Winning Peace - Chapter 52:

The embers I'd worked hard to keep smoldering had been fanned into a flame that was going to consume the galaxy if it wasn't stopped.

Which, admittedly, I could do fairly easily.

The issue was doing so in a manner which wouldn't immediately lead to the collective might of all of the alien races of the galaxy attempting to smash down on the Systems Alliance.

Both my own knowledge and countless simulations indicated that, were I to confront the reapers in combat openly and publicly and trounce them, it would be an enormous warning sign to the Citadel and the Empire that I truly and legitimately could destroy them at will. Which, again, was largely correct. But doing so would put me in the exact position I had worked diligently for decades to avoid cornering myself into. I very much could become the God King of the Milky Way Galaxy should I desire to, but... I didn't. Moreover, it was counterproductive to the goal of fostering a stable civilization to have peace only manifest at the spear-tip of a seemingly omnipotent emperor.

I didn't want to be in charge of that shit and the vast majority of sapient beings in the galaxy, humans included, didn't want me to be in charge either.

But if I just suddenly emerged publicly as a widely-known galactic power on my own with technologies tens or hundreds of thousands of years in advance of their own... well, the natural conclusion most nation-states would make is that the Stellar Council in specific and the Systems Alliance as a whole are simply my puppets and the reapers forced me into showing my hand rather than conquering the galaxy from the shadows as I'd clearly intended by keeping my true abilities secret!

Whereas, if I'd revealed my strength from the start, the other powers of the galaxy would have taken me for a threat anyway and openly prepared countermeasures against both myself and humanity. Even if it wouldn't have been particularly stable, there were good odds that the Empire and the Citadel would have signed a nonaggression pact in order to freeze out any possibility of the Systems Alliance forging friendly relations with the other. Under that atmosphere of suspicion and hostility, virtually any disaster that befell them would have been taken as a cause for war, my fault or not.

...and people wondered why I didn't want to rule these idiots.

But, thankfully, I didn't actually need to confront Harbinger.

I needed to kill him.

Those weren't the same thing.

Un-thankfully, however, Harbinger was playing smart. He was taking all of my hard work at getting the major galactic powers just distracted enough with internal problems I'd set up and turning them into major problems that monopolized their attention away from more regularly-patrolled areas and the like.

Which created gaps.

Gaps that could be exploited when the species in question had commitments ranging across wide sectors of space.

When the species in question was confined to a relatively small cluster of systems with a complex and multi-layered defensive network that could stop most attacks, though...

Well, the problems that scenario created were more akin to questions.

Very strongly worded questions that someone had to answer.

And, sadly, that someone had turned out to be me.

"The. Fuck." Selena Orbis stated as she dropped the tablet to the surface of her desk with a dull clatter, staring at me intensely. "The actual fuck, Lopez."

"Because time is of the essence, I need to ask you whether your shock and anger are at the fact that I took these courses of actions or if they're a result of anyone being able to, at all?" I asked plainly, bringing the woman up short. "If it's the first, I can apologize and offer substantive compensation once we're past the current crisis, including technology handovers to the Stellar Council and-or the Systems Alliance's government. If it's the latter, though, and you're angry over your worldview being disturbed by the fact that someone as powerful and capable as I am existed without your outright knowledge, I'd politely ask you to table the matter indefinitely and move on to more productive subjects."

There was a lengthy pause as Selena closed her eyes and took a deep calming breath.

As she did so, I pinged the FTL communications network in this body's skull and continued coordinating my responses to the reaper threat.

Finally, after a small biological eternity, Selena replied as she opened her piercing blue eyes. "Normally, this would be the stage where I yell at someone for their arrogance in presuming to lecture me, however... given what you've done both to and for humanity over your lifetime, I'm giving you a pass. Once. Regardless of whether or not you're some technocratic godling, Lopez, you're still a citizen of the state that I am the head of the duly-elected government for."

She narrowed her gaze suspiciously, and I could read the question on it before it was spoken.

"I manipulate people, not votes, and even then only seldom," I replied calmly, shaking my head. "There were a few candidates over the years that would have been... problematic, but I didn't stoop so low to tamper with the actual electoral process itself."

Selena gave a short scoff, but leaned back in a pose that made it obvious she was going to let the subject slide, either permanently or at least for the moment. "So, this isn't the Last Dogs, then?"

She made a motion and a screen popped up on the wall to my right, the image that of a serene-looking hermit sitting on a flattened stone in the lotus position. Around him was a managed forest complementing his grass-stained clothing that was, if still clean, definitely very worn.

It was a nice touch, I thought.

"-through the efforts of the illegitimate government which even now bows its head to the alien menace threatening us from all sides, our predecessors were brought low. Now we have reemerged, like the beasts in human form we are, after the great frost, to once again assault the towers of corruption and idolatry that mankind has built in our absence to worship the false gods of technological luxury and sloth."

There was a pause for the declaration to sink in before he continued.

"As before, when we attempted to enlighten humanity, we used the most destructive weapons of the age to show them the folly of their ways. Now, we deploy the weapons of this age against the hedonistic violations of the natural order our species has become. As we speak, human colonies are being assaulted by nano-technological machines programmed to devour and reproduce until there is nothing left of the people who have forsaken our natural homeworld."

She cut it off there, for which I was thankful.

The entire announcement was definitely in the style of the Last Dogs, echoing their manifesto from decades prior when the Short War had kicked off. Still...

"It's not the Last Dogs," I reiterated under Orbis' assessing gaze. "Putting aside the fact that I searched the crater I left behind when I dropped that tungsten slug on Mongolia and found nothing survived... this has all the hallmarks of a group parroting their ideology without understanding what they actually believed. If there's any humans behind this at all, of course."

"So you concede that it's possible some humans are involved in this alleged reaper plot," Selena stated.

I sighed and leaned back, giving her the point she wanted. "It's entirely possible that there's an off-grid community on some backwater asteroid or planetoid somewhere coordinating with Harbinger, but even then there wouldn't be a direct line of descent from the original Last Dogs to what we're seeing now."

"Explain," Selena ordered. "I'm going on an inter-system stream soon to explain to the population of humanity that there's no need to be afraid and that this is a group of imitators whose plans have already been thwarted by our defense systems. I need evidence."

"If these actually were the Last Dogs? The real, genuine article?" I asked rhetorically. "They'd have already decided that all of humanity that's been modified in any way by the Asclepius treatments, cyberization, or any form of gene-modding is too corrupted to save. They'd have detonated explosives on satellite stations, the various transit arcologies we've been building, and other artificial structures housing the majority of off-world humanity."

"So the colony worlds were distractions in truth, then?" Selena asked, calming somewhat as her questioning turned contemplative.

"They're definitely meant to have some effect," I corrected with a shake of my head. "But it's meant to be one of preoccupation, not a serious civilization-crippling wound. Targeting space-based infrastructure would have been much more damaging and could have easily allowed them to attack the colonies as a follow-up tactic to pour salt in the wound and disparage morale further."

"It's frankly horrifying that you understand the Dogs so well," Selena stated candidly, rising and beginning to pace behind her desk. "But yes, that's good. I can work with this. There's no chance of an actual attack on our infrastructure?"

"Not an effective one," I denied with a shrug. "I personally set the standards they use for construction in space. Frankly, you can detonate the same antimatter bombs we use for system defense inside an orbital station and it should be just fine. Oh, everyone in that sector will be dead, and everyone else onboard will feel something like a three-point-oh earthquake, but I over-engineered the hell out of virtually everything humanity's put up in space on top of making sure some genius didn't decide that it wasn't necessary to keep building to that standard."

Selena snorted, nodding. "And the reapers. You've got them... handled?"

I nodded, meeting her eyes again. "I'll send word if I have to actually step out of the shadows and what to expect if that happens, but I should be able to take care of everything behind the scenes."

She released an explosive sigh. "I can't believe the goddamn protheans were right. Jesus... an ancient race of biomechanical monsters piloted by rogue AI. It sounds like the plot of a bad science fiction novel."

"Or a decent trilogy of games," I stated, unable to help myself and completely earning the glare I got in response.

"If you're quite finished?" Selena asked. My silence apparently answered that, given she continued. "What exactly did you deploy to shut down the gray goo these imitators attempted to deploy?"

I sighed and rubbed at my chin, considering how detailed I needed to get. "In the simplest possible terms? I turned physics off locally."

"You... turned physics off?" Selena asked, and I could see the activity on her implants as she searched out images of the fallout of the attack.

Which were... ah, a bit unflattering as far as my threat-rating went.

They weren't craters, contrary to the common results of large impacts. Instead, once I'd activated a combination of Ancient and Aperture technologies, things had gotten decidedly odd. For the most part, they appeared like chaotic storm-wracked seas of ocean water abruptly frozen in a single moment. The strange matter that had been spawned from my little countermeasures had bled off, thankfully, but the residual effects made the normal matter take on decidedly odd appearances and effects.

"I made the area within a certain radius unable to support normal types of matter. Given that the nanomachines in question were, I believe, based on my own designs for the nanofabbers, I knew that sort of environment would destroy them," I explained further. "Frankly, if they managed to survive what I did? We'd have bigger problems than some rogue nanomachines."

And I meant that, too.

The 'Wipe Shit Clean' field I'd produced had been tested even against the quantum-locked material that made up the relays themselves. I doubted the reapers could reasonably be made of anything that sturdy given their mobility requirements and the power limitations of their own reactors, but that was the lowest-bound I was prepared to accept for a true anti-reaper weapon.

The only thing I'd consider actual overkill at this point would be something that made the entire galaxy uninhabitable.

Which, again, was something that I could do should push come to shove, but definitely not even close to a measure of first resort.

"As much as I want details on the incredibly-worrying weapons system you've just hinted at, I think I'll instead ask what you're going to do as far as the reapers go. Have they made their real move yet?" Selena asked.

I shook my head. "The batarians are only beginning to move their fleets and there's been nothing more to distract the salarians from the Citadel patrol-"

A chime interrupted my spiel as we both looked to the Prime Minister's console. As she spared me a glance, I shrugged and she sighed.

Turning my attention inwards as she took the communication at her terminal, I tracked the ships in motion and the network of gravitational sensors wrapped around specific targets. Harbinger had gotten lucky in his methodology and selection so far, capitalizing on the vastness of space and the speed of his own drives. It was just easier to pick a random spot somewhere in the galaxy and start shit than it was for me to actually catch someone doing so.

The space between star systems was just really goddamn big, after all.

And there was some weird shit out there after the reapers had wiped out unknown millions of civilizations over the past billion years.

Apparently the reapers really just didn't give a shit about traces of species surviving as long as they successfully wiped out the large-scale civilization itself. I'd already had deep space monitoring pick up two dozen different automated resource-gathering fleets operating out of isolated nebulae in remote areas or picking apart rogue planets. I'd even picked up a few megastructures that had slowly died a lingering death as their power sources ran themselves down in an attempt to keep the last vestiges of their people alive through the long harvest.

There was one large comet, in fact, that had been hollowed out and was running a bizarre kind of heavy-water fusion engine using mass effect principles that still had a few hundred thousand aquatic lizard people in cryo. And then there was the rogue satellite with the virtual aliens in it.

Just no reaper.

"Let me see if I have this correct," Selena stated in disbelief. "The asari are opening lines of communication over a possible joint military exercise?"

I blinked back to reality and raised an eyebrow.

My gaze met the Prime Minister's. Selena sighed and turned back to her console. "One moment, you'll have my answer after I consult an expert."

She muted the line and looked at me expectantly.

"Ever since I wiped the STG out, the central council of matriarchs has moved their meetings and set new security standards," I replied to the unasked question pointedly. "So I can't say for sure, not without getting invasive to a level I don't believe is necessary right now, but I'd say there's an even chance they're planning for contingencies."

"Do they know about the reapers?" Selena asked bluntly.

I nodded. "They suspect, at least. I can say that much for sure, but I don't believe they're treating the threat with the kind of gravitas it deserves. There's a kind of institutional arrogance within the asari government that can only come from forcing the galaxy to dance to your tune, more or less, for the last five thousand years or so."

"I see," Selena nodded. "That's much the same feel I get from them, yes. Do you think we should go through with it?"

"If you do, prepare to be attacked," I stated frankly. "Even if these are covert exercises, expect Harbinger to have chosen a pawn to observe asari fleet movements to better select a time to attack the Citadel. Given the relatively less problematic status of the asari compared to the salarians and the batarians, I haven't put their entire civilization under the kind of microscope I have the others."

"So it's entirely possible that one or more individuals within the Republics is indoctrinated," Selena surmised. "And they'll be feeding Harbinger information."

"It's possible, hypothetically even, that this entire operation could be an attempt to sabotage human-asari relations to the point that hostilities ensue, drawing down the Citadel garrison fleet to a skeleton crew. All of it under the guise of preparing to cooperate against the reapers." I explained.

Selena considered that in silence for a moment, then nodded. "You'll be watching the joint exercise? Assuming we go through with it, I mean."

I nodded. "I won't drop stealth unless Harbinger himself appears, but I'll be available for assistance in case someone tries to start something or the Collectors show themselves again."

"Then I think we'll move forward with the plan," Selena stated, frowning. "On the condition that we're allowed to bring a supplemental force of turian vessels as observers."

I nodded appreciatively. "A good way to gauge their commitment."

"What will you be pursuing while we're planning this?" Selena asked directly.

I sighed. "I'm going to be looking into an alternative strategy I've been putting off. Just in case things go south, I'd like to have another ace up my sleeve. So... I guess it's time to go talk to a sentient plant monster."