Ethereal Effect. Chapter 25. (Patreon)

Decian Noloris, scion of the lesser House Noloris, actor of the Arakesh Theatre, Harmony space station, third week of negotiations between the Aiterri Dominion and Citadel Space

The entire month I had spent on the station had passed for me as an endless chain of rehearsals and performances in the grand hall of the newly built space station. But I regretted nothing. Performing on stage for our new allies was a genuine pleasure. Never in my life had I encountered such an attentive audience. It did not matter who filled more of the auditorium that night — the beautiful asari, whose enormous eyes caught my every movement, or the strange salarians with their quick, jerky turns of the head — I could feel that they were sincerely enjoying themselves, immersing themselves in our culture.

I was filled with pride that I was the one playing so many leading roles in the theatre, and that from among a million others, I had been chosen for this event, so fateful for the entire Dominion. A million actors across thirty-six planets — and they chose Decian Noloris, a scion of nothing more than a lesser House, one that no one had taken seriously even fifty years ago. Now my face was known to the envoys of the Citadel. If that was not success, then I did not know what success was.

And so I gave the audience all of myself. I quite literally lived the life of the hero, showing the viewers true feelings — anger, love, despair, hope. I became the one I portrayed. The pity of it was that the more emotion you showed on stage, the more moral exhaustion you felt in ordinary life. After every premiere, I returned to my cabin emptied out, like a fruit squeezed dry, and simply sat in silence, unable even to eat. And I was deeply worried that if the negotiations dragged on — which was exactly where things seemed to be heading, since the Citadel fleet, apparently because of the very dangerous route it had taken to reach us, did not intend to set off on the return journey anytime soon — I would be living on this station for a very long time yet.

Fortunately, it had been built from the beginning to support permanent life. And what a life it was! The station had everything: numerous restaurants serving both our cuisine and dishes adapted to the tastes of our guests, theatres, entertainment zones, museums, art exhibitions, and even a full-fledged park with living trees brought from Aetris. Sometimes, after performances, I walked there when I needed to come back to myself. I would sit on a bench beneath a silver-leaved tree, close my eyes, and imagine that I was home.

— Excuse me, is this seat taken? — I had sunk so deeply into thought that I did not notice the asari approach me. — I saw your latest performance, and honestly, I think I am now your fan. — She smiled sweetly, lowering her eyes in embarrassment.

And at that gesture, my heart skipped a beat.

— Oh, I did not introduce myself. I am Malena, a specialist in the study of alien cultures, — she said, extending her slender hand to me.

— Decian Noloris, scion of the lesser House Noloris, leading actor of Arakesh’s principal theatre. — I gave a polite bow, drawing on every bit of my acting skill.

— Oh, so you also belong to an aristocratic House? That is so interesting! I have been studying the cultures of Citadel Space species for one hundred and twenty years. I even personally visited one of the developed worlds of the Batarian Hegemony, where more than half the planet’s population are slaves. But nowhere have I seen such a clearly defined caste distribution of society. I am so interested in how it formed!

Her sudden onslaught made me falter. There was a true researcher’s passion in her voice.

— I know nothing about batarians, but the aiterri have never been slaves! — I defended my species from unfair accusations. — Yes, we have rigid social stratification, but there are objective reasons for it!

— Really? And what are they? — She smiled slyly. I realized I had fallen into a trap — she had deliberately provoked me into an emotional reaction to get a more honest answer.

— It is connected with both our biology and our religion.

— As for your religion, I have heard that you exalt all biotics as children of the goddess. But biologically?

— We call biotics the Blessed. And to us, it is not some weapon, but the gift of the goddess. The stronger the Gift, the more love Aetra shows the Blessed one. And everyone aboard this station subconsciously feels before whom they should bow. For example, I could never look upon the Eternals, the children of Aetra herself, as equals. They are above me, and I feel that they love me.

— That is horrifying! — Malena was truly surprised. — Biotics, or the Blessed, as you call them, constantly interfere with your thinking.

— You misunderstood me. — I stopped her before she wrote off our entire species as tyrants. — Although I do feel that they are above me, they do not control me. I can resist it easily. It is not mind control, but at once an indicator of strength and a sign of Aetra’s favor. The first civilizations were built on that feeling even before Aellarin came into our lives.

— And what is the religious reason? I noticed that you mention your goddess Aetra very often, even when we are discussing a science like biology. Your society is not religious, is it? As far as I understood from meetings with your cultural experts, you have an unusual form of oligarchy. An unchanging council rules you.

— It is simple. Our Eternals are far from ordinary Blessed. The concentration of ether in their blood is so high that their bodies should under no circumstances be able to live. By every law of biology, they should die in infancy — ether poisoning of such strength kills within hours. But they not only live calmly, their lifespan exceeds that of the strongest Blessed by at least threefold. And if you compare an ordinary Blessed and an Eternal in terms of power, it is like comparing a dreadnought to a heavy frigate. Our scientists still cannot explain how the Eternals can exist. The only explanation was given by our religion. They are no longer aiterri. They are demigods, children of our gods.

— And what about non-biotics? — she asked softly, but I immediately understood where she was leading. — Ninety-nine percent of your population are non-biotics, are they not? Who are they in your society?

— I know where you are going with this, and I understand why you think Mortals have no rights among us. But do not compare us with some other species of the Citadel. Perhaps Aetra has not deprived your species of her attention either. But I will not tolerate insults against everything my ancestors worked for. I need to go to rehearsal. — I stood up, intending to end the argument.

— Come now, Decian, wait, — she said, gently taking my hand so I would not leave. Her fingers were warm, almost weightless, and I froze. — I never thought that. Your culture is simply so interesting to me! And I am very ashamed that I provoked you. — She sadly lowered her gaze to the floor. — Let me show you how the asari live?

She truly did show me how the asari lived. It all began with an ordinary walk through the station’s diplomatic sector, during which Malena brought a small holo-projector and began showing me images of her worlds. Vast cities built around waterfalls, transparent towers reflecting the light of several moons, ancient temples that had existed even before the founding of my House. She spoke about all of it with such enthusiasm that time beside her almost ceased to exist.

Sometimes Malena touched my hand to draw my attention to some especially interesting detail, and sometimes she leaned so close that I could feel the faint scent of her perfume. She seemed astonishingly alive for a being who had lived more than two centuries. She could spend several minutes admiring the pattern on my clothing, the meaning of a House symbol, or the differences between shades of white in theatrical costumes. And I gladly explained everything I knew to her.

After that walk, Malena began coming to nearly every one of my performances. Even if hundreds of guests were in the hall, I could always find her gaze unerringly among the other asari. She watched the stage attentively, never distracted herself with a terminal, and applauded longer than most of the audience. Soon I caught myself thinking that I was no longer performing for the entire hall.

I was performing for her.

Every movement became more precise, every glance more expressive. If my hero confessed his love, I turned almost imperceptibly toward the place where Malena sat. If the character suffered, I wanted her, specifically, to see the full depth of his pain. A true actor should not single out one spectator among hundreds, but I could not help myself.

After performances she more and more often waited for me by the service exit. We would go to the park or dine in one of the restaurants open to the diplomatic delegation. Thanks to Malena, I tried asari dishes for the first time, most of which seemed to me too sweet and almost tasteless. She, for her part, regarded our cuisine with suspicion, especially the marine organisms of Aetris, though out of politeness she tried to taste everything I offered.

Gradually, meetings with her became part of my routine. I freed time for them in advance, shifted rehearsals, and declined meetings with other actors. Sometimes Malena did not come because she was busy with the delegation’s work, and then the rest of the day seemed ruined to me. Rationally, I understood how foolish it was to become attached so quickly to a representative of another species, one who sooner or later would return home.

Perhaps that was exactly why I wanted to spend every free minute with her.

Malena began acquainting me not only with the culture of her people, but with her own life. She showed recordings of her home city, images of her mother and sisters, and told me about her education and travels. Over her two centuries she had managed to change professions several times and visit dozens of worlds. Beside her, my life seemed astonishingly short: a lesser House, the academy of dramatic arts, and the theatre.

But Malena listened to my stories so attentively, as though there truly were something special in them. She was especially interested in the history of House Noloris. I told her about our few Blessed ancestors, the long path to recognition, and the duty of every scion to conduct himself impeccably. She remembered almost every detail, and a few days later could remind me of the name of a distant relative or the title of my first play.

Conversations about the House gradually shifted to the structure of the Dominion. Malena was interested in the differences between Great, middle, and lesser Houses, the position of the Blessed, and the role of the Council of Eternals. I answered everything I knew, seeing nothing dangerous in it. I possessed no state secrets, and most of the information I shared was publicly available.

Sometimes her questions seemed too precise. But Malena was a researcher of alien cultures, so I easily found an explanation for it. A true specialist had to be interested in details. It was precisely her mind, curiosity, and attention to small things that I liked so much.

In the second week of our acquaintance, I took her backstage at the theatre. I showed her stage costumes, set mechanisms, lighting systems, and devices that allowed actors to soar above the stage. Malena was especially interested in my costume of the first Blessed from an ancient legend. White cloth was covered with silver threads, and a construction fastened behind the back created a halo of light.

I allowed her to touch the fabric. Malena stepped so close that almost no space remained between us. Her fingers slid over the embroidered symbol and barely brushed my chest, as though she were only checking the density of the material. For several seconds we looked at one another, and then she stepped back and continued studying the costume as though nothing had happened.

I woke with thoughts of Malena, chose my clothes while imagining whether she would like the color, and rehearsed ordinary phrases as though preparing for a new leading role. She, too, became bolder: taking my arm, sitting closer and closer, straightening my hair and touching my face, explaining it as an interest in aiterri physiology.

Perhaps it was then that I finally convinced myself our feelings were mutual.

In the third week, Malena first told me about the Embrace of Eternity. She showed me a recording in which two asari sat opposite each other, touching foreheads, while a blue radiance slowly revolved around them. During the Embrace, the boundaries between minds temporarily vanished, allowing partners to share not words, but memories, feelings, and sensations.

For the asari, it was considered the highest form of trust.

At first, the thought that Malena would be able to see my most intimate memories frightened me. There were no state secrets in my life, but there were childhood fears, old grievances, and failures I would have preferred to forget. Yet at the same time, I could see the real Malena — not the researcher and not a member of the delegation, but who she truly was.

After that conversation, she almost stopped asking questions about the Dominion. She was no longer interested in the fleet, the Houses, or the Council of Eternals, as though she had already obtained everything she wanted to know and now needed only me. At least, that was how I wanted to perceive it.

One day after a performance, we came to the park again. The artificial lighting gradually dimmed, tiny lights came on among the silver leaves, and through the transparent dome the stars and ships of the Citadel could be seen. Malena laid her head on my shoulder, and I was afraid to move, lest I destroy the moment.

That was when I realized I no longer perceived her departure as inevitable. In my thoughts there existed a future where she remained in the Dominion, continued attending my performances, traveled with me, and met my family. We had known one another for less than a month, and I was already imagining decades of life together.

Malena raised her head and simply looked at me for several moments. Then she touched my cheek and kissed me. It all happened nothing like it did in the theatre: without music, properly arranged light, or rehearsed movements. I did not know where to put my hands, closed my eyes too late, and nearly bumped my forehead against hers.

But I did not care.

That evening, I finally believed that she loved me.

And a few days later, Malena offered to share the Embrace of Eternity with me.

Interlude. Malena, xenocultural specialist of the asari republic, Harmony station.

The actor turned out to be even more saccharine than I had expected.

In the first days, his adoring gaze was even amusing. Decian blushed at an accidental touch, carefully chose his clothes before each of our meetings, and tried to turn ordinary walks into scenes from his own plays. He even spoke to me differently than he did to the others: a little more slowly, a little lower, with pauses placed exactly where they needed to be. Apparently, he thought I did not notice how he rehearsed our conversations in advance.

By the end of the second week, it had begun to tire me. Decian looked at me as though I were not an intelligence operative carrying out Matriarch Velaria’s order, but the heroine of an ancient legend who had descended to him from the stars. If I smiled, he became happy for the entire day. If I feigned weariness, he immediately tried to surround me with care, even if that care consisted of ordering yet another dish that my body could not properly digest at all.

He was beautiful. There was no point arguing with that. Tall, slender, with regular features and long white hair that he constantly adjusted before going on stage. But even his beauty began to seem irritating when it came accompanied by endless stories about the theatre, the purpose of art, and how genuine an actor’s feelings ought to be.

Were it not for Matriarch Velaria’s direct order, I would have ended this performance long ago.

She had demanded more than simply obtaining information. I was to embed myself deeply in the Dominion’s ruling class, create connections among the Houses, and establish a permanent channel of influence that would continue working after the negotiations ended. Decian came from only a lesser House, but he was a famous actor, had access to the highest aristocracy, and regularly performed before members of the Council of Eternals. As a starting point, that was sufficient.

With the Republic’s support, House Noloris could be elevated fairly quickly. A few profitable trade contracts, access to asari cultural venues, joint projects, and a little properly directed fame — and within a few decades, a lesser House would become a middle one. After the end of the rachni war, when the true division of liberated territories began, the Nolorises might already be able to claim the status of a Great House.

And I would become the wife of its head, or of its most influential scion.

True, persuading him to agree to the Embrace of Eternity proved more difficult than I had expected. The aiterri regarded intimacy much more seriously than most species of the Citadel, and Decian, on top of that, turned out to be indecently romantic. Mere attraction was not enough for him. He wanted trust, shared memories, promises, and confidence that our relationship would last, if not a lifetime, then at least several decades.

I had to move slowly.

Touch by touch. Glance by glance. Several walks during which I pretended to admire every silver-leaved tree in their artificial park. Attending his performances. The pendant of the Arakesh Theatre that Decian had given me had to be worn every day, though it did not match my official clothing at all. Several carefully chosen confessions about fear of loneliness and weariness from a long life.

He believed all of it.

Now Decian was so in love with me that all it took was a slight nudge, and he began building plans for our shared future on his own. I saw it on his face when he looked at the Citadel ships beyond the transparent dome. He was already imagining how I would remain in the Dominion, enter his family, attend every premiere, and spend the next hundred years listening to stories about his roles.

Perhaps I truly would have to do that.

We were in his cabin after another performance. Decian had not yet fully washed off his stage makeup, and thin silver lines still remained near his eyes. He was saying something about his character, about the final scene, and about why the last pause should have lasted several seconds longer, but I was barely listening anymore.

The time had come.

I was the first to move closer and kiss him. Decian froze, as always happened with an unexpected touch, and then embraced me so carefully, as though afraid to damage me. There was enough strength in him to break my spine with one movement, but even during the kiss he controlled every motion.

I placed my palms against his temples and brought my forehead close to his.

His eyes flickered for an instant. Even now, he was more nervous than before stepping onto the stage. I smiled and allowed my face to take on precisely the expression he wanted to see: tenderness, a slight fear, and complete trust.

Our foreheads touched.

The world vanished.

The first Embrace of Eternity always astonished young asari. They sincerely believed that the partners’ minds opened completely and that both received equal access to the other’s feelings and memories. It was considered something sacred: two beings voluntarily giving up all boundaries and, for a few moments, becoming a single whole.

Nonsense told to maidens.

Equality remained only for the first hundreds, perhaps thousands, of melds. Then an asari learned to control the current, create protective structures around the necessary memories, and show her partner only what she wanted to show. A little experience was enough to make an unprepared mind see love instead of indifference, sincerity instead of calculation, and random images instead of real secrets.

I had practiced intelligence melds for almost one hundred and fifty years.

In that time I had penetrated the memories of batarian officials, volus bankers, salarian scientists, and asari aristocrats. Some of them had undergone special training and still failed to notice the intrusion. What could an aiterri oppose to me, one who had not even reached a hundred years old and was participating in a meld for the first time in his life?

I opened the prepared memories before Decian.

He saw my childhood on a coastal world of the Republic. Felt the joy of my first walk in open space. Saw how I first entered the hall of his theatre and supposedly noticed him at once among the other actors. I allowed him to feel pleasure from our walks, my admiration for the aiterri, and hope for long cooperation between our peoples.

I showed him a beautiful future in which the asari and the aiterri together guided the younger species. Two peoples marked by biotics gradually took control of the galaxy and protected it from those who could not see the correct path on their own.

Decian accepted everything without the slightest resistance.

His joy passed through the meld in a warm wave. He believed completely. All doubts that might still have remained disappeared, and his mind opened before me like a door flung wide.

At first came ordinary memories. Childhood at the Noloris estate. First lessons with tutors. Fear before the elder Blessed. The stage of a small provincial theatre where he forgot his lines for the first time. Family celebrations, endless rehearsals, the joy of receiving his first major role.

I was interested in the Council of Eternals, the structure of the Houses, internal borders, and everything else the aiterri did not reveal in official negotiations. Decian was no politician, but as a famous actor he often attended closed events and heard things ordinary citizens were not supposed to know.

The first real secret appeared almost at once.

An enormous chamber. Rows of transparent tanks. Inside each was a developing aiterri body, connected to medical systems. Scientists in white garments watched the readings, replaced nutrient solutions, and moved newborns into neighboring sections.

They were growing Mortals. Not using ordinary artificial gestation to save a child or help an infertile family. They were producing intelligent beings by the thousands, determining the necessary genetic characteristics in advance.

This was one of the strictest violations of Citadel law.

The artificial mass creation of intelligent life was listed alongside attempts to subjugate the rachni and the deliberate destruction of relays. No state had the right to grow a population for the sake of economics, colonization, or war.

The envoys had to learn of this immediately.

I could have ended the meld right then. The information already obtained was enough for a full investigation and pressure on the Dominion. But if a secret like that lay almost on the surface of an ordinary actor’s memory, what else might he know?

I moved deeper, and the stream of memories accelerated.

At first, I did not attach any significance to it. That happened when a partner was too agitated or was unconsciously trying to share a large number of images. Usually, all it took was to narrow the channel slightly and restore control.

I tried to do so, but the stream did not weaken.

Decian’s memories began passing through me by the dozens at once. His first role. A relative’s death. Fear before an Eternal. A secret laboratory. His mother’s face. The songs of Aetris. White light above the ocean. Enormous figures rising from the depths.

Nothing happened. The connection no longer obeyed me.

Decian’s mind had not merely opened — it had begun pulling me inside. Element Zero, evenly distributed through his nervous system, passed through the connection and remade it according to its own nature. I felt hundreds of tiny currents finding paths through my brain, filling and widening them without caring whether the tissue could withstand the strain.

The stream suddenly jerked, and Decian’s memories disappeared.

In their place came darkness. Not the emptiness of space, but a heavy mass of water pressing in from all sides. Somewhere far below, enormous silhouettes moved. I could not make them out in full — only long limbs, pale eyes, and black carapaces rising from the abyss.

Above the ocean, the sky burned.

Through the clouds descended similar beings, only made of dark metal. Crimson light pulsed between the plates of their bodies. Those that came from the depths met them on the shore, and the world vanished in collisions of white and red flashes.

Then the aiterri appeared.

But they were different: short, rough, almost unlike Decian’s people. They knelt before the ocean, and enormous limbs took them one by one beneath the water. No one resisted. I felt their fear, pain, and at the same time a strange, almost agonizing reverence.

The images changed too quickly. White light. Someone’s hands, chained to a stone surface. Thin tendrils touching head and spine. A scream. Bodies carried away into the darkness, then returned changed.

I did not understand whether this was a memory of a play, an ancient legend, or something that should not have existed in his mind at all.

For an instant, it seemed to me that one of the enormous silhouettes turned toward me.

And then the stream accelerated again.

Aellarin

In the end, the negotiations dragged on far longer than originally expected. And the reason lay not only in the number of questions that had accumulated for both sides after first contact. As it turned out, the fleet of Citadel Space was in far worse condition than our guests tried to show.

Of the three salarian dreadnoughts that had taken part in the expedition, only one reached our borders. The other two had been destroyed during the breakthrough through clusters occupied by the rachni. The cruiser fleet accompanying the five asari and salarian dreadnoughts had lost almost half its ships, and most of the survivors needed at least minimal repairs. The three remaining dreadnoughts had suffered especially badly: two of them had taken such serious damage that even by the most optimistic calculations of Citadel engineers, repairs would take no less than a year.

If the delegation had tried to depart immediately after the negotiations ended, there was a very real chance it simply would not reach Citadel Space. The rachni already knew about the fleet that had passed through their territories and had surely managed to strengthen their guard over the relays. Repeating the same route with damaged ships and half the escort would have been practically suicide.

Therefore, the diplomatic station Harmony, which we had originally built as a temporary platform for first contact, unexpectedly had to become a home for the asari and salarians for a very long time.

Naturally, we offered help. At one of our border shipyards, the damaged vessels could have been restored much faster. Moreover, the Dominion was prepared to manufacture the necessary components in our laboratories free of charge using provided samples. All that was required of our guests was to hand over technical documentation and admit our specialists to the damaged sections of the ships.

For some reason, no one agreed.

The very thought that the aiterri would gain access to the internal structure of dreadnoughts caused the representatives of the Citadel almost physical pain. They were ready to sit for years in a border system, produce parts themselves on surviving ship fabricators, and wait for help from home, but not to let us study their technology.

I understood them perfectly. In their place, I would have done exactly the same.

In the end, the Citadel fleet had two options. Either wait until another military group fought its way through rachni-occupied territory to reach them, or try to restore the ships on their own. Both choices could stretch on for years, but that was no longer our problem.

Although our guests tried very hard to make it ours.

At first, the envoys proposed that five of our dreadnoughts escort them back to Citadel Space. Once there, under the protection of allied fleets, we were supposed to continue negotiations, sign additional agreements, and officially present the Dominion to the other members of the galactic community.

The offer sounded beautiful, if one did not think about what would happen next.

After delivering the delegation, our ships would have had to return by the same route. Alone, through rachni clusters, far from their own bases and without any possibility of receiving reinforcements. And that was assuming no one in Citadel Space decided to detain them under some plausible pretext.

I fully allowed for the appearance of entirely unknown “pirate dreadnoughts” that would accidentally intercept our squadron somewhere in an uninhabited system. They might turn out to be batarian, salarian, or even asari. What difference would it make if, by the time the investigation began, only wreckage remained of our ships and the most interesting technologies had been neatly dismantled and sent to laboratories?

At first, the representatives of the Citadel tried to appeal to our nobility and allied duty. When it became clear that we had exactly as much nobility as they did, they moved on to monetary compensation.

The amount offered was almost insulting.

For sending five dreadnoughts, which made up half of our heavy fleet, they promised a payment that would not have been enough even to build one ship. Moreover, the cost was calculated based on the price of ether that Citadel Space intended to set in future trade agreements.

In other words, they wanted to buy our services with our own resources, having first determined their value themselves. We had to politely refuse.

Then the next idea appeared. They proposed moving the damaged fleet closer to our home cluster, where major shipyards, developed infrastructure, and the Dominion’s main forces were located. The formal explanation was security. Supposedly, deep within our space, Citadel ships would find it much easier to await reinforcements and complete repairs.

I had to remind them that their military fleet was present on Dominion territory solely because it was accompanying a diplomatic delegation. Its presence in the border system was a temporary exception. Once negotiations ended, the ships either had to leave our borders or receive a new legal basis for remaining.

As you may already have guessed, the Aiterri Dominion refused to join Citadel Space until the end of the rachni war.

The envoys protested for a long time and with genuine feeling. They spoke of the responsibility of intelligent species, the common threat, and the billions of beings dying daily because of the rachni. The word “murderers” was uttered several times, as though it was we who had opened a relay into an unknown cluster and released an aggressive insectoid race from it.

When it became clear that guilt did not work on us, the representatives of the Citadel accepted our magnanimous counteroffer.

The damaged fleet would remain in the border system and join its defense. In the event of a rachni appearance, the Citadel ships were obligated to participate in battle on equal terms with Dominion forces. In return, we provided repair materials, manufactured tungsten ammunition using supplied samples, and ensured our guests had everything necessary for a prolonged stay.

Since we were signing an alliance treaty against the rachni, let our new allies confirm it not with pretty speeches, but with their own dreadnoughts.

Discussion of future military campaigns took even more time. The sides negotiated the exchange of intelligence information, warnings about the movement of large rachni forces, and rules for joint operations. The fiercest arguments, as expected, flared up around territories that had yet to be liberated.

As a result, a simple rule was adopted: a cluster would pass under the control of the state whose forces independently cleared it of rachni. Exceptions were systems that had previously belonged to one of the species of Citadel Space and had been lost during the war. They would be returned to their former owners regardless of who participated in their liberation.

An additional treaty was signed forbidding the independent activation of unknown intercluster relays. Our scientists were already actively working on ways around that agreement.

At the same time, the Dominion’s future accession to Citadel Space as an associate member was discussed. It would not have been possible to avoid joining the galactic community entirely. Sooner or later, we would have to open trade missions, recognize common navigation norms, and establish official relations with other states.

The important thing was that we had managed to postpone that moment until the end of the war.

Until then, we agreed only to familiarize ourselves with the laws of Citadel Space, protocols of interspecies interaction, and rules for relay use. Our specialists gained access to a vast array of legal documentation, which now had to be studied, dissected, and evaluated to determine which clauses could be observed, which needed changing, and which it would be most advantageous to learn how to bypass.

A separate battle had to be fought for the Dominion’s right to maintain its existing relations with the lizards and the aruns.

The representatives of the Citadel argued that every intelligent species had the right to independently join the galactic community. Consequently, the Dominion could not represent the interests of other civilizations, limit their foreign policy, or include their territories within its own borders.

How fortunate that the lizards and aruns themselves had absolutely no desire to join Citadel Space.

Their economies were already part of the Dominion’s economy. The homeworlds of both species lay deep within our territory, and to reach the Citadel, their ships would in any case have had to pass through dozens of systems under our control. They depended on our defense, infrastructure, medicine, and interstellar transport.

Representatives of both species independently confirmed that they were fully satisfied with the existing arrangement and did not wish to open separate diplomatic missions.

Thus, the decision to reject the proposed democracy was made by an entirely democratic process.

Of course, not everything went smoothly. The most unpleasant incident was the death of one of the asari who had arrived as part of the diplomatic delegation. She attempted to perform with an aiterri the so-called Embrace of Eternity — a special form of biotic melding during which an asari joined her mind with the consciousness of a partner.

The experiment ended in a brain hemorrhage.

The asari died almost instantly, despite the doctors’ help. Her partner was not physically harmed, but the incident drove him into such a severe state that specialists feared for his life. He practically stopped speaking, refused to return to the theatre, and did not react even to the presence of relatives. I even felt sorry for the good-natured fellow.

Both sides concluded that the Embrace of Eternity was incompatible between our species. The reasons remained unclear. Perhaps the aiterri nervous system contained too much Element Zero, or perhaps the very structure of our Gift was unsuitable for asari melding.

As a precaution, any similar attempts were forbidden.

The death of a member of the diplomatic mission, of course, affected the atmosphere of the negotiations. The asari demanded a full investigation, access to medical documentation, and official guarantees of safety. We had to make several minor concessions in trade and cultural agreements, but they received nothing truly important.

The negotiations ended several months after they began.

In honor of first contact, a monument to the crew of the salarian reconnaissance cruiser Iltanar was unveiled on the central square of Harmony station. It was this ship that had first discovered the aiterri civilization and transmitted information about it to Citadel Space.

Almost the entire leadership of the diplomatic mission gathered for the unveiling ceremony. The salarians spoke of the duty of explorers and the price of knowledge. The asari spoke of the beginning of a new era of cooperation. Our priests sanctified the monument with white radiance, and the warships of both sides fired a simultaneous salute.

I, too, had to speak.

I told them of the courage of intelligent beings who had gone into the unknown and paid with their lives for the meeting of our civilizations. I promised that the Dominion would never forget their sacrifice, and expressed the hope that one day the path between us would become safe. Judging by the faces of those present and the applause that followed, the speech was a success.

The real Iltanar was located in a closed Dominion dock. Its equipment had long since been dismantled, copied, and distributed among dozens of research centers.

Perhaps one day, the truth would come out.

For now, the envoys congratulated one another on the successful completion of first contact, solemn music sounded over the square, and cameras transmitted the image of the monument to all the worlds of the Dominion. Billions of aiterri saw the faces of representatives of Citadel Space for the first time and heard the story of the salarians who had given their lives for the sake of meeting our people.

Thus, we officially entered the galactic community.