With Pride and Blood 4 (Patreon)

With Pride and Blood 4 - or ‘Time to make Humanity the Greatest Ever, at the Expense of some scum from outer space!’ (Mass Effect, Senator Armstrong!SI)

Ben can be an idiot at times, but he wasn’t outright stupid.

Jack knew this as a fact, and yet he knew the bastard was taunting him with his latest bout of idiocy. They had gone through the mission their boss gave them, which was to secure this place, keep an eye on what the hell this research ship was carrying and not fuck up.

Along the way, they also found a few squads of Turians, and one of them carried a VIP.  A fucking General at that. The guy looked furious that he was roped up and restrained under their watch as he had expected the numbers he had gotten from the local forward camp they torched to have been enough to kill the trio.

Still, that wasn’t what pissed Jack off.

“Stop it.”

“Why? I am just thinking about it. What’s the worst thing that could happen?” Ben pushed back, smiling teasingly as he was clearly shitting with them.

The bastard ‘wanted’ to touch the monolith they found. It was hilarious, really, up to just a minute of this banter- after that, it was just becoming stupid. Jack was no scientist, but he could pick up the bad vibes that thing was giving off. Hell, he was sure that it wasn’t just his nanomachines informing it that it was emitting dangerous jolts, but that his guts were telling him that too.

He just could feel that even staying close to that shitty thing was going to bear some issues.

“How about you may get testicular cancer?” Eva pushed back from her lookout, the radioed message buzzing in with as much irritation as Jack had in his body.

“I could get it removed-”

“If the thing doesn’t give you an advanced stage of it,” Jack snapped back, not too harshly but still enough to get this conversation dealt with.

Ben huffed, shaking his head and turning his attention to his other hobby as they waited for reinforcement: engaging in a glaring contest with the Turian General. They were so adorable together, but all in all there wasn’t much of an aggression coming out of this.

Their patient wait had gone on for two hours now, with large Turian reinforcements delaying the approach of the larger detachment deployed to relieve them of the duty of keeping guard.

It was getting a bit on Jack’s nerves how invested these guys were, tempted to break the order of not ‘speaking with the hostile officer’ to just see what was up. Yet, he had a clue that not even the guy knew what was up.

Did anyone, really? That thing looked old and yet so difficult to read. It was like some of those hocus-pocus stories where magic is a thing. In a time where technology can do some impressive things, it sure felt odd to call something as ‘magic’. But it would be a blunt reasoning to how that stone construct was pumping out that much unknown radiation.

Tempting as it may sound to learn what that crap was all about, Jack was aware that their job was almost over and… the cavalry arrived. A bit ruffled, but overall fine, General Williams offered a big smile as he spearheaded the group he was in charge of taking care of garrisoning the grounded ship.

“Good job, Harper, Coré and Hislop. And I see we are ‘matching’ with our VIPs.”

Right as he said that, one of the soldiers dropped another Turian, this one, still unconscious, gaining a strong reaction from the previously quiet officer in their care.

“B-Brother.”

“General Arterius, your brother is fine until you will be willing to cooperate. We want info on what is going on and you will tell us what is going on here.”

Unease flashed before the still awake Turian and… he nodded.

Jack was curious to learn more about this, but he was quickly dismissed with the rest after their boss told them that their promotions were going to be made later that day. It was enough to satisfy his interest for the time being and…

All in all, another good job for his team with just a slice of oddity here and there.

—------d-d-d-d—------

Meanwhile, in the chambers of the Citadel Council…

The Emergency Meeting had been expected.

Tevos had been made aware of the Turian’s move on aggressively attacking this new species, the humans, days ago, so she had been very prepared for this very moment. The real issue was gauging Sparatus and the Turian Hierarchy’s view on the conflict.

“It wasn’t ordered by the Primarchs,” The cautious Councilor replied, knowing his position was not good at all. “We don’t recognize the actions of that fleet as dictated by our government and thus request the Council to produce judges to put the guilty party on trial.”

He was clearly angry for how things were going, with many other Councilors perceiving how his inward seething was rattling him a bit. It was fair to say that, had this skirmish gone in a more positive way for the Turians, he would have gone harsher against the ‘newcomers’.

There was a policy for First Contact, and one that was disregarded due to a non-existing legal misunderstanding. It was clear the Turian Fleet had acted out of personal interest rather than through the understanding of the laws it tried to defend its actions with.

The law was for council members primarily. How would a new species be made aware of such a law when they clearly had no understanding of their own existence. If Palaven had been caring of diplomacy as some Primarch had vouched for in decades, then they would have intervened on this instantly.

No, the issue wasn’t just this First Contact went wrong, but the things that led up to it. Tevos was not as aware of Turian politics as she was of other races, thinking that the Turian Military would have been able to keep decorum and discipline of its own troops rather than let them conduct unauthorized attacks.

It was clear to her that this was somewhat supported before it turned out into a disaster and… she knew she had to clean this mess to some extent.

“We already sent a neutral party to take care of the armistice on behalf of the council,” Tevos finally spoke, her voice calm and yet her eyes mirroring the growing frustration at having to take these steps into avoiding a full-fledged war. “Councilor Sparatus, I hope you understand that there will be demands put forward by the Humans in regard to the regulation of this trial, and they may have rights to impose those.”

“They are not part of the council-” The Turian representative tried to say, only to be cut short by Valern, the Salarian Councilor.

“Debatable. The claim carries relevance within the prestige and ongoing progress of the war. Humans have managed to score the lowest percentage of losses possible, while the Turian troops successfully decimated themselves by trying to fight an unknown enemy and expecting to win by sheer ‘experience’.”

The sharp remark drew a growl from Sparatus, but he couldn’t truly come back from this pit he had been hurled into. Tevos couldn’t truly blame him. After all, he was running damage control with a situation that, by all means, was unfair towards him and other Turians that wouldn’t seek out this sort of conflict.

“Would it be fair for you, Sparatus, if we vetoed any chance of prisoners being kept by humans and encouraged them to follow the council’s regulations on the topic.”

From the grimace, he didn’t, but he knew better than spit the sugarcube as the bitter poison coming up with the trial was going to be dreadful to stomach for him and any other diplomat involved in this massive fiasco.

“It will do, Councillor Tevos.”

Small steps. For peace and… gaining a potential new ally.

—-----d-d-d-d—-------

AN

Tevos is a cunning individual, but her mastery of politics and negotiations can be her own undoing when facing someone that is ‘aware’ of her antics. Likewise, the rest of the council is bound to some harshness towards them once Armstrong visits to ‘say hi’ to them.