Interesting Times

July 27th, 2173

20:27

Illium, Tasale-System

Nos Astra, Seyola-Restaurant

I put the glass of wine back on the table after taking a sip of the exquisite Asari wine imported from Lusia.

The taste of the wine fit perfectly with the steak I ordered.

The Thessian Red would have been an even better fit since it was the one the waitress recommended. Yet, I didn't order that one. After all, the waitress was an Asari and seemed to forget one important fact. I was human and not an Asari. Everything that grew on Thessia was laced with eezo since its concentration was so high on the planet. And thanks to that, the wine was also laced with eezo, and most humans wouldn't be able to drink it without getting sick after.

A shame, really. I would have liked to try it.

My eyes roamed the restaurant, looking for one person. She hadn't arrived yet, but I was sure it wouldn't take long for her to show up. Her and her escort.

I knew who her escort was, and a smile appeared on my face when I thought about what was going to happen.

Still, I would have to wait, but the meal was good enough to bridge the time.

I was back only Illium for only a few days, having been back in Alliance territory for most of the last three months. The time I spent here on Illium was productive, but I had to travel back for a while. Spending time away from my original powerbase for so long wasn't something anyone should do if they wanted to keep their power stable.

And I wasn't just talking about those that saw my absence as an opportunity to attack my company by economic means like Henry Lawson tried to do. That man didn't seem to understand that no matter what he did, I would end up on top. He was like an unruly child that you had to put into time-out again and again because it didn't seem to learn from its mistakes.

But he wasn't the only one trying to undermine me in my own company. Perhaps Lawson was the most persistent of the people trying to do so from the outside, but the most annoying guys were those hired by me.

These people that were sitting in places I put them in, financing their lifestyle with the money I paid them to do their job, enjoying the privileges that came with working for me, and then they have the gall to want more without doing more? Or even better, trying to replace me?

I knew that power and influence could get to one's head, and it happened even to me from time to time, but to think that they could use the power I gave to them to climb up the ranks in my company to one day dethrone me from my position?

Delusional was too weak a word to describe their madness.

Thanks to that, I had to leave Illium for a spring cleaning at my company. Well, there were some events for which I would have to go to anyway, so it wasn't bad that I went a little earlier than I planned.

Furthermore, it gave me the opportunity to observe how stable my operations on Illium were and how my induction into the Circle would change my position.

I knew my new associates, and I used the word cautiously, wouldn't try to go for my throat so shortly after our first meeting. They were more patient and careful than that.

But what would happen if I gave them an opening like that? Leaving my Illium company branch in the hands of someone that wasn't me? Would they make a mistake? Would someone else crawl out of the dark and try to do something?

In the end, nothing out of the ordinary happened, and now that I was back, there wouldn't be anyone brave enough to go through with their plans.

Still, I used the time away from Illium well. There had been a couple of matters that deserved a personal touch, and it would work wonders for my position if I didn't delegate them.

One such matter was my attendance at the first-ever graduation ball held for every person of the Terra Nova University, the university I founded, that achieved a bachelor's or master's degree since its opening. My appearance, combined with a simple speech in honor of all graduates, was enough to cement an image in their minds that portrayed me as a supporter of the new generation. The generous job offerings I gave out to those that got high marks throughout their studies helped too.

Most thought it was to reward their hard work and that I acknowledged those giving their all.

I didn't comment on that line of thought, even if the truth was that I just wanted the best people I could get my hands on working for me.

Furthermore, I didn't give out many job offers anyway because around three-thirds of the people with the highest marks already signed a contract with Ad Astra before they even started their studies.

They were the ones that had benefitted from my scholarship program where I paid for their tuition and housing as long as they were students of the Terra Nova University and held themselves to certain standards.

And no, those standards did not include that they had to finish their bachelor's degree in three years. As someone who took longer than that in my old life, I wouldn't put them under this pressure. I wanted them to enjoy their lives as students too.

Perhaps that was one of the reasons why the fight for a place in the scholarship program was so heated. One of the managers I put in charge of the program joked that if they wanted, they could organize cage fights between the applicants, and everyone would sign up in a heartbeat.

As amusing as the picture was, it painted an accurate portrayal of the situation. Thankfully, the number of approved applicants would rise in the coming years as I didn't believe for a second that the number of hopefuls would decline in the meantime. That was due to the fact that every person who received the benefits of the scholarship was obligated to pay back the costs that accumulated during their studies at no interest so that another could benefit from it as well. Additionally, there was the option to become a benefactor of the scholarship program and donate money that they could deduct from taxes as long as the donation was above a minimum limit.

I talked with dozens of people during the ball that had benefited from my scholarship program, and while not one had paid back their loan, they all assured me they would become benefactors of the program to give even more youths the same chance they got.

I was just grateful that their talents would help Ad Astra to grow even more in the near future.

And speaking of growth. It wasn't just my company that grew steadily in power, but the Alliance as well.

James heard that I was back in Alliance territory and took the chance to invite me to dinner with his wife. While I was grateful for the chance to catch up and learn more about the current situation of the Alliance, another point that made me accept the invitation was that Wright lived on Earth.

The planet I was born on and hadn't visited for more than five years by now. Or had it even been longer?

One would expect that seeing Earth from space wouldn't be something special after traveling through the galaxy and seeing dozens of different planets and a space station that could house millions upon millions of people, but they would be wrong. Utterly wrong.

The moment Earth appeared in the distance, my heart began to beat faster, and my breath got stuck in my throat when the blue planet showed its full beauty through the window of the observation deck of my personal starship.

I hadn't even noticed that I opened a communications channel to the pilot to tell him to wait a moment before he started the landing process.

Seeing Earth somehow got me all emotional, and I started to wonder if those who didn't have the chance to travel back to Earth felt something like homesickness or longing to see the world humanity originated from again.

Furthermore, we, which means us humans, have been exploring the galaxy and colonizing new planets for more than twenty years now.

There were thousands of young adults and even more children that had never seen Earth in the first place, and most of them would probably never do so in their lives.

What would they feel if they could see our homeworld? Would they just see another planet populated by humans, or would they see it as their homeworld, too? Would they somehow feel a connection to this planet? Even if it was just deep down?

It was a question I would probably never get an answer to, but that was alright with me since I knew what I was feeling.

Earth was home.

It didn't matter that I didn't visit for years, and I already knew that my path would lead me to places far away from there.

The best analogy I could find was to compare Earth to the home of one's parents. There would come a day when you left your parents' home to go out into the world, but you would always know there was a home you could come back to.

I unconsciously clenched my hands as I swore to my safe to keep Earth safe so that humanity would always have a home it could come back to.

After I gave my pilot the go-ahead, and he started the descent, I saw that the first step in keeping Earth safe was already underway.

A grid of six ODPs, with another seventh in construction, spanned around the horizontal axis of the planet.

The initial idea was that Earth would get 14 ODPs in total, placed around the horizontal and vertical axes of Earth. This way, there would be no angle an attacker could use without running into a defense that would obliterate most starships in a few shots. Coupled with the fact that the ODPs had the ability to rotate, every enemy fleet attacking Earth would have to go up against at least half of the ODP grid.

It would take a long time until the plans were realized, and I knew that they wouldn't be finished by the time the Reapers were supposed to arrive in the galaxy, but it would hopefully give them a bloody nose or hold them back long enough to evacuate more people.

When that thought crossed my mind, I grimaced. Earth was my home, but I was already giving it up. Logic dictated that it would happen. Even if future events wouldn't play out like in the games, I knew that the Reapers would attack Earth and succeed. Their technological superiority and their numbers guaranteed it.

Besides, the tactical and psychological advantages of attacking the homeworld of a species were too great to ignore them in favor of anything else. It would either demoralize a species or goad them into ill-considered actions. Both were very helpful in any sort of fight.

Yet, I couldn't just abandon my home planet. It didn't matter if it was doomed to be invaded, and that every credit I put into its defense could be better used in another place. It was completely illogical, but since when was being human logical?

The enemies coming from beyond the Milky Way were machines, beings of logic. So perhaps being illogical was the way forward?

I had banished the thought from my mind at the time, but keeping it in the back for the possibility it would prove itself useful.

After we entered Earth's atmosphere I took a shuttle toward James' home and arrived a few minutes before the time we agreed on. James greeted me with open arms and enthusiastically introduced me to his wife.

The dinner went well, and I have to say that James' wife was an excellent cook. Her roast was wonderful, and I didn't just say that because it had been a long time since I had a home-cooked meal.

Afterward, James and I retired to his study, where he gave me an overview of the current situation and operations of the Alliance. He concentrated more on the militaristic side, but that was to be expected, in my opinion.

I couldn't help but laugh when he told me that in trying to prove the Alliance's worth as an able defense partner, the current president allowed the Board of Admiralty to circumvent the Council completely and open talks with the Turian Hierarchy directly.

Every time Anita brought up our willingness to participate in the border patrol efforts of the Hierarchy, the Council responded with indifference and that while our offer was appreciated, it was unnecessary as the current border patrol fleets were sufficient.

If I had been there in person, I wouldn't have been able to hold back a scoff at the response. It was a load of crap, and everyone who looked into the situation a bit more deeply could see it as well.

The fleets put under the Citadel Council were stretched thin, and most of them were placed to protect the interests of the Council. The colonies bordering the Attican Traverse or the Terminus system, no matter the species, were disastrously underdefended, and the Turian Hierarchy took it upon itself to defend these colonies as it did its own.

This led to the Asari and Salarian slowly reducing their contribution to the Citadel fleets, and by now, the Turian contribution to the Citadel fleets almost equaled those of the Asari and Salarians combined. If one took into account the support coming from the Hierarchy directly, the ratio shifted dramatically in the Turian's favor.

Of course, calling it a favor would be wrong. After all, it led to the Turian fleets being stretched thin, and they couldn't even keep up with their duties inside their own territory. Furthermore, thanks to the long period of peace the galaxy enjoyed the Council, or better said the Asari and Salarians were unwilling to grant the Hierarchy their approval to put more fleets into active service. Even the Turian councilor was careful not to rock the boat, which didn't mean much since the current one was a pushover and was trying to consolidate more power for himself than to help his government on the galactic stage.

Yet, even if the Council showed disapproval, the Hierarchy wasn't going to stop building up its forces. It just didn't do so aggressively.

And when the offer from the Board of Admiralty to work together in matters of border defense came through official channels, some Turian admirals instantly agreed to meet.

James told me, as he was one of the few admirals invited, the meeting went well. While he was annoyed at the amount of politicking that went on, he couldn't disagree that it would help the Alliance to become more active in galactic affairs.

To cut a long story short, it was agreed upon that for the next three years Alliance frigates and cruisers would be attached to the existing border patrol fleets of the Turians. The idea behind this action was to give the Alliance officers time to learn how the Turians operated to ensure that, in the future, operations between the two militaries would run smoothly.

The Alliance officers would be subordinate to the Turian commander of the fleet they were attached to for the time of their deployment but would be under no obligation to follow any order that wasn't given concerning their border patrol duties. Should conflicts arise from that, then a board of Turian and Alliance officers would review the case and punish the party guilty of wrongdoing.

Furthermore, if the 'exchange program', as Wright called it, prove itself to be successful after one and a half years, then a number of Turian officers would be sent to take part in the border patrol fleets of the Alliance under the same circumstances.

The reason why there was a time discrepancy between sending Alliance and Turian officers was that the Alliance wanted to create a sentiment of trust between the two governments. The Turian Hierarchy protected the borders of Citadel Space for centuries before humans even left Earth. Their pride would get in the way if they ever thought we saw ourselves as their equals when we, in their minds, just discovered that the galaxy was a much bigger place than we previously thought.

Because of that, the Alliance decided to go into the meeting with the image of someone willing to learn from a more experienced person. It worked, and the Turians decided to magnanimously accept our readiness to learn from them.

The fact that if they decided to forego sending officers to our patrol fleets would give us a bigger advantage because we would know how the Turian patrol fleets operated and how to counter them in the event of war between our government, didn't seem to register to them. Perhaps there would be a Turian admiral or general who thought about that and pressed for officers to be sent to our side. And if that happened, it would paint a picture of cooperation to the galaxy, and such a picture was a powerful tool.

In the end, the Alliance would only benefit from the exchange program.

Wright also told me that plans were already made to further the cooperation between the two militaries through war games if the program proved successful. These war games would pit Turians against humans to test the limits and weaknesses of their respective combat doctrines, and teams consisting of humans and Turians against each other to test their compatibility and work out any edges.

Hopefully, their plans would work because the Alliance would need an ally like the Hierarchy in the coming years.

While most of the things James told me were good, there were also some troubling signs. Despite the best efforts of the AIS, the political situation inside the Batarian Hegemony seemed to have calmed down over the last years, and with this calm came an increase in pirate and slaver attacks on Alliance territory.

Of course, the Hegemony continued to disavow their involvement, even if nobody believed their word. The number of Batarians participating in the attacks was too great to not be sanctioned by them. Yet, without concrete evidence, the Council was unwilling to do anything, especially with the Batarian ambassador making a nuisance of himself. He even managed to get the testimony of a captured Batarian captain dismissed, calling it a sham and an attempt of the Alliance to weaken the Hegemony. It shouldn't have worked, but he insisted that a task force of the Council investigated the claims of Batarian involvement in the recent attacks.

James, who heard from Anita, told me that the Council was ready to make a ruling in the Alliance's favor before the Batarian ambassador called for the task force, taking the testimony the AIS produced for what it was, the truth. But every member of the Citadel had the right to call for a Council investigation before any binding ruling that would lead to severe implications for that member. The hands of the Council were tied, and thus they sent the task force, waiting for their report before they took any action.

And lo and behold, the task force never encountered a single Batarian pirate or slaver during their two-month investigation. Just pirates of every other species.

Their report concluded that the pirates and slavers were from the Terminus systems and that they didn't find anything connecting the attacks to the Batarian Hegemony.

From what Anita told James, the Batarian ambassador strutted around the Presidium like he owned it after the Council had no choice but to dismiss the testimony as false. Of course, the Alliance's accusation subsequently got dismissed as well.

Thankfully, since the Council knew what probably happened and didn't want the Alliance to be pushed into a corner, they called the 'false' testimony an act of revenge by a Batarian with a grudge towards the Hegemony who saw his capture by the Alliance as his chance to get back at it.

Ever since then, the tension at the border between the Alliance and the Hegemony was rising steadily, and it was just a matter of time until something happened that would explode the powder keg.

The top brass of the Alliance military was already planning and looking for a target that would have the most impact during the time between the initial event and the moment the Council intervened. It was universally decided that the Alliance wouldn't be the initiator of such an event to keep the morale high ground, but the retaliation would be swift and show the Hegemony that the Alliance wouldn't be merciful if they dared to try again.

It wouldn't escalate into a full-blown war as the Council would want to prevent such an event. A fact that I was truly grateful for.

While the Alliance was strong and its position in the galaxy became better and better with every passing week, its strength wasn't nearly enough to contend with the Batarian Hegemony if things got really heated. At least without an ally to back them.

That was another reason why I hoped that the program James told me about would be successful. If a number of Turian officers were present during the inevitable attack on one of our colonies, or at least during the aftermath, it wouldn't be hard to get Turian support. Even if they wouldn't send actual troops to participate in the counterattack, then the Alliance could at least be sure of their support when the matter came before the Council. Their sense of righteousness would demand no less.

James and I continued to talk about several more things concerning the Alliance but nothing that had the potential to change the current power structure.

After I said goodbye to James and his wife, I spent the night in a hotel before I left Earth the next late afternoon for my next destination. I would have loved to stay for a few more days, but since I didn't know how much I missed being on Earth, I packed my schedule so full that there was not enough time to do so. Even the morning and midday I spent there was already a delay in my timetable, but I just couldn't help myself.

My next destination was Reach, where I would meet up with Takahashi to witness the first attempt to jump into FTL with a frigate that was equipped with a three-eezo-core drive. All previous tests were just hypothetical, but they showed promising results.

If all went well during the attempt, then the next thing was to test its capability to use the relays. And just like with the FTL jump, the theoretical deliberations told the scientist that the ship would be able to do it without any damage to the ship or its crew.

After that, the only thing left would be to adapt the DR drive to the multi-core technology, which would take another year or so. At least, that was what Takahashi promised me.

So, if everything went according to plan, then the construction of the first Ruler-class ship would begin in 2175.

With the need to keep everything secret - well, as much as we could keep it secret with thousands of people working on it - the construction would take around five to seven years, and I was generous with that time estimation.

A Ruler-class was like a black hole in regard to the resources it needed, and I hoped it would be like one when it came to crushing the obstacles in its path.

Yet, that would depend on the success of Takahashi's and Barbara's tests with the multi-core technology and the adaptation of the DR drive to it.

Until then, I wouldn't even think of green-lighting the construction. It would cost me millions if the combination of multiple eezo cores and the DR drive proved to be impossible.

That was why I took the opportunity to see the first field test of the multi-core tech and traveled to Reach. I wanted to see humanity's progress in trying to stand on the same level as the other galactic civilizations.

Still, when I made my plans, there had been enough time to travel from Earth to Reach to visit Arcturus Station in between. That was the real reason why I left Earth so early. The appointments I made with several people on Arcturus weren't something I was willing to delay just to indulge myself, no matter how much I wanted to.

Furthermore, some of those meetings would help me conclude my business on Illium sooner and thus would enable me to leave the planet in the hands of a trusted subordinate.

Besides, Arcturus was on the way to Reach, not visiting the space station would be idiocy. I would have to travel there at one point to take care of some business, and to not take the opportunity of doing so when I was already close by would be gross mismanagement of my time.

While Arcturus Station did not take my breath away like Earth did when I arrived, it still left me with a feeling of satisfaction. After all, my company was the one responsible for its construction.

After years of nonstop work, Arcturus wasn't just the political capital of the Alliance and one of its military centers, the station had become a city in space. It wasn't nearly as grand as the Citadel, but it didn't lose in matters of impact.

During my time on the Citadel, I overheard a discussion between an Asari and a human concerning Arcturus. The Asari tried to disparage our achievement of creating a smaller copy of the Citadel for our own use by saying that anything humanity created would always be less than the splendor of the Citadel. She spoke with the by-now-expected arrogance of a member of the oldest spacefaring species in the current galaxy. Yet, she had no better answer than to praise the Citadel again when the human asked her if the Asari ever built anything similar to it.

I couldn't hold back a smirk when I heard the human remarking that the Citadel didn't count since the Asari merely found it floating in space, abandoned by its former owners, and didn't build it themselves. In essence, the human told her, that the Asari were trying to take credit for something another did and that they never even attempted to recreate it.

The argument was over after that comment, but the human was the definitive winner of it, especially after the Asari walked away with a huff.

Besides, the construction of Arcturus Sation may be done, but I was sure that there were already plans to further expand the station. If the Reapers didn't destroy it, I would love to see how the space station looked in fifty years. In my mind, Arcturus was a project that would never be completely finished. There would always be more that could be added or expanded on. If one thought about it, the station was a good representation of humanity's mindset.

Still, I didn't travel to Arcturus to watch the station float around the emptiness of space, I had business to conduct.

My pilot landed in the hangar that was reserved for my use since I didn't want to deal with the crowds at the public terminals. The hangar could easily hold two or three ships as long as they weren't too big, and since the only ships using it were of the personal transport variety, it hadn't been a problem in all the time I paid the rent for the hangar. I could have rented a bigger hangar, but what use would I have for one? The location was close to the small Ad Astra office building on Arcturus, and every ship bringing in materials for construction could use the commercial port on the other side of the station.

After we landed, I was greeted by one of my employees who asked if I would like to relax in the room they prepared for me or if I wanted to check in with our branch office first. I disregarded both options and told him that he was to call our lawyer here on Arcturus and tell him that I was going to visit his office.

Normally, I would invite the lawyers from Hendrickson & Derber to meet me in my offices, or at least give them enough time to prepare themselves for my arrival, but the fact that those appointments were the reason why I couldn't stay for another day on Earth, made me a bit petty.

It was juvenile, but I didn't care. If one got power, then one should use it sometimes for petty reasons as long as nobody got hurt by it. It was fun seeing people run around like headless chickens whenever I said something they didn't expect, and they tried to accommodate me.

And such a scene greeted me when I stepped into the offices of Hendrickson & Derber.

The lobby on the ground floor was a picture of calmness, projecting a strong image to everyone who walked by, and it showed nothing of the hecticness that happened on the first floor where I was going to meet with the two heads of the law firm.

The moment I stepped out of the elevator was like taking a step into the dreaded battlefield of a Black Friday Sale. Dozens of people running around with towering mountains of paper in their hands, orders shouted across the floor, and for the first few seconds, nobody noticed my arrival, too focused on their work to take a moment to look around.

That was truly funny.

They were rushing to prepare for me but didn't notice I was already there.

When the first person noticed me, she just stopped, like a deer caught by headlights. And from there, it was like a ripple effect. More and more people started to notice me, and all the noise that had permeated the office disappeared.

Into the ensuing silence, I just raised an eyebrow and said: "Don't mind me, continue as you were. I'll find the way myself."

Thankfully, my words helped them to leave their state of shock, and they continued with their work, only in a much more tempered way.

A man came my way and introduced himself as Mrs. Derber's secretary, and asked me to follow him toward the meeting room Mrs. Derber and Mr. Hendrickson prepared.

He led me into a meeting room at the other end of the office and asked me to wait inside until Hendrickson and Derber arrived.

I helped myself to the coffee that was placed on a small side table, and as I took the first sip, the door opened, and the two people I wanted to see entered the room.

To my appreciation, the usual exchange of niceties and general questions about the current state of being was over quick, and we proceeded to the reason I wanted to meet with them.

It wasn't something world moving, I just wanted to go over the details of what could happen if my deal with Nisco Ron, where I would buy company shares with his money, came to light, the consequences, the ramifications, and the legal trouble, I wanted to know as much as I could. Furthermore, I wanted the two lawyers to be prepared to run interference if my dealings ever came to light and not caught unaware. The moment it happened, the two lawyers would have their work cut out for them, but thankfully they were at the center of the political scene of the Alliance, and they were trustworthy enough to be informed about my dealings and, maybe even more important, in possession of a part of my little black book.

Every favor I owned was written down on those pages, and more importantly what I did to get that favor. The pages Hendrickson and Derber had access to were only about politicians, but that would be enough to mitigate any damage to my image.

In addition to that, the other law firms my company employed would help them by working from different angles.

The exact number of law firms my company employed eluded me, and personally, I had no desire to rectify that. I knew that the number was somewhere between twenty and one hundred, but if one asked me to recount their names, I would only be able to name half a dozen, at most! One law firm at every important place I visited. Earth, Arcturus, Terra Nova, the Citadel, Illium, and... Well, at least, I could remember five of them.

Most of the other law firms were used for local disputes or as a delay technique, so it was excusable to not remember their names.

The delay technique was the brainchild of a member of my administrative department after he had observed how long it took to take action if something happened in star systems further away.

While the communication network made great improvements in the last few years, there was still some delay if the importance of the sender or recipient wasn't high enough to warrant special treatment from the companies operating the network.

Of course, the importance was determined by the contract negotiated with them, and that meant how much you paid them for their services. And small-time law firms sadly only used one of the standard contracts that didn't rank high on their list as something important.

Sadly, this method only worked in Alliance territory since its laws stated that every participating party had to be informed and confirm that the information arrived before any action could be taken. At least, as long as the actions were legal. So, if one put up a distant law firm as the main contractor and added a close one as CC, then one could use the extra time to prepare for one's opponent's actions before they could legally enact them.

The Citadel's laws didn't have that addendum, so the method was less useful when dealing with people outside the Alliance. Furthermore, there was a push in the Alliance parliament to bring out laws more in line with those of the Citadel to make it easier to deal with the other species' governments. And the law my company was used would be among the ones that would be changed.

Meh, it wasn't that effective of a method anyway. Besides, downsizing the number of law firms my company employed would save a lot of money.

In the end, the meeting between me and my lawyers didn't take too long, only a little more than two hours. We spoke about possible ramifications and their counters, put a plan in place that could be activated whenever needed, and made sure that when Nisco Ron could take control of his investments legally, the transition would be as smooth as possible.

The last point was more of a ploy to get Nisco Ron to trust in me than anything else.

I wanted to show him something that would assuage his worries and convince him that I was taking our deal and my admittance to the Circle seriously. The rules and ways of the Circle seemed to be something important to him, and my showing that I was trying to live by them would put me on his good side.

Well, not that the transition would ever happen in the first place. By the time it would be possible, I wanted my dealings with the Circle to be over and done with, and the other members either in positions where they would never be able to move against me or dead.

Personally, I leaned toward the latter. It was more of a clear cut and without any loose ends that could bite me in the ass down the road. The other members of the Circle didn't strike me as the type of people who would be stopped by seemingly powerless positions. They would crawl out of the hole I would throw them in and do everything in their power to see me brought low. Truly, it would be better for me if I didn't allow this possible scenario in the first place.

The following two days I spent on Arcturus were a sequence of updates about my company's projects, and meetings with people that were somewhat important in the political scene. A promise to support someone during the next election on this or that planet, a donation to a charity I never heard of before, posing for pictures that would appear in some magazine. It was tedious, really tedious.

But that's the life I choose, and when I became ambassador, and hopefully later on councilor, those things would happen even more frequently.

Nonetheless, I was grateful for the silence and comfort of my ship when we left Arcturus to meet up with the Alliance cruiser 'Kopenhagen'. The 'Kopenhagen' would transport us into the Olympus system since my personal ship didn't possess a DR drive. At least, this one didn't. Well, officially, none of the ships that belonged to me personally possessed a DR drive, but that was just on paper. After all, how many ships that were in private hands were just like they should be on paper? Everybody liked to tinker a bit, and if my personal property was a bit more modified than others? What can I say? It's the privilege of the rich.

I spent most of my time on the 'Kopenhagen' cooped up on my ship after I went to meet up with the ship's captain and made some small talk with the officers on the bridge. The travel didn't take long, and I had no desire to just walk around the cruiser aimlessly.

I visited enough ships of the same make to almost find my way with eyes closed, so there wasn't anything that interested me.

Ok, that was a lie. I wouldn't be able to find my way around with my eyes closed, but it was true that I knew the ship in and out.

The general blueprints of any military ship didn't change too much from one generation to the next, and the changes to the layout were so minuscule they could be called nonexistent.

If one walked through a cruiser from ten to fifteen years ago and knew, for example, where to find the sleeping berth of the engineers, then that somebody would find it in the same amount of time in a cruiser fresh out of the drydock.

It was designed this way so that whenever a soldier changed ships or had to operate on a ship that wasn't his, could find his way to every location without having to think or search where it was.

Of course, some argued that this was more of a disadvantage than an advantage since everybody with less than honorable intentions could learn about the interior of an up-to-date cruiser with the help of an already decommissioned ship. The location of the reactor, possible chokepoints and ambush sites, and other targets of interest.

But those concerns could be dismissed, in my opinion.

First of all, the internal security features of every ship, be it a frigate, cruiser, or dreadnought, were always different from generation to generation and were one of the first things to be removed when the ship left service. Additional blast doors were placed at different locations, there were hidey holes hidden in walls for soldiers to ambush enemy boarding parties from behind, and don't get me started on the turrets installed into the ceiling.

I've seen enough simulated boarding operations to know that taking over any Alliance ship would be a monumental task, and that didn't take into account the steer stubbornness of the Alliance defenders.

There had been more than one ship sent back into the drydocks for repairs after its interior had been damaged during a... lively training session.

The face of the ship's captain must have been a sight to see when he could do nothing but watch as his crew's training turned destructive.

Especially when he had to explain the costs of the repairs to his superiors.

The time between getting on the Kopenhagen and arriving at Reach went over in a flash, and I was asked to board a shuttle that would bring me directly to the testing site.

The place from where the test would be observed was another cruiser, but I couldn't recall its name. I was probably distracted when someone told me, and I didn't think to ask again. After all, the cruiser's name was unimportant in the end. Really, the only important thing about the second cruiser was that its scanning and observation equipment had been improved with tech directly out of the labs down on Reach, and those would be carted back there the moment the tests were over.

I didn't even take five steps off the shuttle before a lieutenant walked over and bid me to follow him to the observation deck where the rest of the experiment observers were.

The walk was a short one, and the lieutenant took his leave at the door to continue with his tasks.

After I entered, I noticed how crowded the observation deck was and that among all those present, I only recognized around a dozen faces and knew even less of them personally.

Most of the people present were members of the Alliance military with a fairly high rank, but there were also one or two government officials. One of them was, I believe, the personal assistant of the current Minister of Defence. Apparently, the minister herself wanted to come, but an emergency meeting of some kind had been sprung on her, and she couldn't get away to observe the test.

As my eyes went over the assembled crowd, I noticed two people who were part of it but somehow still by themselves, and I knew that those two were representatives of the AIS.

But the only people I had any interest in were standing at the other end of the room, close to the window, looking out into the deep space.

I made my way toward Barbara and Takahashi, and I didn't even have to try to get around the rest of the people. Every person standing in my way, took a step back or forward so that they wouldn't impede me.

Even the Vice-Admirals present did it, and while I was thankful for it, I couldn't help but question the reason behind it.

At the moment, I didn't know it but somehow the story of what happened to the military officers that tried to get in my way by trying to control my actions or stealing from me for a superficial reason as a defense got told over and over again until I became a sort of boogeyman to many military officers.

I even got a saying about me: If you don't want your career to end ingloriously then don't piss off Denebren.

Come on, I wasn't that bad, was I? I mean, I may have been responsible for some careers to end prematurely, or ending up in positions that were nothing more than fancy titles with no power and unrewarding work, but hey, they deserved it. That doesn't mean I would do it to every person who stepped on my toes once.

Well, if I was in a particular mood, I would threaten to do this, but I wouldn't go through with it for something so minor.

Anyway, I met up with Barbara and Takahashi, the latter was very excited to see me again in person after so long and started to talk rapidly about the coming experiment, his work before that, and what success would mean for every project he worked on. It was hard to follow him whenever he got so excited, but my experience with it helped me understand the key points he was making.

If the multi-core technology proved itself stable enough for FTL jumps without the help of a mass relay, then it would be a clear indicator that relay jumps were in the range of the possible too and that the possible adjustments for it were at best minimal. At worst, it would just take another month, especially if Barbara and Takahashi concentrated on the project and didn't let themselves be distracted by their other experiments.

I had to intervene and steer the conversation in another direction when Barbara commented that it would be impossible for Takahashi as he had, in her mind, the attention span of a child on too much sugar.

Thankfully, my diversion of asking about his efforts in designing the Ruler-class prototype staved off the bickering between Takahashi and Barbara, and I got to know how much progress was made.

And the progress was staggering.

The initial blueprints were already finished, and only the exact specifications for the multi-cores were needed to go into the next phase. The specifications were important because Takahashi had to know how far the distance between the eezo cores had to be so that the cores worked effectively and did not inhibit each other. Furthermore, the rest of the different rooms of the ship had to be placed in such a way that there was enough room to shield the chambers of the cores from outside interference.

The fact that there had been no testing in combination with the DR drive yet was another factor that would have an impact on the final result of the blueprints.

If one heard it like this, it didn't seem like the blueprints were anywhere close to being finished, and they would be right.

It would still take a lot of time, but at least one part of the ship, the outer circle, was finalized on paper.

To understand what I mean, one needed to know that the design of the ships was two-fold. An inner and an outer part.

The inner part would house everything that would be essential to run the ship, for example, the drive, the reactors, and the eezo cores. In essence, one could say the inner circle was a ship onto itself, while the outer circle was everything else. From crew quarters to the hangar bays and laboratories. Everything that didn't concern the actual running of the ship would be placed there.

The inner and outer parts were going to be separated by metal plates half as thick as the hull of the ship, which was already thicker than those of any other ship in the Alliance's fleet. Through this, the essential parts of the ship would be much better protected from any attack, and I believed even a Reaper would have problems destroying the ship in one go.

So while the plans for the ship were far from finished since the inner part still had to be designed, the outer circle was almost finished. Even the weapons were already taken into account, although they were still subject to change, and would probably be the last thing to be constructed.

The speed of the development of new weapons and defensive measures was still high, thanks to our efforts in trying to catch up with the rest of the galaxy.

About the real reason why I was in the Olympus system in the first place, the first FTL jump was a huge success. If one could call not blowing up in thousand pieces a huge success. From our position, we couldn't see more than the test ship suddenly appearing before our eyes and the announcement of the test ship's captain that all systems were working as they should.

While Barbara and Takahashi were excited as everyone else that the first test was successful, I had the suspicion they didn't want to watch the event from the observation deck but from the place where the advanced equipment was to see the scanning results in real-time. Instead, they would have to be content with the records.

After the experiment was over, and I said goodbye to Barbara and Takahashi, who wanted to see the accumulated data, I spent some more time talking to the other people. Or at least those who came to me.

In truth, I wanted to talk a bit more to Takahashi since he was the only person around I didn't have to look out for what was said. The whole political talk and double speaking could get annoying after a while. Besides, whatever I was going to talk over with Takahashi would be miles more interesting than anything anyone here could tell me.

Perhaps I should think about taking a month off after I finished up on Illium? Now that I thought about it, I don't remember ever taking even a short vacation in the last ten or twenty years. It would probably do me some good to just relax, especially if the coming years became as hectic as I feared they would be.

Fortunately, the meet and greet didn't take long, and I could leave unobstructed.

Coming to Reach just to watch an experiment, something that didn't even take longer than three hours, seemed like a waste of time to me. Yet, it was an event that I couldn't miss. It was one of these you-have-to-be-seen events that everyone with a high-enough position had to go to if nothing equally important happened at the same time.

Thankfully, the next station of my trip, the Citadel, was by far more interesting.

The opportunities presented were grandiose, and the update I got about my plans had me in high spirits for quite a while.

Of course, the first thing I did on the Citadel was visit my branch office where my second-in-command told me that...

The two people arriving at the restaurant stopped any other thought in my mind in an effort to put my complete focus on them.

I watched how the waiter escorted them to a table not that far from mine but far enough that they didn't notice my presence immediately.

They ordered their meals and drinks quickly, probably already knowing what they wanted to eat before they stepped inside.

I discreetly activated my Omni-tool to pull up a few messages I wrote before I arrived so that they could be sent instantly if I needed to.

If I had learned anything about tactics and strategies from Andrew and James, then it was to prepare your arsenal before you went to battle.

Well, this wouldn't be a true battle anyway, not even one of wits. With the things I prepared beforehand, I stacked the deck in my favor so much that it would be more akin to a one-sided slaughter. On the other hand, what would come after the slaughter was something I had to touch more delicately. After all, if everything went right, then I would strengthen my position within the Circle of Alameina considerably.

The only question remaining was, should I let the Turian and Asari enjoy the main course before I made my entrance, or would the entrée be enough?