Winning Peace - Chapter 44:

"Look! He's walking!" Sasha squealed happily.

"C'mon Casey, come to Daddy," I called out, extending my hands to be ready to catch my son. The tiny human's face was a mask of concentration, if in an infantile way, as he toddled forward. One step. Then two. Then three. He gurgled happily, which was of course, when his focus failed him and he began to tumble forward, right into my hands. "A~aaand, there we go. Your first steps, Casey! So amazing!"

Sasha blinked rapidly, sniffling as she rubbed at her eyes. "Oh my god, I can't believe it! My little boy's walking!"

Casey cried out, a noise that was obviously more excitement than unhappiness, and reached out for his mom. Chuckling, I leveraged the boy over to her waiting arms as she hugged him tightly and made cheering noises.

Heaving myself to my feet, I sighed and popped my neck. "Okay, Daddy's got a call to take. So if I have to go put out a fire, I'll be back by dinner. And after I've left whoever's annoying me during family time a smoking crater."

Sasha rolled her eyes. "Please don't turn our child into a mad scientist, Z."

I grinned and knelt down again, booping my son on his nose. "Nonsense, I don't need to turn him into anything. He'll be holding planets hostage all on his own soon enough."

"Boo!" Casey cried, babbling in something that wasn't quite a language yet, but I put that down to not-quite-developed vocal chords.

Sasha chuckled, even if it appeared to be against her own best attempts.

Soon enough, I was stepping away to another room and sighing as I 'answered' the insistent feeling of an incoming call. Honestly, I was probably going to go back to a ringing noise of some kind. I'd implemented the new sensory input indicator to stop the annoyance that was a phone ringing. Instead, I'd simply found a more annoying way for a system to notify you of an incoming call.

'You've got Ezekiel Lopez. What's the sitch?'

'Sitch-ah, situation. Yes sir, I'm terribly sorry to interrupt, especially when your message service replied with that kind of response-'

I cut the young man off, sensing that he'd drawn the short stick in calling me. I was only going to get excuses out of him unless and until I prompted him to cut to the chase. 'It's fine. What's going on that you need me?'

I could have entirely just pulled the data from their servers, but I was still working on that. There was some fun to be had in playing the omniscient sage of the digital age, but it was also kind of annoying when people started taking it for granted that you'd show up if you were 'needed.' A few incidents like that had popped up where neo-net talking heads decided that me not solving their problems now that I'd come out of retirement was somehow failing in my duty as a 'public servant.'

To quote an old meme, 'And I took that personally.'

'Ah, well... there's a new arrival through the Hot Gates Pass, sir. The turian garrison cleared them from the other side and they have diplomatic credentials. We've identified their vessel as legitimate envoys from Rannoch with quarian and, ah... geth diplomats in tow. The higher-ups want you to go over their scans to make sure the artificial intelligence isn't a threat and..."

'And?'

I pressed.

'Well, the quarian diplomat is asking for you personally. His name is Rael'Zorah and he's asking about... some kind of exchange? I'm sorry, I think he's obfuscating and our translators don't have much experience with his dialect. Or quarian languages at all, really.'

Mentally, I mapped out the path I'd need to take to get to what was becoming known as the 'Hot Gates.' It was a somewhat poetic reference to the ancient mountain pass in Greece otherwise known as Thermopylae. The chain of secondary relays that I'd mapped out, in my defense, wasn't all that dangerous to the vessels I'd constructed and allowed my post-human students to use. It wasn't even all that dangerous to normal human interstellar craft... as long as they were careful.

To Citadel craft? Which broadly included the turians?

It was... substantially more dangerous.

One of the systems, for instance, had a triple set of neutron stars (two of which were pulsars) that, due to their orbital pattern, behaved fairly erratically. Of course, the system was incredibly rich in element zero and was the subject of a joint human-turian mining venture being currently planned, but even the two ice giants were unsettling with how close their orbits were to each other. Often, atmospheric material from the two would stretch across the void between them during their closest brushes. The moons they'd once had were long-since crushed into ring material or flung out into their own strange orbital patterns that acted more like particularly large comets than planets.

The other three relay systems along the chain weren't necessarily less dangerous, either. It was just that each one had its own specific and unique set of tumultuous obstacles to avoid. Which, in fairness, if one was willing to take their time and make a wide parabolic arc around the systems using short hops of superluminal travel to minimize charge buildup, they'd be fine. Human and accosian ships were less vulnerable, but could still be disastrously affected by the strobes of radiation being emitted from the pulsars' poles just for example.

My ships could just tank a hit from that and only respond by pointing and laughing.

Funnily enough, it was in the process of being registered as one of most treacherous relay chains known to the wider galaxy, right up there with the worst parts of Sigurd's Cradle. The latter of which was infamous for unknown navigation hazards and hidden pirate nests making ships disappear without a trace. It probably didn't help that it was on the edge of the New Prothean Empire territory and a vicious battleground of proxy forces being funded by both sides.

Well, in addition to the billion-year-old clutch of Leviathans hiding out there.

But nobody knew about that except for me.

'If they came through the Hot Gates, they must have come into Hierarchy space via the Illium Crossing. That means they came through Citadel space from the Hegemony access to quarian controlled territory.'

In other words, it wasn't easy to get to Alliance territory from Rannoch, due in large part to the prothean attitude towards travel through their territory. They allowed private vessels, unlike the Alliance, but there were strict licensing and inspection protocols on top of a detainment policy that was best described as 'arbitrary.' Everything got a lot easier if you were an imperial subject, of course, but even vessels flying diplomatic flags wouldn't be immune from some level of hassle. And, if the protheans were feeling especially spicy, they could provoke a diplomatic incident and you'd be stuck in a very opulent cell (as had almost happened to me) for an unknown amount of time.

Which meant it was safer, if more time-consuming, to make the grand detour through batarian space as long as you were on good terms with them. Contrary to my dim memories of the games and stories I'd once read, Hegemony space was well-ordered and clean of any threats that might endanger the valuable shipping lanes that carried so much sentient cargo between their worlds and into Citadel territory proper.

At the very least, the asari had been somewhat effective at 'civilizing' the batarians over the past thousand or more years.

But that meant nothing against the cost in sentient lives.

Which reminds me...

'Yes sir, and they're understandably a bit anxious about how they're being received. As neither Earth nor the Alliance have formal diplomatic ties with Rannoch, this is somewhat... well, important.'

I refrained from sighing. Everything seems to be 'important' these days.

'Tell them I'll be on-site within twenty-four hours. You can let your bosses know that I'm in transit and will be unreachable during that time. They'll know who to pass it along to.'

'Ah, yes sir! Thank you very much!'

Once I cut the line, though, I gave in to the urge to sigh and returned to spend a few more hours with my wife and son. That, at least, was a perk of the position. Considering I could appear through a portal at my destination at virtually any time I wanted to, I could leave when I damned well pleased and fuck anyone who objected to it.

"Daddy's back!" I called out, watching Casey's eyes light up as Sasha held him out to me.

Thermopylae Station was a burgeoning trade hub just coming into its own.

Formerly, it had been something of a dead-end system with a number of sleeping relays strewn about a group of fairly unremarkable planets with two asteroid belts. There was one possible candidate for terraforming, but it'd require a great deal of work to get the blasted rock on the edge of the habitable zone of the local star into something that could actually support life.

As it was, the year since First Contact with the turians and subsequent discovery that this system led, through a series of secondary relays, to their own claimed space.

Which meant it was both militarily important and economically viable.

So the Alliance had started to build another cooperatively developed system. A second rachni queen had taken up residence on one of the hot Jupiter's moons, and the accoasians were growing the crystal substrate for their technology on the outermost gas giant's two largest moons. Humanity, meanwhile, had seized upon one of the larger asteroids and towed it into position to act as the building block for a new space station and defensive emplacement while the antimatter plants near the star were coming online.

I decided to take the Wing Zero out for another spin, since it was awesome and my inner child screamed for delight every time I did so.

"This is Ezekiel Lopez in the Mobile Suit Fighter Form coming in. I am shedding stealth now, you should see me on sensors," I called out through the laser communication grid.

"This is Thermopylae Station, Dr. Lopez. We read you loud and clear. Thanks for the warning. We've got you an available port in Section One. Dock 7, please." The young woman on the other end replied, relief evident in her void informing me that she'd doubtless seen clips of my bad behavior with other authority figures.

"Roger that, loud and clear. ETA is two minutes," I called back, relaxing into the cockpit and letting autopilot takeover the docking maneuver. I could have, I supposed, but it was actually pretty boring to park your vehicle. Even when it was a multi-ton aerospace fighter.

The short burst of free time did give me a moment to contemplate who I was meeting, though.

Rael'Zorah.

It wasn't a name that was particularly familiar to me, but felt like someone was ringing a distant bell. When I'd scrolled through the documentation on the man, though, his daughter's name had stood out much more firmly.

Tali'Zorah.

I had the vaguest feeling her name should have been longer, though. I think it had something to do with a cultural shift after the quarian people had lost their war against the geth and fled in the vast flotilla of ships they'd called home. I think they'd adopted the names of the ships they served on, or something like that?

There was a greater question, though. Tali had existed in the game I'd once played, briefly, and read about copiously. Of course, I'd seen 'familiar' faces before this point, but it was one thing to learn that Matriarch Aethyta was a Citadel Councilor instead of a... bartender? Whatever. The point was that asari were exceptionally long-lived and their big political actors would probably change the least even after such a massive shift in the history of the galaxy. It was odd that she still had a daughter named Liara, but... well, the name may have held a sentimental attachment for the older woman and any daughter she had was going to get it, no matter what.

It was the same reason I hadn't really been startled to see Urdnot Wrex as the head of his clan serving under the turian military as a respected Krogan Battlemaster.

Rael and Tali were another matter.

Simply put, they shouldn't exist.

Or, well... it was unlikely that they should exist, at least. Especially with such an uncanny resemblance to the versions of themselves from the game I knew of. The galaxy had deviated so much that it was downright odd to see two people so familiar show up like that. The mad scientist that Rael had apparently taken as his second wife (contemporary to the first) seemed familiar, too.

But... at the end of the day, I couldn't really argue that two or three people 'shouldn't exist' or anything. It was probably just a quirk of fate or an odd resonance in an eight-dimensional multiversal membrane or something. Nothing too strange, just... a little more odd for the fact that they'd shown up asking for me, specifically.

I discreetly high-fived an engineer stepping up to take care of my Wing Zero, the feeling of deja vu passing by as I saw my own face from another angle flashing by for a moment before it was gone.

Greeting a more official member of the diplomatic team on-site, I got a brief rundown of the situation, then stopped and stared.

"She wants what?" I asked, taken by real surprise for the first time in a long while.

"She wants to apprentice under you, Dr. Lopez." Max Caulfield, the short-straw who'd called me the previous day explained, flushing a bit. "Not in so many words, of course, but that's the feeling I got from her and her father."

I rubbed at my chin, looking through the monitor to where Rael and Tali were surrounded by four geth platforms, each lightly armed with a variant of plasma weaponry I wasn't overly familiar with. As much as I knew about quarian history and technology, that field didn't perfectly overlap with the geth's and I'd been reluctant to poke the gestalt AI too much just out of an abundance of caution. I'd had their programs under observation enough to know they hadn't been Indoctrinated or anything, but...

Well, perhaps I'd subconsciously wanted to leave myself a few puzzles to amuse myself with.

"What's her father's take on this?" I asked, observing the clear-plated helmet that the quarian man wore.

"He seems rather... taciturn, if I'm reading their body language right," Max replied, shaking his head. "I don't think he approves much of this entire attempt. Or, at least, his daughter being along."

"Hmm," I nodded, frowning. "It wouldn't be the first time I've had a student..."

Max blinked, turning to me in surprise. "I... hadn't known that. Sir."

I chuckled. "And you weren't meant to. Well, at any rate, I can guarantee that the geth aren't a problem for our network. There are inbuilt safeties for programs like theirs that make it hard for them to freely move about the neo-net. I suppose it's nice that those are finally paying off after so long."

The diplomat clearly didn't know what to say to that as I kept watching our guests curiously.

Is this something I want to do? Maybe. Will it distract me from what needs to be done? No. Worse comes to worst, I'll just lock her in a closet for a few hours while I save the galaxy. Is there a reason not to?

"It's a transparent attempt at espionage," Max stated, looking back at me. "The Prime Minister has asked that you not give away another technology base to a foreign race, also."

That caused me to laugh aloud.

"No, no... I don't think the quarians are in a place to need that kind of gift," I stated, waving him off. "Hmm... perhaps... I've been meaning to check in on the turians, actually. I do, nominally, have diplomatic duties I can attend to, even if I'm still suspended from official service. The investigation is finishing up anyway and they don't look to want my head on a platter. Yet."

"I don't think the Prime Minister would have an issue with you making an official visit to the Hierarchy," Max stated, his tone carrying a 'you've done all the damage you can there,' feel to it.

"Equally obvious as the technology angle, they're trying to bait the Citadel into a more secure position. I can't imagine the asari, salarians, and batarians are all that comfortable with a gestalt AGI running an organic civilization like caretakers at a zoo," I reasoned, beginning to see the angles. "Relations have been pretty cold between them and the Citadel for the last few centuries, but they've warmed up recently. This may be an attempt to move that trend along faster."

"Or it could simply be a corporate oligarch meddling in politics where he doesn't belong," Max muttered, only seeming to realize what he'd said once it had passed his lips. Then he blushed deeply. "No offense meant, sir."

I chuckled again, slapping the man on the back. "No offense taken, it's why I stepped down in the first place."

"As you say," he replied awkwardly. "So what will you do?"

"I'm thinking we play their game for a bit, see how things go," I replied. "I'll make the rounds with the Hierarchy, maybe meet up with a few Free Krogan Clan Heads and just generally show off my prospective student while I get a feel for her. I can't imagine she's a complete failure with the quarian equivalent of a doctorate in engineering at her age, but that doesn't mean she's a good fit."

"The Prime Minister will likely want to speak with you, then," Max cautioned.

"Of course she will," I sighed. Then clapped my hands. "Well, let's go do a meet and greet, shall we?"