Humanity met the Turians. But the Turians didn't meet the Systems Alliance. They instead met the Confederacy.
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A Just Measure (One Piece x Mass Effect)
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Vagabond
The Clone Guy, Swiss Guy, and Battletech Guy
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Commissioned by Mace Sheperd
A Just Measure
Chapter 1
-VB-
Commander Oseup Mandalin
Aboard CNS Today's Justice
AR 2111.11.13
Oseup took a deep breath in and let it out slowly.
Sitting by himself aboard his one and only ship, he felt … conflicted.
On one hand, it was an honor to serve aboard a Confederate Navy vessel. On the other hand, he was serving aboard a small corvette on the edge of the confederate space while looking out for pirates, smugglers, and their ilk while knowing that his little corner of confederate space was known for its lack of interesting things.
Shanxi System sat at the literal edge of known space, and while there was a relay here that led out of the system and into the unknown, that relay was being jealously guarded by half a dozen destroyers and a cruiser. Meaning, nothing was getting through to explore the other side of that relay without permission from the Blue Planet Confederate central government, and the BPC jealously guarded one of the few privileges they had.
He knew that there was some sort of a scientific and explorative expedition being put together, but he didn't have a part in it. Only the best and the brightest across the confederacy had a chance to submit their applications. Acceptance? You better be related to some admiral, be a famous professor, or something.
Which meant that he, Oseup Mandalin from some bumfuck nowhere world who joined the navy to climb his way out of poverty, was not getting a chance at being in the expedition.
Now, while the relay was exciting, the rest of the Shanxi System wasn't.
Shanxi System had exactly eight main celestial bodies, thirty natural satellites, and one asteroid ring. Of those thirty-nine celestial objects, only three were interesting: one for being habitable and the other two for their mineral contents, Element Zero specifically speaking.
He yawned, making his fishman mouth and gills widen as he sucked in a lot of air. A bit of tears built up in his eyes and he sighed.
He wanted to be in water to freshen up his shark scales, but that wasn't possible aboard a spaceship. He just had to deal with his lot in life.
At least, he wasn't poor anymore, and his posting could be so much worse.
He shuddered.
The Confederate Navy had dominion over the very oceans that they originated from, the very oceans that were crawling with Sea Kings and other monsters of the deep. Even now, thousands of years since the founding of the confederation after the Revolution, the navy took its jobs to deal with the Sea Kings very seriously.
There were plenty of unfortunate sons of bitches - and bitches - who ended up stationed aboard ships that had to fly a little bit too close to Sea King territories. It wasn't odd to hear about someone who died to Sea Kings every year.
So, yeah, he wasn't posted there, got plenty of food to keep up with his big fishman body, and got paid well.
It could be so much worse.
… But it didn't change the fact that the Shanxi System was boring.
There was one plenty that was habitable, yes, but that planet was a mostly arid world with nothing going for it. Sure, it was habitable, but it was a dry and dusty world that needed a constant delivery of water from the local ice belts. There were quite a few fishmen who lived down there, though they stuck around the one ocean that was on the planet.
He didn't understand why any fishman would want to colonize a dustball, but then again, he wasn't one of the dumb fuckers. Maybe they got swindled by some colonization corporations. He knew it happened. They got promised one thing and got sent elsewhere because they didn't take care to read their contract.
Sad shit, but the confederate government couldn't intervene in member states' policies and laws.
Speaking of which, Shanxi was one of the few colonies that was still within confederate jurisdiction, mostly because its population hadn't decided to join any specific member state or choose to become a member state.
That meant that, for the foreseeable future, he and other sailors and soldiers of the confederate navy would be patrolling this boring ass system.
Ugh.
So boring.
Oh, well, at the very least, it was time for him and his crew to return to Shanxi for shore leave.
-VB-
Regos (Captain/Colonel) Gillius Gruminos
Aboard HFS Unsung Dawn
CC 2157.05.08
Gillius took in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
He felt bored. Here he was, having climbed up the ranks of the Hierarchy's military to the rank of Regos, and because he mouthed off a colonel, he had been reassigned to this border frontier leading to nowhere to watch over Relay 314 that he knew the Citadel Council would never open.
And because he was also here with his cruiser HFS Unsung Dawn and five escort frigates, no pirate was going to be able to open it either.
So here he was.
Stuck.
Bored.
And probably not due for any promotion for the next decade.
… Should he retire? Life in the military suited him, but he wasn't one to keep taking shit from his superiors. If they didn't want him, then he could retire without a problem. It wasn't as if he wouldn't be receiving a good pension for the work he did so far. Besides, his family had a farm in one of the safer colonies. If he brought some more money over, then they could grow that farm into something bigger.
He raised his left hand and picked at his mandible's carapace. It was a childhood habit that never went away, and because of that, he had a scarred left mandible carapace. It made him look rougher than he actually was.
Hell, despite being a soldier, he only got into two handfuls of fistfights (outside of the ring) over the last two decades of his service!
But it made him look dashing for the ladies, so he wasn't going to go out and correct that misunderstanding.
Besides, ladies loved it when a rough man had a soft side.
"Regos?"
He blinked and looked up from where he had been looking through cute chalcha photos. "Yes?" he asked the ensign who'd just walked in. If he remembered this man's title… he was the sensor officer, wasn't he?
"I-I detected something on our sensor, sir, but I couldn't believe it so -."
"Get to the point, grogin (ensign)," he sighed.
"S-Sir. I checked three times, and the eezo power build up in the Relay 314 quadrant hasn't gone down, sir."
He froze.
What?
"Report number?"
"Gn-559-Yr, sir."
He quickly looked it up on his officer cabin's computer. He scrolled down from Tn and Ri to Gn and Vr. There, he found the report.
He quickly read through it.
And his eyes widened.
He pulled the regos's officer coat from his chair. "Sound the alarms. Someone is trying to open the fucking relay!"
The ensign froze stiff before he rushed off.
He connected his omnitool to the ship's intercom and made his call.
"Code Grey! I repeat code grey! We have a potential inactive relay activation! All crew to their stations. This is not a drill! All crew to their stations, this is not a drill!"
He ran out of his cabin and out into the halls along with the rest of the crew who'd been relaxing.
When he got to the bridge, his soldiers immediately snapped to attention and he had to quickly order them to get back to their work at hand. He sat down as he clasped the last button of his uniform and looked at the holographic map of the still unnamed solar system.
"Status!"
"Relay is still powering up, regos," the sensor officer from before reported from his station. His claws flew across the holographic screen in front of him as he took in data after data. "It'll reach the unlock stage in just under half an hour!"
"Damn," he muttered. "Can you see if there are any ships on this side?"
"Negative, regos. The only ships that are in the system are our task unit, sir!"
Which meant that someone was opening the relay from the other side.
A complete unexplored side of the relay network.
Drats.
"I want to send a message to the Palavan Command! How soon can we get … HFS Regal Talon up to the task?" he asked after he opened a channel to the rest of the hierarchy ships in the system.
Because of how isolated this system was from Hierarchy's interstellar comm network, the Bronze Ring, getting any message out meant that someone needed to get to a system with one of the comm buoys set up to contact the high command.
The gnoris (commander/major) of Regal Talon was quick to speak up.
"I am ready to jump through Relay 313 to send the message out."
"Then do so."
Less than three minutes after his command, Regal Talon was racing toward the relay on the other side of the system.
This left Gilius with just his cruiser and four escort frigates to deal with whatever was coming through.
"Eager Truvius, Grand Marine, Flowing Nila, and Second Wind, all form up on me," he spoke. "And whatever happens, do not fire unless fired upon first or ordered to do so."
The four escort frigates formed around him in a ring.
"We are jumping in 10!" the FTL officer shouted.
And on zero, they jumped forward together as one.
---
When they came out on the other side of the jump, they found themselves looking at a small flotilla of ships and a deactivated mass relay.
They saw plenty of ships, ranging from ugly and large cruiser-sized ones to sleeker and less armored corvette-sized ships. There were roughly fifteen ships in total.
Gilius wasn't sure how to analyze the flotilla in front of his task element now. A pair of cruisers were of the same make and model, five destroyers were of the same make and model, a pair of frigates were also of the same make and model.
The other six ships were of vastly different shapes and sizes. Where the previously paired and similarly made ships were all blocky with many gun turrets, these smaller ships - the largest of which was a frigate - were all vastly different in appearance. The frigate in question almost looked like a sailing ship found on any pre-space age civilization. It even had sails, though it was made out of hexagonal solar panels. A smaller ship had a similar hull shape but had four pairs of sails… on the side. Another ship was a brick with thrusters. The funniest looking one was definitely some kind of an animal-shaped ship.
It didn't … look like a hostile scouting force.
And this definitely felt like an exploration force.
A First Contact scenario…!
"Esgos (lieutenant), initiate the First Contact protocol."
His words snapped the bridge of its daze and his officers quickly went to work.
Then one of the ships within the alien fleet broke off and sped deeper into the system.
"Flowing Nila, get in front of that ship and stop it from leaving!" he barked out.
One of the escort frigates quickly broke off to carry out his orders. The frigate flew forward faster than the alien ship and quickly got in front of it, bringing that ship to a stop.
"Anything, esgos?!" he barked at the comms officer.
"I've opened all channels, sir! We're transmitting the First Contact package, but we're not getting anything back in return!"
"Regos, this alien is trying to circumvent us!" the gnoris (major/commander) of Flowing Nila chimed in.
"Fire off a warning shot," he grunted.
The Flowing Nila did.
And that's when everything went wrong.
The ship swerved to the exact side that the Flowing Nila had fired off a round with its weaker gun turrets and not the spinal mount cannon. In doing so, they ran directly into the warning shot.
The attack cored the much smaller ship from stern to aft on the spot. Fire broke out.
And Gilius watched in horror as the ship detonated.
"ALIEN SHIPS ARE POWERING WEAPONS!" the sensor officer shouted from the front.
"Shields up!" he shouted. "Get us out of here!"
And the cruisers opened fire.
And Gilius's eyes widened when a red laser, thicker than a construction steel beam, slammed into Second Wind. The laser burned through one of the wings of the frigate, but the frigate hung on to life.
Laser.
Shit.
"Ready the cannon!" he shouted as he took aim with his ship. He couldn't afford to outright destroy these alien vessels lest the situation grew even worse than before. But shoot to disable? He could do that.
At the same time, he saw the gate activating.
The aliens were trying to flee. Their smaller ships were moving behind the cruisers and destroyers while they fired upon Gilius's ships.
"Ready!" the fire officer shouted.
"Ready!" engineering confirmed.
He fired.
The tungsten round shot from the rear of his cruiser, traveled along the length of the spinal mount barrel, and blitzed into space. It struck something like a kinetic shield surrounding the alien cruiser, punched through it, and slammed into the armored hull.
Something exploded. Not the entire ship but something aboard.
They fired again, and the laser struck his ship, Unsung Dawn, instead of any of the escort frigates.
The ship shook like there was a Po-Scale 7 earthquake.
"Damage report!" he demanded as he got ready again. The mass effect engine needed time to spool up.
"Starboard level 1b through 5c are all gone!"
"Incoming!"
Another laser burned into Unsung Dawn.
"Levels 1a through 4d are gone! Port-side thrusters are all damaged!"
"Operational?!"
"Negative, regos!"
By this time, everyone was slinging kinetic rounds and lasers. Flowing Nila took a coring laser shot from one of the destroyers, and detonated from within, all hands on deck dead with no chance to escape. Grand Marine was reporting heavy damage while the other two were reporting no damages yet.
Then the relay activated, taking all of the smaller eclectic ships and half of the obviously military vessels.
Engineering and fire gave the green light again.
He hesitated.
For a single second, he hesitated.
But then he saw that the alien cruisers, both of which were left behind along with three destroyers and one frigate, and saw how they weren't stopping their fire despite what was possibly civilians no longer in the way.
He clicked.
A second tungsten round left Unsung Dawn's spinal cannon, and punched into the same cruiser's shield and armor.
The ship's lights started to go out and it began to lose its heading.
Then he saw it before his officer could report it.
A beam of red laser.
Aimed straight at his bridge.
"D-!"
Everything burned for a split second.
And nothing.
-VB-
Commander Oseup Mandalin
Shanxi
AR 2111.11.16
"What?"
General Charles Williams grunted from his hologram. "You are not hearing things wrong, commander," he stated as he pointed to the images on screen. "Two days ago, Exploration Expedition 19 went through the Shanxi rimward relay and encountered a hostile alien species. At first, there was an attempt to communicate, but before any communication could be achieved, one of the civilian ships tried to go around the stand off. It was intercepted by one of the alien frigates, and when the civilian ship, despite orders from Admiral Enni Rantam to stop, tried again, it was shot down. This sparked the battle, and the expedition retreated with the loss of one cruiser and one destroyer. In return, we destroyed their cruiser and two of their frigates before they escaped."
Oseup slowly sat back down as he watched the event play out on the video captured by one of the ships of the expedition. The enemy frigates were quick to fly around and fire on their ships with turrets but the enemy cruisers stayed in place, only swerving side to side to dodge. And why it had done so was clear.
It fired off a massive kinetic round and punched through BCS Maria Greuschugen's energy shield.
'That's a pretty powerful cannon. But why is the cruiser moving so -?' His eyes widened. "General, is that cruiser's main cannon a spinal mount?"
The general glanced at him and nodded. "It is as you noticed, Commander Mandalin. The alien cruiser had a spinal cannon. It is powerful enough to punch through the shield in one-go. This is a strategic problem for us because all of our naval ships and their shields are geared towards deflecting and absorbing lasers as lasers are the mainstay naval weapons for the vast majority of provincial navies, private, commercial, and pirate ships use. But our armors can hold against their attacks. If it wasn't for the second hit striking the main fusion engine directly, then Greuschugen would have made it out of the system." He took a deep breath in. "We have sent word for reinforcement to the homeworld. All we can do right now is to hold the line and wait."
Then rapid bangs in the meeting room rang out as someone pounded on the meeting room doors. There was also a sound of scuffles outside. "General! I have urgent news!" someone shouted.
"In, now!" the general's hologram demanded.
A lieutenant stumbled in before quickly standing at attention and saluting. "General! News from deep space telescopes and gravitic sensors! We have incoming from the rimward relay! There's at least two dreadnoughts, four battleships, twenty cruisers, twenty frigates, and more than a hundred transports!"
The tension in the room skyrocketed.
That was ten times what was defending the entire system. They didn't even have a battleship.
"Commander Mandalin," the general spoke up.
He quickly stood up. "Yes, general."
"You, as the highest ranked naval officer in the system, will take all of our ships… and flee."
"Sir?!"
"I will not let you lose those ships when they could be of help to our navy in future engagements. It is clear that our ships are capable of matching theirs. Which means every single one of those ships are valuable! Thus heroically losing yourselves and those ships against an overwhelming number of enemies where you achieve little is not allowed. That is an order. I expect you to carry it out in letter and spirit."
Oseup's mouth opened and closed before he finally responded. "Yes… general."
"Good," he said before he turned to the other officers inside the meeting. "Prepare for the worst possible scenario. I want all of our bunkers stocked up, nuclear warheads ready, and all of the elites ready to pounce on their ground command center. Dismissed!" Then his hologram went out.
Fishmen, humans, and others - but all in their uniforms proudly displaying the flag of the Blue Planet Confederacy and the Blue Confederate Navy - all stood up and saluted.
---
Oseup was back aboard Today's Justice along with his officers, crew, and what few people who were willing to board naval ships to flee the battle.
Because everyone who could and would run was getting on any kind of ship to flee the planet.
But with just twenty ships in system at any given time, there were just simply not enough of them to lift every single civilian.
Instead, only a tenth of the civilians were being taken with them, leaving the rest to fight and survive against the coming onslaught.
And though he wanted to take his place in orbit, he had his orders.
All twenty ships - both of civilian and military ownership - all jumped out from the planet's orbit just as the alien fleet jumped into the range of Shanxi's orbital defenses.
-VB-
General Charles Williams
Shanxi
He watched from where he and his special troops hid.
He watched as the meager number of anti-orbital cannons pointed up and fired upon the now orbiting alien ships.
"Lasers are the most effective, general," a colonel reported from within the underground bunker. Charles couldn't fit in there, which was why he was up here on the surface, itching to jump the aliens the moment they landed.
"Against their small shuttles, too?"
"It seems that way, sir. All of their ships seemed to be geared towards kinetic and missile engagements."
He grunted. Well, there went his plan to throw rocks at their shuttles. Actually, he'll throw it anyway to see if speed mattered.
But he did have a backup for that plan.
"Continue to shoot at their capital ships," he ordered over the radio. "But ignore the shuttles unless they move towards our inner defensive perimeter."
"Yes, general."
Now, the alien shuttles and transports streamed down toward them, and looked to be landing nearby the capital city.
"Fools. Landing your troops so close to the city when they don't know what defenses and defensive technology we might have?"
More importantly, the shorter distance between their camp and the city meant that the few elite fighters Charles had under his command would be able to cross the distance before anyone thought to fire on them pre-emptively.
And as they landed, he had to keep his hand up to hold his people.
Hold.
Two dozen shuttles and one of the capital ship transports landed.
Hold.
Close to a hundred shuttles had landed, disgorged their cargos of soldiers, armored vehicles, and supplies, and took off. Two capital ships had now landed and were still pushing out their contents. Actually, no, only one of them was doing that. The other hadn't put their ramp down.
Why wasn't it doing that?
HOLD.
Then one of the transport ships began to take off.
Fuck it. It was now or never.
"Now!" he roared as he rushed out from behind the hill. 'Armament Haki!'
---
Regos Baellos H'radrusak reacted immediately from aboard the HFS Nadal's Embrace, which was leaving the ground to go back to orbit.
He whirled around when his ship's sensors blared at a sudden thermal flare-up..
And he nearly stumbled back at what was heading toward him.
A fucking giant had jumped out of the tall and dense forests surrounding the clearing. Its skin was quickly changing from dry sand and muddy color (no, that was actual mud sliding down the giant's body) to … shiny black?
And it had a giant rock in its hands.
The giant reared its arm back as it got into a throwing stance.
"EVADE!" he roared. But nothing happened. He looked at the pilot.
The pilot… hadn't seen the giant. And then he did.
But it was too late.
Baellos overrode pilot's maneuvering controls -.
But he saw the giant boulder rushing at his ship from the periphery of his eyes.
And he realized in that moment that the no rock thrown would trigger the passive speed threshold of the kinetic barriers.
So he overrode the passive shield from his command console.
The kinetic barriers flared and then the rock crashed into it.
The ship rumbled and shook, and he felt gravity reasserting itself in how his stomach dropped.
But the kinetic barrier held!
Then he saw something he couldn't comprehend.
The now glossy black skinned giant had uprooted one of the giant trees… and swung it down at the ship.
"BRACE FOR IMPACT!" he shouted.
And then the tree trunk struck the barrier like the creator god's own smithing hammer.
The barrier shattered and then the trunk struck the thinly armored hull.
He heard metal squealing and breaking. He heard screams as the ship went down. Through the bridge's windows, he saw the ground approaching too quickly.
Shit shit shit -!
And then the ship crashed.
---
Charles grunted as one of the transport ships went down but the other got away because his son missed his rock throw and decided that throwing a tree was better than using the tree to pin the ship down.
And missed.
He told James that his aim was bad but the boy never practiced!
And the metal birds - because that's what the aliens looked like - were shooting at him with their guns. He could feel it piercing through his Armament Haki, but it was like getting poked by a hair. Annoying and not dangerous.
Hell, he wasn't even bleeding!
"What kind of puny guns do you little birds carry, hah?!" he laughed as he jumped into the fight with nothing but his hands.
And while all of the metal birdies were focused on him, his small troops - the regular sized ones - fired on the aliens from their hidden positions.
---
"What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck -?!" Gno'iis (private) Mex stuttered out as he rolled out of the way like his training taught him.
And his training just saved his ass.
The tank he was using for cover squealed and crashed as something giant stepped on it and cast a shadow over … a lot of them. Mex looked up and saw the giant - living giant! - that he and everyone else had been shooting at while their smaller guys in the forest were shooting at them.
'Oh, well, why aren't you shooting at the shooters, Mex?'
Because there was a giant in front of their faces tearing all of their armored and shuttles apart with its bare hands!
And the goddamn aliens were shooting lasers at him!
The thing had to be … at least two hundred narins* tall.
Oh spirits. How were there living things that big?!
And then he saw something in the periphery of his vision. He looked and realized that the giant's soldiers - the regular sized aliens - were on the ground.
'There's at least four species,' he realized as he looked at what looked like an aquatic species, the giant itself, a hairless tumak**, and a lanky thing with long legs that looked like the hairless tumak but twice as tall.
The Hierarchy hadn't just come to subjugate a single species but a federation of species!
And Mex knew enough about Citadel laws to realize that the Hierarchy … might have fucked up.
Royally fucked up.
One of the long legged ones saw him… and then disappeared?!
Suddenly, it was in front of his face with its gun pointed at his face.
He immediately raised his arms up.
And for a moment, a blissful moment, nothing happened.
It stared at him.
He stared at it.
It barked something at him loudly, and not wanting to piss off the thing who was twice as tall as he was and could apparently move fast enough to cover a hundred narins in under two seconds, he slowly set his gun down and then kept his hands up.
It blinked.
A few other soldiers came to support the long leg one, and one of them cuffed his wrists.
And then dragged him away.
And as they dragged him away, he saw what had happened to the ground invasion force.
One of the capital-grade transport ships had been ground with its back broken, shuttles that weren't already in the air were all smoking and destroyed with what looked like molten holes all along their hulls, and most of the soldiers that hadn't immediately died to the laser barrages were now surrendering.
Mex … relaxed.
He wasn't going to die to absurdities today.
That's good.
… Yeah, that's good. Not dying on some barbarian backwater colony was good.
-VB-
Kringal (Admiral) Dakkan Edruius
HFS Might of Palavan
"What?" Dakkan uttered out in utter shock, breaking his own discipline.
"The ground assault failed," Shagin (General) Tsirius hissed. "They have biological weapons. Living giants that were taller than my transport ship was long!"
Dakkan leaned back into his seat.
As much as he wanted to call Tsirius a coward for leaving his men, if there truly were biological weapons that were … ship-sized, then he did the right thing to save the troops that were still on his transport ship.
"Do you have footage?" he asked.
"Of course, I do! No one will ever believe us otherwise!"
When he received the footage, he reviewed it immediately.
And he felt his stomach turn and sink.
While Tsirius had focused on the giant, Dakkan saw something much more important: a diverse set of races, laser infantry small arms, and the giant's ability to ignore mass effect small arms after turning black.
It wasn't just at the periphery of the largest city that their assault had been turned aside.
Other assaults, especially those sent to put down the anti-orbital guns, have also failed. All of those assaults all reported the same thing as well: soldiers capable of turning their skin black to fight against mass effect weapons. Unlike the giant, however, the "regular" sized soldiers capable of doing that didn't survive long if they charged head-first into a barrage.
Whatever these races had, it was obvious to Dakkan that this small fleet that the Hierarchy had sent would not be enough to subjugate them, especially if this was nothing more than a backwater planet (which was almost certain considering that there was almost no heavy industry centers observed from orbit).
"Kringal!" the sensor officer shouted. "We have emergences from the other mass relay!"
"Has the Talon Fleet engaged the enemy?"
"Negative, kringal. Talon is pulling back. Their commanding kringal states that the enemy fleet is too big."
"I want numbers, esgos!"
It was obvious to him that this attempt at subjugating a new species was not only a failure… but something that will become a diplomatic crisis, especially since this was not a single race but an alliance of races.
They may have just encountered an interstellar alliance just like the Citadel Council, and that was bad news for them all.
"Instruct Talon kringal to join back with Maw Fleet," he ordered. "We're pulling out of this system and waiting for further instruction. It's clear that we are not prepared."
All of the officers on the bridge looked up at him in shock.
He didn't defend himself, even if the act of pulling out without giving a proper fight might get him in hot trouble.
No, his job was keeping his men alive. The mission to subjugate came after that in his list of priorities.
"Move!"
-VB-
A/N: *made up turian measuring unit for length. 1 meter = 4.42 narins = 3.28 feet
Charles Williams, a descendent of the ancient giants, is roughly 50 meters tall, or 221 narins, or 164 feet.
**tumak = a made up monkey-like creature found in one of Hierarchy's colonies.
A Just Measure
Chapter 1
-VB-
Commander Oseup Mandalin
Aboard CNS Today's Justice
AR 2111.11.13
Oseup took a deep breath in and let it out slowly.
Sitting by himself aboard his one and only ship, he felt … conflicted.
On one hand, it was an honor to serve aboard a Confederate Navy vessel. On the other hand, he was serving aboard a small corvette on the edge of the confederate space while looking out for pirates, smugglers, and their ilk while knowing that his little corner of confederate space was known for its lack of interesting things.
Shanxi System sat at the literal edge of known space, and while there was a relay here that led out of the system and into the unknown, that relay was being jealously guarded by half a dozen destroyers and a cruiser. Meaning, nothing was getting through to explore the other side of that relay without permission from the Blue Planet Confederate central government, and the BPC jealously guarded one of the few privileges they had.
He knew that there was some sort of a scientific and explorative expedition being put together, but he didn't have a part in it. Only the best and the brightest across the confederacy had a chance to submit their applications. Acceptance? You better be related to some admiral, be a famous professor, or something.
Which meant that he, Oseup Mandalin from some bumfuck nowhere world who joined the navy to climb his way out of poverty, was not getting a chance at being in the expedition.
Now, while the relay was exciting, the rest of the Shanxi System wasn't.
Shanxi System had exactly eight main celestial bodies, thirty natural satellites, and one asteroid ring. Of those thirty-nine celestial objects, only three were interesting: one for being habitable and the other two for their mineral contents, Element Zero specifically speaking.
He yawned, making his fishman mouth and gills widen as he sucked in a lot of air. A bit of tears built up in his eyes and he sighed.
He wanted to be in water to freshen up his shark scales, but that wasn't possible aboard a spaceship. He just had to deal with his lot in life.
At least, he wasn't poor anymore, and his posting could be so much worse.
He shuddered.
The Confederate Navy had dominion over the very oceans that they originated from, the very oceans that were crawling with Sea Kings and other monsters of the deep. Even now, thousands of years since the founding of the confederation after the Revolution, the navy took its jobs to deal with the Sea Kings very seriously.
There were plenty of unfortunate sons of bitches - and bitches - who ended up stationed aboard ships that had to fly a little bit too close to Sea King territories. It wasn't odd to hear about someone who died to Sea Kings every year.
So, yeah, he wasn't posted there, got plenty of food to keep up with his big fishman body, and got paid well.
It could be so much worse.
… But it didn't change the fact that the Shanxi System was boring.
There was one plenty that was habitable, yes, but that planet was a mostly arid world with nothing going for it. Sure, it was habitable, but it was a dry and dusty world that needed a constant delivery of water from the local ice belts. There were quite a few fishmen who lived down there, though they stuck around the one ocean that was on the planet.
He didn't understand why any fishman would want to colonize a dustball, but then again, he wasn't one of the dumb fuckers. Maybe they got swindled by some colonization corporations. He knew it happened. They got promised one thing and got sent elsewhere because they didn't take care to read their contract.
Sad shit, but the confederate government couldn't intervene in member states' policies and laws.
Speaking of which, Shanxi was one of the few colonies that was still within confederate jurisdiction, mostly because its population hadn't decided to join any specific member state or choose to become a member state.
That meant that, for the foreseeable future, he and other sailors and soldiers of the confederate navy would be patrolling this boring ass system.
Ugh.
So boring.
Oh, well, at the very least, it was time for him and his crew to return to Shanxi for shore leave.
-VB-
Regos (Captain/Colonel) Gillius Gruminos
Aboard HFS Unsung Dawn
CC 2157.05.08
Gillius took in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
He felt bored. Here he was, having climbed up the ranks of the Hierarchy's military to the rank of Regos, and because he mouthed off a colonel, he had been reassigned to this border frontier leading to nowhere to watch over Relay 314 that he knew the Citadel Council would never open.
And because he was also here with his cruiser HFS Unsung Dawn and five escort frigates, no pirate was going to be able to open it either.
So here he was.
Stuck.
Bored.
And probably not due for any promotion for the next decade.
… Should he retire? Life in the military suited him, but he wasn't one to keep taking shit from his superiors. If they didn't want him, then he could retire without a problem. It wasn't as if he wouldn't be receiving a good pension for the work he did so far. Besides, his family had a farm in one of the safer colonies. If he brought some more money over, then they could grow that farm into something bigger.
He raised his left hand and picked at his mandible's carapace. It was a childhood habit that never went away, and because of that, he had a scarred left mandible carapace. It made him look rougher than he actually was.
Hell, despite being a soldier, he only got into two handfuls of fistfights (outside of the ring) over the last two decades of his service!
But it made him look dashing for the ladies, so he wasn't going to go out and correct that misunderstanding.
Besides, ladies loved it when a rough man had a soft side.
"Regos?"
He blinked and looked up from where he had been looking through cute chalcha photos. "Yes?" he asked the ensign who'd just walked in. If he remembered this man's title… he was the sensor officer, wasn't he?
"I-I detected something on our sensor, sir, but I couldn't believe it so -."
"Get to the point, grogin (ensign)," he sighed.
"S-Sir. I checked three times, and the eezo power build up in the Relay 314 quadrant hasn't gone down, sir."
He froze.
What?
"Report number?"
"Gn-559-Yr, sir."
He quickly looked it up on his officer cabin's computer. He scrolled down from Tn and Ri to Gn and Vr. There, he found the report.
He quickly read through it.
And his eyes widened.
He pulled the regos's officer coat from his chair. "Sound the alarms. Someone is trying to open the fucking relay!"
The ensign froze stiff before he rushed off.
He connected his omnitool to the ship's intercom and made his call.
"Code Grey! I repeat code grey! We have a potential inactive relay activation! All crew to their stations. This is not a drill! All crew to their stations, this is not a drill!"
He ran out of his cabin and out into the halls along with the rest of the crew who'd been relaxing.
When he got to the bridge, his soldiers immediately snapped to attention and he had to quickly order them to get back to their work at hand. He sat down as he clasped the last button of his uniform and looked at the holographic map of the still unnamed solar system.
"Status!"
"Relay is still powering up, regos," the sensor officer from before reported from his station. His claws flew across the holographic screen in front of him as he took in data after data. "It'll reach the unlock stage in just under half an hour!"
"Damn," he muttered. "Can you see if there are any ships on this side?"
"Negative, regos. The only ships that are in the system are our task unit, sir!"
Which meant that someone was opening the relay from the other side.
A complete unexplored side of the relay network.
Drats.
"I want to send a message to the Palavan Command! How soon can we get … HFS Regal Talon up to the task?" he asked after he opened a channel to the rest of the hierarchy ships in the system.
Because of how isolated this system was from Hierarchy's interstellar comm network, the Bronze Ring, getting any message out meant that someone needed to get to a system with one of the comm buoys set up to contact the high command.
The gnoris (commander/major) of Regal Talon was quick to speak up.
"I am ready to jump through Relay 313 to send the message out."
"Then do so."
Less than three minutes after his command, Regal Talon was racing toward the relay on the other side of the system.
This left Gilius with just his cruiser and four escort frigates to deal with whatever was coming through.
"Eager Truvius, Grand Marine, Flowing Nila, and Second Wind, all form up on me," he spoke. "And whatever happens, do not fire unless fired upon first or ordered to do so."
The four escort frigates formed around him in a ring.
"We are jumping in 10!" the FTL officer shouted.
And on zero, they jumped forward together as one.
---
When they came out on the other side of the jump, they found themselves looking at a small flotilla of ships and a deactivated mass relay.
They saw plenty of ships, ranging from ugly and large cruiser-sized ones to sleeker and less armored corvette-sized ships. There were roughly fifteen ships in total.
Gilius wasn't sure how to analyze the flotilla in front of his task element now. A pair of cruisers were of the same make and model, five destroyers were of the same make and model, a pair of frigates were also of the same make and model.
The other six ships were of vastly different shapes and sizes. Where the previously paired and similarly made ships were all blocky with many gun turrets, these smaller ships - the largest of which was a frigate - were all vastly different in appearance. The frigate in question almost looked like a sailing ship found on any pre-space age civilization. It even had sails, though it was made out of hexagonal solar panels. A smaller ship had a similar hull shape but had four pairs of sails… on the side. Another ship was a brick with thrusters. The funniest looking one was definitely some kind of an animal-shaped ship.
It didn't … look like a hostile scouting force.
And this definitely felt like an exploration force.
A First Contact scenario…!
"Esgos (lieutenant), initiate the First Contact protocol."
His words snapped the bridge of its daze and his officers quickly went to work.
Then one of the ships within the alien fleet broke off and sped deeper into the system.
"Flowing Nila, get in front of that ship and stop it from leaving!" he barked out.
One of the escort frigates quickly broke off to carry out his orders. The frigate flew forward faster than the alien ship and quickly got in front of it, bringing that ship to a stop.
"Anything, esgos?!" he barked at the comms officer.
"I've opened all channels, sir! We're transmitting the First Contact package, but we're not getting anything back in return!"
"Regos, this alien is trying to circumvent us!" the gnoris (major/commander) of Flowing Nila chimed in.
"Fire off a warning shot," he grunted.
The Flowing Nila did.
And that's when everything went wrong.
The ship swerved to the exact side that the Flowing Nila had fired off a round with its weaker gun turrets and not the spinal mount cannon. In doing so, they ran directly into the warning shot.
The attack cored the much smaller ship from stern to aft on the spot. Fire broke out.
And Gilius watched in horror as the ship detonated.
"ALIEN SHIPS ARE POWERING WEAPONS!" the sensor officer shouted from the front.
"Shields up!" he shouted. "Get us out of here!"
And the cruisers opened fire.
And Gilius's eyes widened when a red laser, thicker than a construction steel beam, slammed into Second Wind. The laser burned through one of the wings of the frigate, but the frigate hung on to life.
Laser.
Shit.
"Ready the cannon!" he shouted as he took aim with his ship. He couldn't afford to outright destroy these alien vessels lest the situation grew even worse than before. But shoot to disable? He could do that.
At the same time, he saw the gate activating.
The aliens were trying to flee. Their smaller ships were moving behind the cruisers and destroyers while they fired upon Gilius's ships.
"Ready!" the fire officer shouted.
"Ready!" engineering confirmed.
He fired.
The tungsten round shot from the rear of his cruiser, traveled along the length of the spinal mount barrel, and blitzed into space. It struck something like a kinetic shield surrounding the alien cruiser, punched through it, and slammed into the armored hull.
Something exploded. Not the entire ship but something aboard.
They fired again, and the laser struck his ship, Unsung Dawn, instead of any of the escort frigates.
The ship shook like there was a Po-Scale 7 earthquake.
"Damage report!" he demanded as he got ready again. The mass effect engine needed time to spool up.
"Starboard level 1b through 5c are all gone!"
"Incoming!"
Another laser burned into Unsung Dawn.
"Levels 1a through 4d are gone! Port-side thrusters are all damaged!"
"Operational?!"
"Negative, regos!"
By this time, everyone was slinging kinetic rounds and lasers. Flowing Nila took a coring laser shot from one of the destroyers, and detonated from within, all hands on deck dead with no chance to escape. Grand Marine was reporting heavy damage while the other two were reporting no damages yet.
Then the relay activated, taking all of the smaller eclectic ships and half of the obviously military vessels.
Engineering and fire gave the green light again.
He hesitated.
For a single second, he hesitated.
But then he saw that the alien cruisers, both of which were left behind along with three destroyers and one frigate, and saw how they weren't stopping their fire despite what was possibly civilians no longer in the way.
He clicked.
A second tungsten round left Unsung Dawn's spinal cannon, and punched into the same cruiser's shield and armor.
The ship's lights started to go out and it began to lose its heading.
Then he saw it before his officer could report it.
A beam of red laser.
Aimed straight at his bridge.
"D-!"
Everything burned for a split second.
And nothing.
-VB-
Commander Oseup Mandalin
Shanxi
AR 2111.11.16
"What?"
General Charles Williams grunted from his hologram. "You are not hearing things wrong, commander," he stated as he pointed to the images on screen. "Two days ago, Exploration Expedition 19 went through the Shanxi rimward relay and encountered a hostile alien species. At first, there was an attempt to communicate, but before any communication could be achieved, one of the civilian ships tried to go around the stand off. It was intercepted by one of the alien frigates, and when the civilian ship, despite orders from Admiral Enni Rantam to stop, tried again, it was shot down. This sparked the battle, and the expedition retreated with the loss of one cruiser and one destroyer. In return, we destroyed their cruiser and two of their frigates before they escaped."
Oseup slowly sat back down as he watched the event play out on the video captured by one of the ships of the expedition. The enemy frigates were quick to fly around and fire on their ships with turrets but the enemy cruisers stayed in place, only swerving side to side to dodge. And why it had done so was clear.
It fired off a massive kinetic round and punched through BCS Maria Greuschugen's energy shield.
'That's a pretty powerful cannon. But why is the cruiser moving so -?' His eyes widened. "General, is that cruiser's main cannon a spinal mount?"
The general glanced at him and nodded. "It is as you noticed, Commander Mandalin. The alien cruiser had a spinal cannon. It is powerful enough to punch through the shield in one-go. This is a strategic problem for us because all of our naval ships and their shields are geared towards deflecting and absorbing lasers as lasers are the mainstay naval weapons for the vast majority of provincial navies, private, commercial, and pirate ships use. But our armors can hold against their attacks. If it wasn't for the second hit striking the main fusion engine directly, then Greuschugen would have made it out of the system." He took a deep breath in. "We have sent word for reinforcement to the homeworld. All we can do right now is to hold the line and wait."
Then rapid bangs in the meeting room rang out as someone pounded on the meeting room doors. There was also a sound of scuffles outside. "General! I have urgent news!" someone shouted.
"In, now!" the general's hologram demanded.
A lieutenant stumbled in before quickly standing at attention and saluting. "General! News from deep space telescopes and gravitic sensors! We have incoming from the rimward relay! There's at least two dreadnoughts, four battleships, twenty cruisers, twenty frigates, and more than a hundred transports!"
The tension in the room skyrocketed.
That was ten times what was defending the entire system. They didn't even have a battleship.
"Commander Mandalin," the general spoke up.
He quickly stood up. "Yes, general."
"You, as the highest ranked naval officer in the system, will take all of our ships… and flee."
"Sir?!"
"I will not let you lose those ships when they could be of help to our navy in future engagements. It is clear that our ships are capable of matching theirs. Which means every single one of those ships are valuable! Thus heroically losing yourselves and those ships against an overwhelming number of enemies where you achieve little is not allowed. That is an order. I expect you to carry it out in letter and spirit."
Oseup's mouth opened and closed before he finally responded. "Yes… general."
"Good," he said before he turned to the other officers inside the meeting. "Prepare for the worst possible scenario. I want all of our bunkers stocked up, nuclear warheads ready, and all of the elites ready to pounce on their ground command center. Dismissed!" Then his hologram went out.
Fishmen, humans, and others - but all in their uniforms proudly displaying the flag of the Blue Planet Confederacy and the Blue Confederate Navy - all stood up and saluted.
---
Oseup was back aboard Today's Justice along with his officers, crew, and what few people who were willing to board naval ships to flee the battle.
Because everyone who could and would run was getting on any kind of ship to flee the planet.
But with just twenty ships in system at any given time, there were just simply not enough of them to lift every single civilian.
Instead, only a tenth of the civilians were being taken with them, leaving the rest to fight and survive against the coming onslaught.
And though he wanted to take his place in orbit, he had his orders.
All twenty ships - both of civilian and military ownership - all jumped out from the planet's orbit just as the alien fleet jumped into the range of Shanxi's orbital defenses.
-VB-
General Charles Williams
Shanxi
He watched from where he and his special troops hid.
He watched as the meager number of anti-orbital cannons pointed up and fired upon the now orbiting alien ships.
"Lasers are the most effective, general," a colonel reported from within the underground bunker. Charles couldn't fit in there, which was why he was up here on the surface, itching to jump the aliens the moment they landed.
"Against their small shuttles, too?"
"It seems that way, sir. All of their ships seemed to be geared towards kinetic and missile engagements."
He grunted. Well, there went his plan to throw rocks at their shuttles. Actually, he'll throw it anyway to see if speed mattered.
But he did have a backup for that plan.
"Continue to shoot at their capital ships," he ordered over the radio. "But ignore the shuttles unless they move towards our inner defensive perimeter."
"Yes, general."
Now, the alien shuttles and transports streamed down toward them, and looked to be landing nearby the capital city.
"Fools. Landing your troops so close to the city when they don't know what defenses and defensive technology we might have?"
More importantly, the shorter distance between their camp and the city meant that the few elite fighters Charles had under his command would be able to cross the distance before anyone thought to fire on them pre-emptively.
And as they landed, he had to keep his hand up to hold his people.
Hold.
Two dozen shuttles and one of the capital ship transports landed.
Hold.
Close to a hundred shuttles had landed, disgorged their cargos of soldiers, armored vehicles, and supplies, and took off. Two capital ships had now landed and were still pushing out their contents. Actually, no, only one of them was doing that. The other hadn't put their ramp down.
Why wasn't it doing that?
HOLD.
Then one of the transport ships began to take off.
Fuck it. It was now or never.
"Now!" he roared as he rushed out from behind the hill. 'Armament Haki!'
---
Regos Baellos H'radrusak reacted immediately from aboard the HFS Nadal's Embrace, which was leaving the ground to go back to orbit.
He whirled around when his ship's sensors blared at a sudden thermal flare-up..
And he nearly stumbled back at what was heading toward him.
A fucking giant had jumped out of the tall and dense forests surrounding the clearing. Its skin was quickly changing from dry sand and muddy color (no, that was actual mud sliding down the giant's body) to … shiny black?
And it had a giant rock in its hands.
The giant reared its arm back as it got into a throwing stance.
"EVADE!" he roared. But nothing happened. He looked at the pilot.
The pilot… hadn't seen the giant. And then he did.
But it was too late.
Baellos overrode pilot's maneuvering controls -.
But he saw the giant boulder rushing at his ship from the periphery of his eyes.
And he realized in that moment that the no rock thrown would trigger the passive speed threshold of the kinetic barriers.
So he overrode the passive shield from his command console.
The kinetic barriers flared and then the rock crashed into it.
The ship rumbled and shook, and he felt gravity reasserting itself in how his stomach dropped.
But the kinetic barrier held!
Then he saw something he couldn't comprehend.
The now glossy black skinned giant had uprooted one of the giant trees… and swung it down at the ship.
"BRACE FOR IMPACT!" he shouted.
And then the tree trunk struck the barrier like the creator god's own smithing hammer.
The barrier shattered and then the trunk struck the thinly armored hull.
He heard metal squealing and breaking. He heard screams as the ship went down. Through the bridge's windows, he saw the ground approaching too quickly.
Shit shit shit -!
And then the ship crashed.
---
Charles grunted as one of the transport ships went down but the other got away because his son missed his rock throw and decided that throwing a tree was better than using the tree to pin the ship down.
And missed.
He told James that his aim was bad but the boy never practiced!
And the metal birds - because that's what the aliens looked like - were shooting at him with their guns. He could feel it piercing through his Armament Haki, but it was like getting poked by a hair. Annoying and not dangerous.
Hell, he wasn't even bleeding!
"What kind of puny guns do you little birds carry, hah?!" he laughed as he jumped into the fight with nothing but his hands.
And while all of the metal birdies were focused on him, his small troops - the regular sized ones - fired on the aliens from their hidden positions.
---
"What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck -?!" Gno'iis (private) Mex stuttered out as he rolled out of the way like his training taught him.
And his training just saved his ass.
The tank he was using for cover squealed and crashed as something giant stepped on it and cast a shadow over … a lot of them. Mex looked up and saw the giant - living giant! - that he and everyone else had been shooting at while their smaller guys in the forest were shooting at them.
'Oh, well, why aren't you shooting at the shooters, Mex?'
Because there was a giant in front of their faces tearing all of their armored and shuttles apart with its bare hands!
And the goddamn aliens were shooting lasers at him!
The thing had to be … at least two hundred narins* tall.
Oh spirits. How were there living things that big?!
And then he saw something in the periphery of his vision. He looked and realized that the giant's soldiers - the regular sized aliens - were on the ground.
'There's at least four species,' he realized as he looked at what looked like an aquatic species, the giant itself, a hairless tumak**, and a lanky thing with long legs that looked like the hairless tumak but twice as tall.
The Hierarchy hadn't just come to subjugate a single species but a federation of species!
And Mex knew enough about Citadel laws to realize that the Hierarchy … might have fucked up.
Royally fucked up.
One of the long legged ones saw him… and then disappeared?!
Suddenly, it was in front of his face with its gun pointed at his face.
He immediately raised his arms up.
And for a moment, a blissful moment, nothing happened.
It stared at him.
He stared at it.
It barked something at him loudly, and not wanting to piss off the thing who was twice as tall as he was and could apparently move fast enough to cover a hundred narins in under two seconds, he slowly set his gun down and then kept his hands up.
It blinked.
A few other soldiers came to support the long leg one, and one of them cuffed his wrists.
And then dragged him away.
And as they dragged him away, he saw what had happened to the ground invasion force.
One of the capital-grade transport ships had been ground with its back broken, shuttles that weren't already in the air were all smoking and destroyed with what looked like molten holes all along their hulls, and most of the soldiers that hadn't immediately died to the laser barrages were now surrendering.
Mex … relaxed.
He wasn't going to die to absurdities today.
That's good.
… Yeah, that's good. Not dying on some barbarian backwater colony was good.
-VB-
Kringal (Admiral) Dakkan Edruius
HFS Might of Palavan
"What?" Dakkan uttered out in utter shock, breaking his own discipline.
"The ground assault failed," Shagin (General) Tsirius hissed. "They have biological weapons. Living giants that were taller than my transport ship was long!"
Dakkan leaned back into his seat.
As much as he wanted to call Tsirius a coward for leaving his men, if there truly were biological weapons that were … ship-sized, then he did the right thing to save the troops that were still on his transport ship.
"Do you have footage?" he asked.
"Of course, I do! No one will ever believe us otherwise!"
When he received the footage, he reviewed it immediately.
And he felt his stomach turn and sink.
While Tsirius had focused on the giant, Dakkan saw something much more important: a diverse set of races, laser infantry small arms, and the giant's ability to ignore mass effect small arms after turning black.
It wasn't just at the periphery of the largest city that their assault had been turned aside.
Other assaults, especially those sent to put down the anti-orbital guns, have also failed. All of those assaults all reported the same thing as well: soldiers capable of turning their skin black to fight against mass effect weapons. Unlike the giant, however, the "regular" sized soldiers capable of doing that didn't survive long if they charged head-first into a barrage.
Whatever these races had, it was obvious to Dakkan that this small fleet that the Hierarchy had sent would not be enough to subjugate them, especially if this was nothing more than a backwater planet (which was almost certain considering that there was almost no heavy industry centers observed from orbit).
"Kringal!" the sensor officer shouted. "We have emergences from the other mass relay!"
"Has the Talon Fleet engaged the enemy?"
"Negative, kringal. Talon is pulling back. Their commanding kringal states that the enemy fleet is too big."
"I want numbers, esgos!"
It was obvious to him that this attempt at subjugating a new species was not only a failure… but something that will become a diplomatic crisis, especially since this was not a single race but an alliance of races.
They may have just encountered an interstellar alliance just like the Citadel Council, and that was bad news for them all.
"Instruct Talon kringal to join back with Maw Fleet," he ordered. "We're pulling out of this system and waiting for further instruction. It's clear that we are not prepared."
All of the officers on the bridge looked up at him in shock.
He didn't defend himself, even if the act of pulling out without giving a proper fight might get him in hot trouble.
No, his job was keeping his men alive. The mission to subjugate came after that in his list of priorities.
"Move!"
-VB-
A/N: *made up turian measuring unit for length. 1 meter = 4.42 narins = 3.28 feet
Charles Williams, a descendent of the ancient giants, is roughly 50 meters tall, or 221 narins, or 164 feet.
**tumak = a made up monkey-like creature found in one of Hierarchy's colonies.
Vagabond
The Clone Guy, Swiss Guy, and Battletech Guy
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Commissioned by Mace Shepherd
A Just Measure
Chapter 2
-VB-
General Charles William
Shanxi
AR 2111.11.18
The battle lasted a single day, and to his surprise, the aliens hadn't been … harsh.
Sure, they were still invaders, but they didn't behave horribly.
He knew pirates who'd done worse.
It made this easier.
Taking care of the prisoners, that was. That and interrogation.
"Are the translators working yet?" he asked the lead scientist and linguist currently in his office. His real office, not the digital office he used to talk to soldiers on the base or politicians.
After beating them on the ground two days ago, which was also when the reinforcement from nearby systems came in droves to scare the aliens out of the Shanxi System, everyone's been working pretty hard.
Laborers helped set up the prison camp.
Mechanics performed repairs on the city.
Military engineers pulled part alien tech.
Soldiers kept watch over the prisoners and helped the mechanics and engineers pull the alien tech apart.
Civilians helped remove rubbles.
Everyone was busy.
The tiny humans looked up at him.
"Yes, general. We have the initial version of it that we believe can be used for translation," the linguist replied. "Unfortunately, it seems that we are missing a lot of context for their languages, so it won't be accurate, merely understandable."
Charles hummed. "That is good enough for me and my soldiers. If you can, then keep improving it. Otherwise, you can wash your hands of the project. But do hand over some copies to my soldiers, please. We are trying to get information out of the aliens because the top brass wants information, but that's kind of hard when we can't even talk to them."
"Understood. Do you know how the software teams are doing?"
He snorted. "Worse off than you lot. At the very least, you guys are all doing well enough to produce something. The software guys? They just found out that the aliens run their software and hardware on nearly incompatible and unknown causes. Who would have thought, right?"
They chuckled before they left the room.
With a sigh, he pulled out a den-den mushi, the snail that let him communicate across vast distances. There were better machines out there for communication, of course, but this one was a special one.
Not only was it (somehow) capable of FTL communication, it was also linked directly to high command back at the home world.
The only problem for Charles was the fact that despite literal thousands of years that these things have been around, none of them ever got big enough for a giant to use it comfortably, never mind those with ancient giant lineage like himself. So he did the next best thing.
Pressing a button on his four story high desk, he booted up a robot to make the call for him.
The robot, a spindly humanoid thing, pushed itself out of its casket, walked over to where the den den mushi was and picked it up to make the call. Once it did, the robot carried it over to a stereo system where it would be safe from the loud volumes the system would be making so that it would be easier for him to hear.
"General Williams," the speaker rang out with the voice of the President of the Blue Planet Confederacy, Madam Strawberry Nixon.
Her alluring voice was the same as ever. It was still unbelievable to Charles that the popular seahorse mermaid idol ended up becoming the president of the BPC. But then again, better her than anyone else that had been running for the presidency at the time. He could still imagine how she looked when he first met her for some of his proposals. Gods, she was … beautiful. He didn't need to be a fishmen or mermaid to appreciate that kind of beauty.
"I'm just calling to report to you that my boys and girls managed to get their hands on a rudimentary translator. Interrogation will begin now, but I don't expect to get anything except the most basic information for some time."
"I see," she hummed. "And their computers?"
"Runs on a completely different programming language on top of a different coding philosophy, ma'am. If getting a proper translation is hard, then getting access to their computers without their cooperation would be even harder especially since we have no basis for it and no one that can help us."
"I see. Understood. Try to get it when you can. If you can't, then focus on the regular methods of information acquisition."
"Yes, madam president."
"Good. Now, tell me how you feel about our current situation."
"Yes, ma'am. As I've reported before, the alien's ground forces are no match for ours if we do the proper thing and integrate all skill levels of our force evenly across each battle group."
"Like you have been advocating."
"Yes, madam. And we now have proof of it."
"Hmm, continue."
"While our ground force can and will overcome anything they throw at us, the same cannot be said of our space force."
"The navy."
"Yes, madam. The enemy's naval assets are, frankly speaking, far more advanced than ours in specific fields: kinetic barriers, armor, and design. Their spinal cannons, in particular, can take down our energy barriers that can withstand hours of concentrated laser fire. On the other hand, they cannot withstand laser barrage for long. However, due to the short to medium range of our lasers compared to their long range kinetic spinal cannons and higher speed, we are at a critical disadvantage. We can try to close distance but they are faster than us. That is the report I have received from my people."
"Do we have any other advantage?"
"We do. We have access to a civilian model electronic we found on the enemy's transport ship. On it, we found a map of the enemy's star network."
"Oh?"
"Yes, madam. Our advantage is that we seem to possess significantly more stars and colonies than they do."
The president sighed. "That is not an advantage, general."
"No, madam, not on the surface."
"On the surface?"
"It can be used during negotiations to make the enemy believe that we are far larger - and capable of bringing that might around - to fight them if need be. It is one thing to fight an equal, madam president, but it is something else entirely when they see that we are much larger than them."
He heard her hum.
"How much larger is the confederacy compared to them?"
"It seems that they only use the mass effect relays."
A pause.
"Ridiculous. That would mean -!"
"They are limited to worlds on and close to the relay network, yes, ma'am."
"And relay network systems only make up five percent of our total…" she muttered. "Are you suggesting that we may be as big as twenty times their size?!"
"Twenty times would be pushing it, madam. But ten times? Even five times? Very much so."
And that held meaning.
Even with only twenty percent of all colonies offering their support for the war effort, they would easily match these aliens in manpower and industrial might.
"You realize that this changes the calculus of war quite a bit."
"I do."
"Yet you did not send this information ahead."
"It is a map we cannot read, madam. We see the stars and colonies but not what the words indicating those stars and colonies are. For all we know, the map doesn't include any colony and space station that does not reach a certain threshold. I thought it prudent that I keep the information for now until I could verify it."
"And with the new translator?"
"We will begin the verification."
"... Good. I want you to focus on that, general."
"Of course, madam president. Is there anything else I can answer?"
A pause. "No, not for now. But you've given me enough to think about. Good day and good luck, General Williams." Another pause. "Oh, but before I go. The federal government is sending an ambassador just in case they reach out for peace."
"...
-VB-
Kringal (Admiral) Dakkan Edruius
HFS Might of Palavan
NX-0254C System, the other side of Shanxi-Theta Relay
CC 2157.05.14
Ever since their retreat from the alien "Shanxi" system, he and his fleet continued to hold their position in the NX-0254C System while waiting for reinforcement and sending what knew information they obtained about the enemy aliens.
Including from the wrecked salvage and survivors of the first clash right here in this system.
It was to his shock and dismay that he learned exactly what happened once they managed to build a translator.
For one, he wasn't up against a single race but a coalition of them… that apparently originated from a single world.
Two, he wasn't up against a race new to the scene but one that has been around for as long as some of the associate races of the Citadel Council. In fact, they have been in space for about as long as the Turians have been part of the Citadel Council if the interviews with the civilians were to be believed.
Which led to the real problem at hand.
Shooting a civilian ship was what led to the battles.
Because said civilian ship made a stupid move, which most of the survivors of the first battle agreed was a stupid move.
In fact, more than a few were very furious with their own people for making such a stupid move and began apologizing, though they were very few in number. Most were still angry with them.
Which led to the second problem at hand.
The coalition of these races weren't divided along racial lines but along political lines. According to "Doctor Samuel Carter," one of the alien survivors he and the rest of the Turian hierarchy managed to save via saving escape pods, the "Blue Planet Confederacy" was a legitimate confederate government where each planet and system was a member of the government and there were no racial representation in the federal government. Each planet acted like their own… nation-state, almost. The only things they gave up to the federal government was tax.
It sounded like how Turians were like before the Unification War.
Which led to the third problem.
Shanxi, the planet they attacked, wasn't even a particularly well defended world; it was considered a "rimworld," a barely accepted member of the confederation which just got out of the initial colonization period.
There was a beep on the door.
"Come in."
An officer walked in. "Kringal (Admiral), we've detected mass relay activation from the Beta relay. The following FTL signature matches known asari ship signatures."
Dakkan sighed.
Good.
The asari diplomat was here to unfuck the situation at hand.
"Is she in range for comms?"
"Yes, kringal."
"Good. I'll be up at the bridge soon."
Hopefully, the intervention of a third party will keep the conflict from boiling over into a war.
---
"I see," Matriarch Zolanna said out loud even as she sighed internally.
She had always advocated for asari representatives or liaisons being aboard any Council patrols near or in systems with unopened mass relays because she saw border skirmishes like this breaking out.
And now, she had one in her hands.
Did the Council send her because she was the one who had suggested it?
Was it something like 'Since you were so obviously into this kind of situation, solve it and maybe we can talk about it further' kind of situation?
She wasn't sure.
But from what she heard, this was … a very volatile situation.
And thankfully, she even had a map to go off of.
She looked at the still image map of this "Blue Planet Confederacy." It was a map recovered from a dying hard drive from within one of the destroyed civilian ships. And … and it was massive. She could tell from the map that these worlds were a tightly packed network of systems. These aliens used the Mass Relay Network, yes, but the pattern of colonization also suggested that they invested heavily into colonizing worlds off of it.
She didn't know why they would have done something so prohibitively expensive but it must have paid out dividends considering the fact that some of the "big" colonies were off the Mass Relay Network, clearly marked out by the circles and lines that connected far away systems.
If the translation so far proved to be correct, then the Citadel Council may have just encountered a peer civilization at the very least.
Zolanna let out a shuddering breath. This was … probably the worst case scenario for her and her people.
It was one thing to attempt to enforce regulations and rules on a lesser civilization or even a barely spaceflight capable one. It was another thing to do so to a peer; wars have broken out for less as the turians themselves knew well thanks to their Unification War.
Then her guideline for conduct was rather simple: she needed to be firm yet deferential to the BPC on matters regarding their sovereignty but give no promises and assurances when it came to future diplomacy.
"How long until we are aligned with the Hierarchy fleet?" she asked, not looking up from the map.
"Just five minutes, ma'am."
"Very well."
-VB-
General Charles William
Shanxi
AR 2111.11.21
"General, Shanxi-Theta activated again! The Confederate fleet has raised the alarms to maximum!"
Once again, he was in his office. There was no point going outside because it would actually limit his ability to coordinate the troops, even though he would rather be outside throwing rocks and fists.
Within seconds of getting the alert, he made a call to the admiral in orbit with his den-den mushi.
"Tell me what you see, admiral," he said as soon as the call went through.
"They brought more ships than before, that's for sure," the admiral, a young man, reported with a grunt. "I see … 4 capital-class ships, 33 cruisers, and 56 frigates."
That was the quick summary, even Charles could tell.
On their side, they had 10 capital-class ships (2 carriers and 2 battleships), 25 cruisers, and 40 frigates. The battle was not going to be in their favor.
"... We're getting signals on the radio and … a den-den mushi?" the admiral repeated something someone else on his ship said. "The aliens must have cracked our communication methods through salvage. That is blisteringly fast."
"Or any of the survivors could have helped, if there were survivors on the other side."
The admiral was silent.
"Answer the call," Charles insisted. "Let's hear what they have to say."
"... to all Blue Planet Confederacy elements within the system. I am Matriarch Eina Zolanna of the Asari Republics. I am here as a representative of the Citadel Council, which the Turian Hierarchy is a part of, to negotiate a truce on behalf of the Turian Hierarchy. What happened here and in the next door system is a terrible tragedy that should not have taken place. Please, I implore you to send an envoy if you wish or to allow me onto your world for negotiations. If you send an envoy, we shall respect them to the fullest extent of intergalactic laws."
After that, the message repeated itself a few more times.
Charles sat dumbfounded. "What the fuck?" he muttered out loud.
"... Should we be glad that we won't have to throw any more of our soldiers onto the frontline or pissed that these people think it'll be this easy to get over the fact that they attacked us without provocation?" the admiral asked.
Charles groaned. "Who's the highest ranking person?"
"You."
"No! I mean… the person who can negotiate this."
"You."
"... Seriously?"
"I'm a rear admiral. You're the four-star general. Ergo, you are the highest ranked individual, even if we are two separate branches of the military"
"I have to play politics?"
"You didn't?" the admiral sounded surprised.
"No! That's why I'm out here in the periphery!"
"... Guess politics catches up to us all no matter where we are."
Charles wanted to throw something.
But then he realized that the first and last battle he participated in during this war had been the only chance for him to throw something big at something else that was big and get away with it.
He groaned in dismay.
"What about the governor?" he tried.
"General, you know as much as I do that planetary governors or planetary rulers are not allowed to partake in foreign relations."
Charles let his head drop onto the table, making the building-sized desk rumble and shake from the impact.
"Goddamnit."
"Good luck, general."
-VB-
Matriarch Eina Zolanna
Shanxi, "Shanxi" System
CC 2157.05.16
Zolanna stared up at the giant.
Because there was no other way to describe what - who - she was looking at without using the word "giant" in everything.
She had spotted the giant as her ship had entered the planet's atmosphere, courtesy of the general in charge. As it had been explained to her, there was no trained diplomat or envoy on site and due to legalities, the local planetary politicians could not represent the "Blue Planet Confederacy."
As her ship had flown down, she thought the giant had been a statue.
But then the "statue" turned its head to look at her ship and raised an eyebrow.
And now, she'd come out of her ship and stood at the feet of the giant with her very clearly disturbed bodyguards.
The giant was supposedly their general and also the one who had led his soldiers to battle in the one and only ground battle of the border skirmish so far. For that, he had the Turians' respect because they saw in him someone like themselves: an honorable leader who led from the front.
But Zolanna could only think about how quickly she'll die if the giant turned out to be deceptive and this was just his way of gaining a new pet.
Because from where she stood?
It wouldn't be too farfetched to think that the giant might have a glass jar terrarium somewhere to drop her into and force her into becoming a pet.
Hell, would her biotics even be enough for her to defend herself?
"You are an asari?" the general spoke up. But instead of him speaking directly to her, she found herself talking to a mollusc of some kind that sat on top of a platform held up by a much smaller and asari-sized "human." She knew that this one was human because that was the "baseline" of their species. And despite the size difference (a normal asari to a small skyscraper), both wore the same uniform. "You nothing like bird people. Turian?"
It was expected of a military leader to be … more blunt.
"Yes," she replied. "I am an asari. My name is Eina Zolanna, a matriarchal envoy of the Asari Republics. It is a pleasure to meet you, General William."
"... I ponder it is a pleasantly thing to know that our words can halt this fight from digging on," he replied through some sort of a translator software. "Well met."
… Well, that sounded like this was going to go well!
She hoped.
Their people's ability to create translation software so quickly, however, alarmed her. The reason why the asari were at the forefront of diplomacy was because of their ability to gain new languages through melding. It smoothed over first contacts and gave them a leverage over primitive species. The translation software negated that leverage, regardless of how rough the translation was.
At the same time, a race dedicated to linguistics generally tended to be cooperative to a decree. Turians, Salarians, and Asari were all like that. Batarians, however, weren't, and it showed to this day that their race, governments, and nations continued to be passively hostile to the Citadel Council and its associate races.
"... Is tranlator-person not work?"
"Ah. Yes. But it is … very rough."
"Hmm. Understood. But can agree to ceasefire still, no?"
"Yes, we can," she nodded.
"Good. We return your people. You return people mine. Stop hostility. No one but envoys pass through relay. Your people and me people talk later more closely, but we stop fight now. Can agree?"
… It was the best case scenario as far as she was concerned.
"Agreed," she said. She moved to shake hands before stopping. "Does your people shake hands to seal deals?"
"Very much. But me big, you small. Handshake hard. My Regos small. Can shake her hand."
And that's how Eina was introduced to Confederate Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter. Brilliant green eyes, bob cut blonde hair, and a mind that could figure out the most difficult puzzles.
And though she stood on the other side of the battlefield, Eina fell in love. She would laugh about it later, falling in love so quickly like a maiden, but it was not a love that she ever regretted.
-VB-
President Strawberry Nixon
Arcturus Station
AR 2111.11.21
"Peace?" she asked, flabbergasted by what was being said from the other side of the den-den mushi. And it showed in how her seahorse mermaid tail flicked while she sat on her chair. If it hadn't been for the anti-grav modules, she would be on the floor and not the chair, but the module made moving in the air almost like swimming in the ocean.
"Yes, ma'am," General Charles William replied from Shanxi, some eight thousand light years away on the frontier of the confederacy space.
She had met him before, and knew him to be a no-nonsense man who fought more for his soldiers than anyone else. He didn't dabble in politics, which was why he lost out on more lucrative posts closer to the Core and ended up in the periphery.
He was not someone who she would personally ally with, but the fame of being the general who defended a member planet against an honest-to-gods alien invasion would be useful in the short term.
Especially once the public learned about how he negotiated a ceasefire so quickly as well without giving up anything… though detractors and haters will criticize him for not getting anything out of the deal.
Those fools didn't care that the general had no legal right or means to do that; that job and right belonged solely to the federal government.
"How soon can we get a diplomat out there?" she asked as she looked around the table.
"The closest thing we have to a diplomat would be any number of interstellar negotiators we deploy to settle planet-to-planet issues," the Minister of Internal Relations, Chosui Montegomery (a white skinned human), replied from his seat three seats down from her left.
She looked around. "And you think," she asked without looking at him. "That a mere interplanetary negotiator will fulfill the needs of the confederation right now?"
He opened his mouth but someone elbowed him and he shut up.
"Right now, the federal government has been given the chance to prove to the wider confederation that they were right to have joined the confederation. We've done that partially so far in how quickly our fleet responded to the invasion. Now, we must do so on the diplomatic battlefield. And you suggest instead that we should use a mere negotiator instead of a trained diplomat?"
"... My apologies, ma'am."
She took a deep breath in and let it out. "I want this to be perfect," she demanded coldly. "If there is a war, then it will be because we are the righteous defenders. If there is peace, then it is because we are the generous and magnanimous defenders. And nobody is going to interfere in this, understood?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Good. Since I don't trust anyone else to lead this negotiation, I will be sending my protege. She will be the one to head the diplomatic party."
Eyes widened around the room.
She "stood" up from her chair, prompting everyone else to do the same.
"Dismissed."
Everyone in the room left.
"Madam president…"
It was General William.
"Yes?" she answered.
"Is it wise?"
She glanced at the den-den mushi.
"Anita Goyle is my protege. More than that, she has the achievements to back up her assignment. Or would you like to dispute how she was able to keep the Harkon Trade Union and the Seven Star Coalition from going to war?"
"That is not what I am speaking of and you know it. Why everyone else looked uneasy."
She stared at the mushi and then snorted. "You truly do not have a lick of political finesse in your bones, do you, general?"
"My job and purpose is to keep people trained, alive, and protecting others. As long as it doesn't interfere with that, then I do not mind. But sending someone of her stature…"
"Are you a racist, general?"
"Racist?" he barked out a laugh after. "No. If I was a racist, then I would not be able to see just how useful everyone is, regardless of their appearance. No, I am a pragmatist, and though I may not be a politician, I am keenly aware of what first impressions are like. The people who she will talk to are the ones I fought and talked with today. They will be like you, madam president, and all they will see is her."
"... I will take your recommendation under advisement, and yet, this does not change my decision."
"Very well, madam president. Good luck."
And then the connection severed.
The mushi quieted down, leaving Strawberry alone in her office.
Her longer fingers ra-ta-tapped on the plasteel table in the presidential office.
She didn't like it. Didn't like how everyone in the room had questioned her decision.
She will simply have to make it clear to her protege that failure was not an option, not when they were still questioning her.
Instead of using the den-den mushi, her fingers rose up and drifted over to one of the tablets nearby. With a few flicks of her fingers, a call rang out.
And picked up almost immediately.
"Teacher?"
"Anita. I want you in my office. I have an assignment for you."
-VB-
General Charles William
Shanxi
AR 2111.11.27
It took almost a full week for the designated ambassador to arrive.
This showed the lengths the president was willing to go to.
'First off, the speed at which the federal government responded to the situation itself was notable. By doing this, the president told the confederation that this was a matter of dire consequence. Regardless of the result of the negotiations, the president would be seen as someone who gave a situation the attention it deserved.
'Second, most shuttles and warships did not travel that quickly. By using such a powerful FTL capable ship, she showed off the federal government's reach, technological prowess, and potential - a warning to all of the worlds and planetary coalitions gibbering day and night about independence and sovereignty. The federal government will never initiate violence, but if the "freedom fighters" initiate violence, then the federal navy and army will respond so quickly that most will not be able to put up a meaningful resistance.'
He watched the shuttle come down the atmosphere smoothly. Even more smoothly than the "asari" and their ship, which flew smoother than the Turian ships.
'And if they do, then it was treason from start to finish, and the world will become a "ward of the federal government," effectively ending the world's participation in the confederation and reduced to a mere territory.
'And three, this was a power play.'
The shuttle, a long and narrow golden thing engraved with even rarer metals and minerals landed on its four landing gears. A door opened up on its previously remarkably smooth and indistinguishable surface, and a floating staircase gracefully extended down.
But Charles knew that there was no need for that.
Two people walked out, both dressed in the red and black of the confederate presidential guard.
And finally.
The president's protege walked out.
Or well, floated out.
---
Eina Zolanna
She watched the opulent ship landed not too far from her and the general's position.
She glanced at the giant general and then at his retinue.
The ship was about the same size as the one that she came on, so it had to be for someone close to the baseline human, right?
When she initially heard that an ambassador would be coming to negotiate for the entire "Blue Planet Confederacy," she had been worried. While she didn't see or hear about any racial discrimination among the elites of the confederation from any of the prisoners the Turians held, she had postulated that there was a chance the giants might be the leaders of the confederation.
The size of the ship has so far dissuaded her of that notion, however.
Instead, she watched two normal humans walk out, quickly followed by a third. All three wore the same uniform, and carried themselves like most ceremonial guards did.
Then the ship's door closed behind them?
She watched as the three humans approached them and finally noticed that the third human had a tray in his hands.
And as they got closer, her eyebrows rose up slowly.
Because as the party of three drew closer, she realized that it was not a party of three but a party of four.
Because on that tray held by the third human was a tiny being.
The party of four came to a stop with a synchronized clicks of their boots.
"Presenting the Ambassador of the Blue Planet Confederation, Anita Goyle of Green Dressrosa!"
And Zolanna finally saw her.
A human-like being with a large fluffy tail and a sharp nose. It almost looked like a cartoonishly small version of baseline humans (sans the tail).
"Greetings, ambassador," she spoke, her training kicking in. "I am Matriarch Eina Zolanna of the Asari Republics."
"It is a pleasure to meet you," Ambassador Goyle replied with a curtsy. When she straightened back up, she smiled. "It must be a surprise to see someone like myself, yes?"
"Y-Yes."
Goyle smiled. "It is normal. Most peoples of the confederacy do not meet a dwarf in their lifetime, despite how much we have been becoming more involved in the confederation's daily lives." Then her smile became fixed as she turned to look at the general. "General William. It's a pleasure to meet you."
"The pleasure is mine, ambassador."
"Thank you for accompanying the diplomat, but I'll take it from here."
It was a dismissal, Zolanna realized.
The general squinted down at them. "Very well. I wish you good luck."
And he left without a fight. To her surprise. Most Turians would have been upset at such a public and decisive dismissal.
"Now, shall we get inside somewhere?" the "dwarf" asked.
"... Yes," Zolanna responded because she had no other words to say. If the BPC wanted to show their internal politics to her, then that was just something she'll report, not something she'll intervene in.
A Just Measure
Chapter 2
-VB-
General Charles William
Shanxi
AR 2111.11.18
The battle lasted a single day, and to his surprise, the aliens hadn't been … harsh.
Sure, they were still invaders, but they didn't behave horribly.
He knew pirates who'd done worse.
It made this easier.
Taking care of the prisoners, that was. That and interrogation.
"Are the translators working yet?" he asked the lead scientist and linguist currently in his office. His real office, not the digital office he used to talk to soldiers on the base or politicians.
After beating them on the ground two days ago, which was also when the reinforcement from nearby systems came in droves to scare the aliens out of the Shanxi System, everyone's been working pretty hard.
Laborers helped set up the prison camp.
Mechanics performed repairs on the city.
Military engineers pulled part alien tech.
Soldiers kept watch over the prisoners and helped the mechanics and engineers pull the alien tech apart.
Civilians helped remove rubbles.
Everyone was busy.
The tiny humans looked up at him.
"Yes, general. We have the initial version of it that we believe can be used for translation," the linguist replied. "Unfortunately, it seems that we are missing a lot of context for their languages, so it won't be accurate, merely understandable."
Charles hummed. "That is good enough for me and my soldiers. If you can, then keep improving it. Otherwise, you can wash your hands of the project. But do hand over some copies to my soldiers, please. We are trying to get information out of the aliens because the top brass wants information, but that's kind of hard when we can't even talk to them."
"Understood. Do you know how the software teams are doing?"
He snorted. "Worse off than you lot. At the very least, you guys are all doing well enough to produce something. The software guys? They just found out that the aliens run their software and hardware on nearly incompatible and unknown causes. Who would have thought, right?"
They chuckled before they left the room.
With a sigh, he pulled out a den-den mushi, the snail that let him communicate across vast distances. There were better machines out there for communication, of course, but this one was a special one.
Not only was it (somehow) capable of FTL communication, it was also linked directly to high command back at the home world.
The only problem for Charles was the fact that despite literal thousands of years that these things have been around, none of them ever got big enough for a giant to use it comfortably, never mind those with ancient giant lineage like himself. So he did the next best thing.
Pressing a button on his four story high desk, he booted up a robot to make the call for him.
The robot, a spindly humanoid thing, pushed itself out of its casket, walked over to where the den den mushi was and picked it up to make the call. Once it did, the robot carried it over to a stereo system where it would be safe from the loud volumes the system would be making so that it would be easier for him to hear.
"General Williams," the speaker rang out with the voice of the President of the Blue Planet Confederacy, Madam Strawberry Nixon.
Her alluring voice was the same as ever. It was still unbelievable to Charles that the popular seahorse mermaid idol ended up becoming the president of the BPC. But then again, better her than anyone else that had been running for the presidency at the time. He could still imagine how she looked when he first met her for some of his proposals. Gods, she was … beautiful. He didn't need to be a fishmen or mermaid to appreciate that kind of beauty.
"I'm just calling to report to you that my boys and girls managed to get their hands on a rudimentary translator. Interrogation will begin now, but I don't expect to get anything except the most basic information for some time."
"I see," she hummed. "And their computers?"
"Runs on a completely different programming language on top of a different coding philosophy, ma'am. If getting a proper translation is hard, then getting access to their computers without their cooperation would be even harder especially since we have no basis for it and no one that can help us."
"I see. Understood. Try to get it when you can. If you can't, then focus on the regular methods of information acquisition."
"Yes, madam president."
"Good. Now, tell me how you feel about our current situation."
"Yes, ma'am. As I've reported before, the alien's ground forces are no match for ours if we do the proper thing and integrate all skill levels of our force evenly across each battle group."
"Like you have been advocating."
"Yes, madam. And we now have proof of it."
"Hmm, continue."
"While our ground force can and will overcome anything they throw at us, the same cannot be said of our space force."
"The navy."
"Yes, madam. The enemy's naval assets are, frankly speaking, far more advanced than ours in specific fields: kinetic barriers, armor, and design. Their spinal cannons, in particular, can take down our energy barriers that can withstand hours of concentrated laser fire. On the other hand, they cannot withstand laser barrage for long. However, due to the short to medium range of our lasers compared to their long range kinetic spinal cannons and higher speed, we are at a critical disadvantage. We can try to close distance but they are faster than us. That is the report I have received from my people."
"Do we have any other advantage?"
"We do. We have access to a civilian model electronic we found on the enemy's transport ship. On it, we found a map of the enemy's star network."
"Oh?"
"Yes, madam. Our advantage is that we seem to possess significantly more stars and colonies than they do."
The president sighed. "That is not an advantage, general."
"No, madam, not on the surface."
"On the surface?"
"It can be used during negotiations to make the enemy believe that we are far larger - and capable of bringing that might around - to fight them if need be. It is one thing to fight an equal, madam president, but it is something else entirely when they see that we are much larger than them."
He heard her hum.
"How much larger is the confederacy compared to them?"
"It seems that they only use the mass effect relays."
A pause.
"Ridiculous. That would mean -!"
"They are limited to worlds on and close to the relay network, yes, ma'am."
"And relay network systems only make up five percent of our total…" she muttered. "Are you suggesting that we may be as big as twenty times their size?!"
"Twenty times would be pushing it, madam. But ten times? Even five times? Very much so."
And that held meaning.
Even with only twenty percent of all colonies offering their support for the war effort, they would easily match these aliens in manpower and industrial might.
"You realize that this changes the calculus of war quite a bit."
"I do."
"Yet you did not send this information ahead."
"It is a map we cannot read, madam. We see the stars and colonies but not what the words indicating those stars and colonies are. For all we know, the map doesn't include any colony and space station that does not reach a certain threshold. I thought it prudent that I keep the information for now until I could verify it."
"And with the new translator?"
"We will begin the verification."
"... Good. I want you to focus on that, general."
"Of course, madam president. Is there anything else I can answer?"
A pause. "No, not for now. But you've given me enough to think about. Good day and good luck, General Williams." Another pause. "Oh, but before I go. The federal government is sending an ambassador just in case they reach out for peace."
"...
-VB-
Kringal (Admiral) Dakkan Edruius
HFS Might of Palavan
NX-0254C System, the other side of Shanxi-Theta Relay
CC 2157.05.14
Ever since their retreat from the alien "Shanxi" system, he and his fleet continued to hold their position in the NX-0254C System while waiting for reinforcement and sending what knew information they obtained about the enemy aliens.
Including from the wrecked salvage and survivors of the first clash right here in this system.
It was to his shock and dismay that he learned exactly what happened once they managed to build a translator.
For one, he wasn't up against a single race but a coalition of them… that apparently originated from a single world.
Two, he wasn't up against a race new to the scene but one that has been around for as long as some of the associate races of the Citadel Council. In fact, they have been in space for about as long as the Turians have been part of the Citadel Council if the interviews with the civilians were to be believed.
Which led to the real problem at hand.
Shooting a civilian ship was what led to the battles.
Because said civilian ship made a stupid move, which most of the survivors of the first battle agreed was a stupid move.
In fact, more than a few were very furious with their own people for making such a stupid move and began apologizing, though they were very few in number. Most were still angry with them.
Which led to the second problem at hand.
The coalition of these races weren't divided along racial lines but along political lines. According to "Doctor Samuel Carter," one of the alien survivors he and the rest of the Turian hierarchy managed to save via saving escape pods, the "Blue Planet Confederacy" was a legitimate confederate government where each planet and system was a member of the government and there were no racial representation in the federal government. Each planet acted like their own… nation-state, almost. The only things they gave up to the federal government was tax.
It sounded like how Turians were like before the Unification War.
Which led to the third problem.
Shanxi, the planet they attacked, wasn't even a particularly well defended world; it was considered a "rimworld," a barely accepted member of the confederation which just got out of the initial colonization period.
There was a beep on the door.
"Come in."
An officer walked in. "Kringal (Admiral), we've detected mass relay activation from the Beta relay. The following FTL signature matches known asari ship signatures."
Dakkan sighed.
Good.
The asari diplomat was here to unfuck the situation at hand.
"Is she in range for comms?"
"Yes, kringal."
"Good. I'll be up at the bridge soon."
Hopefully, the intervention of a third party will keep the conflict from boiling over into a war.
---
"I see," Matriarch Zolanna said out loud even as she sighed internally.
She had always advocated for asari representatives or liaisons being aboard any Council patrols near or in systems with unopened mass relays because she saw border skirmishes like this breaking out.
And now, she had one in her hands.
Did the Council send her because she was the one who had suggested it?
Was it something like 'Since you were so obviously into this kind of situation, solve it and maybe we can talk about it further' kind of situation?
She wasn't sure.
But from what she heard, this was … a very volatile situation.
And thankfully, she even had a map to go off of.
She looked at the still image map of this "Blue Planet Confederacy." It was a map recovered from a dying hard drive from within one of the destroyed civilian ships. And … and it was massive. She could tell from the map that these worlds were a tightly packed network of systems. These aliens used the Mass Relay Network, yes, but the pattern of colonization also suggested that they invested heavily into colonizing worlds off of it.
She didn't know why they would have done something so prohibitively expensive but it must have paid out dividends considering the fact that some of the "big" colonies were off the Mass Relay Network, clearly marked out by the circles and lines that connected far away systems.
If the translation so far proved to be correct, then the Citadel Council may have just encountered a peer civilization at the very least.
Zolanna let out a shuddering breath. This was … probably the worst case scenario for her and her people.
It was one thing to attempt to enforce regulations and rules on a lesser civilization or even a barely spaceflight capable one. It was another thing to do so to a peer; wars have broken out for less as the turians themselves knew well thanks to their Unification War.
Then her guideline for conduct was rather simple: she needed to be firm yet deferential to the BPC on matters regarding their sovereignty but give no promises and assurances when it came to future diplomacy.
"How long until we are aligned with the Hierarchy fleet?" she asked, not looking up from the map.
"Just five minutes, ma'am."
"Very well."
-VB-
General Charles William
Shanxi
AR 2111.11.21
"General, Shanxi-Theta activated again! The Confederate fleet has raised the alarms to maximum!"
Once again, he was in his office. There was no point going outside because it would actually limit his ability to coordinate the troops, even though he would rather be outside throwing rocks and fists.
Within seconds of getting the alert, he made a call to the admiral in orbit with his den-den mushi.
"Tell me what you see, admiral," he said as soon as the call went through.
"They brought more ships than before, that's for sure," the admiral, a young man, reported with a grunt. "I see … 4 capital-class ships, 33 cruisers, and 56 frigates."
That was the quick summary, even Charles could tell.
On their side, they had 10 capital-class ships (2 carriers and 2 battleships), 25 cruisers, and 40 frigates. The battle was not going to be in their favor.
"... We're getting signals on the radio and … a den-den mushi?" the admiral repeated something someone else on his ship said. "The aliens must have cracked our communication methods through salvage. That is blisteringly fast."
"Or any of the survivors could have helped, if there were survivors on the other side."
The admiral was silent.
"Answer the call," Charles insisted. "Let's hear what they have to say."
"... to all Blue Planet Confederacy elements within the system. I am Matriarch Eina Zolanna of the Asari Republics. I am here as a representative of the Citadel Council, which the Turian Hierarchy is a part of, to negotiate a truce on behalf of the Turian Hierarchy. What happened here and in the next door system is a terrible tragedy that should not have taken place. Please, I implore you to send an envoy if you wish or to allow me onto your world for negotiations. If you send an envoy, we shall respect them to the fullest extent of intergalactic laws."
After that, the message repeated itself a few more times.
Charles sat dumbfounded. "What the fuck?" he muttered out loud.
"... Should we be glad that we won't have to throw any more of our soldiers onto the frontline or pissed that these people think it'll be this easy to get over the fact that they attacked us without provocation?" the admiral asked.
Charles groaned. "Who's the highest ranking person?"
"You."
"No! I mean… the person who can negotiate this."
"You."
"... Seriously?"
"I'm a rear admiral. You're the four-star general. Ergo, you are the highest ranked individual, even if we are two separate branches of the military"
"I have to play politics?"
"You didn't?" the admiral sounded surprised.
"No! That's why I'm out here in the periphery!"
"... Guess politics catches up to us all no matter where we are."
Charles wanted to throw something.
But then he realized that the first and last battle he participated in during this war had been the only chance for him to throw something big at something else that was big and get away with it.
He groaned in dismay.
"What about the governor?" he tried.
"General, you know as much as I do that planetary governors or planetary rulers are not allowed to partake in foreign relations."
Charles let his head drop onto the table, making the building-sized desk rumble and shake from the impact.
"Goddamnit."
"Good luck, general."
-VB-
Matriarch Eina Zolanna
Shanxi, "Shanxi" System
CC 2157.05.16
Zolanna stared up at the giant.
Because there was no other way to describe what - who - she was looking at without using the word "giant" in everything.
She had spotted the giant as her ship had entered the planet's atmosphere, courtesy of the general in charge. As it had been explained to her, there was no trained diplomat or envoy on site and due to legalities, the local planetary politicians could not represent the "Blue Planet Confederacy."
As her ship had flown down, she thought the giant had been a statue.
But then the "statue" turned its head to look at her ship and raised an eyebrow.
And now, she'd come out of her ship and stood at the feet of the giant with her very clearly disturbed bodyguards.
The giant was supposedly their general and also the one who had led his soldiers to battle in the one and only ground battle of the border skirmish so far. For that, he had the Turians' respect because they saw in him someone like themselves: an honorable leader who led from the front.
But Zolanna could only think about how quickly she'll die if the giant turned out to be deceptive and this was just his way of gaining a new pet.
Because from where she stood?
It wouldn't be too farfetched to think that the giant might have a glass jar terrarium somewhere to drop her into and force her into becoming a pet.
Hell, would her biotics even be enough for her to defend herself?
"You are an asari?" the general spoke up. But instead of him speaking directly to her, she found herself talking to a mollusc of some kind that sat on top of a platform held up by a much smaller and asari-sized "human." She knew that this one was human because that was the "baseline" of their species. And despite the size difference (a normal asari to a small skyscraper), both wore the same uniform. "You nothing like bird people. Turian?"
It was expected of a military leader to be … more blunt.
"Yes," she replied. "I am an asari. My name is Eina Zolanna, a matriarchal envoy of the Asari Republics. It is a pleasure to meet you, General William."
"... I ponder it is a pleasantly thing to know that our words can halt this fight from digging on," he replied through some sort of a translator software. "Well met."
… Well, that sounded like this was going to go well!
She hoped.
Their people's ability to create translation software so quickly, however, alarmed her. The reason why the asari were at the forefront of diplomacy was because of their ability to gain new languages through melding. It smoothed over first contacts and gave them a leverage over primitive species. The translation software negated that leverage, regardless of how rough the translation was.
At the same time, a race dedicated to linguistics generally tended to be cooperative to a decree. Turians, Salarians, and Asari were all like that. Batarians, however, weren't, and it showed to this day that their race, governments, and nations continued to be passively hostile to the Citadel Council and its associate races.
"... Is tranlator-person not work?"
"Ah. Yes. But it is … very rough."
"Hmm. Understood. But can agree to ceasefire still, no?"
"Yes, we can," she nodded.
"Good. We return your people. You return people mine. Stop hostility. No one but envoys pass through relay. Your people and me people talk later more closely, but we stop fight now. Can agree?"
… It was the best case scenario as far as she was concerned.
"Agreed," she said. She moved to shake hands before stopping. "Does your people shake hands to seal deals?"
"Very much. But me big, you small. Handshake hard. My Regos small. Can shake her hand."
And that's how Eina was introduced to Confederate Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter. Brilliant green eyes, bob cut blonde hair, and a mind that could figure out the most difficult puzzles.
And though she stood on the other side of the battlefield, Eina fell in love. She would laugh about it later, falling in love so quickly like a maiden, but it was not a love that she ever regretted.
-VB-
President Strawberry Nixon
Arcturus Station
AR 2111.11.21
"Peace?" she asked, flabbergasted by what was being said from the other side of the den-den mushi. And it showed in how her seahorse mermaid tail flicked while she sat on her chair. If it hadn't been for the anti-grav modules, she would be on the floor and not the chair, but the module made moving in the air almost like swimming in the ocean.
"Yes, ma'am," General Charles William replied from Shanxi, some eight thousand light years away on the frontier of the confederacy space.
She had met him before, and knew him to be a no-nonsense man who fought more for his soldiers than anyone else. He didn't dabble in politics, which was why he lost out on more lucrative posts closer to the Core and ended up in the periphery.
He was not someone who she would personally ally with, but the fame of being the general who defended a member planet against an honest-to-gods alien invasion would be useful in the short term.
Especially once the public learned about how he negotiated a ceasefire so quickly as well without giving up anything… though detractors and haters will criticize him for not getting anything out of the deal.
Those fools didn't care that the general had no legal right or means to do that; that job and right belonged solely to the federal government.
"How soon can we get a diplomat out there?" she asked as she looked around the table.
"The closest thing we have to a diplomat would be any number of interstellar negotiators we deploy to settle planet-to-planet issues," the Minister of Internal Relations, Chosui Montegomery (a white skinned human), replied from his seat three seats down from her left.
She looked around. "And you think," she asked without looking at him. "That a mere interplanetary negotiator will fulfill the needs of the confederation right now?"
He opened his mouth but someone elbowed him and he shut up.
"Right now, the federal government has been given the chance to prove to the wider confederation that they were right to have joined the confederation. We've done that partially so far in how quickly our fleet responded to the invasion. Now, we must do so on the diplomatic battlefield. And you suggest instead that we should use a mere negotiator instead of a trained diplomat?"
"... My apologies, ma'am."
She took a deep breath in and let it out. "I want this to be perfect," she demanded coldly. "If there is a war, then it will be because we are the righteous defenders. If there is peace, then it is because we are the generous and magnanimous defenders. And nobody is going to interfere in this, understood?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Good. Since I don't trust anyone else to lead this negotiation, I will be sending my protege. She will be the one to head the diplomatic party."
Eyes widened around the room.
She "stood" up from her chair, prompting everyone else to do the same.
"Dismissed."
Everyone in the room left.
"Madam president…"
It was General William.
"Yes?" she answered.
"Is it wise?"
She glanced at the den-den mushi.
"Anita Goyle is my protege. More than that, she has the achievements to back up her assignment. Or would you like to dispute how she was able to keep the Harkon Trade Union and the Seven Star Coalition from going to war?"
"That is not what I am speaking of and you know it. Why everyone else looked uneasy."
She stared at the mushi and then snorted. "You truly do not have a lick of political finesse in your bones, do you, general?"
"My job and purpose is to keep people trained, alive, and protecting others. As long as it doesn't interfere with that, then I do not mind. But sending someone of her stature…"
"Are you a racist, general?"
"Racist?" he barked out a laugh after. "No. If I was a racist, then I would not be able to see just how useful everyone is, regardless of their appearance. No, I am a pragmatist, and though I may not be a politician, I am keenly aware of what first impressions are like. The people who she will talk to are the ones I fought and talked with today. They will be like you, madam president, and all they will see is her."
"... I will take your recommendation under advisement, and yet, this does not change my decision."
"Very well, madam president. Good luck."
And then the connection severed.
The mushi quieted down, leaving Strawberry alone in her office.
Her longer fingers ra-ta-tapped on the plasteel table in the presidential office.
She didn't like it. Didn't like how everyone in the room had questioned her decision.
She will simply have to make it clear to her protege that failure was not an option, not when they were still questioning her.
Instead of using the den-den mushi, her fingers rose up and drifted over to one of the tablets nearby. With a few flicks of her fingers, a call rang out.
And picked up almost immediately.
"Teacher?"
"Anita. I want you in my office. I have an assignment for you."
-VB-
General Charles William
Shanxi
AR 2111.11.27
It took almost a full week for the designated ambassador to arrive.
This showed the lengths the president was willing to go to.
'First off, the speed at which the federal government responded to the situation itself was notable. By doing this, the president told the confederation that this was a matter of dire consequence. Regardless of the result of the negotiations, the president would be seen as someone who gave a situation the attention it deserved.
'Second, most shuttles and warships did not travel that quickly. By using such a powerful FTL capable ship, she showed off the federal government's reach, technological prowess, and potential - a warning to all of the worlds and planetary coalitions gibbering day and night about independence and sovereignty. The federal government will never initiate violence, but if the "freedom fighters" initiate violence, then the federal navy and army will respond so quickly that most will not be able to put up a meaningful resistance.'
He watched the shuttle come down the atmosphere smoothly. Even more smoothly than the "asari" and their ship, which flew smoother than the Turian ships.
'And if they do, then it was treason from start to finish, and the world will become a "ward of the federal government," effectively ending the world's participation in the confederation and reduced to a mere territory.
'And three, this was a power play.'
The shuttle, a long and narrow golden thing engraved with even rarer metals and minerals landed on its four landing gears. A door opened up on its previously remarkably smooth and indistinguishable surface, and a floating staircase gracefully extended down.
But Charles knew that there was no need for that.
Two people walked out, both dressed in the red and black of the confederate presidential guard.
And finally.
The president's protege walked out.
Or well, floated out.
---
Eina Zolanna
She watched the opulent ship landed not too far from her and the general's position.
She glanced at the giant general and then at his retinue.
The ship was about the same size as the one that she came on, so it had to be for someone close to the baseline human, right?
When she initially heard that an ambassador would be coming to negotiate for the entire "Blue Planet Confederacy," she had been worried. While she didn't see or hear about any racial discrimination among the elites of the confederation from any of the prisoners the Turians held, she had postulated that there was a chance the giants might be the leaders of the confederation.
The size of the ship has so far dissuaded her of that notion, however.
Instead, she watched two normal humans walk out, quickly followed by a third. All three wore the same uniform, and carried themselves like most ceremonial guards did.
Then the ship's door closed behind them?
She watched as the three humans approached them and finally noticed that the third human had a tray in his hands.
And as they got closer, her eyebrows rose up slowly.
Because as the party of three drew closer, she realized that it was not a party of three but a party of four.
Because on that tray held by the third human was a tiny being.
The party of four came to a stop with a synchronized clicks of their boots.
"Presenting the Ambassador of the Blue Planet Confederation, Anita Goyle of Green Dressrosa!"
And Zolanna finally saw her.
A human-like being with a large fluffy tail and a sharp nose. It almost looked like a cartoonishly small version of baseline humans (sans the tail).
"Greetings, ambassador," she spoke, her training kicking in. "I am Matriarch Eina Zolanna of the Asari Republics."
"It is a pleasure to meet you," Ambassador Goyle replied with a curtsy. When she straightened back up, she smiled. "It must be a surprise to see someone like myself, yes?"
"Y-Yes."
Goyle smiled. "It is normal. Most peoples of the confederacy do not meet a dwarf in their lifetime, despite how much we have been becoming more involved in the confederation's daily lives." Then her smile became fixed as she turned to look at the general. "General William. It's a pleasure to meet you."
"The pleasure is mine, ambassador."
"Thank you for accompanying the diplomat, but I'll take it from here."
It was a dismissal, Zolanna realized.
The general squinted down at them. "Very well. I wish you good luck."
And he left without a fight. To her surprise. Most Turians would have been upset at such a public and decisive dismissal.
"Now, shall we get inside somewhere?" the "dwarf" asked.
"... Yes," Zolanna responded because she had no other words to say. If the BPC wanted to show their internal politics to her, then that was just something she'll report, not something she'll intervene in.
Last edited:
Vagabond
The Clone Guy, Swiss Guy, and Battletech Guy
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Commissioned by Mace Shepherd
A Just Measure
Chapter 3
-VB-
Ambassador Eina Zolanna
Shanxi
AR 2111.11.27 (same day)
She … did not know what to think about the tiny ambassador.
And they were tiny.
If she were to estimate her size, then she was barely bigger than both of Eina's fists. But the fact that she was not speaking with a squeaky voice but an y'elasmara*, which was something most classic Asari singers longed for and yet failed to have.
… But how was a tiny no bigger than most flying creatures able to speak with such a low tone?
A mystery for sure.
"It's a pleasure to meet the first Asari to have stepped onto one of the confederacy's worlds," Ambassador Anita Goyle spoke up. It sounded professional and heartfelt. "Though I wish it could have been under better circumstances."
"I too think so as well. It's an honor to meet the first of your kind that my people have lain eyes upon," she said with a shallow curtsy.
Perhaps it was not the best way to approach this as it was not part of the Republic's professional stance to use ancient customs, but she was of the Zolanna Clan, one of the oldest bloodlines of the Asari Republics. It was her right to approach this meeting as she saw fit both as a representative of the Asari Republics and the Citadel Council's ambassadorial corp.
"Would you like to move right into negotiations or should we spend the first day learning about each other's peoples?" Goyle offered.
Eina thought about it.
Starting off negotiations right off the bat might come off as business-like but also rude and condescending. There were multiple ambassadors in Citadel Council's history who encountered races and peoples, sometimes even old colonies from bygone eras, who did not appreciate such a direct approach.
Sometimes, it was best to ask.
"If I may ask, would it be considered rude to your people to begin negotiations right away or would it be seen as pragmatic and professional?"
Goyle looked surprised for a second before a real smile showed up that reached her eyes. "It would depend on the culture, but there are a thousand and more cultures in the confederacy, so it would be hard to give you a good answer." A thousand cultures? It sounded very much like the Asari Republics in that regard. "The majority of the confederacy's federal government will not see a first day negotiation start as rude or in a negative light. However, it may be a good idea to use Shanxi's cultural mannerism as a respectful nod to the negotiation's location."
"I see. And how do the people of Shanxi negotiate?"
Goyle smiled. "First, we eat a shared meal from a communal pot and get to know each other and each other's people. A communal meal shows that since we mean to not harm each other as attempting to harm the other party will spill the food that both tried to consume."
"A communal tradition?"
"One that originates from Shanxi's harsh past, if I am correct. Shanxi used to be a very harsh world where the local titanofauna restricted where the colonists could build and share kitchens."
"Titanofauna and communal restrictions. What a fascinating history this world holds. It is a shame that a violent first contact happened so close to it. But, oh yes, a conversation over a meal is one that my people also appreciate."
"Wonderful. Since we don't know each other's dietary restrictions, should we have each other's people bring meals here?"
---
Ambassador Anita Goyle
Asari were an interesting race.
No, more than race, she was more interested in their cultures. As a mono-sex race, the Asari developed in ways that simply can't be replicated by anyone else out there. Even unisex or hypothetical machine races cannot because to have a sex means sex-related hormones and biases affecting decisions.
And despite what the good ambassador across from her insisted, the Asari was a definite female race. It wasn't just their appearance and overall female appearance, though those two definitely played a part in it. It was also in how the Turians and other races supposedly interacted with them as well, which was something the Turian prisoners of war talked about.
As much as she wanted to spend a decade or two just researching Asari sociophysiology, anthrohistory, and matriarchal politics, Anita was here as an ambassador and her job was to make peace here without giving away territorial or legal concessions.
And from what she was hearing, the Asari Republics would not care about extracting concessions from the confederacy. They were more concerned about keeping the status quo. Anita knew this was what the Asari Republics would want because there was a constellation of worlds within the Blue Planet Confederacy itself which acted similarly to the Citadel Council and the Asari Republics as Ambassador Zolanna was telling her.
Even if there were some strong embellishments in what was being told to her, the Asari Republics held one of the three executive political votes in this council of theirs. On top of this, they were not only the dominant economic powerhouse of the Citadel Council's three most powerful states but also the entire Citadel Council.
Quotes from the Turian POWs ranged from the Asari Republics controlling anywhere from 20% to 45% of the entire economy, and the ambassador's offhanded statement about the importance of the Asari Republics' financial and mining industries to the Citadel Council as a whole only confirmed that guess.
"So the Asari Republic and our Blue Planet Confederacy share many similarities!" Anita hummed as she took a bite of her meat-berry steak.
"It certainly seems so," Ambassador Zolanna nodded as she took a sip of her toyan* valley wine. "It gladdens me to see that there is another true democracy out here in the galaxy."
"I can toast to that," Anita smiled.
Democracy.
What a joke.
The Blue Planet Confederacy tittered on the brink of splintering in all but name. The federal government could barely do anything, and it was only in cases of emergencies like this first contact debacle that they came crawling for help.
Her mentor, the president, wanted to use this incident to raise the legal authorities of the federal government, but to do that, she needed to ensure that the result of this war didn't hurt the confederacy… too much. To do that, she needed to engineer a situation where the core world alliances looked at the situation and saw a need for a stronger federal government.
But with what the ambassador was freely telling her, she wasn't sure if she could make such a thing happen.
"Then I assume that each of your worlds operate their own military? Militia?"
"They do," she nodded. "And those who cannot produce their own spaceships buy them from others who can."
"And does your federal government place any restrictions on the size of the spaceships? There must be some fear of what individuals and independent actors might do with them."
Size on spaceships?
"No, we do not." They didn't have to worry about that when it was exactly the individuals that they needed to worry about more. The King of Gran Moria, for example, was someone who would handily defeat General Williams. He and his people had waged defensive wars against those seeking to take control of his collection of systems, which was an admittedly very lucrative collection of eleven habitable gaia worlds, but every gun, every armored truck, every tank, other Haki users, frigates, battleships, and even dreadnoughts that his enemies brought to the field were all handily defeated by the man. "Not when we have individuals like General Williams."
The reminder of the ancient giants' descendants stalled the Asari ambassador.
"Right, of course. Your people are … unique. Footage I was able to view showed many of your people being able to do some fantastical things. We have something similar called biotics."
"Fascinating. You too?" she asked with a broad smile.
But Anita also knew - again, thanks to the interrogated Turian POWs - that Citadel Council's biotic specialists were nowhere near the power levels of the top ten percent of Haki users and Devil Fruit users, never mind the mindnumbingly powerful top 0.01% percentile combatants.
The confederacy called them colony breakers for a reason.
She was just playing along with the Asari ambassador's attempt to even the playing field, because once it became clear that what the Turians faced here on Shanxi weren't the best of the best or even the best … or even the top 10% percentile of Haki and Devil Fruit combatants? She would freak out.
The negotiation itself might become difficult. So in a way, Anita was playing along because leveling the playing field was exactly what she and her mentor wanted. Keep the other side calm, get minimal concessions to get the people upset, get the people to give the federal government more power, and work from there. Oh, and peace, yes.
'But then again,' she thought to herself as she took another bite. 'The Citadel Council and the rest of the galaxy beyond their territory might be a useful valve to shunt excess pirates and criminals into.'
The conversation over the meal didn't delve into anything deep after that, but the way the ambassador had asked about size restrictions on spaceships was something she will have to ask the general to ask the Turian POWs about.
"Speaking of which… what do your people call yourselves?" Zolanna asked.
Anita swallowed. "We call ourselves dwarves."
"Dwarves?" the Asari ambassador looked surprised. "Is the translation working?"
"It is. We do call ourselves dwarves."
"Does that not carry negative connotations…?"
"Hmm? How so?"
It was only then that she remembered just how stale the differences in appearances that Citadel races had within each race. The size and shape of their noses, the height, weight, width, and even smaller details like eyelashes were so close to each other.
Humanity was much more diverse than these aliens.
"I apologize. It seems that it is a cultural connotation that you do not have," the ambassador replied after a moment to gather herself. "Dwarves, when used within Citadel space, is often a term used to belittle those with short heights or genetic problems."
"Ah, I see. I understand. In that case, Little People may also be used to refer to my people."
"And are you a different species from the most populous 'humans' I've seen outside?"
Different species?
"Goodness, no. We are a different race, for sure, but humans and dwarves can interbreed and produce viable children."
The Asari ambassador stared at her.
"I'm sorry, what?"
"All races you have seen here on Shanxi," Anita clarified. "And many others that you have not are all part of humanity, and we have been like this for thousands of years even before we left our homeworld."
It was the first time that she saw the ambassador's professional smile drop into a gobsmacked face.
---
Eina Zolanna
Eina knew that she had reached more than she should have with some of the questions. And that she might have provided more information than strictly necessary.
But, in exchange, she also learned a lot.
What she and the rest of Citadel Council had thought was a collection of races - and thus the "confederacy" in their name - had been, in fact, many subspecies of one species.
While it was too early for her to say this, she believed that "humanity" was a very adaptive species.
One might say that they were even more adaptive than the asari, who were known for being able to live and work in basically any environment that wasn't immediately hostile to their existence. Which meant that the humans and their subspecies would become the asari's biggest competitors.
She could not allow that to happen.
So she now sat before her ship's bridge screen and waited for the Council to respond to her.
The wait gave her time to think even more about the situation at hand.
It was a good thing that negotiation was happening, because the more she had learned about the humans, the more she realized how badly the Turians had thoughtlessly provoked a superpower.
Yes, a superpower.
Because even if they could not bring everything they had to bear, the Blue Planet Confederacy was a superpower. If they could only bring a quarter of their full might to bear, they would have overwhelmed the Citadel Council, especially since the Council's capital ships and warships had no counter to the long range laser weaponry used by the human warships.
And there also seemed to be a lot of ship manufacturers.
Like.
A lot.
This was from the humans captured on the other side of the relay, but there were essentially close to a hundred different spaceship manufacturers, of which a tenth were capable of producing viable warships.
And, if it was to be believed, then even the goddamn pirates had their own manufacturers who were capable of capital ship production while there were numerous smaller shipyards that could and would refit smaller ships for piratical optimization.
Or that piracy was a tradition.
Yes.
Tradition. That piracy has been a major traditional industry for the humans for more than a thousand years, going back to their homeworld.
And it was something the ambassador had confirmed for her.
She wasn't sure if that had been a threat or not. After all, confirming something like piracy being a major traditional industry - like how the batarians had their slavery - would be like insinuating a plausibly denial form of retaliation that the confederacy could unleash.
… Except that had fallen under scrutiny rather quickly. Both humans captured on the other side of the relay and the ambassador stated that it was only considered "traditional" because so many beloved historical figures started their life long journey as a pirate, and sometimes remained as a pirate for their entire lives.
Pirates like Whitebeard, Pirate King Gol D. Roger, Pirate King Monkey D. Luffy, Emperor Buggy, Grandmother Vavayag, Warlord Inconquita, and so many more.
And a brief look at human history (courtesy of the ambassador - it had been a gift from her at the end of their first meeting) told her that humans were not a structured race like the Turians and Asari. They were also not centered on a central figure like Salarians because the figure they gravitate around can change and had no biological cause for it (mostly). They were also not like the Elcor, Hanar, and Volus, who liked to keep to their own space.
Humans might not live as long as the Asari but a select few had been known to live for more than a few hundred years. They might not be as subtle or smart as a Salarian on average, but once in a while, a genius will pop up that will utterly change everything. They might not be structured as the Turians, but that didn't mean they couldn't be; they simply chose not to, but woe to any who gives the humans cause to discipline themselves, even for a moment.
Of course, she took this "history book" she received with a grain of salt.
But Eina would treat it as if it wasn't; being cautious here would pay dividends later, and if more than half of the events and traits she expected out of the humans turned out to be false, the humans would still be the dominant race once this war came to an end, especially because they didn't need mass relay to travel.
T-r-ring.
She sat up as the screen smoothly transitioned from center towards the edge into a livestream of three separate images, each containing one of the councilors.
"Ambassador Eina Zolanna," the Asari Councilor, Tevos of Clan An'Dhalia, spoke first. "You've asked for a priority meeting."
"I have, councilor. I am transferring all of the data I have so far collected."
"It takes ten minutes for long distance data transfer, so why don't you tell us your impression of these humans in the meantime?" the Turian Councilor, Sparatus asked.
"I have confirmed what our prisoners on our side of the relay stated during interrogation. The Blue Planet Confederacy is not only made up of multiple races but also dwarfs any individual member or associate state of the Citadel Council."
Salarian Councilor, Jur Huokka, hummed. "We will need higher funding for STG and Spectres and expand their numbers."
"... Before I continue, I must point something out."
"Go ahead, ambassador."
"When I said race… I did not mean species."
That made all three Councilors pause.
"Explain," Councilor Huokka asked with a frown.
"The confederacy's ambassador was not a human but a race called the Little People," she said as she brought up an image taken by the security cameras within her ship.
"... I assume you are not joking," Councilor Sparatus hummed.
"I am not. A … sentient being that is barely bigger than one of my fists was sent to treat with me. Initially, I thought that this was because they were looking down on the Citadel Council, but I quickly learned that it was the opposite. The ambassador is a student of the current president of the confederacy, and is a member of a race known for their prodigious strength."
Here, she played a video, taken by the same cameras, of the dwarf ambassador showing off that strength at her request. The dwarf lifted one of the equipment in the ship, some kind of a cart, that weighed at least half a ton with one hand. And then sped around like a bullet, her form rendered down to a blur in the high definition security camera's recording.
"Are you sure it is not some kind of ploy?" Tevos asked with a frown.
"No," Eina replied. "And I believe I understand why their ambassador is being open with me. It is simply that they have interrogated their prisoners as well, collected enough evidence to support those claims, and understand that the Citadel Council is not a threat to them. So they want this misunderstanding solved as quickly as possible."
"And why do they think the Citadel Council is not a threat?" Sparatus asked with a frown.
It was obvious why he was the one to ask that question and so quickly. The Turians considered themselves to be the defenders of law and order within the Citadel Council and its associate races. To state that the Council was not a threat was to state that the Turians are not a threat.
And she was going to have to be the one to break that bubble. That the Citadel Council was no longer the superpower. Or at least, no longer the lone superpower.
"Councilor, I say this respectfully, but human pirates have more tonnage and more advanced weapons technology than any one of the Citadel states do."
"... What?"
"The ambassador admitted, hesitantly, that their pirates have formed multiple bandit kingdoms that are large enough to be a bigger problem for them than the rest of the Citadel Council is. The only reason they have not been able to effectively combat this threat is because their own politics prevents them, not the willingness or the raw military might."
And after that, she had to explain to the increasingly alert and upset councilors what she had been told as well as the evidence presented to her.
The humans wanted this to go well because it was in their federal government's political agenda for this to go well, not that the First Contact scenario itself was a monumental thing. It was, kind of, but most on the other side of the confederacy wouldn't care, because the humans was a species composed of many subspecies - the "races" she mentioned earlier - and how they were, in effect, their own Citadel Council with more stars, more colonies, more population, and more industries under their nominal control than what the Citadel Council ever had.
Yes, Councilor Tevos, this monumental historical event was nothing but a political move for the humans.
No, Councilor Sparatus, they are most likely not overexaggerating the military might of the pirate problem they have not been able to solve for more than a thousand years.
Yes, Councilor Huokka, humans were that decentralized, and that was the reason why the humans were most likely using this event to gain even a little bit of centralization.
No, Councilor Sparatus, any further military action will only help them, and I believe it was in our best interest to back off now before humans use a lack of peace for further centralization, and thus become a bigger problem for us.
… Yes, Councilor Tevos, there was a not insignificant chance that human pirates may migrate in massive numbers into the Citadel space and beyond once they realized that there was room here… with patrols that lacked defense against their lasers.
Yes, Councilor Huokka, humans possessed advanced lasers and energy shields needed to keep them at bay.
Yes, Councilor Tevos, I will do my best to negotiate a technological exchange with the humans, but I cannot guarantee them signing the Treaty of Farixen.
"Councilors, there is also something else I must report as well."
At this point, it had already been an hour into the meeting, and loathed as she was to extend it even further, which cut into her actual planning time, she must get their opinions and instructions. Because these two things were too big for her to decide on her own.
"Go ahead."
"Aside from the numerous subspecies, it seems that the confederacy has a very decent biotechnology base and a very widespread one at that."
"... Gauge what exactly they are involved in first and report to us," Tevos replied. "Anything else?"
"Yes, councilor. It's regarding their version of biotics."
"They have biotics?" Sparatus asked with a hum. "It's only expected, I suppose, for a nation of that size with frequent enough encounters with element zero."
She grimaced. "Not … exactly, councilor. They possess two alternate ways of augmenting their elite soldiers. The first is some kind of anomalous, even naturally occurring fruit that supposedly gives each individual unique powers on par with biotics."
"Fascinating," Huokka muttered.
"And the other is …" she sighed. "I have no idea how to put it other than an innate supernaturalness of the humans."
"An innate supernaturalness…?" Tevos asked skeptically.
"Yes, ma'am. According to the ambassador, they call this haki, and while not every human or individuals of human subspecies can use it, there are enough of them that we can expect to encounter anywhere from a dozen to thousands of haki users."
"And the extent of their combat ability?"
She grimaced.
Instead of replying, she played a video. It was a combat footage one of the Turian soldiers managed to get, and this was given to her by the admiral currently still in space.
And in it, a haki user, a mere militia captain, turned shiny black and tanked a direct hit from a tank shell. And then proceeded to dodge a hundred plus projectiles from a squadron of Turian soldiers.
Which frankly bordered on impossible because eezo principle implemented weapons - which was basically most weapons in Council space - shot metal grains or shrapnels at speeds too quick for biological eyes to detect, never mind track. And to top it off, at the very last moments of the video, the human soldiers almost disappeared from screen before using his fists to crush armored Turian heads into pulp.
"... Impressive. And worrying," Huokka summed up what everyone felt. "What do you think about these haki and devil fruit, ambassador Zolanna?"
She thought about it. Well, she had already thought about it for a long time even before contacting the Council.
"I believe that the confederacy is being open with us. On this colony alone, there are reportedly at least half a dozen such individuals on this world of Shanxi, and there aren't even ten million residents here. Even if the ambassador exaggerated the numbers to us, we are looking at an army with special operatives that even biotics would have trouble dealing with."
"... are any of the humans we captured have either of this haki or devil fruit?" Sparatus asked.
"No," she shook her head. "Most of them are civilians, and the soldiers we captured are all regular sailors."
"Then we must gain access to this haki and devil fruit. Make that a condition for peace."
"And if they don't accept, councilor?" she asked.
"We'll cross that relay when we get there."
-VB-
Ambassador Anita Goyle
Shanxi
AR 2111.11.29
The first day of negotiations - greetings, understanding, and learning - gave away to the true phase of the event: negotiations.
They agreed both sides wanted peace.
They agreed that neither wanted to "dominate" the other.
And that's where the agreements stopped.
During the second day, there were agreements about the borders of the Blue Planet Confederacy and the Citadel Council lay: right here in the Shanxi System and the other side of the Mass Relay 314. The negotiations had continued after that to include exchange of prisoners, which they agreed: all prisoners would be exchanged without valuation on each individual's worth.
During the second day of negotiations, they discussed a very critical point of contention: fault. After spending a whole day, it was agreed that the confederacy was at fault for not sending out scouts but the Citadel Council, specifically the Turian Hierarchy, was at fault for opening fire on what was a mostly civilian fleet and then invading Shanxi instead of waiting for the rest of the Council. The Turian hierarchy would pay reparations to the families of the deceased and the Blue Planet Confederacy would not close the borders to the Citadel Council.
The problem came to head on the third day of negotiations.
"You are saying that the council wants access to what is considered a strategic weapon?" Anita asked incredulously.
Eina looked … upset. Frustrated.
Was it a play? Was it genuine? Anita liked to think that she had seen enough from the Asari across from her, but the Asari ambassador was being too open. It made her question the tells that she observed.
"They want assurances," Eina smoothed the accusation. "Haki and devil fruits are … unfamiliar things for the Citadel Council and its people. They want to know if this is something that may cause problems for us."
"You mean use it against us."
"In exchange, we are willing to open up our borders and offer the confederacy favorable trade deals."
"Trade is not what we are interested in. You know that peace comes first, and trade was never on the table to begin with."
"It is something the councilors insisted on."
"... What changed? We have had great talks and negotiations so far? Why risk it here over this?" she asked exasperatedly.
Eina took a deep breath in and looked at her. She had to be thinking whether or not she was being candid.
"It's because your confederacy is too powerful, and the Citadel Council is now keenly aware of the slumbering giant on its doorstep."
While it was true that the confederacy was exactly that, a confederation where the central government had little power, it was a lumbering giant that could wake up at any time to crush anything that stood in its way. That's how Grandmother Vavayag's reign of terror ended. A pirate queen who once ruled over fifty systems for over a century had been utterly crushed after pushing the line once too far by the combined might of the confederation.
And the Citadel Council had apparently decided that they were too strong to just … let be.
"And throwing all of our hard work at the last step is the best way to go about this?" she asked.
Eina shook her head. "It's out of my hands. I would have concluded the negotiations yesterday. We got everything we wanted, but apparently not for the council. They want the secrets of your haki and devil fruits."
"And they think it's something we'll just hand over?"
"They are willing to open up -."
"The confederation at this time does not care about trade, and if you keep insisting that trade is worth that, then you can leave the Shanxi System and we can go back to fighting each other. So I'll wait right here for that final answer. Go and talk to your councilors."
And after that, she plopped down on her raised seat.
Eina opened her mouth -.
Anita turned her head away.
If they were going to be obstinate, then she was going to do the same.
The Asari ambassador sighed and left the room.
When she returned an hour later, she conveyed the Citadel Council's agreement.
There would be peace, and they will not seek the secrets of haki and the devil fruits… for now.
-VB-
The First Contact War, or Relay 314 Incident for the Citadel Council states, was monumental in that the races of the Blue Planet Confederacy finally encountered something that was truly "alien."
However, as far as scales went, it was not a big event.
No. What happened next was an even bigger deal.
Because when the news about First Contact spread and the locations of the Blue Planet Confederacy in relation to the Citadel Space - and Terminus Space - was revealed to the public, there was a small migration from the Confederacy space to the Council space through various means.
Some took the legal route. For exploration. For tourism. For learning. For good things.
Others … didn't.
Mercenaries, slavers, and pirates poured out from the confederacy's periphery into Council space. They saw races and states without haki and devil fruit. They saw states without weapons and shielding technology. They saw … fresh meat.
And thus began the Third Space Age of Piracy.
The races of the Citadel Council would have another name for this era: the Rampage.
However, it was not all chaos and violence. There was a significant number of cooperation that happened between the two civilizations.
And the first cooperation they had? They wanted to learn about each other.
Tourism exchange.
-VB-
Assume none of these are canon
*toyan - a valley in Thessia famous for asari-wine production
*y'elasmara - alto/deep contralto but not Tenor or reaching the average lows of baritone
A Just Measure
Chapter 3
-VB-
Ambassador Eina Zolanna
Shanxi
AR 2111.11.27 (same day)
She … did not know what to think about the tiny ambassador.
And they were tiny.
If she were to estimate her size, then she was barely bigger than both of Eina's fists. But the fact that she was not speaking with a squeaky voice but an y'elasmara*, which was something most classic Asari singers longed for and yet failed to have.
… But how was a tiny no bigger than most flying creatures able to speak with such a low tone?
A mystery for sure.
"It's a pleasure to meet the first Asari to have stepped onto one of the confederacy's worlds," Ambassador Anita Goyle spoke up. It sounded professional and heartfelt. "Though I wish it could have been under better circumstances."
"I too think so as well. It's an honor to meet the first of your kind that my people have lain eyes upon," she said with a shallow curtsy.
Perhaps it was not the best way to approach this as it was not part of the Republic's professional stance to use ancient customs, but she was of the Zolanna Clan, one of the oldest bloodlines of the Asari Republics. It was her right to approach this meeting as she saw fit both as a representative of the Asari Republics and the Citadel Council's ambassadorial corp.
"Would you like to move right into negotiations or should we spend the first day learning about each other's peoples?" Goyle offered.
Eina thought about it.
Starting off negotiations right off the bat might come off as business-like but also rude and condescending. There were multiple ambassadors in Citadel Council's history who encountered races and peoples, sometimes even old colonies from bygone eras, who did not appreciate such a direct approach.
Sometimes, it was best to ask.
"If I may ask, would it be considered rude to your people to begin negotiations right away or would it be seen as pragmatic and professional?"
Goyle looked surprised for a second before a real smile showed up that reached her eyes. "It would depend on the culture, but there are a thousand and more cultures in the confederacy, so it would be hard to give you a good answer." A thousand cultures? It sounded very much like the Asari Republics in that regard. "The majority of the confederacy's federal government will not see a first day negotiation start as rude or in a negative light. However, it may be a good idea to use Shanxi's cultural mannerism as a respectful nod to the negotiation's location."
"I see. And how do the people of Shanxi negotiate?"
Goyle smiled. "First, we eat a shared meal from a communal pot and get to know each other and each other's people. A communal meal shows that since we mean to not harm each other as attempting to harm the other party will spill the food that both tried to consume."
"A communal tradition?"
"One that originates from Shanxi's harsh past, if I am correct. Shanxi used to be a very harsh world where the local titanofauna restricted where the colonists could build and share kitchens."
"Titanofauna and communal restrictions. What a fascinating history this world holds. It is a shame that a violent first contact happened so close to it. But, oh yes, a conversation over a meal is one that my people also appreciate."
"Wonderful. Since we don't know each other's dietary restrictions, should we have each other's people bring meals here?"
---
Ambassador Anita Goyle
Asari were an interesting race.
No, more than race, she was more interested in their cultures. As a mono-sex race, the Asari developed in ways that simply can't be replicated by anyone else out there. Even unisex or hypothetical machine races cannot because to have a sex means sex-related hormones and biases affecting decisions.
And despite what the good ambassador across from her insisted, the Asari was a definite female race. It wasn't just their appearance and overall female appearance, though those two definitely played a part in it. It was also in how the Turians and other races supposedly interacted with them as well, which was something the Turian prisoners of war talked about.
As much as she wanted to spend a decade or two just researching Asari sociophysiology, anthrohistory, and matriarchal politics, Anita was here as an ambassador and her job was to make peace here without giving away territorial or legal concessions.
And from what she was hearing, the Asari Republics would not care about extracting concessions from the confederacy. They were more concerned about keeping the status quo. Anita knew this was what the Asari Republics would want because there was a constellation of worlds within the Blue Planet Confederacy itself which acted similarly to the Citadel Council and the Asari Republics as Ambassador Zolanna was telling her.
Even if there were some strong embellishments in what was being told to her, the Asari Republics held one of the three executive political votes in this council of theirs. On top of this, they were not only the dominant economic powerhouse of the Citadel Council's three most powerful states but also the entire Citadel Council.
Quotes from the Turian POWs ranged from the Asari Republics controlling anywhere from 20% to 45% of the entire economy, and the ambassador's offhanded statement about the importance of the Asari Republics' financial and mining industries to the Citadel Council as a whole only confirmed that guess.
"So the Asari Republic and our Blue Planet Confederacy share many similarities!" Anita hummed as she took a bite of her meat-berry steak.
"It certainly seems so," Ambassador Zolanna nodded as she took a sip of her toyan* valley wine. "It gladdens me to see that there is another true democracy out here in the galaxy."
"I can toast to that," Anita smiled.
Democracy.
What a joke.
The Blue Planet Confederacy tittered on the brink of splintering in all but name. The federal government could barely do anything, and it was only in cases of emergencies like this first contact debacle that they came crawling for help.
Her mentor, the president, wanted to use this incident to raise the legal authorities of the federal government, but to do that, she needed to ensure that the result of this war didn't hurt the confederacy… too much. To do that, she needed to engineer a situation where the core world alliances looked at the situation and saw a need for a stronger federal government.
But with what the ambassador was freely telling her, she wasn't sure if she could make such a thing happen.
"Then I assume that each of your worlds operate their own military? Militia?"
"They do," she nodded. "And those who cannot produce their own spaceships buy them from others who can."
"And does your federal government place any restrictions on the size of the spaceships? There must be some fear of what individuals and independent actors might do with them."
Size on spaceships?
"No, we do not." They didn't have to worry about that when it was exactly the individuals that they needed to worry about more. The King of Gran Moria, for example, was someone who would handily defeat General Williams. He and his people had waged defensive wars against those seeking to take control of his collection of systems, which was an admittedly very lucrative collection of eleven habitable gaia worlds, but every gun, every armored truck, every tank, other Haki users, frigates, battleships, and even dreadnoughts that his enemies brought to the field were all handily defeated by the man. "Not when we have individuals like General Williams."
The reminder of the ancient giants' descendants stalled the Asari ambassador.
"Right, of course. Your people are … unique. Footage I was able to view showed many of your people being able to do some fantastical things. We have something similar called biotics."
"Fascinating. You too?" she asked with a broad smile.
But Anita also knew - again, thanks to the interrogated Turian POWs - that Citadel Council's biotic specialists were nowhere near the power levels of the top ten percent of Haki users and Devil Fruit users, never mind the mindnumbingly powerful top 0.01% percentile combatants.
The confederacy called them colony breakers for a reason.
She was just playing along with the Asari ambassador's attempt to even the playing field, because once it became clear that what the Turians faced here on Shanxi weren't the best of the best or even the best … or even the top 10% percentile of Haki and Devil Fruit combatants? She would freak out.
The negotiation itself might become difficult. So in a way, Anita was playing along because leveling the playing field was exactly what she and her mentor wanted. Keep the other side calm, get minimal concessions to get the people upset, get the people to give the federal government more power, and work from there. Oh, and peace, yes.
'But then again,' she thought to herself as she took another bite. 'The Citadel Council and the rest of the galaxy beyond their territory might be a useful valve to shunt excess pirates and criminals into.'
The conversation over the meal didn't delve into anything deep after that, but the way the ambassador had asked about size restrictions on spaceships was something she will have to ask the general to ask the Turian POWs about.
"Speaking of which… what do your people call yourselves?" Zolanna asked.
Anita swallowed. "We call ourselves dwarves."
"Dwarves?" the Asari ambassador looked surprised. "Is the translation working?"
"It is. We do call ourselves dwarves."
"Does that not carry negative connotations…?"
"Hmm? How so?"
It was only then that she remembered just how stale the differences in appearances that Citadel races had within each race. The size and shape of their noses, the height, weight, width, and even smaller details like eyelashes were so close to each other.
Humanity was much more diverse than these aliens.
"I apologize. It seems that it is a cultural connotation that you do not have," the ambassador replied after a moment to gather herself. "Dwarves, when used within Citadel space, is often a term used to belittle those with short heights or genetic problems."
"Ah, I see. I understand. In that case, Little People may also be used to refer to my people."
"And are you a different species from the most populous 'humans' I've seen outside?"
Different species?
"Goodness, no. We are a different race, for sure, but humans and dwarves can interbreed and produce viable children."
The Asari ambassador stared at her.
"I'm sorry, what?"
"All races you have seen here on Shanxi," Anita clarified. "And many others that you have not are all part of humanity, and we have been like this for thousands of years even before we left our homeworld."
It was the first time that she saw the ambassador's professional smile drop into a gobsmacked face.
---
Eina Zolanna
Eina knew that she had reached more than she should have with some of the questions. And that she might have provided more information than strictly necessary.
But, in exchange, she also learned a lot.
What she and the rest of Citadel Council had thought was a collection of races - and thus the "confederacy" in their name - had been, in fact, many subspecies of one species.
While it was too early for her to say this, she believed that "humanity" was a very adaptive species.
One might say that they were even more adaptive than the asari, who were known for being able to live and work in basically any environment that wasn't immediately hostile to their existence. Which meant that the humans and their subspecies would become the asari's biggest competitors.
She could not allow that to happen.
So she now sat before her ship's bridge screen and waited for the Council to respond to her.
The wait gave her time to think even more about the situation at hand.
It was a good thing that negotiation was happening, because the more she had learned about the humans, the more she realized how badly the Turians had thoughtlessly provoked a superpower.
Yes, a superpower.
Because even if they could not bring everything they had to bear, the Blue Planet Confederacy was a superpower. If they could only bring a quarter of their full might to bear, they would have overwhelmed the Citadel Council, especially since the Council's capital ships and warships had no counter to the long range laser weaponry used by the human warships.
And there also seemed to be a lot of ship manufacturers.
Like.
A lot.
This was from the humans captured on the other side of the relay, but there were essentially close to a hundred different spaceship manufacturers, of which a tenth were capable of producing viable warships.
And, if it was to be believed, then even the goddamn pirates had their own manufacturers who were capable of capital ship production while there were numerous smaller shipyards that could and would refit smaller ships for piratical optimization.
Or that piracy was a tradition.
Yes.
Tradition. That piracy has been a major traditional industry for the humans for more than a thousand years, going back to their homeworld.
And it was something the ambassador had confirmed for her.
She wasn't sure if that had been a threat or not. After all, confirming something like piracy being a major traditional industry - like how the batarians had their slavery - would be like insinuating a plausibly denial form of retaliation that the confederacy could unleash.
… Except that had fallen under scrutiny rather quickly. Both humans captured on the other side of the relay and the ambassador stated that it was only considered "traditional" because so many beloved historical figures started their life long journey as a pirate, and sometimes remained as a pirate for their entire lives.
Pirates like Whitebeard, Pirate King Gol D. Roger, Pirate King Monkey D. Luffy, Emperor Buggy, Grandmother Vavayag, Warlord Inconquita, and so many more.
And a brief look at human history (courtesy of the ambassador - it had been a gift from her at the end of their first meeting) told her that humans were not a structured race like the Turians and Asari. They were also not centered on a central figure like Salarians because the figure they gravitate around can change and had no biological cause for it (mostly). They were also not like the Elcor, Hanar, and Volus, who liked to keep to their own space.
Humans might not live as long as the Asari but a select few had been known to live for more than a few hundred years. They might not be as subtle or smart as a Salarian on average, but once in a while, a genius will pop up that will utterly change everything. They might not be structured as the Turians, but that didn't mean they couldn't be; they simply chose not to, but woe to any who gives the humans cause to discipline themselves, even for a moment.
Of course, she took this "history book" she received with a grain of salt.
But Eina would treat it as if it wasn't; being cautious here would pay dividends later, and if more than half of the events and traits she expected out of the humans turned out to be false, the humans would still be the dominant race once this war came to an end, especially because they didn't need mass relay to travel.
T-r-ring.
She sat up as the screen smoothly transitioned from center towards the edge into a livestream of three separate images, each containing one of the councilors.
"Ambassador Eina Zolanna," the Asari Councilor, Tevos of Clan An'Dhalia, spoke first. "You've asked for a priority meeting."
"I have, councilor. I am transferring all of the data I have so far collected."
"It takes ten minutes for long distance data transfer, so why don't you tell us your impression of these humans in the meantime?" the Turian Councilor, Sparatus asked.
"I have confirmed what our prisoners on our side of the relay stated during interrogation. The Blue Planet Confederacy is not only made up of multiple races but also dwarfs any individual member or associate state of the Citadel Council."
Salarian Councilor, Jur Huokka, hummed. "We will need higher funding for STG and Spectres and expand their numbers."
"... Before I continue, I must point something out."
"Go ahead, ambassador."
"When I said race… I did not mean species."
That made all three Councilors pause.
"Explain," Councilor Huokka asked with a frown.
"The confederacy's ambassador was not a human but a race called the Little People," she said as she brought up an image taken by the security cameras within her ship.
"... I assume you are not joking," Councilor Sparatus hummed.
"I am not. A … sentient being that is barely bigger than one of my fists was sent to treat with me. Initially, I thought that this was because they were looking down on the Citadel Council, but I quickly learned that it was the opposite. The ambassador is a student of the current president of the confederacy, and is a member of a race known for their prodigious strength."
Here, she played a video, taken by the same cameras, of the dwarf ambassador showing off that strength at her request. The dwarf lifted one of the equipment in the ship, some kind of a cart, that weighed at least half a ton with one hand. And then sped around like a bullet, her form rendered down to a blur in the high definition security camera's recording.
"Are you sure it is not some kind of ploy?" Tevos asked with a frown.
"No," Eina replied. "And I believe I understand why their ambassador is being open with me. It is simply that they have interrogated their prisoners as well, collected enough evidence to support those claims, and understand that the Citadel Council is not a threat to them. So they want this misunderstanding solved as quickly as possible."
"And why do they think the Citadel Council is not a threat?" Sparatus asked with a frown.
It was obvious why he was the one to ask that question and so quickly. The Turians considered themselves to be the defenders of law and order within the Citadel Council and its associate races. To state that the Council was not a threat was to state that the Turians are not a threat.
And she was going to have to be the one to break that bubble. That the Citadel Council was no longer the superpower. Or at least, no longer the lone superpower.
"Councilor, I say this respectfully, but human pirates have more tonnage and more advanced weapons technology than any one of the Citadel states do."
"... What?"
"The ambassador admitted, hesitantly, that their pirates have formed multiple bandit kingdoms that are large enough to be a bigger problem for them than the rest of the Citadel Council is. The only reason they have not been able to effectively combat this threat is because their own politics prevents them, not the willingness or the raw military might."
And after that, she had to explain to the increasingly alert and upset councilors what she had been told as well as the evidence presented to her.
The humans wanted this to go well because it was in their federal government's political agenda for this to go well, not that the First Contact scenario itself was a monumental thing. It was, kind of, but most on the other side of the confederacy wouldn't care, because the humans was a species composed of many subspecies - the "races" she mentioned earlier - and how they were, in effect, their own Citadel Council with more stars, more colonies, more population, and more industries under their nominal control than what the Citadel Council ever had.
Yes, Councilor Tevos, this monumental historical event was nothing but a political move for the humans.
No, Councilor Sparatus, they are most likely not overexaggerating the military might of the pirate problem they have not been able to solve for more than a thousand years.
Yes, Councilor Huokka, humans were that decentralized, and that was the reason why the humans were most likely using this event to gain even a little bit of centralization.
No, Councilor Sparatus, any further military action will only help them, and I believe it was in our best interest to back off now before humans use a lack of peace for further centralization, and thus become a bigger problem for us.
… Yes, Councilor Tevos, there was a not insignificant chance that human pirates may migrate in massive numbers into the Citadel space and beyond once they realized that there was room here… with patrols that lacked defense against their lasers.
Yes, Councilor Huokka, humans possessed advanced lasers and energy shields needed to keep them at bay.
Yes, Councilor Tevos, I will do my best to negotiate a technological exchange with the humans, but I cannot guarantee them signing the Treaty of Farixen.
"Councilors, there is also something else I must report as well."
At this point, it had already been an hour into the meeting, and loathed as she was to extend it even further, which cut into her actual planning time, she must get their opinions and instructions. Because these two things were too big for her to decide on her own.
"Go ahead."
"Aside from the numerous subspecies, it seems that the confederacy has a very decent biotechnology base and a very widespread one at that."
"... Gauge what exactly they are involved in first and report to us," Tevos replied. "Anything else?"
"Yes, councilor. It's regarding their version of biotics."
"They have biotics?" Sparatus asked with a hum. "It's only expected, I suppose, for a nation of that size with frequent enough encounters with element zero."
She grimaced. "Not … exactly, councilor. They possess two alternate ways of augmenting their elite soldiers. The first is some kind of anomalous, even naturally occurring fruit that supposedly gives each individual unique powers on par with biotics."
"Fascinating," Huokka muttered.
"And the other is …" she sighed. "I have no idea how to put it other than an innate supernaturalness of the humans."
"An innate supernaturalness…?" Tevos asked skeptically.
"Yes, ma'am. According to the ambassador, they call this haki, and while not every human or individuals of human subspecies can use it, there are enough of them that we can expect to encounter anywhere from a dozen to thousands of haki users."
"And the extent of their combat ability?"
She grimaced.
Instead of replying, she played a video. It was a combat footage one of the Turian soldiers managed to get, and this was given to her by the admiral currently still in space.
And in it, a haki user, a mere militia captain, turned shiny black and tanked a direct hit from a tank shell. And then proceeded to dodge a hundred plus projectiles from a squadron of Turian soldiers.
Which frankly bordered on impossible because eezo principle implemented weapons - which was basically most weapons in Council space - shot metal grains or shrapnels at speeds too quick for biological eyes to detect, never mind track. And to top it off, at the very last moments of the video, the human soldiers almost disappeared from screen before using his fists to crush armored Turian heads into pulp.
"... Impressive. And worrying," Huokka summed up what everyone felt. "What do you think about these haki and devil fruit, ambassador Zolanna?"
She thought about it. Well, she had already thought about it for a long time even before contacting the Council.
"I believe that the confederacy is being open with us. On this colony alone, there are reportedly at least half a dozen such individuals on this world of Shanxi, and there aren't even ten million residents here. Even if the ambassador exaggerated the numbers to us, we are looking at an army with special operatives that even biotics would have trouble dealing with."
"... are any of the humans we captured have either of this haki or devil fruit?" Sparatus asked.
"No," she shook her head. "Most of them are civilians, and the soldiers we captured are all regular sailors."
"Then we must gain access to this haki and devil fruit. Make that a condition for peace."
"And if they don't accept, councilor?" she asked.
"We'll cross that relay when we get there."
-VB-
Ambassador Anita Goyle
Shanxi
AR 2111.11.29
The first day of negotiations - greetings, understanding, and learning - gave away to the true phase of the event: negotiations.
They agreed both sides wanted peace.
They agreed that neither wanted to "dominate" the other.
And that's where the agreements stopped.
During the second day, there were agreements about the borders of the Blue Planet Confederacy and the Citadel Council lay: right here in the Shanxi System and the other side of the Mass Relay 314. The negotiations had continued after that to include exchange of prisoners, which they agreed: all prisoners would be exchanged without valuation on each individual's worth.
During the second day of negotiations, they discussed a very critical point of contention: fault. After spending a whole day, it was agreed that the confederacy was at fault for not sending out scouts but the Citadel Council, specifically the Turian Hierarchy, was at fault for opening fire on what was a mostly civilian fleet and then invading Shanxi instead of waiting for the rest of the Council. The Turian hierarchy would pay reparations to the families of the deceased and the Blue Planet Confederacy would not close the borders to the Citadel Council.
The problem came to head on the third day of negotiations.
"You are saying that the council wants access to what is considered a strategic weapon?" Anita asked incredulously.
Eina looked … upset. Frustrated.
Was it a play? Was it genuine? Anita liked to think that she had seen enough from the Asari across from her, but the Asari ambassador was being too open. It made her question the tells that she observed.
"They want assurances," Eina smoothed the accusation. "Haki and devil fruits are … unfamiliar things for the Citadel Council and its people. They want to know if this is something that may cause problems for us."
"You mean use it against us."
"In exchange, we are willing to open up our borders and offer the confederacy favorable trade deals."
"Trade is not what we are interested in. You know that peace comes first, and trade was never on the table to begin with."
"It is something the councilors insisted on."
"... What changed? We have had great talks and negotiations so far? Why risk it here over this?" she asked exasperatedly.
Eina took a deep breath in and looked at her. She had to be thinking whether or not she was being candid.
"It's because your confederacy is too powerful, and the Citadel Council is now keenly aware of the slumbering giant on its doorstep."
While it was true that the confederacy was exactly that, a confederation where the central government had little power, it was a lumbering giant that could wake up at any time to crush anything that stood in its way. That's how Grandmother Vavayag's reign of terror ended. A pirate queen who once ruled over fifty systems for over a century had been utterly crushed after pushing the line once too far by the combined might of the confederation.
And the Citadel Council had apparently decided that they were too strong to just … let be.
"And throwing all of our hard work at the last step is the best way to go about this?" she asked.
Eina shook her head. "It's out of my hands. I would have concluded the negotiations yesterday. We got everything we wanted, but apparently not for the council. They want the secrets of your haki and devil fruits."
"And they think it's something we'll just hand over?"
"They are willing to open up -."
"The confederation at this time does not care about trade, and if you keep insisting that trade is worth that, then you can leave the Shanxi System and we can go back to fighting each other. So I'll wait right here for that final answer. Go and talk to your councilors."
And after that, she plopped down on her raised seat.
Eina opened her mouth -.
Anita turned her head away.
If they were going to be obstinate, then she was going to do the same.
The Asari ambassador sighed and left the room.
When she returned an hour later, she conveyed the Citadel Council's agreement.
There would be peace, and they will not seek the secrets of haki and the devil fruits… for now.
-VB-
The First Contact War, or Relay 314 Incident for the Citadel Council states, was monumental in that the races of the Blue Planet Confederacy finally encountered something that was truly "alien."
However, as far as scales went, it was not a big event.
No. What happened next was an even bigger deal.
Because when the news about First Contact spread and the locations of the Blue Planet Confederacy in relation to the Citadel Space - and Terminus Space - was revealed to the public, there was a small migration from the Confederacy space to the Council space through various means.
Some took the legal route. For exploration. For tourism. For learning. For good things.
Others … didn't.
Mercenaries, slavers, and pirates poured out from the confederacy's periphery into Council space. They saw races and states without haki and devil fruit. They saw states without weapons and shielding technology. They saw … fresh meat.
And thus began the Third Space Age of Piracy.
The races of the Citadel Council would have another name for this era: the Rampage.
However, it was not all chaos and violence. There was a significant number of cooperation that happened between the two civilizations.
And the first cooperation they had? They wanted to learn about each other.
Tourism exchange.
-VB-
Assume none of these are canon
*toyan - a valley in Thessia famous for asari-wine production
*y'elasmara - alto/deep contralto but not Tenor or reaching the average lows of baritone
4
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Commissioned by Mace Shepherd
A Just Measure
Chapter 4
-VB-
Councilor Tevos
Citadel
AR 2111.12.04
Humans were a problem.
As she looked over the forms and reports from the border worlds near the Blue Planet Confederacy, Tevos realized that the Confederacy was going to be a headache for a long, long time.
It took her a little under a week to realize the true scale of the problem that the Blue Planet Confederacy and "humanity" would soon present against the stability of the Citadel Council.
The most obvious of these were the pirates being sighted across the "antispinward" borders around Relay 314.
Yes, pirates.
Because while the Confederacy did mention that they did have a significant pirate infestation in their "periphery," she didn't realize just how bad it was for them that, within a week of Relay 314 opening, pirates were actively bypassing the Mass Relay to jump directly into Citadel space.
Within a week!
At the same time, this presented a wonderful opportunity. Those pirates possessed technologies that the Citadel Council members and associate races did not possess. Taking those pirates out, salvaging their ships, and reverse engineering the technologies aboard those ships would provide an ample opportunity to catch up to the Confederacy on a number of technological fields. In fact, she would privately call this a blessing in disguise. Never publicly, of course, not when citizens of the Citadel Council were being attacked, enslaved, and tortured by those pirates.
The pirates, though, worried her.
It was clear from the reports that the pirates possessed a number of individuals that could poorly mimic the effects caught on camera what some of the human individuals were capable of on Shanxi.
Of course, they would need to be captured and their secrets extracted for the good of the Asari Republics.
But how?
The very fact that those individuals were powerful was already something that put them above Asari Commandos. She'd seen the types of damages the "haki' users could cause. And those that were "devil fruit" users?
The only city on the Asari colony of A'Reum was now gone. Destroyed by a "ping pong" man, as ridiculous as that sounded.
An Asari city was gone and dead just a week after the Relay 314 Incident.
The speed of the Confederacy's FTL came as a shock to her and her peers.
But because of how the treaty was worded and signed, the Citadel Council could not ask, tell, or demand the Confederacy to deal with its own problems. Because part of the peace treaty included borders being closed off to each other's militaries. At the same time, they didn't limit civilian travel; those seeking to legally travel over the border would need get travel e'lasa*.
While most of the pirates had bases outside of the Confederacy, the Citadel's navies couldn't get there because the only way for their ships to reach those Confederacy peripheries required passage through Relay 314, which was within the Confederacy's borders - and thus their warships could not reach the pirates due to the lack of military access. And while the pirates and their Confederacy alternate FTL could cross a hundred lightyears in over a couple of days, the Citadel warships could not; the fastest Asari frigates, the smallest interstellar warship, could travel one lightyear in one day and ten lightyears before they needed to cooldown lest the ship's reactor core cooks the crew alive.
While the Citadel Council still held iron grip over systems where there were Mass Relays and those immediately close to one, the same could not be said about any other systems. Human pirates were rampaging through those systems and there was nothing the Council could do about it.
Worse, the Human Confederacy didn't want to do anything about it nor did they want to do anything about it because they were too busy getting their own house into order.
---
Councilor Sparatus
Humans were a problem.
The biggest issue as he saw it was their entire society's lack of centralization. Even the least unified of the Citadel and associate council races, the Salarians, maintained a central government that could dictate their own affairs.
The humans did not possess this. This confederacy was incapable of doing anything significant. Hell, it could barely hold itself together! Worse, the humans actively admired chaotic and harmful ventures like piracy, privateering, and frontiersmanship. They were unorganized, unconsolidated, undisciplined, and weak.
And the only reason they were able to succeed was because of their "greats:" individuals who had significant personal power or prowess. Reading into their history made that very clear, and reading about them also made a number of other things clear as well.
Humans, as he discovered, were an "average" race. They did not particularly excel at anything. They were physically weaker than the Turians, shorter lived than the Asari and Krogans, dumber and slower than the Salarians, smaller than Elcor, lazier than a Volus, and greedier than the goddamn Terminus pirates.
No, the danger of humans came from "individual effort" that took advantage of their innate … talent.
Because "haki" was bullshit. There was no other way to say it. Haki was bullshit.
What the fuck do you mean a human can just train to be able to punch out an entire spaceship?!
Sparatus stopped his rumination and took a deep breath in before continuing to type out his report for the Hierarchy.
'It is unknown whether or not haki is specific to their race,' he typed out. 'It is my recommendation that we gain access to their media on any of their less regulated worlds to devise a method to see if Turians can also learn haki.'
Even as he wrote this out, Sparatus knew that it wasn't likely to happen. If this haki was possible for Turians, then they would have had someone appear in their long past or present to do even half of what human haki users were able to.
No, he wanted the Hierarchy to focus on something else instead: the devil fruits. Unlike hakis which looked to be innate to humans, devil fruits were something that bestowed very specific supernatural powers that aligned with the devoured fruit. This meant that the fruits performed some kind of genetic work upon the consumer's body. It meant that there was a possibility that the devil fruits could be used by Turians.
The question was how many bodies it take to make it work for them.
… Of course, haki and devil fruits were not the only problems he had to contend with.
Namely, the pirates.
Humans adored their pirates.
It was a sickening thing for him and Turians that there was a race out there that actively endorsed their pirates. It wasn't directly or even indirectly, but the fact that piracy had become an industry stated a lot about the humans.
Again, this was where their undisciplined, uncultured, weak, greedy, and vainglorious nature revealed itself in full.
Which also meant that humans would do the same once they were inside Citadel space.
Which meant he needed to keep them out of Citadel space as much as possible.
It meant that his job - and that of the Turian Hierarchy's job - was simple: restrict immigration, reject settlements, kick out any illegal immigrants, and make sure to kill any human pirates found lest they become one of their pirate warlords.
Everything outside of that, he could leave to his coworkers.
---
Councilor Jur Huokka
Humans were a problem, but not in the way that his coworkers thought they were.
Yes, they were problematic because of haki, devil fruit, and pirates, but Tevos and Sparatus were ignoring something much more fundamental about human society.
Their technology.
The most problematic of their technology was their non-Element Zero faster-than-light engines. It meant that humans were not bound by the Mass Relay network like the rest of the races were, and they already showed what that looked like; the Citadel security forces and the Turian Hierarchy would not effectively fight off the initial wave of human pirates.
And he fully expected this to be the initial wave.
What few advice the council managed to get from the confederacy about the pirates was that the confederacy classified the pirates into six tiers.
The lowest tier, the Minnow, was what anyone would expect from low-end pirates: barely equipped, flying half-functioning ships, and absolute scums of society.
The second lowest tier, the Salmon, was a tier above. They were better fit, better equipped, and could be mistaken for commerce ships. Disguising as commerce ships was, actually, half of their tactics.
These two tiers also excluded any pirate crews that did not have a haki or devil fruit user.
The tiers above them didn't exclude them but there was no guarantee.
The third tier was where untrained but powerful individuals began to appear. The "Barracuda" pirates were those very well organized and had a member or led by someone with a devil fruit, haki, or any other significant combat enhancements like high end cybernetics.
The fourth tier, Shark, was reserved specifically for pirate crews that could take on planetary militia and come out victorious at least fifty percent of the time and also including more than one combat enhanced individuals in their retinue.
The penultimate tier, Orca, were more or less warlords without a permanent base of operations. Their leaders were often trained haki users or experienced devil fruit possessors, and could - and often did - burn entire cities on their lonesome. The mere rumor that an Orca was nearby was enough to drive up prices and fear.
And then there was the final tier, the Whale. Whales were warlords, full stop. They ruled over at least one planet with an industrialized population, and could match most forces sent to curb the pirates. More often than not, their leaders were in the top one thousand haki users and devil fruit possessors. Mountains crumbled under their fists. Fleets vanished.
But these tiers also represented a predictable pattern for the average member of the tier. Whales were slow. Cumbersome. They didn't leave their territory because they were basically kings of bandit kingdoms.
However, the Minnows, Salmons, and Barracudas easily wove in and out of borders and regions. And almost all of the pirates that had begun to raid Citadel worlds were Minnows and Salmons… with one exception.
Tekletec the Magnetic. Possessor of the Magnet-Magnet Fruit, he could generate magnetic fields capable of pulling down spaceships from orbit. A fast growing threat among the pirates, the fact that he had come into Citadel space meant that there were bigger threats soon to follow… because he was technically on the run from bigger pirates, and they wouldn't appreciate their prey getting away from them. If they happened to find new worlds to raid at the same time, then they would enjoy it.
Which meant that there would be bigger pirate fleets entering Citadel space with technologies that the Citadel races would be hard pressed to counter.
'Recommendation: capture all pirate ships to capture technology. Reverse-engineer what we can, STAT,' he typed out and sent it to the Dalatrasses.
-VB-
Buffalo Stalin
New Jorul, BPC
AR 2111.12.02
Buffalo ran his fingers down his moustache. It was a little dry today, which meant that his moustache was in perfect condition instead of being wet from melting snow.
But being dry left him feeling a little thirsty. What should he drink? He already had three hundred gallons of Jorul Milk. Should he drink something a bit stronger to drown out the sound of the yapping commissars? Ah, but his doctor did tell him to pull back on his consumption of alcohol.
"... it is clear that we must prepare ourselves. Our close proximity to Shanxi means that the federal government will use this as a chance to poke into our domestic policies, comrades," Commissar of the Right Rusef ground out from Buffalo's right.
"Too true," Commissar of the Left Koyanna crooned. "Those pigs are incapable of keeping their hands to themselves, isn't that right, general secretary?"
"... It is true that the federal government does pry into our business," he said slowly and smoothly. Almost quietly. But that was simply how he spoke. He was powerful and so he did not need to make threats with his voice. "However, I am far more interested in what we could do to reach out to these … 'Citadel' races. From what I have read about the publicly available codices, it is clear that they do not know anything about the Glorious Revolution."
The other giants in the room agreed with rumbles.
"Sugar," he intoned and the tiny mink "servants" pushed the sugar bowl across the table from the other end of the table, which was a measly one hundred meters across. He watched them push the bowl across the table with their trembling, weak limbs.
Minks, like all other races, were pathetic. And like the minks, he expected all of these "Citadel" races to be pathetic as well. More pathetic, actually, since no haki users were found among the "Turian" army.
When one of the minks tripped and fell, he snorted and reached out.
And flicked his finger at the mink like he would with one of the "giant" flies, blasting the mink out of existence into pink mist.
Others in the room laughed.
Buffalo snorted before he leaned back into his seat.
"Then let us start making preparations. I believe the first thing we need to do is understand what our new neighbors are like so that we can devise our strategy from there. Should we send in direct subordinates or should we cajole the capitalist journalists? They are oh so receptive to our advances."
The members of the board chuckled derisively.
-VB-
President Strawberry Nixon
Parliament, Arcturus Station
AR 2111.12.06
The First Contact War had come to an end.
And it was her administration - with the help of the Confederacy Army - that brought it to a close.
Despite her involvement in making that peace happen, she was not getting what she wanted despite the success of her action leading to peace.
And here in the vast and cavernous gray, green, and white parliament chamber on Arcturus Station, she was being criticized for trying to do what was best for the confederacy.
"President Nixon, you are suggesting policies that will achieve little in the face of the crisis that you solved without those policies!" Representative Shujan refuted. He was from the Refuge Republics, a constellation of star systems containing thirteen worlds that represented a total of one percent of the entire GDP of the Blue Planet Confederacy. "Even though the policies and institutions of the confederacy have proven to be successful against a previously unknown threat - so much so that the damage was limited to a single world and not even a single continent on that world - and showed that the founding principles - of each world's independence - of the confederacy rings true, you ask of this body to ratify policies that seeks to overthrow that very success?"
"It is necessary for the future safety of the confederacy," she replied evenly with narrowed eyes. "As we have learned, our new neighbors may be smaller but their reach is greater. Worse, their greater implementation of Element Zero allows them to overcome their technological deficiencies on the battlefield. I am not asking for all of the worlds to give up their independence, only that haki users and devil fruit users are given priority when it comes recruitment into the confederacy's military."
"You mean individuals who are strategic assets of each world?" Representative Rurin, a merfolk, asked as she stood up. he was from the world of Dadandadan, a rimward border world that faced off against the pirate infested Rimworlds Region. "This policy you pushed forward does not give exceptions or limitations on how many strategic individuals the federal government could recruit from each world! You could strip any world of all haki users and be completely legal! Even if you had the best of intentions, what about your successors? What about their successors? There is no guarantee that the current political status quo remains. We may have a demagogue who may want to turn the confederacy into their personal fiefdom, and they would be completely within their legal right as the president of the confederacy to leave a world defenseless! And anyone who knows anything about devil fruit users and haki users that nothing short of an overwhelming mundane military might is needed to take either of them out!"
"While I am loath to do so," Lord Garen of the Serene Noble Republica de Crucidenia, a coreworld member of the confederacy a mere ten lightyears from the Blue Planet, stood up. The human noble looked around before his eyes settled on her. "I must agree with Representative Rurin. This policy, even if it came from a place of good intention, is wildly ill written. In its current form, I would not vote in line with it, even though we are of the same political party."
"Here here!" someone said loudly and it was repeated around the parliament chamber.
Nixon gritted her teeth. The idiot. Instead of staying quiet, he stood up and criticized her when he wasn't getting anything out of this. Instead of helping her, he stood up with his own enemies. Was he after the presidency after her term was up? That had to be it.
Unlike the old days when the president of the confederacy was voted on by electoral representatives (not the legislative representatives), politicians had to appeal to the wider confederacy. This put some limitations on how wide someone could reach, even with helpers, but ever since the Reform of 1808, legislative representatives now voted for the president.
Which meant that a politician's popularity and backroom deal status in the parliament chamber itself directly impacted their chance of becoming the president.
She would know. She made a lot of deals, most of which she carried out. Most. Because her deal with her own party member, Lord Garen, fell through last year when he voted against the party, and she in return had to put a hold on one of the minor industrial subsidies that his planet benefited from, but it wasn't like it was only his planet that benefited from it! This felt like a retaliation for that.
And when she met his eyes…
Oh yeah, this was retaliation for that.
Sniveling, backstabbing son of a bitch.
"Then will you explain to your people when our defenses breach?" she almost snapped out at the idiots in front of her.
"We take care of our own defenses!" someone shouted, and the prideful fools all exclaimed along with that. "You'll just make it worse with this bill! In fact, at least a quarter of the pirates are gone now! We can do more with what we have but your bill will take what we already have! You speak one thing but your bill says something else!"
"It will not! All it would be doing is deputizing them and inducting them into the confederacy army and navy's ranks!"
"And that also gives you the right to take them away because they will fall under your authority!"
As she looked around, she realized that it wasn't going to pass, and more than half of the legislators who she had gotten deals out of her and slowly shaking their heads.
Not this one. We'll offer our support later. Or change this.
She gritted her teeth.
"Fine! What amendments to this bill would you accept?" she demanded.
And she was forced to watch as the legislators butchered the bill in front of her. Some of them even tried to add amendments that had nothing to do with the bill like increased regulation of the meat market. As the author of the bill, she retained the right to strike down amendments before the voting, and struck all of those irrelevant amendments.
By the end of the day, the bill had more holes than before, black marks crossed out entire paragraphs, and changed so very little that she debated whether or not she should even allow the bill to pass, because she could get it to pass but that would use up all of the political power she amassed for this bill specifically.
In the end, she tabled the bill, pushing it further back so that another bill can be looked at first.
---
Anita Goyle
"You look tired, teacher."
The president grumbled as she floated across the room and poured herself a cup of coffee. Even though the day should be ending for her soon, she was picking up a cup of coffee instead of choosing to turn in for the (artificial) night.
"I am tired," Strawberry grunted out after taking a seat behind her favorite desk.
This room was not her teacher's official office of the presidency but a more private one deeper inside the station.
It was one of the few places that either she or her teacher could get some privacy.
Strawberry let out a long stuttering sigh.
"Damn it," she muttered before taking a ship of her coffee. "All of that work. All of that preparation. Ruined."
"... Because I was too successful."
"No," her teacher snapped. "If anything, I overestimated the aliens. After starting the border skirmish themselves, they backed off fully just because they met a single diplomat? This wasn't your fault. These 'Citadel' races are either far too cowardly or too diplomatic for my plans to have worked through them. And worse, because the pirates know that the Citadels are weak, for now, so they are rushing into Citadel space, giving our worlds the pretext they need to reject the reforms!" Then she collapsed after that brief rant. "Worse, the pirates are going to give away our tech while we get nothing for it in return. And greedy corporations will do the same for a payday to satisfy their shareholders."
Anita nodded.
She understood. How could she not? This was the kind of social, business, and political changes that high society expected their heirs and politicians to understand. And to prevent them. But then again, who could prevent a First Contact scenario and all of the changes that the scenario brought about?
But the point here was that the balance of power within the confederacy now had external agents, factions, and nations to balance itself against (pirates didn't count), and with none of the reforms Nixon prepared going through, the confederacy was sure to lose a lot of cards in short order.
Nixon sat there, thinking about the situation at hand.
"Which means… I need to use the advantages that we do have so that they don't lose their value completely," she grunted. She then turned to Anita.
And Anita felt a shiver run up her spine.
Why did it feel like…?
No.
"Anita."
"Teacher, please don't send me away again."
"I must. I don't trust anyone else."
Anita closed her eyes and took a deep breath in. She opened them while releasing her breath.
"What are you asking of me?"
"Because of confederacy's member worlds, corporations, and pirates, we are going to lose our technological edge to the Citadel races. So we need to use them as quickly as possible to achieve even a modicum of results. Technological exchanges, trade agreements, and more. We have to get on top of the situation before those agreements become not worthless but definitely worth less."
She sighed. "So I have to travel across the stars again… to talk to more politicians."
"Girl, you signed up for this."
"Teacher, you said it was either this or a career in the military."
"And after learning about everything, has your answer changed?"
"... No." She really did enjoy the wining and dining, verbal needling and probing, policy sparring and investigating, and the very occasional blackmailing and violence.
"Well, then. Time to pack your bags, no?" she asked with a dark titter. "I'm sure you will also like meeting your new Asari friend, no?"
"Teacher, we were simply acquaintances," Anita sighed.
"Well, when are you going to get married?"
"Teacher, I don't like this conversation topic."
"But I've been rooting for you and that good boy before you dumped him! Do you know just how much I had betting on your marriage?!"
"... You bet on me?"
Her teacher made a strategic retreat after that.
Anita snorted but did leave the office to pack her bags as her teacher had bade her.
The old adage was true.
The reward for good work was more work.
-VB-
General Charles Williams
Shanxi
AR 2112.01.06
Even after the invasion, the colony of Shanxi didn't officially join the confederacy as a member state.
Most people would think that after facing such a horrific event as a First Contact War, the planet would find it in their best interest to join the confederacy. Doing this would allow the confederacy to claim the entire Shanxi system and properly fortify it.
Unfortunately for the confederacy, Shanxi didn't.
In fact, Shanxi chose to be a dick about it.
In their eyes, Shanxi's colonists saw that the aliens of the Citadel Council were … weak. Not worth defending against in earnest, in depth, or improve existing defenses of. After all, didn't they repel the invaders without a single city suffering significant casualties?
Of course, people were dumb. They forgot that the planet had been defended by the confederacy army more than the local militia. In fact, the local militia, outside of a few individuals who chose to join the active defense, didn't even see combat!
But, no, that didn't matter.
Because people were dumb.
All they saw was that "they" repelled the invaders, so they felt justified in not needing the defensive umbrella of the confederacy.
Instead, they set up a freeport.
Yup.
They set up a freeport.
Right at the border of the Blue Planet Confederacy and the Citadel Council.
And what orders did Charles get from his higher ups and the parliament?
Leave it be.
The general had a very good idea as to why that was the case.
One, the colony of Shanxi didn't kick the confederacy army out. Two, technically, the land that the confederacy army stationed their troops on was confederacy land, not the colony's. Three, the confederacy might need a freeport at the border where they had troops nearby. Four, the existence of a freeport might help move contraband goods from the Citadel space to the confederacy. Five, the existence of a freeport offered the confederacy's black ops a reliable plausible deniability.
There were probably more reasons but the gist of the situation was that a freeport Shanxi was a useful tool for the wider confederacy.
But as a soldier?
Charles did not like it.
In fact, the idea that the place he defended becoming a freeport irked him something fierce. Instead of being thankful, they chose to become a haven for pirates and unscrupulous mercenaries…? The kinds of people that plagued the rest of the confederacy…?!
'I should have failed the defense,' was the thought that occasionally blurred across the front of his mind. Oh, his career would have come to an end once someone else repelled the invasion easily, but the fact was that at the very least that would have seen Shanxi not become a literal pirate haven.
In fact, there was already a pirate crew loitering about in the local space port.
And he couldn't hunt them down unless either the colony asked for help in subduing them or they stepped out of the neutral zone of the space port.
"I want to take them down as well, major," he gritted his teeth. "But the moment we do that is the moment we get a court martial order dropped on our heads."
"But sir!" the major, an earnest and good human, urged. "Just letting them roam around like this -!"
"Don't think that I don't feel anything about the situation," Charles replied. He took a deep breath in and let it out. The human major buckled at the gust a mere forceful breath caused. "I want to bring them in. I want to go in there and beat the shit out of them all, Shanxi-in and pirates alike! Utterly ungrateful sons of bitches…! They don't even realize that the only reason that the pirates are being polite is because we have our guns pointed at them!"
When a planet declared freeport, it meant that any ship that was in orbit of the planet was also considered neutral. They would have to break orbit and leave the planet to be considered fair game. But the orbit was low enough for most pirate ships to enter FTL.
Which meant that smugglers and pirates alike could come and go from the planet without any issue.
And he hated that.
But he was a man of the law, even if he was not a law enforcement officer. He was a soldier, and his job was to uphold the law in both spirit and letter.
He would not be the one to break it.
But pirates were pirates. They would eventually go out of control and commit some heinous deeds. And even if the colony was not a member of the confederacy, it was still beholden to international laws.
If they or the pirates broke any of those laws, then he would enter that space port with the wrathful smile worthy of Joy Boy.
But for now…
For now.
He would stay his and his soldiers' hands. But stayed hands did not mean idle hands.
No.
Drills would be had.
Ammunition would be stocked.
Devil fruit techniques would be refined.
Haki would be honed.
And when that inevitable stumble came…
When it came….
Yes.
He would be there.
He would make sure of it.
-VB-
A/N: lasa: Asari version of charta visa, or visa.
A Just Measure
Chapter 4
-VB-
Councilor Tevos
Citadel
AR 2111.12.04
Humans were a problem.
As she looked over the forms and reports from the border worlds near the Blue Planet Confederacy, Tevos realized that the Confederacy was going to be a headache for a long, long time.
It took her a little under a week to realize the true scale of the problem that the Blue Planet Confederacy and "humanity" would soon present against the stability of the Citadel Council.
The most obvious of these were the pirates being sighted across the "antispinward" borders around Relay 314.
Yes, pirates.
Because while the Confederacy did mention that they did have a significant pirate infestation in their "periphery," she didn't realize just how bad it was for them that, within a week of Relay 314 opening, pirates were actively bypassing the Mass Relay to jump directly into Citadel space.
Within a week!
At the same time, this presented a wonderful opportunity. Those pirates possessed technologies that the Citadel Council members and associate races did not possess. Taking those pirates out, salvaging their ships, and reverse engineering the technologies aboard those ships would provide an ample opportunity to catch up to the Confederacy on a number of technological fields. In fact, she would privately call this a blessing in disguise. Never publicly, of course, not when citizens of the Citadel Council were being attacked, enslaved, and tortured by those pirates.
The pirates, though, worried her.
It was clear from the reports that the pirates possessed a number of individuals that could poorly mimic the effects caught on camera what some of the human individuals were capable of on Shanxi.
Of course, they would need to be captured and their secrets extracted for the good of the Asari Republics.
But how?
The very fact that those individuals were powerful was already something that put them above Asari Commandos. She'd seen the types of damages the "haki' users could cause. And those that were "devil fruit" users?
The only city on the Asari colony of A'Reum was now gone. Destroyed by a "ping pong" man, as ridiculous as that sounded.
An Asari city was gone and dead just a week after the Relay 314 Incident.
The speed of the Confederacy's FTL came as a shock to her and her peers.
But because of how the treaty was worded and signed, the Citadel Council could not ask, tell, or demand the Confederacy to deal with its own problems. Because part of the peace treaty included borders being closed off to each other's militaries. At the same time, they didn't limit civilian travel; those seeking to legally travel over the border would need get travel e'lasa*.
While most of the pirates had bases outside of the Confederacy, the Citadel's navies couldn't get there because the only way for their ships to reach those Confederacy peripheries required passage through Relay 314, which was within the Confederacy's borders - and thus their warships could not reach the pirates due to the lack of military access. And while the pirates and their Confederacy alternate FTL could cross a hundred lightyears in over a couple of days, the Citadel warships could not; the fastest Asari frigates, the smallest interstellar warship, could travel one lightyear in one day and ten lightyears before they needed to cooldown lest the ship's reactor core cooks the crew alive.
While the Citadel Council still held iron grip over systems where there were Mass Relays and those immediately close to one, the same could not be said about any other systems. Human pirates were rampaging through those systems and there was nothing the Council could do about it.
Worse, the Human Confederacy didn't want to do anything about it nor did they want to do anything about it because they were too busy getting their own house into order.
---
Councilor Sparatus
Humans were a problem.
The biggest issue as he saw it was their entire society's lack of centralization. Even the least unified of the Citadel and associate council races, the Salarians, maintained a central government that could dictate their own affairs.
The humans did not possess this. This confederacy was incapable of doing anything significant. Hell, it could barely hold itself together! Worse, the humans actively admired chaotic and harmful ventures like piracy, privateering, and frontiersmanship. They were unorganized, unconsolidated, undisciplined, and weak.
And the only reason they were able to succeed was because of their "greats:" individuals who had significant personal power or prowess. Reading into their history made that very clear, and reading about them also made a number of other things clear as well.
Humans, as he discovered, were an "average" race. They did not particularly excel at anything. They were physically weaker than the Turians, shorter lived than the Asari and Krogans, dumber and slower than the Salarians, smaller than Elcor, lazier than a Volus, and greedier than the goddamn Terminus pirates.
No, the danger of humans came from "individual effort" that took advantage of their innate … talent.
Because "haki" was bullshit. There was no other way to say it. Haki was bullshit.
What the fuck do you mean a human can just train to be able to punch out an entire spaceship?!
Sparatus stopped his rumination and took a deep breath in before continuing to type out his report for the Hierarchy.
'It is unknown whether or not haki is specific to their race,' he typed out. 'It is my recommendation that we gain access to their media on any of their less regulated worlds to devise a method to see if Turians can also learn haki.'
Even as he wrote this out, Sparatus knew that it wasn't likely to happen. If this haki was possible for Turians, then they would have had someone appear in their long past or present to do even half of what human haki users were able to.
No, he wanted the Hierarchy to focus on something else instead: the devil fruits. Unlike hakis which looked to be innate to humans, devil fruits were something that bestowed very specific supernatural powers that aligned with the devoured fruit. This meant that the fruits performed some kind of genetic work upon the consumer's body. It meant that there was a possibility that the devil fruits could be used by Turians.
The question was how many bodies it take to make it work for them.
… Of course, haki and devil fruits were not the only problems he had to contend with.
Namely, the pirates.
Humans adored their pirates.
It was a sickening thing for him and Turians that there was a race out there that actively endorsed their pirates. It wasn't directly or even indirectly, but the fact that piracy had become an industry stated a lot about the humans.
Again, this was where their undisciplined, uncultured, weak, greedy, and vainglorious nature revealed itself in full.
Which also meant that humans would do the same once they were inside Citadel space.
Which meant he needed to keep them out of Citadel space as much as possible.
It meant that his job - and that of the Turian Hierarchy's job - was simple: restrict immigration, reject settlements, kick out any illegal immigrants, and make sure to kill any human pirates found lest they become one of their pirate warlords.
Everything outside of that, he could leave to his coworkers.
---
Councilor Jur Huokka
Humans were a problem, but not in the way that his coworkers thought they were.
Yes, they were problematic because of haki, devil fruit, and pirates, but Tevos and Sparatus were ignoring something much more fundamental about human society.
Their technology.
The most problematic of their technology was their non-Element Zero faster-than-light engines. It meant that humans were not bound by the Mass Relay network like the rest of the races were, and they already showed what that looked like; the Citadel security forces and the Turian Hierarchy would not effectively fight off the initial wave of human pirates.
And he fully expected this to be the initial wave.
What few advice the council managed to get from the confederacy about the pirates was that the confederacy classified the pirates into six tiers.
The lowest tier, the Minnow, was what anyone would expect from low-end pirates: barely equipped, flying half-functioning ships, and absolute scums of society.
The second lowest tier, the Salmon, was a tier above. They were better fit, better equipped, and could be mistaken for commerce ships. Disguising as commerce ships was, actually, half of their tactics.
These two tiers also excluded any pirate crews that did not have a haki or devil fruit user.
The tiers above them didn't exclude them but there was no guarantee.
The third tier was where untrained but powerful individuals began to appear. The "Barracuda" pirates were those very well organized and had a member or led by someone with a devil fruit, haki, or any other significant combat enhancements like high end cybernetics.
The fourth tier, Shark, was reserved specifically for pirate crews that could take on planetary militia and come out victorious at least fifty percent of the time and also including more than one combat enhanced individuals in their retinue.
The penultimate tier, Orca, were more or less warlords without a permanent base of operations. Their leaders were often trained haki users or experienced devil fruit possessors, and could - and often did - burn entire cities on their lonesome. The mere rumor that an Orca was nearby was enough to drive up prices and fear.
And then there was the final tier, the Whale. Whales were warlords, full stop. They ruled over at least one planet with an industrialized population, and could match most forces sent to curb the pirates. More often than not, their leaders were in the top one thousand haki users and devil fruit possessors. Mountains crumbled under their fists. Fleets vanished.
But these tiers also represented a predictable pattern for the average member of the tier. Whales were slow. Cumbersome. They didn't leave their territory because they were basically kings of bandit kingdoms.
However, the Minnows, Salmons, and Barracudas easily wove in and out of borders and regions. And almost all of the pirates that had begun to raid Citadel worlds were Minnows and Salmons… with one exception.
Tekletec the Magnetic. Possessor of the Magnet-Magnet Fruit, he could generate magnetic fields capable of pulling down spaceships from orbit. A fast growing threat among the pirates, the fact that he had come into Citadel space meant that there were bigger threats soon to follow… because he was technically on the run from bigger pirates, and they wouldn't appreciate their prey getting away from them. If they happened to find new worlds to raid at the same time, then they would enjoy it.
Which meant that there would be bigger pirate fleets entering Citadel space with technologies that the Citadel races would be hard pressed to counter.
'Recommendation: capture all pirate ships to capture technology. Reverse-engineer what we can, STAT,' he typed out and sent it to the Dalatrasses.
-VB-
Buffalo Stalin
New Jorul, BPC
AR 2111.12.02
Buffalo ran his fingers down his moustache. It was a little dry today, which meant that his moustache was in perfect condition instead of being wet from melting snow.
But being dry left him feeling a little thirsty. What should he drink? He already had three hundred gallons of Jorul Milk. Should he drink something a bit stronger to drown out the sound of the yapping commissars? Ah, but his doctor did tell him to pull back on his consumption of alcohol.
"... it is clear that we must prepare ourselves. Our close proximity to Shanxi means that the federal government will use this as a chance to poke into our domestic policies, comrades," Commissar of the Right Rusef ground out from Buffalo's right.
"Too true," Commissar of the Left Koyanna crooned. "Those pigs are incapable of keeping their hands to themselves, isn't that right, general secretary?"
"... It is true that the federal government does pry into our business," he said slowly and smoothly. Almost quietly. But that was simply how he spoke. He was powerful and so he did not need to make threats with his voice. "However, I am far more interested in what we could do to reach out to these … 'Citadel' races. From what I have read about the publicly available codices, it is clear that they do not know anything about the Glorious Revolution."
The other giants in the room agreed with rumbles.
"Sugar," he intoned and the tiny mink "servants" pushed the sugar bowl across the table from the other end of the table, which was a measly one hundred meters across. He watched them push the bowl across the table with their trembling, weak limbs.
Minks, like all other races, were pathetic. And like the minks, he expected all of these "Citadel" races to be pathetic as well. More pathetic, actually, since no haki users were found among the "Turian" army.
When one of the minks tripped and fell, he snorted and reached out.
And flicked his finger at the mink like he would with one of the "giant" flies, blasting the mink out of existence into pink mist.
Others in the room laughed.
Buffalo snorted before he leaned back into his seat.
"Then let us start making preparations. I believe the first thing we need to do is understand what our new neighbors are like so that we can devise our strategy from there. Should we send in direct subordinates or should we cajole the capitalist journalists? They are oh so receptive to our advances."
The members of the board chuckled derisively.
-VB-
President Strawberry Nixon
Parliament, Arcturus Station
AR 2111.12.06
The First Contact War had come to an end.
And it was her administration - with the help of the Confederacy Army - that brought it to a close.
Despite her involvement in making that peace happen, she was not getting what she wanted despite the success of her action leading to peace.
And here in the vast and cavernous gray, green, and white parliament chamber on Arcturus Station, she was being criticized for trying to do what was best for the confederacy.
"President Nixon, you are suggesting policies that will achieve little in the face of the crisis that you solved without those policies!" Representative Shujan refuted. He was from the Refuge Republics, a constellation of star systems containing thirteen worlds that represented a total of one percent of the entire GDP of the Blue Planet Confederacy. "Even though the policies and institutions of the confederacy have proven to be successful against a previously unknown threat - so much so that the damage was limited to a single world and not even a single continent on that world - and showed that the founding principles - of each world's independence - of the confederacy rings true, you ask of this body to ratify policies that seeks to overthrow that very success?"
"It is necessary for the future safety of the confederacy," she replied evenly with narrowed eyes. "As we have learned, our new neighbors may be smaller but their reach is greater. Worse, their greater implementation of Element Zero allows them to overcome their technological deficiencies on the battlefield. I am not asking for all of the worlds to give up their independence, only that haki users and devil fruit users are given priority when it comes recruitment into the confederacy's military."
"You mean individuals who are strategic assets of each world?" Representative Rurin, a merfolk, asked as she stood up. he was from the world of Dadandadan, a rimward border world that faced off against the pirate infested Rimworlds Region. "This policy you pushed forward does not give exceptions or limitations on how many strategic individuals the federal government could recruit from each world! You could strip any world of all haki users and be completely legal! Even if you had the best of intentions, what about your successors? What about their successors? There is no guarantee that the current political status quo remains. We may have a demagogue who may want to turn the confederacy into their personal fiefdom, and they would be completely within their legal right as the president of the confederacy to leave a world defenseless! And anyone who knows anything about devil fruit users and haki users that nothing short of an overwhelming mundane military might is needed to take either of them out!"
"While I am loath to do so," Lord Garen of the Serene Noble Republica de Crucidenia, a coreworld member of the confederacy a mere ten lightyears from the Blue Planet, stood up. The human noble looked around before his eyes settled on her. "I must agree with Representative Rurin. This policy, even if it came from a place of good intention, is wildly ill written. In its current form, I would not vote in line with it, even though we are of the same political party."
"Here here!" someone said loudly and it was repeated around the parliament chamber.
Nixon gritted her teeth. The idiot. Instead of staying quiet, he stood up and criticized her when he wasn't getting anything out of this. Instead of helping her, he stood up with his own enemies. Was he after the presidency after her term was up? That had to be it.
Unlike the old days when the president of the confederacy was voted on by electoral representatives (not the legislative representatives), politicians had to appeal to the wider confederacy. This put some limitations on how wide someone could reach, even with helpers, but ever since the Reform of 1808, legislative representatives now voted for the president.
Which meant that a politician's popularity and backroom deal status in the parliament chamber itself directly impacted their chance of becoming the president.
She would know. She made a lot of deals, most of which she carried out. Most. Because her deal with her own party member, Lord Garen, fell through last year when he voted against the party, and she in return had to put a hold on one of the minor industrial subsidies that his planet benefited from, but it wasn't like it was only his planet that benefited from it! This felt like a retaliation for that.
And when she met his eyes…
Oh yeah, this was retaliation for that.
Sniveling, backstabbing son of a bitch.
"Then will you explain to your people when our defenses breach?" she almost snapped out at the idiots in front of her.
"We take care of our own defenses!" someone shouted, and the prideful fools all exclaimed along with that. "You'll just make it worse with this bill! In fact, at least a quarter of the pirates are gone now! We can do more with what we have but your bill will take what we already have! You speak one thing but your bill says something else!"
"It will not! All it would be doing is deputizing them and inducting them into the confederacy army and navy's ranks!"
"And that also gives you the right to take them away because they will fall under your authority!"
As she looked around, she realized that it wasn't going to pass, and more than half of the legislators who she had gotten deals out of her and slowly shaking their heads.
Not this one. We'll offer our support later. Or change this.
She gritted her teeth.
"Fine! What amendments to this bill would you accept?" she demanded.
And she was forced to watch as the legislators butchered the bill in front of her. Some of them even tried to add amendments that had nothing to do with the bill like increased regulation of the meat market. As the author of the bill, she retained the right to strike down amendments before the voting, and struck all of those irrelevant amendments.
By the end of the day, the bill had more holes than before, black marks crossed out entire paragraphs, and changed so very little that she debated whether or not she should even allow the bill to pass, because she could get it to pass but that would use up all of the political power she amassed for this bill specifically.
In the end, she tabled the bill, pushing it further back so that another bill can be looked at first.
---
Anita Goyle
"You look tired, teacher."
The president grumbled as she floated across the room and poured herself a cup of coffee. Even though the day should be ending for her soon, she was picking up a cup of coffee instead of choosing to turn in for the (artificial) night.
"I am tired," Strawberry grunted out after taking a seat behind her favorite desk.
This room was not her teacher's official office of the presidency but a more private one deeper inside the station.
It was one of the few places that either she or her teacher could get some privacy.
Strawberry let out a long stuttering sigh.
"Damn it," she muttered before taking a ship of her coffee. "All of that work. All of that preparation. Ruined."
"... Because I was too successful."
"No," her teacher snapped. "If anything, I overestimated the aliens. After starting the border skirmish themselves, they backed off fully just because they met a single diplomat? This wasn't your fault. These 'Citadel' races are either far too cowardly or too diplomatic for my plans to have worked through them. And worse, because the pirates know that the Citadels are weak, for now, so they are rushing into Citadel space, giving our worlds the pretext they need to reject the reforms!" Then she collapsed after that brief rant. "Worse, the pirates are going to give away our tech while we get nothing for it in return. And greedy corporations will do the same for a payday to satisfy their shareholders."
Anita nodded.
She understood. How could she not? This was the kind of social, business, and political changes that high society expected their heirs and politicians to understand. And to prevent them. But then again, who could prevent a First Contact scenario and all of the changes that the scenario brought about?
But the point here was that the balance of power within the confederacy now had external agents, factions, and nations to balance itself against (pirates didn't count), and with none of the reforms Nixon prepared going through, the confederacy was sure to lose a lot of cards in short order.
Nixon sat there, thinking about the situation at hand.
"Which means… I need to use the advantages that we do have so that they don't lose their value completely," she grunted. She then turned to Anita.
And Anita felt a shiver run up her spine.
Why did it feel like…?
No.
"Anita."
"Teacher, please don't send me away again."
"I must. I don't trust anyone else."
Anita closed her eyes and took a deep breath in. She opened them while releasing her breath.
"What are you asking of me?"
"Because of confederacy's member worlds, corporations, and pirates, we are going to lose our technological edge to the Citadel races. So we need to use them as quickly as possible to achieve even a modicum of results. Technological exchanges, trade agreements, and more. We have to get on top of the situation before those agreements become not worthless but definitely worth less."
She sighed. "So I have to travel across the stars again… to talk to more politicians."
"Girl, you signed up for this."
"Teacher, you said it was either this or a career in the military."
"And after learning about everything, has your answer changed?"
"... No." She really did enjoy the wining and dining, verbal needling and probing, policy sparring and investigating, and the very occasional blackmailing and violence.
"Well, then. Time to pack your bags, no?" she asked with a dark titter. "I'm sure you will also like meeting your new Asari friend, no?"
"Teacher, we were simply acquaintances," Anita sighed.
"Well, when are you going to get married?"
"Teacher, I don't like this conversation topic."
"But I've been rooting for you and that good boy before you dumped him! Do you know just how much I had betting on your marriage?!"
"... You bet on me?"
Her teacher made a strategic retreat after that.
Anita snorted but did leave the office to pack her bags as her teacher had bade her.
The old adage was true.
The reward for good work was more work.
-VB-
General Charles Williams
Shanxi
AR 2112.01.06
Even after the invasion, the colony of Shanxi didn't officially join the confederacy as a member state.
Most people would think that after facing such a horrific event as a First Contact War, the planet would find it in their best interest to join the confederacy. Doing this would allow the confederacy to claim the entire Shanxi system and properly fortify it.
Unfortunately for the confederacy, Shanxi didn't.
In fact, Shanxi chose to be a dick about it.
In their eyes, Shanxi's colonists saw that the aliens of the Citadel Council were … weak. Not worth defending against in earnest, in depth, or improve existing defenses of. After all, didn't they repel the invaders without a single city suffering significant casualties?
Of course, people were dumb. They forgot that the planet had been defended by the confederacy army more than the local militia. In fact, the local militia, outside of a few individuals who chose to join the active defense, didn't even see combat!
But, no, that didn't matter.
Because people were dumb.
All they saw was that "they" repelled the invaders, so they felt justified in not needing the defensive umbrella of the confederacy.
Instead, they set up a freeport.
Yup.
They set up a freeport.
Right at the border of the Blue Planet Confederacy and the Citadel Council.
And what orders did Charles get from his higher ups and the parliament?
Leave it be.
The general had a very good idea as to why that was the case.
One, the colony of Shanxi didn't kick the confederacy army out. Two, technically, the land that the confederacy army stationed their troops on was confederacy land, not the colony's. Three, the confederacy might need a freeport at the border where they had troops nearby. Four, the existence of a freeport might help move contraband goods from the Citadel space to the confederacy. Five, the existence of a freeport offered the confederacy's black ops a reliable plausible deniability.
There were probably more reasons but the gist of the situation was that a freeport Shanxi was a useful tool for the wider confederacy.
But as a soldier?
Charles did not like it.
In fact, the idea that the place he defended becoming a freeport irked him something fierce. Instead of being thankful, they chose to become a haven for pirates and unscrupulous mercenaries…? The kinds of people that plagued the rest of the confederacy…?!
'I should have failed the defense,' was the thought that occasionally blurred across the front of his mind. Oh, his career would have come to an end once someone else repelled the invasion easily, but the fact was that at the very least that would have seen Shanxi not become a literal pirate haven.
In fact, there was already a pirate crew loitering about in the local space port.
And he couldn't hunt them down unless either the colony asked for help in subduing them or they stepped out of the neutral zone of the space port.
"I want to take them down as well, major," he gritted his teeth. "But the moment we do that is the moment we get a court martial order dropped on our heads."
"But sir!" the major, an earnest and good human, urged. "Just letting them roam around like this -!"
"Don't think that I don't feel anything about the situation," Charles replied. He took a deep breath in and let it out. The human major buckled at the gust a mere forceful breath caused. "I want to bring them in. I want to go in there and beat the shit out of them all, Shanxi-in and pirates alike! Utterly ungrateful sons of bitches…! They don't even realize that the only reason that the pirates are being polite is because we have our guns pointed at them!"
When a planet declared freeport, it meant that any ship that was in orbit of the planet was also considered neutral. They would have to break orbit and leave the planet to be considered fair game. But the orbit was low enough for most pirate ships to enter FTL.
Which meant that smugglers and pirates alike could come and go from the planet without any issue.
And he hated that.
But he was a man of the law, even if he was not a law enforcement officer. He was a soldier, and his job was to uphold the law in both spirit and letter.
He would not be the one to break it.
But pirates were pirates. They would eventually go out of control and commit some heinous deeds. And even if the colony was not a member of the confederacy, it was still beholden to international laws.
If they or the pirates broke any of those laws, then he would enter that space port with the wrathful smile worthy of Joy Boy.
But for now…
For now.
He would stay his and his soldiers' hands. But stayed hands did not mean idle hands.
No.
Drills would be had.
Ammunition would be stocked.
Devil fruit techniques would be refined.
Haki would be honed.
And when that inevitable stumble came…
When it came….
Yes.
He would be there.
He would make sure of it.
-VB-
A/N: lasa: Asari version of charta visa, or visa.