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Presidential Palace, Thessia, 8 May 2137
It was three hours past midnight when the call came in. Aethyta awoke and grabbed the phone from the nightstand to her left. Her eyes didn’t leave the ceiling.
“Yes?”
“It’s Desta. Turians made first contact. Crisis developing.”
“What?” Aethyta rubbed her eyes with one hand. “How Bad?”
“Bad. The Hierarchy is mobilizing for war. Situation room, ten minutes.” click
Aethyta sat up in bed and put the phone down to her right. She bent slightly sideways and rested her hands on the nightstand, staring at it, not once blinking.
Her hunch had been right. Those anomalous movements of Hierarchy logistical forces weren’t just noise. The cautious naysayers had been wrong, again.
Her inner ear switched reference frames.
No, not this time, please.
Her brain didn’t listen. Aethyta grimaced as her stomach lit up as if from an ulcer, her heart beat unnaturally fast, her hands burned and were barraged by virtual needles. She opened her eyes as wide as she could, but could not wake.
It’s happening. We’re not prepared and it’s happening - another Rachni - what are we going to do - maybe if they had listened - damn you Tevos! - no time, have to act fast - Liara, vacation home, now
Aethyta grabbed the phone again and began frantically dialing, but stopped herself before pressing the button to call.
Wait a minute
How many times had she feared for Liara’s safety? And how many times had that fear actually been warranted?
Aethyta hovered her thumb over the phone’s cancel button for a long moment, then pressed it. The pain subsided a little, and she let out a deep breath. She looked at the clock at the foot of her bed. Three of her ten minutes were gone.
Goddess, get yourself together.
She got out of bed.
*** *** ***
Aethyta arrived at the situation room with barely thirty seconds to spare. She expected the meeting to have already been underway, so the rancorous, unorganized discussion that greeted her was quite the shock. Two other things stood out: there were no briefings to be seen, and the president was not there. For a brief moment, her anxiety completely gave way to confusion.
Huh?
She walked slowly towards the long table and sat down next to Desta, who was too engrossed in conversation to notice her entrance.
“...not what I heard. My contact said they achieved total victory in occupying the colony.”
“We have it from highcom that they’re mobilizing for war. What else could that mean?”
“That they’re being careful? This is a first contact scenario. The Hierarchy is too smart to rest after a single victory. We don't know what the enemy’s capabilities are.”
“We know half the 3rd fleet went da-”
Tevos walked through the door. Everyone went silent instantly, even those facing away.
“Sorry I’m late everyone, I was just speaking to the Primarch. There was a lot to talk about.” A slight but unmistakable exasperation tinged her voice. She sat down at the head of the table and handed each column of seats a stack of papers.
“Before you start reading, let me give you the long and short of it: The Hierarchy lied to us. First contact between the Turians and the species they’re calling Humans actually happened almost three entire months ago. They’ve been fighting a war with these Humans and covering it up, until now. Those unusual fleet movements Aethyta’s people picked up? Sustainment efforts for Hierarchy forces. I understand you all have a lot of questions, and I would be glad to answer, but please read the briefing first.”
Aethyta looked down at the document in front of her. It was a single piece of double-sided paper with standard font size and no pictures. From a meter away you would never guess it held some of the most sensitive information in the galaxy. She began quickly reading.
Humans were bipedal, mammalian, sexually dimorphic, levo-amino, evolved from an average garden world orbiting an average main-sequence star, got mass-effect technology from a Prothean cache on a sister planet about 40 years ago, and found a relay in their home system… encased in ice? Orbiting a dwarf planet? Well that was kind of a weird one, Aethyta thought, but otherwise this seemed like a pretty standard species, which was a major relief. However, this relief would be short lived.
The Humans currently hold four previously unknown relay systems, and a Human scientific vessel was found by a Turian patrol trying to activate yet another relay, which was illegal under council law. The Turians immediately opened fire without making any attempt at warning or negotiating - of course they did - and war ensued when the vessel managed to get off a tight-beam FTL distress call before being destroyed. The Turian patrol traced the distress call to a nearby system, and quickly destroyed the Human naval presence there, subsequently laying siege to the colony below - the Humans called it Shanxi . Hierarchy forces had a tough time with urban COIN operations and so resorted to leveling entire city blocks from orbit - populated city blocks - to coerce the Human authorities there to surrender, which eventually succeeded.
There were quite a few weird details interspersed - aside from the initial scientific vessel, the Human vessels that were destroyed did not have mass-effect-based propulsion systems, and neither their vessels nor their ground troops had any kinetic barriers to speak of. Their mass-accelerator weapons likewise did not use mass-effect technology, just plain magnetism - even more, some of the guerillas in the city were using chemically driven bullets in an attempt to fight the Turians.
What? Didn’t they get their Prothean cache decades ago?
The Turian patrol forces, themselves formed from elements of the Heirarchy’s 3rd fleet, had assumed that the vessels they destroyed formed the bulk of Human naval capability. They were wrong, and to devastating effect. About twelve hours ago, a massive human force came through the Shanxi relay and utterly destroyed the Turian Naval presence there. All Turian attempts at surrender were met with silence. Not a single ship made it back, it was a massacre. The fate of the forces stranded on Shanxi remains unknown, but was assumed to be just as grim.
The document ended there. They all placed it down within a few seconds of each other.
“The floor is now open,” Tevos said. Admiral V’nara was the first to speak up.
“So, let me get this straight: This species, Humans , got their cache of prothean data almost a full Salarian lifetime ago. And yet, aside from the very first encounter, not once did the Turians observe them actually employing mass-effect technology. In fact, some Human guerrillas were seen using pre-fusion weaponry. Obviously, this allowed hierarchy forces to easily dominate the war. That was, until less than a day ago, when some kind of Human force arrived through the relay and obliterated the Turians, somehow. Am I getting that right?”
“Yes,” replied Matriarch D’zia, interstate secretary. “You’re right, it doesn’t make sense. My first instinct was that this Shanxi colony was some kind of rebel offshoot or politically independent backwater, which would explain the technological discrepancies. But that isn’t consistent with the ferocity of Human retaliation. I think it’s likely this colony was directly affiliated with the main Human state.”
“Which puts us back at square one,” said Aethyta R'dea, herself the director of the Thessia Intelligence Agency. “The document is ambiguous on the last point. Did the Turians manage to salvage any intel on the Human intervention force, through comm buoys maybe? That could give us a better idea of who we’re dealing with.”
“No,” said Tevos. “The Primarch explicitly confirmed to me that they did not. Assuming he was not lying about that too, we’re completely in the dark about what kind of capabilities the Humans used to evict the 3rd fleet elements at Shanxi.”
“Damn it.”
“Yeah.”
“There are other elements to consider beyond the technological,” said D’zia. “Like Hierarchy forces brazenly committing war crimes by orbitally bombarding civilian population centers. And to a lesser extent, Humans committing their own by killing Hierarchy forces that were attempting to surrender. Both of those are going to seriously hinder any kind of potential diplomatic resolution, and I think we need to start thinking of ways to work around that sooner rather than later, especially since the hierarchy is already mobilizing.”
Desta T’nek, chief security advisor to Tevos, spoke up.
“I definitely agree that we need to initiate communication with the Human side as soon as possible. Right now this war is the only experience they have with citadel space, and the sooner we change that, the better. That being said, the Turians will never agree to negotiations without a clearer idea of what capabilities the Humans do and do not have. And the Humans are certainly not going to be forthcoming in the wake of this experience.”
Aethyta turned to Pesava T’lila, science and technology secretary, and the only Matron in the room.
“You’ve been awfully quiet, Pesava.”
“I’ve been thinking, Matriarch.” She shifted uncomfortably.
“Anything you’d like to share?”
“Okay.” Pesava leaned forward slightly.
“The intel the Turians were able to gather was clearly limited. However, we’re not totally in the dark. We know the Humans have access to at least a modest repository of Prothean technology. We know this repository was recovered on a planet that was not their home world, and that they have since expanded to four relay systems, inclusive of Shanxi. In other words, they have at least a basic level of competence. Their forms of social organization are capable of generating and defusing new technologies at sufficient pace to pass through the fossil filter in one piece.”
“Of course. What are you getting at?”
“That they’re not stupid. If they’re not using mass effect technology despite having knowledge of it, then it is likely due to a reason that goes beyond simple obstruction by social forces.”
Gears began turning in the Matriarchs’ heads.
“And if what D’zia says is true, which it likely is, then this reason must necessarily apply to the main Human state as a whole, rather than just this one colony. Otherwise, the Human forces present in the system at the outset would not have been without barriers or proper mass-accelerator weapons.”
V’nara spoke.
“Reasons such as…?”
“Eezo shortages,” interjected Bella R’tae, council liaison, who had been silent up until now. She never had been a night person, Aethyta thought to herself.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I was thinking,” replied Pesava. “They don’t make frequent use of mass effect fields because the systems they control simply lack any substantial deposits of element zero.”
“Hold on a moment,” Tevos said, “I admit this sounds plausible at face, but still, think about the implications of what you’re saying. Say the Humans really did have a severely limited eezo supply. Then how did they evict the Turian forces from the Shanxi system?”
Aethyta knew the answer the moment Tevos finished voicing the question. It was the same answer Pesava had come to just as she was putting down the briefing, but had been too nervous to say out loud.
“Directed energy weapons,” Aethyta deadpanned. She stared through the table as she said it.
“Yes. There is no plausible alternative,” Pesava replied.
There was a long moment of silence. The Matriarchs didn’t need Pesava’s help to piece together what this meant. The psychosomatic pain Aethyta had banished earlier came creeping back.
Again, V’nara was the first to speak.
“But the Hierarchy… they fought guerillas; live Humans, for three months. They must have gotten at least some POW testimony. Did none of them ever mention a machine revolt?”
“No,” said Tevos. “What’s on the briefing is the extent of useful intel they were able to get out of prisoners. None of them ever spoke of a hostile machine intelligence or machine revolt of any kind.”
“Then… then maybe it happened in the intervening three months; it wouldn’t be an implausibly short time frame, we saw how quickly synthetics can move during the Morning War. Or maybe this intervention force actually wasn’t related to Humanity at all. What if it’s a previously unknown synthetic race that happened to sweep through Human space at the same time as the war?
“Admiral…”
“Either way, this changes everything. We got lucky with the Geth, but we can’t count on getting lucky again. This needs to be snuffed out, now. There’s no time to waste. We should begin mobilizing imme-”
“Admiral!” Tevos almost shouted. “We are not mobilizing on a maybe. The presence of machine intelligence alone doesn’t guarantee a Geth-like situation. We need to try contacting the Human side first before making any rash decisions.”
“What difference does that make?” Aethyta asked. “Sure, the presence of machine intelligence doesn’t guarantee that a revolt has happened, yet. The Quarians had the Geth for nearly 70 years before the Morning War.”
Tevos knew where she was going with this. She shot Aethyta with a knowing look, but the director willfully ignored it.
“Even if the Humans haven’t yet been hit with their own Morning War, there’s no reason we should wait that long to get involved. The history is unambiguous: machine intelligence is an existential threat to every sapient species in the galaxy. That’s why the Protheans never shut up about its dangers in their beacons. The Humans must have got these warnings in their cache, and they still chose to make AIs regardless. That alone is sufficient evidence that they are not responsible enough to be allowed access to post-fusion technology. No matter how you put it, we need to intervene.”
“Overruled.” Tevos said coldly. Aethyta glared at her.
“We’re not committing to anything until we know more about the situation. R’tae, write up a summary of our conclusions regarding human capability and relay them to Benezia. T’nek, do the same with the Primarch, and break out the old contingency plans from the Morning War for brainstorming. V’nara, work with her on that, and have our forces put to readiness level 3. D’zia, I want you to spearhead efforts to initiate contact with the human side, and notify me immediately as soon as correspondence is established. R'dea, I made sure the Primarch would have Hierarchy Intelligence share every scrap of data they have from this conflict with the agency. I want you to oversee its analysis and compile a report on the agency’s own findings from it. T’lila, meet with me in my office. Meeting adjourned.”
And that was that. As she filed out of the room with the rest, Aethyta’s mind was already lightyears away.
She saw Human settlements being razed, Hierarchy troops in firefights with guerillas, Turian vessels having their hulls carved through by lasers, crews screaming all the while.
She saw footage from the Morning War. Geth platforms remorselessly gunning down noncombatants. Children and parents living just long enough to see the other die.
She saw self-replicating FTL probes spreading through the galaxy like a cancer, turning every system they touched into colossal shipyards within a single year. Organic civilizations smothered by a swarm of unfeeling metal.
And then she saw Liara, digging for fossils in the park at eight years old. Her laugh as she played with her friends in the afternoon sun. The intensity in her eyes as she told Aethyta about what she had been learning at university… Her tears after the divorce.
For her sake, Aethyta had to work through the fear.