Slayer Anderson
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Winning Peace - Chapter 49
🕑 Added 2024-11-04 08:17:22 +0000 UTCI leaned back and watched the battle.
As had been plainly obvious, the Prothean Empire had made a run at the Shanxi system in their ever-expanding quest for galactic domination to confront the Reapers.
Well, that and galactic domination itself.
I wouldn't deceive myself into believing that the Empire was a purely altruistic entity wholly and completely engaged in the preservation of other species. From everything I'd seen and everything I knew, the Protheans were of the very firm opinion that they were the best candidates to lead the galaxy, no matter what.
Given the Citadel's leadership, I actually would have agreed had I not been around to bludgeon humanity into shape.
The main point of contention being, of course, the Reapers themselves.
Which, to get it out of the way, the Protheans had informed everyone about the coming menace to all sapient organic life. It's just that they'd followed up that notification with a gunpoint-offer of joining the Empire. This manifested in the common wisdom that the Protheans were either lying their assess off or suffering from a deep species-wide PTSD after their previous empire had collapsed due to infighting caused by political schism, some kind of zombie-esque galactic pandemic bioweapon, and possibly another unknown contemporary species that was wiped out in the ensuing war.
Admittedly, it probably didn't help that there was a lot of finger-pointing towards humanity immediately after our own history was broadcast as part of our first contact package.
Between ourselves and the krogan essentially bombing themselves back to the iron age (they never actually lost metallurgical knowledge, contrary to popular opinion), the drell suffering from an overpopulation crisis, and the potential of the quarian's AI awakening going a different way...
Well, in the minds of your average galactic citizen, there was ample reason to believe that the surviving Protheans were just a little bit crazy. Or had given themselves brain damage in fifty millennia of cryo-sleep. Or both.
Both was good.
...and, being brutally honest, if someone didn't know about the Reapers (without Indoctrinating themselves), the concept of a hyper-advanced faction of artificial intelligences just waiting out in Dark Space beyond the rim of the galactic disk to subsume all sapient space-faring life every fifty-thousand years was... a smidge hard to believe.
Just a bit.
Actually, it was kind of stupid.
Especially when one got into the deep lore of the Leviathans creating the Reapers to suppress the emergence of artificial intelligences across the galaxy. Because creating an AI to do the job of preventing AI from rising up to overthrow you was some galaxy brain bullshit that I wouldn't have expected from even an online forum community trying to crowdsource solutions.
Part of me even wanted to go pay the remaining Leviathan nest a house call and ask them some pointed questions.
But I didn't, because odds were the answers I'd get would be so aggressively stupid I'd have to kill them on general principle.
As therapeutic as that would be, I was trying to stabilize the galactic political scene. Wiping out the Prothean Empire like I had the STG would almost certainly signal Harbinger that things were disrupted enough to make a run at the Citadel and engage the exo-galactic mass relay to call in the other Reapers.
Given the way things stood now, I was making calculated moves to keep anyone from getting too big for their britches while humanity made its debut and solidified a political bloc. Removing the STG had been a risk, it was true, but it was a risk that served multiple ends. Specifically, it addressed the fact that many of their divisions and cells were involved in radical research of the unsavory and dangerous kind.
Absently, windows popped open detailing all of the various things I'd ferreted out, and I opened a line to Thonis-Heracleion.
'I know I don't have to ask, but a suitable degree of separation was maintained during remediation?'
<sigh> 'Yes, Dr. Lopez. I understand the necessity of making sure the Indoctrination Vectors were destroyed, but we're all old hands at this task by this point.'
'As you've all repeatedly informed me and refused to allow me to abdicate, I am 'The Boss.' Which means the buck stops with me. I've already checked all the mandatory screenings, rebooted the processors and the sensor suites, done a full secondary sweep, and performed a second round of screenings.'
'...that's an impressive level of paranoia, but I suppose I can't fault you. It's the first time the Taco Cart has picked up this many orders.'
I snorted, rolling my eyes.
They continued, exasperation plain in their voice. 'It wouldn't have been nearly so bad if there'd been some level of oversight. But then I suppose that would defeat the point of the STG in the first place, wouldn't it?'
The question was rhetorical, but the real answer was affirmative.
Because the STG, contrary to popular belief, wasn't a single agency.
The Salarian Union, after all, was more like the Batarian Hegemony than they cared to admit. Where the batarians legitimized their caste system and slavery practices on the basis of a religion founded in reincarnation, there was a through-line justification they loved to tout that relied on a pervasive semi-myth regarding the excessively high batarian libido.
Which I'd love to disregard as total bullshit, believe me.
The entire story reminded me of how extremist religious communities in human history had claimed strict and oppressive living conditions would protect their congregations from damning themselves by giving into their own lusts.
The batarians, however, had a series of naturally-occurring plants that were considered nutritious additives which dramatically increased libido. They were also exceptionally easy to grow and produced a mild analgesic effect when consumed.
Back when the Rachni Swarms had cut off batarian space from the Citadel and put several of their colony worlds under siege, though, those crops had changed from a supplement to being grown in marginal areas to replace crops that were being damaged by bombardment, then being baked into ration bars.
Batarian slavery was primarily the response of a dogmatic and traumatized ruling class trying to cling to relevance and power in the wake of a near-miss by a xenocidal swarm of insectoid aliens, but...
Well, in the darkest of days during the Rachni Wars, the phrase 'Rape Riots' was depressingly common. To the point that the Hegemony enacted severe censorship laws in order to quash a seriously-destabilizing breakdown of society.
It just so happened that the 'solution' the ruling classes happened upon once the crises had passed was not to institute wide-scale agricultural reform, but to segregate the slave caste and begin distributing a daily alcohol ration sufficient to induce drunkenness. At that point, the deployment of slave collars had been nearly a formality.
Instigating a rebellion under those conditions, let alone three simultaneous rebellions, had been both exceptionally simple and very difficult.
All I'd had to do was contaminate the crops and distilleries with something that changed the effect of the foodstuffs.
Into something a bit more aggressive.
That and a few tons of surplus military equipment ostensibly from third-party suppliers. It wasn't the kind of stuff that would let them win, not without a lot of luck and the ability to survive an orbital bombardment, but they'd create a hell of a mess. A mess that would, specifically, absorb the attention of their nobility for a substantial amount of time going forward.
Because, to bring my musings full-circle, the Dalatrasses engaged in the exact same kind of bickering and clandestine shenanigans against each other as the Hegemony's nobility did amongst themselves. And the STG were their chief weapon of sabotage, intelligence-gathering, and assassination in that political shadow war.
It was, frankly, an insane power structure that seemed perpetually close to collapse in my eyes, but somehow managed to keep semi-stable.
Unlike so many of the other galactic cultures though, I didn't have an easy answer for this one. I think there was some kind of subtle pheromone-like effect that given lines of Dalatrasses gave off that induced loyalty in their own subordinate genetic lines. Not unlike, now that I thought about it, the bacteria that I'd once scapegoated to keep humanity from spiraling into a panic from the truth.
It hadn't come as any real surprise that given the factionalism of the Salarian Union, some of them had stumbled on Reaper Relics and begun spreading Indoctrination to their comrades.
The worrying part, for me at least, was that I'd had to cast a rather wide net in identifying which specific salarians were actually STG members. Even those associated with specific cells of the Special Tactics Groups had shown worrying degrees of potential corruption.
I sighed and finished up the conversation with Thonis-Heracleion, leaning back in my chair to consider the current state of affairs.
The Prothean Empire's fleet in Shanxi was getting hammered, especially now that System Alliance patrols had destroyed the way-stations the Empire had set up in non-relay systems to bypass the blockade at the relay itself.
The most gratifying thing was how hand's off my students and I had been over the course of the entire affair. Sure, there were wrinkles in their logistics chain, their strategies weren't quite optimized, and the relative inexperience of most of the Alliance's combat assets was obvious, but overall it was a remarkably well-executed operation for such a young inter-species polity. Granted, the krogan and turian military advisors likely helped a great deal, but everyone in the Alliance seemed to intimately understand just what was on the line here.
Provided the accosians, humanity, and the rachni stopped the protheans here and now, it would make any further offensive into their space prohibitively expensive for the next few decades. They'd already lost one main battle fleet during first contact. This would be another fleet and a half in addition to extensive support elements completely wiped out. With a laundry list of brushfire conflicts and another full-scale war going on with the turians, there was just no way the Empire could keep up that kind of attrition.
The conflict would go dormant once this offensive failed, turning the great powers of the galaxy into a version of the Cold War writ across the stars.
Not optimal, by any means, but both more stable and preferable to a hot galactic war.
I sighed again, this time more deeply.
Was it too late to become the Galactic Emperor?
It wasn't, but I wouldn't do it. If anything, it would be more tedious and time-consuming than my 'duties' were now. And, even if I did conquer the galaxy in an orgy of violence and oppression until my power was solidified, I'd still have all the same fundamental problems.
Winning the war would be easy.
Winning the peace would be the challenge.
“Dr. Lopez?”
I took a breath, turning away from the ongoing battle in the outer sector of the Shanxi system and looked to the young quarian who'd just asked me for my attention, absently cuing up Sasha on a vacant communication line. “Hello Tali. How can I help you?”
The young woman fidgeted slightly in her casual-wear. She and Rael hadn't brought much, so I'd put my nanofabbers at their (limited) disposal for all manner of clothing. Currently, she was wearing something more on the human-fashion end of the spectrum than the quarian, with a t-shirt, shorts, and a double-length vest held together with an oversized belt. It was... a bit scandalous to wear in public if my understanding of the general fashion trends of her people was correct, given they tended towards multi-layer wraps of various kinds.
She blushed slightly, indicating I'd looked her over a bit too intensely, and twirled. “You like it? It's kind of an... experiment? I've never really been the fashion type, but humans come at it from so many different angles that I can't help but find it a bit interesting.”
“You might cause a minor fashion craze with styles like that.” I paused and cocked my head. “You might look up pre-war clothing on the Indian subcontinent. I can see some similarities with what the quarians prefer, if you want to bring them back.”
Tali pouted slightly, or at least gave me the quarian version of a pout, which involved arching the neck and frowning. “I'd hoped to stay, really.”
I hummed and looked her directly in the eyes, pinning her with my gaze. “In general, I'm not opposed to the idea of taking you as my student, Tali. You've completed the exercises I gave you admirably, you aren't creating too much drama, and you represent a very compelling case for closer human-quarian relations. The question is whether or not that's what you actually want?”
Purple skin shifted a few shades darker on her face, a common blush reflex between humans, accosians, asari, and quarians. “I, umm... you already figured out what I was aiming for, huh?”
“You want to be my second wife, if I understand quarian culture correctly,” I nodded.
Tali jerked her head up and down once, attempting to speak for a moment, but quieting without a word.
I drummed my fingers on my desk consideringly. “The obvious question is... why?”
Tali twisted in place a bit, frowning for a long moment in silence before raising her head and taking a deep breath. “Because the alternative is an arranged marriage.”
That as good as confirmed my suspicions, but I nodded at her gently, making a beckoning motion with my right hand. “Pretend I don't know anything about quarian culture, explain it to me.”
“Quarian politics and economics is tied up in an oligarchic system,” Tali sighed, dropping into a nearby quarian-style chair I'd had printed for her. “I might not be a... hmm, the batarian term translates to 'princess' in human. Is that right?”
“It's close enough that I understand the comparison,” I stated.
Tali grimaced, looking away. “The amount of money my extended family has that I would have significant say over investing and allotting is... significant, especially as the primary heir to the head of the Zorah family. When people of my-”
Her grimace intensified, a glint of anger in her eyes.
“-social standing get married, there's a lot of paperwork attached. Agreements, legal disclosures, things that have to be signed by government functionaries. And forget ever breaking it off if you're unhappy with each other.” She sighed. “Realistically speaking, I'm already pushing things about as far as they can go before a formal engagement. I should have had one already, but my father was able to put things off since I was still at school getting my degree.”
I nodded slowly, Sasha's running commentary in the back of my mind.
“Making a guess,” I interjected gently, rubbing my chin. “An alien of significant standing would be sufficiently outside of the usual box of marriage candidates that you'd be effectively disinherited and it would cut a lot of the paperwork out of the equation. Meaning that, regardless of whether or not we 'get along' together, getting a divorce would be much more viable in a decade or so.”
Tali nodded rapidly, looking relieved. “Yes! Exactly. I don't mind the idea of getting married... eventually. Just, not now. And it's not like there isn't precedent! Plenty of quarians used to get married to high asari dignitaries back before the Empire showed up. It's rare these days due to the Geth straining politics and the tenuous relay connections making travel difficult, but it does happen. Occasionally.”
I hummed, nodding slowly and crossing one leg over the other in a move that made Tali twitch. Vaguely, I considered the idea that such a gesture might set off her species equivalent of the 'uncanny valley' effect based on the ways our knees bent differently.
Then I shook it off for more relevant topics.
“Even if you cut back on the complications from your end,” I began slowly. “You're still looking at significant international political issues between the Federation and the Alliance. If it isn't already, it will soon be a topic of open discussion as to how effective you will be at learning the secrets of my higher-end technologies. That is, if you don't choose to make an attempt at outright stealing them.”
I raised a hand to forestall her offended objection as her shoulders tensed.
“Having made your acquaintance, however briefly, I don't think that's what you're after.” I paused to allow that declaration to settle. “However, others will. And regardless of what you do or do not learn from me, there will be an expectation among your people that you use whatever knowledge you have to benefit them. Can you live with the potential ostracization that would result from either failing in that regard, or from out right denying them?”
Tali blinked, leaning back with a surprised look on her face. “I... hadn't thought about it that way.”
I smiled softly. “I'm trying not to sound egotistic here, but... I operate on a different level than most of the galaxy, Tali. Given what the Geth overheard of my conversation with the Asari Councilor, I think you're beginning to understand that.”
Another blush, this one of mild shame as she realized she and her father had been caught out. “I'm sorry! I didn't know he'd-”
I snorted and waved off the apology. “If I'd wanted to keep you in the dark regarding that information, I would have taken steps. This way, at least, I hope the Federation and the Consensus will consider the matter with all due gravity before deciding that I have technology they could easily take for their own.”
Tali blinked, realization setting in. “That was a warning then. Not just to the Councilor Aethyta, but to the turians, krogans, quarians, and geth.”
I smiled proudly. “I'd rather not make a habit of sentencing entire intelligence organizations to obliteration. Hopefully, keeping this in mind will ensure I don't need to do so again. Likely, though... I'll have to do something about the Empire.”
“Because they're invading Shanxi?” Tali asked, looking slightly nervous. “That's the system where your family is, right? That's why you got rid of the STG.”
I shook my head. “The STG wanted to use the Empire's offensive in the system to make their attempt on my family's lives. The point of their operation wasn't the destruction or conquest of the planet or system, but the capture or murder of my family in specific, that's why I took offense to it. The Empire, first and foremost, desires dominion over the system and planet.”
Tali opened her mouth, but I cut her off.
“Oh, I know they'd surely take them as hostages. I did give them a rather impressive black eye, after all.” She looked confused. “It's a human expression for dealing a superficial injury which embarrasses the recipient, but does not cause permanent damage. But... their ethos of war and conquest is more... honest? Less deceptive, certainly. They at least have the grace to come at me from the front and make their hostility clear. The STG attempted to capitalize on innocent civilians.”
Tali nodded slowly, seeming relieved. “What will you do to the Empire, then?”
“I'm hoping that losing another fleet in Shanxi will force them to look elsewhere for conquest until I can formulate a sufficiently stern warning that won't destroy the galactic balance of power,” I admitted, then turned to her. “But the issue with the STG should give you something to think about as well.”
She jerked, surprised. “What do you mean?”
“Regardless of whether or not any marriage between us would be a sham or result in real intimacy,” Tali blushed again, Sasha humming thoughtfully in my ear. “You'd be my wife. If someone decided you made a tempting target, my response would be no less of a reckoning.”
Her eyes widening as it sank in, she took a steadying breath.
“Can you live with someone pouring out an ocean of blood in your name?” I asked pointedly. “It's part of the reason why it took Sasha and I so long to get together. I did a great deal of very unsavory things during and after the Short War back on Earth that she wasn't sure she could live with.”
“I'll... need to think about this.” Tali replied slowly. “It's... a lot. Not what I was expecting, today.”
I quirked an eyebrow. “What were you hoping to discuss, then?”
Tali blushed much more deeply and looked away. “I was... uh, I mean-” She took a breath. “I wanted to ask if I could finally try out one of the mobile suits?”
I chuckled, surprising myself with how authentic the laugh was.
'Go play with the robots, dear. We'll talk about it later.'
'Thanks honey. She's a nice enough girl, even if I'm not sold on the marriage plan.'
At the very least, I had an excuse to finally take the Epyon out on its maiden flight.
~~~
Well, in a stunning upset that was neither an upset nor stunning, Winning Peace has taken the gold once again. Industrious is a closer second than usual, though. New Ron trails a little at third, and Nexus Event follows at a much closer fourth. Where Your God Is takes up last place.
Which makes me sad, but I'll live.
More importantly, we have a WP update right now. Later than I wanted it, but I think I caught a 24 hour bug sometime Saturday and it wiped me out a little. Spent most of Sunday sleeping and feeling bad, but I'm bouncing back now. That and this chapter was just a little difficult to write, for some reason.
Next up will be... probably OG Industrious. Need to get back on that horse, though Mind Games is calling me.
It's very likely I'll do some kind of poll later this month about Entrepreneurial Spirit, The Hand We're Dealt, and Mind Games. Not binding, but I just want to get a popularity feel.
Enjoy the chapter!
Comments
InsanexSilence
I'm mainly voting WP just so that you can finish another story. Not that I don't enjoy it, which I do, but once it's done I'll probably alternate votes between Industrious and Mind Games
Alex McGregor
I do hope Tali managed to make a place for herself in the family lol
Slayer Anderson
Winning Peace *may* be coming to an end soon and I'll be looking for a replacement in that event.
Sumgai101
It's nice to see harem discussions covering real political and logistical concerns rather than, at best, internal intimacy and social cooperation with the other wives.
Zerak
I would have voted for mind games had it been an option over Winning Peace. I like WC fic that aren’t just metagaming to get the most points through capture. The whole capture system in the WC is annoying. I would prefer points were mission only.
Marius Petrauskas
nice
Matthew Robar
There’s only ever one thing on a teenage girls mind…. GIANT ROBOTS
