Summary: Wait, hold on, the Council isn't completely loaded with idiots? Well, at least there's still one, so the gactic order isn't completely out of bance...

  Chapter 10: 2383CE – Citadel

  Sneaking back across the Perseus Veil had proven remarkably easy. Unlike Saren and the True Geth's issues with doing the same, the Normandy's stealth abilities made it easy to get close enough to activate a Rey without being engaged. They had been pursued on the other side by a set of Heretic picket ships, but those ships had been virtually unpowered to hide their presence. By the time they could properly power up to chase after the Normandy, the speedy frigate had gained enough distance to vanish into stealth again and slip away.

  From there, it had only been a matter of time and patience to use one of the three Reys in the nodal system they'd nded in, waiting for the Heretic ships to be elsewhere so there could be no immediate pursuit. They'd come out into the Terminus Systems, of course. But passing through those quickly, quietly, and unmolested was even easier than evading the Geth Heretics had been. As a result, it had only been a matter of days before they'd made it all the way to the Widow Nebu and the Citadel itself. There, the messages Saren had sent ahead, combined with his own authorization codes, enabled them to dock the Normandy as a private bay reserved for Council operations. The only other vessels currently present were a few private Spectre ships and the personal transports of the three Councilors.

  It was, perhaps, expected that the Normandy had also been immediately locked down. Also logical, though slightly worrying, was the presence of two additional Spectres. The first was a Spectre that had quickly been identified as Jondum Bau by Saren. The second was an Asari he admitted he didn't recognize. Understandable, really. Their long lives and status as by far the single most populus species in Citadel Space meant that Asari were also the most common species among the Spectres. Given that Spectre operatives rarely worked together and really weren't supposed to be noticed most of the time, it would have been unreasonable to assume Saren knew all of them.

  Thankfully, the pair had quickly introduced themselves as escorts. Given the evidence against him, Nhilus's death wasn't being considered suspicious, but there were apparently actual protocols for any time one Spectre ended up killing another. Worse, that was compounded by the fact there were also protocols for the Spectre forces potentially being compromised, dealing with Prothean anything, and the sort of direct order viotions that Saren had been up to with the True Geth. Bau and T'haria, the only name the Asari gave, were there to run Saren through all those protocols. As accessories that had been involved in several of the matters in question, the humans were politely asked to cooperate.

  The politeness wasn't sarcastic, either.

  The truth was that Spectres were still a touchy subject with the Systems Alliance, and the bance of power in the gaxy was still…unsettled. It had only been twenty-six years since first contact, and Humanity had hit the Council and Citadel Space like an unholy cross between a squeaky toy and a wrecking ball. Half intentionally and half unintentionally, they'd disrupted centuries of retive stagnation by bursting onto the scene with a completely different tech base to every other known race. The Asari, in particur, were unhappy that the gaxy's reliance on eezo was threatened by even the most basic study of Eridium, which began almost immediately after first contact. That study and its applications had begun slowly eroding the universal need for their primary export.

  While the economic disruption of the Systems Alliance joining the Citadel had been considerable. The military disruption had been worse. Creating Eridium for civilian use was something that humanity had cheerfully handed over knowledge of. Using it to duplicate many of the things Mass Effect technology could do was much harder, requiring years of knowledge transfers and expert instruction, the rate of which had been carefully managed by the Systems Alliance.

  The Council had gnashed its teeth when they'd realized the rate of knowledge transfer meant it would take decades, at best, before they could even hope to match humanity's mastery of even civilian Eridium usage. Worse, they'd had no choice but to pour the time and massive expenditures into doing so if they ever wanted to get at the military applications at all. They'd realized too te that in order to use Eridium for military applications, they had to advance radically in a dozen other fields that were not part of the agreed upon information sharing by humanity. Without a sufficiently efficient power supply, not one of the Citadel species had really gone down the rabbit hole of high-power energy weapons, just as one such example.

  The Council races now knew how to produce Eridium. They knew how to use it for a double dozen useful things, even. Things which were destabilizing the iron hold on a lot of the civilian markets that the Asari had previously dominated. They had even, after nearly a decade and a half of massive spending, managed to start producing some of the gravity-lensed energy weapons, and the shields that defended against them, that humanity favored. Crude efforts in comparison, humiliatingly rge and unwieldy compared to the refined weapons humanity was using. After just over twenty years, they had finally managed to make the first of the FTL drives humanity used for travel, as well.

  They still hadn't come close to duplicating Jump Gates.

  They had no idea at all how to make their own Sirens.

  They still couldn't match humanity ship-for-ship in virtually any area, forcing massive building programs to make up for the imbance by doubling down on their numbers advantage.

  The Council and the gactic power brokers behind them hated all of that.

  The worst part of it for the Council was that humanity had been entirely reasonable as they walked the entire length of the path to get where they were. While they hadn't doled out information as fast as they could have, forcing the Council Races to learn a lot for themselves, they had helped enough that everyone knew it would have taken decades longer without the guidance and experts the Systems Alliance did provide.

  Combined with the economic opportunities provided by the Asari stranglehold being broken, drastically reduced sver and pirate raids as the Systems Alliance brutally retaliated against 'Rogue Batarian Elements,' and plethora of medical advancements? The people of the Citadel Races were rgely delighted with humanity, forcing the Council to walk on eggshells despite hating that fact with a burning passion.

  Sarians living now were starting to benefit from a Prolong Treatment tripling their short lives. Courtesy of humanity.

  Turian soldiers were benefiting from medigel, the much-easier-to-duplicate small arms like psma rifles, and a hell of a lot less pressure from the Hegemony and Terminus Systems.

  Asari Maidens adored humanity's often passionate nature, flocking to them in the millions, signing on with this or that cause. Humanity was nothing if not good at championing every cause you could imagine and doing so with a near-obsessive fervor that drew Maidens like moths to lightbulbs. Worse, humanity was actually creative enough to have become the new kings of everything porn. A novelty that had even Matrons and bored Matriarchs a little bit enthralled.

  Tuchanka had active terraforming ongoing.

  The Quarians' fleet was getting overhauled slowly.

  The Volus had been wetting their suits from the start at all the new investment opportunities.

  Unlike the majority of races coming to the Council, Humanity had joined from a position of retive strength. They hadn't been a match for the Council, but they'd been strong enough, and possessed enough tech that everyone else wanted, that the Council had found itself dealing with the weaker hand of cards for once. Humanity using their own cards for a carefully coordinated charm offensive on the common citizen had resulted in said common citizen seeing Humanity as generally a net positive.

  In turn, the Systems Alliance had leveraged that fact with a smile on their faces for the Council. They'd traded ruthlessly on the perception of the common sentient to shoot down any attempt to limit their military growth. To dey acceptance of Spectres in their space. To force the Council to start seriously talking about the requirements needed to become a Council Race. That st of which several other races had jumped onto with great interest.

  Suffice it to say that the Spectres leading the investigation were very polite when they started asking for cooperation. And equally relieved when the humans, particurly the poorly understood pair of Sirens, cheerfully went along with all the protocols…

  ... ... ...

  Sae breathed out her annoyance, even as she stretched, joints popping from entirely too much inactivity in the st few days. She was, at least and at st, free from the polite-but-thorough investigation. She'd understood the need for it, of course she had. But understanding still didn't exactly make it a fun exercise. She was relieved it was over, but still annoyed that there was more talking, talking, talking waiting for them. Now that their stories had been checked out thoroughly, she had been pulled into another meeting that was about to start. This one with the most vile-yet-tenacious-sub-species known to the gaxy.

  Politicians.

  Sae didn't like politics and hated that she actually did understand them. The military always had politics, past a certain rank…and the R community had to suffer even more of it than the regur branches. Out of sheer self-preservation, she'd needed to learn to talk the talk and walk the walk among elbow rubbers and power brokers alike. That didn't mean she was exactly looking forward to meeting the three chief politicians in the gaxy. Though, ironically, she actually did know one of them and found her far more tolerable than most politicos. And not just because Matriarch Benezia had one hell of a spectacur set of tits and an ass that just didn't quit.

  No, she actually sort of liked the current Asari Councilor because the woman was actually a half decent leader. She'd repced the far more problematic Councilor Tevos after her predecessor had failed to deal well with humanity's emergence on the gactic scene. Benezia had gotten the post instead specifically in the hopes of being able to protect Asari interests better, having done quite well on a personal level, nearly doubling the T'soni estate's profits off of deals with humanity.

  She'd succeeded, too. Just not in the way the Matriarch's Council had really wanted her too. Instead of limiting humanity in some fashion, Benezia had sought to tie the Asari more closely to the rising power. It had worked, smoothing out the worst of the economic waves for her people as a whole. But it had come at the cost of an effectively permanent erosion of Asari gactic dominance. The Asari were still the most powerful species in the gaxy, but they were now no longer quite so untouchable or detached, and everyone knew it.

  Sadly, just because she respected the woman and enjoyed the view, didn't mean Sae really wanted to py politics with her. Worse, while the current Turian Councilor in Sparatus was rgely neutral, the Sarian representative was not. Datrass Esheel was the first Datrass to be appointed to the position in centuries. The ruling caste of the Sarian people had preferred to work in the shadows previously, but had now stepped out into the light again in an attempt to keep a lid on the changes happening to their own popution. The Sarians had been the most disrupted, as a society. Partially because humanity had enough new toys they hadn't seen before to cripple their ability to use their normal tactics. But also because that same humanity had offered up a solution to the painfully short Sarian lifespans. A solution that the entire species had spent millennia looking for.

  That tter fact meant that entirely too many of their own people were willing to buck the Datrasses commands when it came to humanity. Coming at the same time that many of their best tools were dulled, and added to the way that humanity had been trying to fix the Krogan issue? The Datrasses were perhaps the most pissed off of the various major power blocks, yet couldn't show it to the masses. Sae somehow didn't think that the fact humanity was involved here was going to change that. If they were unlucky enough, the Datrass might actually try to pin the fault for this on humanity, despite it being a Council agent that spearheaded everything.

  Well. Whatever. What would happen, would happen. And as that very Datrass had just entered, marking the st of the three Councilors to arrive, it appeared that things were about to get started properly.

  ... ... ...

  "I really did not expect this was going to be the result of the meeting with the Council. In fact, I'm pretty sure Councilor Esheel is going to need some sort of anti-psychotic if the expression she had on her face was anything to go by."

  Saren snorted, even as he tapped away at the console in Spectre HQ here on the Citadel. He was, much to Sae's ongoing disbelief, creating her credentials.

  "Yes, I do think she's close to being deemed unfit. They made a mistake appointing a Datrass. They aren't mentally flexible enough to handle the waves that your species has made just by existing. They would have been better served to keep using STG personnel for the Councilor role, as they had been going for the st few centuries."

  Sae blinked in consternation at that casual comment.

  "Wait, that's actually true? I mean, a lot of people suspect something like that…but…"

  Saren outright rolled his eyes, a facial gesture she'd been surprised to discover, while working on the Normandy project, was shared between their species. He turned the screen to her, indicating she needed to put her hand on it for a biometric scan. She quickly complied, letting the scanner go to work even as Saren spoke again.

  "But it seems a bit too obvious? That's the Sarians for you. They count on people thinking it's too obvious, then do it anyway as a double bluff. For all that they believe in innovation and that knowledge is power, Sarian society is easily the most rigid in Council Space. More so even than Turians, and we're an outright military state. As a result of their caste system, the only Sarians who are really mentally flexible enough to deal with other race's politics are the same ones that do well in the STG. Ergo, the best suited will normally 'retire' from the STG and become Councilors. They should have stuck with that idea, as it was actually working decently well for them."

  Sae shook her head, before getting distracted by the fact that the system was now asking for…a full body scan? She pursed her lips and hesitated.

  "Don't worry. This is why I volunteered to be your repcement mentor. I'm aware of how paranoid the Alliance is about Sirens. I've also seen enough scans to piece together parts of the reason why, while I looked over the cybernetics involved. I'll adjust the scanner so it can't figure anything out that the Council doesn't already suspect."

  Sae blinked, recalled that Saren had been the Spectre in charge of vetting Siren cybernetics, and nodded. She would, of course, also have Mira interface with the scanner and quietly delete some things, if the scanners were good enough to notice them at all. Which, given this was Spectre HQ and she was being inducted as the newest Spectre, she rather suspected they would be.

  Not caring much for modesty, she stripped on her way to the scanner, noting that Saren didn't seem all that interested in her nudity. Eh, that was fine. She preferred curves over metallic ptes and straight lines anyway, even if she had gotten curious while working on the Normandy project and experimented a little. As she stepped into the scanner and set Mira to work altering anything that the Council wasn't allowed to know about, she shifted topics of conversation.

  "So, oh wise mentor, just what is the pn? Did the Spectre network turn up anything about attacks by strange ships in the Terminus?"

  Saren waited until the scanner had started to properly image her body before he replied, no longer needing to pay attention as it worked.

  "Nothing concrete. And we'd just be chasing a trail that leads back to the Veil if we went that direction, anyway. No, we need to get ahead of this issue, and I think the vision you and Lawson got from the beacon is most likely our best bet. Councilor T'soni's daughter happens to be something of a radical among Prothean experts, and the Councilor forwarded me some of her papers while the investigation was ongoing. Some of what she has found seems to line up with the idea of 'harvests' that the Geth mentioned. I believe taking the vision to her and seeing if she can make anything of it might be our next best step."

  Sae cocked her head, humming as she considered that idea. Her instincts wanted to go after the Heretics, try to keep crippling their infrastructure. But she knew that others were going to be doing that. Trying to deal with fleets of ships was the job of regur military units with expert strategists and pnners on speed dial. Now that she was a Spectre, she needed to get her head around the idea that direct actions weren't always the right py. Information was what they needed, and Saren's idea was one possible way to get it. She nodded, but also added her own two credits.

  "That sounds like a solid possibility. We also still have the Normandy at our disposal, courtesy of the Alliance. With the Beacon it was going to use destroyed, it will need a new one. We might want to see about poking various Protean sites that were deemed too politically risky to fully investigate. Like the old Rachni worlds and a few spots in the Terminus."

  Saren let out the low, half-metallic coo that was the Turian equivalent of a thinking hum, then nodded slowly.

  "That's logical. Particurly once we have T'soni the younger along as expert guidance to those sites. With the Normandy's stealth technology we can be in and out with no one the wiser unless we find something."

  Sae's scan finished and she stepped back out to begin dressing again, Mira cheerily informing her that she'd successfully masked anything too cssified. Once she was dressed, she rejoined Saren, who had finished her Spectre credentials and moved on to pnning targets. This wasn't quite the sort of operation she was used to. But honestly? That's what made it exciting…

  ... ... ... ... ...

  A/N 1: Not yet dead! None of my stories are :-p. Just as a reminder, the reason why this hasn't been updated is that all 'secondary stories' get voted on by my Patrons monthly. This story finally won the monthly patron poll to get and update, so there's actually another 14,000 words of it currently in Early Access on my Patreon Page. Don't worry, though, none of my fanfiction is ever permanently locked behind a paywall. All fanfiction content I make ends up here (or on Fanfiction.net and Questionable Questing) eventually, as new content for each story is released.