Winning Peace - Chapter 30 (Patreon)

Councilor Araeus Aethyta resisted the equally appealing urges to sigh and throw a singularity at the Batarian Councilor. The brown, four-eyed male alien was, once again, pontificating on a long and drawn-out plan to 'expand the security of the Citadel territories.' What this meant in practice, once one moved past all of the flowery rhetoric, was more. More planets for the Hegemony, more money to build more spaceships and raise more armies and build more weapons to hold the people within their society tighter under the yoke of slavery.

Also, of course, more slaves.

It was a common refrain from the representative of the batarian government and one she'd tolerated hearing at least once a month for the last ten years.

As obnoxious as Councilor Pretok Recgagar was, though, the constant demands weren't truly his fault. The councilor had been appointed by the latest Hegemon of Khar'shan, the semi-absolute ruler of batarian society, and Hegemon Kracdogan III was a staunch expansionist. He'd been supported in his bid for succession by the salarians' infamous STG in the name of further prosecuting their proxy war against the remaining Free Krogan Clans.

She only wished Councilor Sebort Nazzi was more interested in defusing the constant militaristic push by his batarian counterpart than his predecessor.

Sadly, he was very much not.

“I believe it isn't too much to ask to back an expedition to the turian world in question,” Nazzi stated, his speech unusually ponderous for one of his species. The salarian blinked slowly and turned to Aethyta, steepling his hands. “Taetris is being used as a staging ground for pirates and thieves, and has been for over a century.”

“Yes,” Aethyta interjected calmly as she leaned back in her seat. “Ever since Pheiros was seized, which was the staging ground for thirty years after Epyrus was conquered.”

Recgagar breathed in deeply and Aethyta met his upper set of eyes in a matched stare, knowing it both unsettled and irritated the man before her. “Does this recounting of galactic history have a point, Councilor?”

Raising one eyeridge in a delicate show of disbelief, something so many of her cohorts in her younger maiden years would have thought beyond her, Aethyta replied. “Does it not bother you, Recgagor? That this cycle of galactic history seems to be repeating itself endlessly?”

Nazzi verbally stepped in. “The turians have only so many worlds, Aethyta. They will either learn their lesson and seek the protection of the Citadel or divest themselves of the war bands operating from their territory.”

“Or they will be slaves,” Recgagor stated coldly, and Aethyta idly wondered for the nth time if the four-eyed alien had been sent to the Citadel to remove him from batarian politics for his lack of subtlety. Although she'd never had the honor of being invited to the Hegemon's court, all of the tales told of it painted a picture of a realm of intrigue and complex expression relying on level after level of meaning.

Recgagor had no talent for any of that.

She could almost hear the orders from his sovereign.

'You have a gift for bluntness, my subject, but that gift can be a knife at your own throat. Go and speak to the aliens. They will appreciate a batarian who does not know how or when to lie.'

“Or subjects of the New Prothean Empire,” Aethyta replied dryly, drawing a twitch from both other sentients. “And then, without such a valuable and militaristic proxy by which we can stave off their resurgence, what do you intend to do?”

Aethyta did not actually need either of them to answer the question, truthfully. She knew all too well what each polity would do. At the end of the year, the Citadel was not the high ideals that so many of the young asari thought it was. It was, instead, a network of deals and bargains made and broken in a combination of necessity and convenience.

Recgagor gave an offended sniff as he reached for a glass of a bitter wine-like substance and took a long draw from it. “In the name of weathering a storm that may or may not ever arrive you would ask an ally to tolerate constant attacks on trade, the murder of good merchants, and the theft of valuable product?”

 Product that is usually related by blood to those 'pirates' coming to free them, you mean?

“Surely a compromise can be agreed upon if the asari do not wish to further fund the defense of the Citadel?” Nazzi asked, almost mockingly playing the role of the mediator in contrast to what so many asari were taught was their role.

Yes Nazzi, that would be a good sound byte for the networks, wouldn't it? 'Asari Councilor declines joint effort to fight pirates.' I can hear the brewing outrage already.

Still, Aethyta hadn't been doing this job since their grandparents were born for nothing. “The reason Taetris has remained as it is for so long is not merely because I am gun-shy about funding an expedition to bring it under Citadel control. Taetris is not Pheiros. Taetris is not even Epyrus. Pheiros was a militarized moon base with a civilian population barely worth mentioning. Epyrus was somewhat larger, but the turian population barely numbered a few million even then. Taetris is a old colony world with a population in the hundreds of millions, a sizable picket fleet, and trained garrison of significant strength with modern weapons the Hierarchy has been reverse-engineering from their war with the Protheans.”

Even with Recgagor's obvious greed and Nazzi's species-wide grudge against the Krogan, her words tempered their fervor.

“Then do you have an alternative?” Recgagon asked intently.

Aethyta touched her omnitool, bringing up an image that she'd already prepared onto the hologram. “This is Chatti. It's a lightly-defended new turian colony founded some fifty years ago and well within their defensive outer line of fortifications. However-” Aethyta expanded the image to include the system's border with the New Prothean Empire. “-due to their ongoing war, naval assets have been shifted. This will allow a corridor of attack and retreat for a punitive raid on the hierarchy.”

Nazzi frowned, tapping away at his own omnitool before turning to Recgagon. “STG intelligence indicates there is a small, but growing krogan population on the colony. If removed, it will undercut supply lines to Taetris.”

Aethyta merely looked bored as Recgagon pondered and conspired with the salarian councilor. She'd been at this too long to show any level of satisfaction when someone took her bait. The batarian councilor was already middle-aged for his species and, if she was lucky, she'd only have to put up with another ten years of this blatant warmongering. Thankfully, Nazzi's effective term would expire much sooner and, hopefully, she could leverage her support on the Council of Matriarchs to pressure the Dalatrasses to pick a more economically-focused councilor for their next appointment.

“I will bring this to the Hegemon,” Recgagon nodded. “It is not what he wishes, but if we have the promise of asari support-” Aethyta nodded wearily. “-then I can frame it as a preparatory action for the eventual seizure of Taetris.”

...and, of course, that's what you want it to be even now, don't you?

It was a stalling action on Aethyta's part. Taetris was the kind of quagmire in the making that could, on a bad day, cause either a recession or a full war to break out. She didn't understand why these two idiots didn't seem to understand that.

The Protheans and the Hierarchy were perfectly happy tearing each other apart in a low-level war of attrition that had been going on most of her life and she was perfectly happy to see it continue.

It kept the Protheans too busy to attack either the Citadel, their allies in the Terminus Systems, or the Quarians. Even if relations were still cold on that front, Aethyta had put a great deal of effort into making sure Rannoch and the Citadel saw each other as the lesser of the many evils in the galaxy. The war also kept both the batarian's 'expeditionary elements' occupied with intermittent raiding and the various krogan clans' populations under control. By all the hells, it even gave the salarians a nice little laboratory by which they could experiment with new weapons in a deniable way.

I'll even admit it weeds out the most radical maidens and matrons of my own people if they have an available starship thruster to throw themselves into instead of destabilizing our own politics.

It was an ugly, messy, brutal affair and Aethyta did not care as long as no one moved to properly draw in the Citadel as a primary combatant.

Thankfully, the issue of Taetris was the last major one for the day and allowed Aethyta to return home, exhausted as she was. It still took her a few minutes to brief an aide to pass on the information about the upcoming raid to a third party information broker who would make the deniable sale to the turians. Hopefully having their hands slammed in a kabble trap would humble their ambitions for a few years.

“Father!” Liara, the light of her life, greeted her as she passed through the doorway to her apartments. If there was one perk of being a councilor she most enjoyed, it was the extremely short daily commute that the Presidium allowed.

“Little Star,” Aethyta smiled warmly, taking refuge in her daughter's embrace momentarily even as Liara began to struggle against her.

“Daaa~aad, I'm already over a hundred! You need to stop calling me that!” Liara whined.

Aethyta merely chuckled and patted her daughter's head. “Did anything interesting happen today? I need a distraction from politics.”

Liara visibly rolled her eyes. “I mostly concentrated on my University classes, Father. I'm very nearly done with my degree, after all, though I have no idea why I'm having to complete a current events module here at the tail end.”

 Aethyta outright laughed at that as she looked through the pre-meals her staff had loaded the fridge with and debated on whether or not to order out. Such was the curse of a one-parent household where neither she nor her child could adequately cook much of anything. Aethyta herself would subsist on takeout if allowed to and she knew Liara had a stockpile of dried noodles stashed in her room. Although the concept was an ancient one, even by asari standards, it had recently surged back into vogue with a series of new flavors and spices.

“I'd wager it's because the module is mandatory for all of the students and you decided to complete all of your content classes before cleaning up the general ones,” Aethyta told her daughter with a sigh.

Liara merely grumbled for a long moment before replying. “I suppose it is interesting, at least. The new salarian longevity treatment is hopefully going to do wonders for their quality of life.”

“As long as Nazzi retires gracefully to spend his golden years on a beach somewhere, I'm all for it,” Aethyta replied dryly.

Liara giggled, then sobered. “There was also that news about the new front opening between the protheans and the turians. With the drell and the hanar at their side and the advanced technology of their pre-fall civilization, all of the reporters on the news are talking about how they'll be losing a world or two.”

“The first rule for keeping up on current events is not to believe what the news cycle reports,” Aethyta replied, finishing her mulling and pulling a pair of meals in trays and putting them in the oven. She could do that much, at least, she thought as she hit a set of icons for time and heat. “While it's true that the New Prothean Empire has a definite edge, the turians are, even with their colonial divisions, united in ideological commitment to their species' defense in a way that neither the hanar nor drell are.”

“I thought the hanar and drell practically worshiped the protheans?” Liara asked, frowning. “Wouldn't you call that an 'ideological commitment?'”

“To servitude, perhaps,” Aethyta replied, sitting down and considering the matter more fully. “Which isn't the same thing, especially when you're requiring them to attack another species which hasn't truly wronged them. The hanar, in particular, make poor soldiers as a general rule. The drell are better, but their cultural proclivities drive them to work in small units rather than a large, cohesive military much like asari.”

“So neither side truly has an advantage?” Liara asked, frowning.

“Keep in mind that I'm speaking in very broad societal terms,” Aethyta cautioned. “Which bring themselves to bear on military matters in subtle and unexpected ways. There's much more to winning a war than just militaristic spirit. Both sides, for instance, employ krogan war bands as auxiliary units and the protheans are waging skirmishes of various levels in the Terminus Systems. And those are just some of the military factors at play, there are others such as intelligence, logistics, and diplomacy that can turn the tables on any individual battle. Individual battles can, in turn, have cumulative effects on campaigns and war.”

Liara nodded, sighing tiredly. “Please don't take this the wrong way, but I'm so glad I'm not going into politics, Father.”

Aethyta laughed boisterously. “I'm honestly glad, Little Star! You can do a lot better with that brain of yours than the nekja pit of politics.”

Liara snorted. “So... what do you think they'll be fighting over?”

Aethyta sighed and mentally reviewed what she knew of the situation. “Some turian-held system with a few militarized moons and a garden world the krogans bombed into a dusty rock. The only value it has is a transit system to other, more important locations. I think it has relays 313-318 in it if you want to look it up.”

Nodding, her daughter grabbed a tablet and began to scroll. “I think I'll do that. Maybe I'll make my paper about misconceptions in the media opposed to the actual results of a military campaign in real life.”

~~~

Little bit late, but them's the brakes.

Anyway, for this chapter have a surprise interlude from the Citadel and some implications about how much things are different in this AU!

Next chapter will be a return to form with Ezekiel Lopez.

In the meantime, I'll be finishing off that chapter of Nexus Event.