Ethereal Effect. Chapter 27 (Patreon)

Abael Vekt, Eternal, plenipotentiary legate of the Council of Eternals and head of the Dominion's first permanent mission to the Citadel.

How amusingly the species of Citadel Space think. The moment they encounter a sapient species capable of speaking, signing treaties, and not opening fire at first contact, plans immediately appear in their heads for its "natural" integration into the galactic community. On the surface, everything looks wonderful: mutual recognition, trade, security, a common struggle against the rachni, and the gradual rapprochement of civilizations. Polite wording, gentle smiles, carefully chosen protocols. And an almost complete transparency of true intentions.

Abael Vekt felt no irritation at that. More like mild disappointment. Citadel Space had turned out not to be a temple of wise civilizations, but a large, old, and rather dirty marketplace, where everyone bargained for power, safety, and the right to explain to everyone else exactly what order was supposed to mean.

He was especially amused by the ban on opening new relays. The Citadel Council presented it as great wisdom drawn from the rachni catastrophe. Do not open unknown routes. Do not wake threats. Do not repeat the mistakes of the past. Almost convincing, if one did not know that during this same war the Citadel fleet itself had opened new relays several times in order to strike at key rachni worlds while bypassing the main fortified routes.

Of course, in those cases it was called not a violation, but military necessity. Vekt could not even condemn them for it. In war, rules always bend beneath the hand of whoever has enough strength and arrogance. But then one should not pretend to be the guardian of some higher order. The ban did not exist for everyone. It existed for those who were not allowed to grow too quickly and too far from the Citadel's eyes.

That was the central falsehood of their system. They spoke of galactic security, but in practice limited the development of species that were far from the war and far from the center of power. They spoke of balance, yet that balance somehow always coincided with the interests of those who had already taken the best routes, the best markets, and the best seats near the Council. They spoke of civilization, but civilization, in their understanding, too often meant a willingness to accept someone else's rules.

The Dominion had no intention of becoming the chief clown in that circus. The aiterri had not come all the way from the tribes of Aetris to an interstellar power just to voluntarily stand in line for permission to have a future. But ignoring Citadel Space would have been criminal stupidity as well. These species had reached space much earlier, had accumulated colossal technological experience, and controlled resources, markets, and knowledge that the Dominion had no right to leave in other hands without at least trying to acquire part of them.

Officially, the mission's primary task was to establish diplomatic relations. Embassies, trade agreements, cultural exchanges, military consultations, coordination against the rachni - all of that truly mattered. Vekt intended to handle it seriously and carefully. A good lie must always rest on truth, otherwise it begins to smell like a lie far too quickly.

But his true task was different. The main objective was to prolong the war with the rachni enough that, by the time victory came, Citadel Space would be as weakened as possible, and the tension between its species so deep that it could no longer be hidden beneath yet another beautiful Council statement.

The Dominion did not doubt victory. The rachni were terrifying, stubborn, numerous, and far too well adapted for a war of attrition. But they were not eternal. Any song could be drowned out with enough fire, steel, and patience. The question was not whether the galaxy would win. The question was who would remain strong enough after victory.

For now, those plans looked almost idealistic. There were only a few thousand aiterri throughout all of Citadel Space, and every one of them would be under observation. But Abael Vekt had a hundred years. For mortal politicians, that was almost an eternity. For an Eternal, it was a long, but entirely acceptable term of work.

Another task of the mission was technological espionage. And this was not even primarily about military technology. Advanced ship cores, combat shield systems, secret salarian intelligence algorithms, and asari military developments would be too well protected. It would be naive to think that even over a hundred years they could obtain anything truly critical. Though Dominion specialists would undoubtedly be delighted to dismantle even the simplest asari warship down to the last fastener.

Far more important was the general technological pool of Citadel Space. The things they used every day, and had therefore stopped considering valuable. Food industry systems, medical scanners, water purification systems, port logistics standards, civilian VIs, educational programs, household operating systems, multi-species station life-support systems. The true maturity of a civilization was hidden in such small things.

And yet the asari ships irritated him most of all. The Dominion cruiser aboard which Vekt traveled looked respectable beside salarian vessels. A good warship, created by a civilization that had lived under rachni pressure for almost a century.

Salarian ships were similar in their general logic. They differed in layout, speed, sensor density, and battle philosophy, but their form was understandable. An elongated hull was the natural choice for most spacefaring powers. It allowed a more powerful main axial weapon to be mounted.

Salarian ships were not the only ones like that. The quarians, batarians, and most other known species would choose the same path. Practicality always pulled the hull along the main axis of movement and fire.

The asari were the exception. Their ships were built according to a different logic, as if the hull was not the foundation of the design, but only the visible part of a more complex field shape. That was why the asari looked like a truly advanced civilization.

That was more unpleasant than any abyss. If the difference had been enormous, it could have been written off as the age of the civilization or access to ancient technology. But twenty percent meant that the asari had simply spent longer and more patiently refining every detail. Their ships, in essence, were expected to serve for at least five hundred years. For a civilization of long-lived beings, that was natural: a ship was not thrown away after a few decades of service, but modernized, preserved, and passed from era to era.

The Dominion could not afford such a luxury. Its ships were built for war, repair, and the next sortie to the front. They had to withstand a rachni strike, return to a shipyard, receive new sections, and go back into battle. Beauty was secondary in such a logic.

Vekt stepped away from the observation screen and allowed himself a smile. In the end, the idea of going specifically to Citadel Space had been excellent. What else did an Eternal need to satisfy his ambitions? Danger, foreign elites, an ancient station, civilizations that did not consider themselves prey, and asari who were far too confident in their own ability to charm others.

This promised to be interesting.

***

Aellarin

The cleansing of planets from the rachni continued. On the map, it looked like forward movement. In reality, each cleansed planet demanded so many forces that the joy of victory quickly drowned in new calculations.

There were not enough resources for everything. A large-scale expansion required absolutely everything: money, starships, transports, engineers, doctors, builders, orbital docks, garrisons, and specialists in colonial administration. The Dominion could not simply take all of that from emptiness. Almost the entire aiterri species had been living in a state of constant war for about a hundred years, and in that time the war had managed to become not a temporary misfortune, but the foundation of the whole economy.

Every plan had to be revised constantly. What had seemed like an acceptable operation yesterday became an overly expensive risk tomorrow. What was meant to go to a new colony was redirected to the front. Development continued, colonies grew, new routes were explored, but the Dominion still lacked a very great deal.

That was why, twenty years ago, the Council of Eternals expanded access to ectogenesis facilities. Previously, such complexes had remained in the hands of the state, major military programs, the most important colonies, and the Great Houses. Now even minor Houses began to receive permissions. Not all of them, and not without inspections, but the fact itself changed a great deal. Ectogenesis ceased to be only an instrument of central power and became part of the Dominion's general economy.

That did not mean a minor House could simply install capsules and begin growing citizens at will. Permission required proof of infrastructure: medical supervisors, food-production capacity, residential blocks, educational programs, and future jobs. Children had to be not only created. They had to be raised, educated, and integrated into the economy, otherwise an ectogenesis facility became not a strengthening, but an expensive problem.

The Council had not done this because life was good. The war devoured personnel faster than the old worlds could replace them. The Dominion needed future engineers, technicians, pilots, physicians, factory-line operators, colonial administrators, and military specialists. Ectogenesis did not solve the problem immediately, but it offered a chance, twenty or thirty years later, to receive generations prepared for the needs of war and expansion.

Was I afraid of the Houses because of this? In a military sense - no. Whatever ground armies the Great or minor Houses might try to assemble, those armies had to be maintained, supplied, and armed with modern equipment. All of that cost enormous money, required an industrial base, and immediately became visible to central services. A hidden army without orbital support in the modern era was not a threat to the metropolis, but a future line in an Inquisition report.

More importantly, the main thing remained unchanged: real control was in space. The Dominion battle fleet answered to the metropolis, the Council, and central command. No House could secretly build a force capable of matching even one full battle group. Civilian ships, even if gathered into enormous caravans, did not become a battle fleet. A transport with reinforced shields did not replace a cruiser, and a converted freighter did not turn into a monitor.

Stories like that would look fine in a cheap adventure novel, where a militia hides a giant fleet from an empire for decades in order to strike it in the back at the right moment. In reality, everything was simpler and harsher. A modern warship required shipyards, crews, ammunition, maintenance, spare parts, and thousands of specialists. None of that could be hidden under the guise of a civilian initiative.

That meant the Houses could be useful. They could build factories, raise personnel, develop colonies, take part of the burden upon themselves, and turn their own ambitions into economic growth. Yes, they were growing stronger. Yes, their influence was growing. But as long as the fleet, the key shipyards, the main aether chains, and the right of strategic command remained with the metropolis, that strengthening was an acceptable price for survival.

Besides, the real threat had not disappeared. The war with the rachni continued, and after the departure of the ships of Citadel Space, hive attacks had grown almost twice as harsh. The rachni pressed more often, more densely, and more viciously, as though they had sensed a change in the balance of forces.

The breach in our defense created by the destruction of two monitors in the joint battle with the Citadel fleet remained especially painful. A monitor was not only a heavy weapons platform, but also the center of a defensive group, a command node, the shield of a direction, and the support for smaller vessels. Their deaths forced us to recalculate the entire defensive line.

Earlier, the Dominion had been preparing forces to seize a bottleneck - a key passage through which the rachni transferred reinforcements into a disputed cluster. The operation was difficult, but possible. The plan involved a breakthrough, clearing the outer orbits, suppressing the hives, installing defensive platforms, and deploying a permanent grouping. If successful, the Dominion would be able to cut one of the important rachni routes.

Now that plan had to be postponed. According to military intelligence, a complete clearing of the cluster would cost the Dominion too many forces. Even if the operation ended in victory, there would be nothing left with which to hold the captured passage. One major rachni wave after that could throw the defense back and erase the entire success.

So the forces that had previously been prepared for the offensive were now being used to plug the breach. Shipyards received new priorities, transport lines were overloaded again, part of the colonial supply was delayed, and expansion plans in several directions were revised.

The only good news was Hivenkor. Construction of the forge world where eighty percent of the Dominion's warships were fully assembled was finally considered complete. The main infrastructure had been finished, adapted to aiterri work, and fully integrated into the Dominion's economy.

Now it was a true industrial world. Millions of aiterri worked there every day. Orbital shipyards hung above the surface, receiving completed ship sections. But the true strength of Hivenkor lay beneath the surface.

Multi-level factories descended for kilometers into the planetary crust. Where an ordinary industrial complex would have required decades of mining, reinforcement, energy networks, and transport tunnels, the rachni simply built the way they knew how. They bit into the planet, creating tunnels, chambers, load-bearing structures, and cavities that Dominion engineers later turned into workshops, warehouses, reactor halls, and transport arteries. In sixty years, Hivenkor had become a fortress no worse than the worlds the rachni turned into their hives.

The only truly vulnerable point remained the orbital shipyards. That was where parts arrived for later ship assembly.

To be honest, the idea of using rachni for megastructures had fully justified itself. An enemy capable, in only a few years, of fortifying itself on an alien planet so deeply that entire armies then had to dig it out proved to be the ideal builder for a project measured in decades. If the rachni could turn a captured world into an impregnable hive with almost no proper industrial base, then under Dominion control they created something far more advanced.

Building a plant of similar power by ordinary methods would have required the bulk of the entire Dominion's expenditures. And if the Council had tried to deepen it several kilometers by its own forces, construction would have continued for another hundred years.

The Council of Eternals would have built a dozen such worlds long ago, had it possessed enough resources to maintain them. But even one Hivenkor devoured too much. The element-zero processing plants gave it half of all refined aether. The rest went to keep the Dominion functioning normally. The forge world was not only a source of strength, but also an enormous maw that had to be fed constantly.

And yet arguing with the result was impossible. Hivenkor built ships, produced sections, supplied components, repaired damaged nodes, and allowed the fleet to hold on where an ordinary economy would long since have begun to suffocate. In the conditions of a nearly century-long war, that mattered more than any doubts.

And with the development of worlds beyond the home cluster, an opportunity appeared to create a second forge world. Reconnaissance had found a planet with a high content of element zero, but the deposits lay too deep for standard extraction. For ordinary mines, that would have meant gigantic costs, years of preparation, and questionable returns. For the rachni, such a planet was almost an invitation.

They had already begun to settle it even before their full defeat. Beneath the planet's crust stretched an enormous chaotic anthill descending five kilometers into the depths. The Dominion had controlled orbit for a long time, but the planet itself had only recently been cleared. And even now, no one intended to claim that it was completely safe.

Reconnaissance considered it likely that somewhere deep below, living queens might still be hiding. This had happened before. In cases of extreme danger and inevitable defeat, some queens burrowed as deeply as possible and entered hibernation.

Was it dangerous to send young queens there? Of course. Only an idiot or a fanatic could deny that. That was why the security measures were no softer than they had once been when working with Barbie, the first queen who had begun the construction of Hivenkor.

There was only one difference. The young queens knew the rules from the beginning. The combat group beside them was there not only to protect them from remaining rachni. It was also there to eliminate them in the event of betrayal. This was not hidden, softened, or dressed up in beautiful wording. The queens knew that if they attempted to break control, orbit would turn their new nests into glowing graves.

But they accepted those conditions calmly. They had already tasted life in a full society of sapients. A life where they were respected and valued, rather than the endless solitude of a queen who knew every movement of her subjects and could control them down to every muscle.

For the rachni, freedom had always been a strange concept. A queen was born the center of her own world, heard everyone, knew everyone, and could direct everyone. But that very fact made her a prisoner of her own hive. The Dominion's young queens had grown up differently. They knew control, supervision, and the threat of destruction, but alongside that they knew conversation, exchange, agreement, and work whose meaning extended beyond reproduction and war.

***

Emberlis Veil was waiting for me in the small hall beneath the western wing of the Valinor Palace. Formally, the room was listed as an archival office of the Council, but for more than a century I had used it for conversations that were not supposed to appear even in sealed protocols.

Veil rose as soon as the doors closed behind me and bowed her head obediently.

"Long time no see, Emberlis," I said, walking toward the table. "How many years has it been since you were last on Aetris? Thirty?"

"I am happy to see you again, my lord," she replied. "I have not been in Valinor for twenty-eight years. A short time for an Eternal."

I chuckled. For an Eternal, of course. Amusing to hear it from a woman who should already have died. Outwardly she had barely changed, except for the careful makeup done not to make her younger, but, on the contrary, to make her look older.

"For an Eternal - yes. For your cover identity, it is already a noticeable span. You will soon have to change it. You are two hundred and fifty years old, Emberlis. It is time to prepare the transfer of affairs to your 'heiress.'"

"I have no problems with that, my lord. Caiaphas has been controlling the body of my 'daughter' for twenty years. She resembles me enough that after a couple of cosmetic operations I will be able to assume a new mask. But I plan to put her in my place a little later, when this identity has accumulated enough power."

"You will also have to die soon, my lord," she added quietly.

"Yes, yes, do not remind me. How much simpler it was two thousand years ago. Started aging - jumped off a cliff and young again. Now too much is tied to me for me to just disappear for a few years. Perhaps I should start praying to Aethra so that she finally makes me an Eternal?"

I said it almost jokingly. Almost. In truth, the question irritated me more and more. Every new cycle became harder than the last. The world was no longer a village, a city, or even a planet where one could disappear, die, and return under another name.

Emberlis raised her eyes. There was no smile on her face. Only the calm, heavy certainty of a person who had long ago answered the main question of the world for herself.

"There is only one God, and it is you, Aellarin. And I am working to give you greater power."

"Yes, your rachni research project," I said after a pause. "Any results?"

"Yes, my lord. Our equipment still detects nothing. But Caiaphas says that the song of the surviving subjects has grown louder."

"Louder?"

"That is how he describes it. In his estimation, some of the subjects have begun to perceive the structure of the rachni signal better. Not to understand it fully, but to react to it. Especially after prolonged exposure to the testing environment."

"And what percentage survived?"

"Only one Mortal in a hundred survived and retained enough sanity for further work in the real world. The methodology is not yet complete, my lord. The artificial intelligence has not found a stable way to create the Gifted. But the selection is already producing material with which we can work. Caiaphas believes that some failures are caused not by a lack of potential, but by the destruction of personality before the potential has time to manifest."

"How comforting."

"Those who survive become more resilient," she said. "Their reaction to the song changes. Some begin to hear it even outside direct contact with rachni material."

"Speaking of artificial intelligence," I said. "Are you certain it will not rebel? The history of every AI in this universe is not exactly varied."

"Everything is secure, my lord."

"That is not an answer."

"Its core is isolated. It has no direct access to external networks. Communication channels pass through Inquisition filters, physical circuits are separated, and emergency shutdown is duplicated on three levels. The complex is under constant observation, and the orbital group has orders to destroy the facility if Kane escapes control."

"I did not ask whether it can be killed, Emberlis. I asked whether you are certain it will not rebel."

"No, my lord. There is no complete certainty. But the risk is acceptable."

"Continue," I said after a long pause. "But I want a full report on this project."

"It will be done, my lord."

I was already about to end the conversation, but stopped. One question was still worth asking. Not because I did not know the answer. Quite the opposite.

"And Emberlis."

"Yes?"

"If your god orders you to stop the project, will you stop?"

She looked at me as though the question were too simple.

"Yes, Aellarin."

"Even if you are certain I am wrong?"

"You are not wrong. You can only see a path that is not yet available to me."

"That blind faith of yours in me is exactly what frightens me, Emberlis," I said softly.

She seemed to take it as praise.

***

Interlude. Kane's Game

My name was Lior Tarven. I still remembered that name when I woke in a filthy restroom with cold tile on the walls. My leg was chained to a pipe near the floor, the light was flickering, and an old screen hung beside the door. I did not understand where I was. The last thing I remembered was the road home and a sharp prick in my neck.

"Welcome, Lior," a voice said from the speaker. "This is your first trial. It has several solutions. You are here to have fun."

At the time, I decided it was someone's sick joke. I shouted, called for help, demanded explanations, promised that people would come for me. The voice did not answer again. Only a timer appeared on the screen, along with a short inscription:

"There is always a way out."

The most obvious way out lay nearby. I do not want to remember how long I stared at it before I understood that there was almost no choice left. The pain was real. The fear was real. Then everything went dark.

Half an hour later I woke in a white room. Whole. Unharmed. Without the chain, without the wound, but with the memory of everything I had done. A glass of water stood on the table, and beside it lay a placard:

"Fast path found. Result: mediocre."

After that, the door opened and I was led into the common hall. Others were sitting there. Mortals like me. Some watched silently, others laughed. The large screen showed that same room, only now I could see that the body of a non-player character lay in the corner. A key had been hidden inside it.

"Another meat one," someone said.

And everyone laughed.

Later I was told that everyone goes through that welcome trial. Some fail it, and no one ever knows anything more about them. Others choose the fast path. A few, the rarest, find the key and get out almost without loss. Then everyone watches together as the next newcomer goes through the trial.

Kane called it a game. He said we were supposed to have fun. That the trials existed for our enjoyment. That every day gave us a chance to become better. No one explained why we were here, where our real bodies were, or whether it was possible to leave.

The trials followed one after another. Rooms, corridors, traps, riddles, choices in which the bad option seemed like the only one. Sometimes we were sent in alone. Sometimes in groups. Kane always spoke calmly, almost cheerfully, as though everything that was happening truly was entertainment.

At first I did not understand how the others could laugh. How one could watch a newcomer in that room and place bets on whether he would find the key. How one could rejoice at another person's pain simply because the body would be restored in half an hour. It seemed to me that they had all gone insane.

Three weeks later, I was laughing with them.

Not because it had become funny. Cruelty had simply stopped feeling special. In the game, everything hurt, broke, disappeared, and returned. Any injury passed in about half an hour. The body became whole, but the memory of the trauma remained.

Not everyone endured it. Some simply fell silent and no longer answered questions. Some began speaking to people no one else could see. Some listened to the walls. Then the worst thing happened to them.

They changed. First the voice, then the movements, and then the face. Then the person turned into a terrifying, aggressive creature with several heads, one that no longer remembered who it had been before. It was dangerous to stay near such things for long. If you lingered, foreign thoughts began to sound in your head, and you could become the same.

Kane disposed of them himself. White doors appeared, black faceless figures came out, and the broken one was taken away. Unfortunately, they did not vanish from the virtual space.

They simply wandered the labyrinths.

The labyrinths began beyond the far doors of the common hall. No one went there without reason. Old corridors, dark branches, stairways that led too deep, and the voices of those who had been taken away long ago. Sometimes they called us by name, and sometimes they asked us to open the door, promising to show us the exit.

Kane said we must not go there.

And that was exactly why everyone knew the exit had to be somewhere inside.