
"Rothschild is an AI. I think he likes you." Shepard explained.
"Spirits, you created an AI too? What were you thinking?" Spartaus said as Tevos slowly regained her feet and bent slightly in a vain attempt at hiding the wet spot on the front of her dress.
"Trust me, I ask myself that every day. Shepard out." She cut the connection and everyone on the bridge burst into laughter.
"Keelah, he made Tevos piss herself! Oh it does this old heart good to see that bitch brought down a peg." Korris said while laughing hysterically.
"I think that'll do for today. Let's go home, Admiral Hackett" Shepard said.
"Yes Ma'am. All ships, set a course for Earth space." Hackett ordered to the fleet, and immediately afterwards the ships began popping out of Widow's vicinity. Shepard gestured for everyone to take a seat as she did.
"So I think that went well how about you guys?" Shepard said.
A still image of Tevos cowering in terror, her dress stained with urine before a three-foot holographic leprechaun became a common desktop background on the PDAs of those yet to adopt an implanted omnitool. Even those who generally did not indulge in schadenfreude couldn't help but take pleasure in their humiliation after learning of the Council's mistreatment of their Quarian brothers and sisters.
After their fateful meeting with the Council, a transport with a heavily armed escort flew into Batarian space and returned the captured Batarians from Arcturus Station's brig. The soldiers tasked with guarding them had wanted to give them a hearty goodbye meal consisting of Quarian food so that their return trip would be as miserable as possible, but their Lieutenant shut that down. The Alliance wasn't going to go around committing war crimes. The fleet after returning the Batarians left them with a simple message to pass along to their superiors. "Don't try it. Trust me." Was all they said before returning to Alliance space.
Meanwhile, the fleet as a whole began rotating shifts of patrols around what was generally accepted to be Alliance space. Most of it was empty systems, but there were a few habitable planets with colonies, all of which were thriving. Rothschild took it upon himself to design atmospheric stabilizers for the colonies on planets with borderline conditions. For all his bluster he deeply loved his organic family.
The Normandy proved itself vital in their efforts at expanding, especially now that they were known to the rest of the galaxy. The council had not had enough time to gather detailed information about their new neighbors but had disseminated images of their vessels. The Normandy was for all intents and purposes, unless it decided to be otherwise, invisible and operated with impunity. This was good because on two occasions they began the initial surveying of a planet only to discover that it was already inhabited by Batarians.
The Alliance vastly outgunned the Batarians, even if they got help from the council, but they were in no hurry to start wars with the other races. Beyond avoiding needless killing, while their soldiers and weaponry were superior, their total population was vastly outstripped by the big three races on their own, let alone combined. The colonies were stimulating population growth but not nearly enough to support a protracted war.
Meanwhile Tali's reaction to her immunotherapy was not what they'd hoped for. After a week she took off her helmet, much to her lover's delight, but within six hours she was coughing and wheezing. They had injected another dose and today was the day that they were set to try again.
"Are you sure you want to try again?" Shepard asked for the third.
"Jane, it's going to be ok. Doctor Chakwas is right over there." Tali said gesturing to the general direction of the medbay.
"Just last time, that coughing. God I couldn't.." Shepard said. Jane cupped her face with her hand.
"Jane please, it will be ok." She reassured. Shepard closed her eyes and nodded. Tali reached up, and unclasped the latch on her face mask. A hiss was heard and the mask came off. Shepard insisted that every time she saw Tali's face she was more beautiful. Of course she was biased, but that sentiment was shared amongst the crew.
"Jesus..." Jane said, once again captivated by the ethereal beauty of her love.
"Jane we've been over this, it's Tali." She laughed. Shepard smiled, and went in for a kiss.
"Ugh Get a room." Captain Anderson said, grinning at the couple.
"Aye Aye, Captain." Jane said, dragging Tali into their shared cabin. Anderson grinned and shooked his head, then continued along his way to the Cockpit.
"How's she holding Up, Joker?" He asked
"Everything's in the green, ETA 14 hours to Cochrane." He reported.
"Very good. Everything to your liking up here, son?" Anderson asked.
"Well I could use someone posted here to go and get me some coffee. Preferably someone Swedish, or Quarian." Jeff joked.
"Sure I'll get right on that, Flight Lieutenant. Alert me if there any changes." Anderson joked back.
"Yes Sir. Thanks for checking in." Joker replied. So far he had been pleasantly surprised by the crew of the Normandy. Most of the time when piloting a ship, people were either quick to ridicule him for his health condition, or they treated him like he was made of glass and went out of their way to "help" him. Aboard the Normandy, nobody seemed to worry so much. They were aware of his condition, but were neither cruel nor overly helpful. That suited him fine, all he wanted to do was take care of himself.
Suddenly the proximity alert went off, and Joker sprang to action. As he'd just reported to Anderson they weren't expected at Cochrane station for 14 hours, between here and there was supposedly just a bunch of empty space. Joker engaged active stealth and put an alert out to all command staff. Within Minutes Captain Anderson, and a flustered looking Lieutenant Commander Shepard and Lieutenant Zorah were in the cockpit requesting a status update.
"We spotted them a few minutes ago and I engaged active stealth immediately. I don't think they spotted us." Joker said.
"Shit." Captain Anderson said. "Get command on the line."
"Yes, Sir." Shepard responded and sat at one of the auxiliary stations adjacent to the cockpit. Within a few minutes Hackett appeared on the view screen.
"Any reason you decided to wake me up at this ungodly hour, Anderson?" Hackett asked.
"Sir, we're 14 hours away from Cochrane and we just spotted 40 ships of Batarian make. If they stay on course they'll be in Alliance space this time tomorrow." Anderson responded.