Mass Effect. Chapter 34. (Patreon)

Abael Vect

Sometimes it seemed to me that the work of our mission on the Citadel benefited the Dominion more than entire military campaigns.

Not because diplomats were more important than admirals. Without a fleet, any treaty remained little more than an elegantly worded request that could be forgotten the moment it was signed. But a military victory could let us occupy one system, while a properly drafted agreement could hand us several clusters at once - before the first Aiterri ship even entered them.

When the Dominion's permanent mission first appeared on the Citadel, it consisted of 5,781 Aiterri: diplomats, military advisers, scientists, engineers, interpreters, officials, and those whose actual occupations were best left out of official documents. The salarians watched every one of us. They tracked purchases, movements, conversations, information-system queries, and even our choices in restaurants.

Ten years had changed the situation considerably.

We were still being watched, but the Aiterri were no longer confined to the mission itself. Our engineers worked in shipyards, trade agents opened offices on the residential rings, scientists took part in joint research, and Dominion officers regularly appeared at joint-command headquarters. Some members of the mission had already changed positions several times and built connections among asari aristocrats, salarian clans, volus banks, and quarian associations.

That was enough to give us a good understanding of local politics. We knew who held the debts of particular republics, which salarian clans had spent decades keeping one another away from military contracts, and which asari matriarchs smiled when they met only because they could not openly demand the other woman's death. But it would have been foolish to claim that we had uncovered every secret of Citadel Space.

Even the salarians did not know everything, despite having turned information gathering into something close to a national art. Every asari republic had its own interests, old agreements, and hidden obligations. Every major salarian clan maintained several alliances at once, some of them contradicting one another. Then there were quarian associations, batarian dynasties, volus banks, elcor trading houses, and hundreds of less significant organizations.

Behind every understandable arrangement, there was another one.

I did not see that as a problem. To influence a system, one did not need to understand every movement within it. It was enough to know where the main current ran and what obstacles could alter its direction. For now, that current was still the war.

A map of the mass relay network hung on the wall of my office. The systems of Citadel Space were marked in blue, Dominion territory in gold, and confirmed rachni holdings in red. Several fortified clusters lay between our lands and the main directions of the allied offensive.

The Dominion had liberated its own worlds and restored its defenses, but any further advance ran into systems the rachni had been fortifying for more than a century. Breaking through such a line was possible, but until recently the cost of the operation had exceeded what the Council of Eternals considered acceptable.

At the same time, the asari and salarians were already discussing who would receive which territories after victory.

Some systems had not even been surveyed yet, but preliminary agreements, lists of future colonies, and proposed trade routes were already being drawn up for them. The asari republics wanted habitable worlds. The salarian clans were interested in deposits of rare elements, convenient research bases, and control over transit routes.

My heart truly ached at the thought that the Dominion continued to hold the front while our allies divided up lands that still had to be liberated. Then again, one could suffer over injustice forever. It was far more useful to take part in the division.

I minimized the map and opened the latest report from the joint transport committee. Nearly four times as much cargo had passed through the relays of Citadel Space over the previous year as at the time of our arrival. Most of the growth was connected to the krogan.

Their armies had to be transported to rachni worlds and supplied with weapons, ammunition, food, medicine, and equipment. After every major assault, the wounded had to be evacuated, damaged equipment brought back, and surviving units transferred to a new front. A single large clan could number hundreds of thousands of fighters, and hundreds of clans were taking part in the offensive.

There were not enough military transports or old civilian ships to move that many troops.

The shipyards began operating without pause. At first they simply expanded production of proven designs, then simplified variants appeared, and several years later the Citadel Council agreed to reduce the mandatory standards for ships operating on internal routes. The measures were declared temporary and justified solely by military necessity.

But nothing became permanent faster than a temporary rule that made money.

The civilian fleet benefited. Before the war, ships built by different companies often used incompatible mounts, power connectors, control systems, and even proprietary formats for diagnostic data. Repairing a civilian transport far from its home shipyard could take months simply because the nearest station did not manufacture the required part.

Mass construction forced the companies to come to terms.

A few dozen types of reactor modules replaced hundreds of previous variants. Standard dimensions appeared for fuel lines, airlocks, cargo mounts, and escape pods. Companies continued to protect their proprietary developments, but the main components could now be replaced in almost any major port.

That significantly reduced not only the cost of building ships, but of operating them as well. Crews no longer had to wait for a part to arrive from the other end of Citadel Space. Sometimes it was enough to dock at the nearest station, choose a suitable certified module, and resume the voyage a few days later.

Entire systems developed along with the shipyards. Fuel depots, repair docks, rescue bases, customs stations, and residential districts for crews appeared near the busiest relays. Places where a single military outpost had stood twenty years earlier could now be home to hundreds of thousands of beings.

Some stations grew into true port cities.

Hotels, medical centers, markets, banks, and offices of transport companies opened there. Quarian engineers repaired engines, volus issued loans for new ships, elcor insured cargoes, and batarians found workers for tasks the others preferred not to handle openly.

The war destroyed some worlds and created others at the same time.

Trade between planets increased every year. Transporting raw materials and industrial goods remained the foundation of commerce, but the falling cost of travel was gradually changing everyday life as well.

Fresh food from the other end of the relay network had once appeared almost exclusively on the Citadel. Only there were enough wealthy residents to pay for complicated transport, the maintenance of a specific atmosphere in the cargo holds, and insurance against spoilage. In other systems, alien food was more often sold in processed form or reproduced with synthesizers. Now that was changing.

Restaurants serving quarian dishes appeared on major asari worlds, although their cooks used only safe substitutes. Salarian entrepreneurs grew plants from Thessia in sealed complexes. Even some colonies could now afford imported fruit, spices, and drinks that had once been considered unattainable luxuries.

Galactic demand proved almost limitless. Several billion asari could turn a rare product from a small planet into the foundation of an entire industry within a single generation.

The other side of that growth became more visible every year.

Military cargo demanded speed, so governments relaxed import rules. If a container belonged to a registered contractor and was headed to the front, it might be checked only against its paperwork. Ships returning from liberated worlds sometimes passed through abbreviated quarantine procedures so they could collect another load of troops more quickly.

Diseases, parasites, and invasive organisms traveled with the goods.

Most died in unsuitable atmospheres, but sometimes a single surviving spore or larva was enough to create a problem for an entire continent. On one asari colony, a fungus brought back from the front destroyed almost a third of the local crops. In a salarian system, authorities spent several months fighting an aquatic parasite that had entered the ocean through a ship's reservoirs.

For now, incidents like these were treated as isolated mistakes. In a few decades, there would be too many of them to keep using that description.

The quality of the ships themselves worried me even more.

Civilian vessels on internal routes had rarely carried full armament even before. In a peaceful system, weapons only increased cost, complicated registration, and attracted unnecessary questions from patrols. But companies were no longer cutting only the weapons.

Hull armor was made as thin as the calculations allowed. One reactor was installed instead of several backups. Sealing systems divided a ship into the minimum possible number of compartments, while cooling was designed around ordinary operating conditions rather than serious damage.

The navigation barrier remained mandatory. Without it, even a small particle at high speed could punch straight through a ship. But cheap vessels were not fitted with full shields capable of surviving weapons fire or even a nearby explosion.

Some companies were abandoning proper escape pods as well. Formally, a ship still had crew shelters, an air reserve, and emergency beacons. In practice, if the reactor compartment was destroyed, reaching them was often impossible.

A report on the loss of the transport Happy Voyage lay in front of me. The name looked almost mocking beside the list of the dead. The ship had not even been three years old. During deceleration, one of its fuel circuits cracked, a fire broke out, and the sealing system failed to isolate the engineering compartment. The crew managed to send a distress signal, but eight minutes later power failed and the vessel lost control. Rescue services arrived an hour later. Eleven of forty-two beings survived. The investigation found that the ship had fully complied with the current temporary standards.

Twenty years ago, building an interstellar vessel cost no less than a hundred million credits. Even a small transport required a fortune, the backing of a large company, or a bank loan lasting many years. Now a person could start a freight business of their own by spending a few tens of millions on what the crews themselves called a flying coffin.

The low price attracted thousands of new owners. Some truly became successful haulers, paid off their loans quickly, and bought a second ship. Others cut maintenance costs, overloaded their holds, and accepted any route they could get so long as they did not miss the next bank payment.

The number of private voyages was growing faster than the ability to control them.

Most systems monitored the space around relays, major planets, and stations. There, sensors recorded every ship, traffic controllers checked routes, and customs services could demand an inspection. But at the edges of a system lay billions of kilometers of emptiness where permanent posts could not be maintained.

All one had to do was switch off the civilian beacon, change course after leaving the controlled zone, and meet another ship far from the main routes.

In theory, a violation like that immediately made a vessel suspicious. In practice, a patrol first had to notice it among thousands of legal flights, then spend fuel and several days investigating. Most systems simply did not have enough ships.

Sooner or later, that would lead to a major rise in piracy. The first signs had already appeared.

Kelara was sending reports from batarian systems about strange activity among the local aristocracy. Several Houses were buying cheap transports through front companies despite having no involvement in trade and no major colonial holdings. The ships disappeared soon after purchase, then turned up near illegal repair stations.

Shadow workshops were turning civilian vessels into raiders. Decommissioned guns were mounted on the hulls, reactors were reinforced, cargo spaces were converted to carry troops, and the simplest combat shields were added. Sometimes the equipment was stripped from damaged ships, sometimes bought from corrupt military personnel, and sometimes obtained directly from government warehouses.

One such raider posed no threat to a real cruiser. But to an unarmed transport, even an old shipboard gun was deadly.

The batarian aristocracy was not yet planning an open war with Citadel Space. Most likely, the Houses were building forces of their own to pressure weak colonies, seize cargo, and transport slaves. While the war with the rachni consumed the Council's attention, the frontier was becoming less and less protected.

The problem would only grow worse after victory. Thousands of shipyards would lose military orders. Hundreds of thousands of pilots, technicians, and hired workers would be left without the work they had grown used to. The ships now carrying krogan armies would no longer be needed in anything like their current numbers.

Some companies would go bankrupt and begin selling off their vessels. Prices would fall even further. Cheap transports would end up in the hands of anyone who could put together a small crew and pay for fuel to the nearest relay.

At the same time, the krogan would receive new worlds.

Their population was already growing faster than projections. Every liberated planet allowed new clans to settle, and every clan needed ships to move fighters, weapons, and plunder. For now, the krogan depended on Citadel fleets, but that dependence could not last forever.

Citadel Space was building more than a transport network with which to defeat the rachni. It was creating roads, ships, and crews that would later be used by the krogan, pirates, and any government that wanted to expand its influence.

I had no intention of stopping the process. Even if it had been possible, weakening the transport system would have prolonged the war and demanded additional sacrifices from the Dominion.

It was far more sensible to prepare for the consequences. And, of course, profit from them.

On my second screen, the report of a quarian company in which I had invested part of my personal funds remained open. Asari manufacturers were formally willing to accept our money, but offered terms under which all the profit remained with them. Salarian companies were even more cautious. They were willing to take our investment provided we received no access to the technology, production, management, or most of the revenue.

The quarians proved considerably more accommodating.

Their company did not try to compete with the manufacturers of the cheapest transports. A single quarian ship cost roughly three times as much as a flying coffin from a small private yard. In return, it came with redundant systems, proper compartment sealing, several reactor circuits, and full escape pods.

The quarians cared about crew comfort. Cabins did not resemble cramped boxes, air-purification systems could operate for years without replacement, and the engineering spaces allowed most repairs to be carried out without completely dismantling entire sections. For a crew spending months or even years aboard a ship, that mattered.

Its greatest advantage remained service life.

A cheap transport required most of its systems to be replaced after only twenty years. Sometimes companies planned from the beginning to scrap the ship as soon as the loan had been paid off. A quarian vessel, with proper maintenance, could operate several times longer and undergo many rounds of modernization.

For a hauler thinking only about the next voyage, the price difference seemed enormous. For a large company planning to operate for centuries, the quarian ship was the better investment.

Those were exactly the buyers we were counting on.

My investments allowed one production line to be expanded and development to begin on several civilian models. In return, the Dominion received a stake in the company, access to some of its technology, and priority when placing orders.

In addition, I had promised to provide the quarians with production capacity in our territory after the war.

That did not mean handing them an entire world or an independent shipyard. The company would receive facilities on one of our orbital industrial stations, access to local materials, and the right to hire Dominion specialists. We would receive production of high-quality civilian ships, the experience of quarian engineers, and another channel through which to acquire foreign technology.

The quarians agreed more readily than the asari. Their own associations were constantly fighting for room in markets where the ancient republics already controlled the best routes and the largest contracts. To them, the Dominion was not only a new customer, but a chance to gain a production base beyond the influence of their old competitors.

Naturally, part of the Council considered my investment excessively risky. The quarian company could go bankrupt, lose its contracts, or come under pressure from larger manufacturers. But even then, our engineers would gain access to its documentation and specialists.

Not every investment had to pay off in money.

Even so, I considered trade far from the most important result of my work.

I opened the map again. Beyond the fortified rachni line lay five clusters the Dominion could not yet liberate.

Only a few years earlier, those clusters had been treated as unclaimed future territories. The asari were already studying planets suitable for colonization. Salarian reconnaissance probes were mapping deposits and old stations. Some republics had even signed preliminary agreements with companies that were supposed to begin exploiting resources after victory.

Nothing prevented the Dominion from claiming the same systems. But without official recognition, liberation would be followed by a long dispute. Our fleet would destroy the rachni, and then an asari republic would produce an old map, a salarian clan would present its survey results, and both would demand access for colonization. I had no intention of allowing that.

The Citadel Council could not simply gift us five clusters. It did not own the territories of the republics and had no right to force independent governments to abandon their claims. Even the Councilors themselves did not yet possess enough authority to redraw the borders of Citadel Space with a single decision.

So instead of one treaty, we needed dozens.

The Council formally recognized the Dominion's right to establish military administrations in liberated systems. Several interested asari republics renounced their colonial claims in advance. Salarian clans recognized our future borders in exchange for access to certain trade routes and to scientific data that would be obtained after the systems were cleared.

Separate agreements covered the relays, rescue operations, demilitarized trade stations, and the rights of foreign companies that had already invested in exploration.

The central clause remained simple: once liberated, the five clusters would automatically pass under Dominion administration.

Securing that wording proved far more difficult than drawing up the plans for a military operation.

Some asari believed a state as young as ours should not receive territories that large. The salarians feared that the Dominion would close the transit routes and gain direct access to their markets. The military demanded that joint command retain the right to station bases in any strategically important system.

I had to concede where the concessions cost us nothing.

Merchant ships from Citadel Space received the right of free passage through the future territories. Allied supply stations could continue operating until the end of the war. In the event of another rachni offensive, the Dominion agreed to provide joint command with long-range reconnaissance data.

Control over the planets, resources, permanent military bases, and internal administration remained ours.

To achieve that result, I had to support a faction that had long demanded stronger central authority for the Citadel. I had regarded it warily before. A strong Council might one day become a rival to the Dominion, capable of forcing dozens of states to act as a single whole. While the asari and salarians argued with one another, it was easier for us to expand our influence.

But a weak Council could not guarantee that the treaty would be honored.

The Councilors had already ceased to be simple envoys of their governments passing along decisions prepared in advance. They were acquiring staffs of their own, military committees, budgets, and officials. Yet they had not become independent rulers of Citadel Space. This was exactly the moment to help them take the next step - after receiving payment in advance.

The five clusters still belonged to the rachni. We had no cities, garrisons, or stations there. But on every official map, a gold Dominion marker had already appeared beside them.

Sometimes diplomacy truly did move ahead of the fleet.

Changing the asari's attitude proved more difficult.

They had not accepted the Aiterri as their equals. Twenty years was not enough for that even by the standards of mortal species, much less for a civilization that measured its history in millennia. Many matriarchs still looked at us as talented, dangerous, but young beings who had yet to learn how to behave in galactic society. But they no longer regarded us as outsiders.

We were closer to them than the batarians, the volus, or even the salarians. The Aiterri resembled the asari in appearance, lived far longer than most species, and possessed the Gift, which they considered a form of biotics. Our Houses made more sense to the asari republics than batarian dynasties did, while the cult of Aethra did not seem nearly as savage to a society that still revered ancient goddesses.

That resemblance had to be used.

The asari liked to imagine Thessia as the elder sister of younger civilizations. They readily offered help, gave advice, and explained exactly how everyone else ought to develop. Direct attempts to argue with them caused irritation. A request for assistance, on the other hand, could often obtain something they would never have given a rival.

And so, in their minds, Aetris was gradually becoming Thessia's younger brother.

Young, warlike, and sometimes too independent, but still kindred in spirit. The Dominion might be dangerous, but its danger was directed against the rachni. The Aiterri made mistakes, but listened to the ancient asari civilization. At least, that was the image our diplomats were creating. I intended to use it until the war was over.

Let the matriarchs consider us their juniors. An elder sister finds it far easier to share technology, markets, and political support with a relative than with a future opponent. By the time they finally understood just how much the Dominion had grown, it would be too late to change agreements already signed.

The internal communications signal pulled my attention away from the map. A few seconds later, the door opened and my aide entered the office. He stopped at the threshold and bowed his head.

"Lord Abael, the Council is calling for you. The discussion of coordination between the forces of Citadel Space and the Dominion is beginning."

I closed the quarian company's report.

"Have the asari confirmed their participation?"

"Yes, my lord. Their military command has accepted the main terms. The salarians will also send formations and reconnaissance ships."

"And the krogan?"

"They have received preliminary orders to prepare their ground forces. They have not yet been told the target of the operation."

I rose from behind the desk and looked once more at the five golden clusters beyond the rachni line.

Ten years of negotiation, trade, observation, and careful pressure had finally produced a result. Citadel Space had agreed to help the Dominion destroy the rachni forces that had kept us trapped inside our own territories for so long.

"Tell them I'm on my way."

***

Interlude. War Correspondent Elara Viren

The broadcast ran with a six-hour delay.

To the viewers it was live, but truly live broadcasts from the front did not exist during wartime. Every recording first went to a command station, where intelligence reviewed it, stripped out coordinates, routes, and any data accidentally caught in frame, and only then forwarded it to us. Even after that, the military could stop a transmission if the situation at the front had changed in the meantime.

So by the time my words were heard on Aetris, the ships I was talking about would already be in another system. Some of them might no longer exist by then.

That was not something I was supposed to say on air.

The rear command station was far enough from the site of the operation that it faced no danger. War arrived here as recordings, dry reports, and lights on a tactical map. Behind a transparent partition, dozens of specialists received data from the fleets, pieced together damaged fragments of communications, and decided exactly what could be shown to the public.

The approved opening script lay on my desk. I read it several times, then set it aside.

It was correct. There was not a single forbidden phrase in it, not one unnecessary number, and not one promise that might prove premature. But a correct script was not enough for a day the Dominion had waited more than a century to see.

A countdown lit up on the panel in front of me.

Five.

Four.

Three.

I straightened and looked into the lens.

"Today Aethra watches not only the Aiterri. Beneath her gaze stand all the peoples of the Dominion and our allies. For the first time, our state goes into battle not as a besieged fortress, but as one of the great powers of the civilized galaxy."

A map of the Dominion appeared behind me. The golden systems ended at a broad band beyond which rachni territory began. For many decades, that border had barely changed. Our ships destroyed individual fleets, cleared frontier planets, and restored ruined fortifications, but the main passages remained locked.

Today, that was supposed to change.

"For more than a hundred years, the rachni have dictated the direction of this war. They chose where to gather a new fleet, which system to attack, and how many ships to throw into the next breakthrough. We won, but almost always we were forced to respond to their actions. Beyond the fortified systems lay dozens of worlds we could not liberate without losses severe enough to weaken the entire Dominion."

The map gave way to footage of ships waiting near a relay. The military had authorized us to show only a few formations, so the viewers could not determine their true numbers. Even the names of the systems had been removed.

Aiterri dreadnoughts filled the frame. Transports, repair ships, and tankers moved between the combat formations. There were so many of them that the individual vessels merged into a continuous stream.

"Around five thousand warships have been assembled for this operation, including almost sixty dreadnoughts. They are accompanied by hundreds of transport, repair, medical, and rescue vessels. The exact distribution of forces will remain classified until the battle is over. We will not name the systems where the reserves are stationed, show the routes of individual formations, or report the timing of relay transits."

The military had added that warning. It seemed obvious, but the editors insisted that I deliver it at the very beginning. Too many viewers had grown accustomed to detailed analyses of older operations and did not understand why this report showed less than ordinary military news.

"But we can already tell you who is fighting beside us today."

Footage from an Aiterri shipyard appeared. Ships left the docks one after another, while repair crews continued working beside hulls that were not yet complete.

"The Dominion has committed formations drawn from every major front. Other peoples of our state serve aboard these ships alongside the Aiterri. Many crews were formed during the war itself. For them, serving together ceased to be unusual a long time ago."

Next came footage from one of the transports. In a cramped compartment, Arun pilots checked their helmets while Lizards beside them secured heavy equipment. Someone noticed the camera and raised a hand. The others kept working.

The recording was already almost two days old. I did not know what had happened to the transport after it was sent.

"For the Aruns, this war began with destroyed cities and millions of dead. For decades, the Lizards have assaulted planets where soldiers of most other species could not survive. Today, their children and grandchildren are taking part in an operation intended to open the way into the depths of rachni space."

The image changed. Now the viewers saw one of the asari ships. Its bridge was almost silent. Officers sat around a shared tactical display, and a tall asari in a dark uniform stood at the center.

The footage lasted only a few seconds.

"The largest allied formations have been provided by the asari republics. Their ships are considerably faster than most heavy Dominion vessels, and their crews have spent decades fighting the rachni on many different fronts. It is the asari who have taken on one of the most dangerous parts of the operation."

I did not say which part. I did not say that some of those ships had already been fighting for several days. I did not say that they were deliberately allowing the enemy to pursue them while gradually retreating toward a system chosen in advance.

The editors had even cut the word "bait" from the script.

"Salarian reconnaissance ships are tracking the enemy's movements, transmitting data to joint command, and checking neighboring systems. In this war, detecting a single fleet in time can sometimes matter more than adding another dreadnought."

Then came footage from the krogan transports.

They looked loud even without sound. Thousands of fighters filled the cargo decks, checking weapons, arguing, and painting clan symbols onto their armor. Most of them did not yet know which planet they would be sent to.

"The krogan armies are waiting for the spaceborne phase to end. If the fortified system is taken, it will be their task, together with Dominion ground forces, to land on the planets, destroy the surviving hives, and hold the surface. For many krogan, this will not be their first campaign. Some clans have been fighting the rachni for several generations."

We showed quarian repair ships taking damaged vessels aboard. Then came asari medical stations, volus cargo transports, and mixed rescue teams. Not all of them took part in combat, but without them, five thousand warships could not remain in foreign systems for more than a few days.

"Victory rarely belongs only to those who fire the guns. Behind every dreadnought stand the shipyards that built it, the transports that delivered its ammunition, the repair crews that returned it to service, and the medical teams that receive the wounded. Millions of beings are taking part in this operation. Most of them will never see the enemy, but without their work the fleet could not make a single transit."

For several seconds, we removed the footage and left only the map.

Five thousand warships seemed like an enormous force. Before the war, the Dominion could not have imagined a fleet like this. Now even that number did not guarantee an easy victory.

The rachni had spent decades fortifying the frontier systems. Fixed batteries and other orbital installations surrounded the relays. Beneath the surfaces of the planets lay hives capable of producing new ships and millions of soldiers. Even after the enemy's main fleet was destroyed, an assault could continue for many more months.

The viewers needed to be reminded of that as well.

"Today's operation will not end the war. Beyond the first fortified system lie others, and beyond them are worlds where the rachni have lived for centuries. Even in the event of a complete victory, our armies will still spend a long time destroying hives, cleansing planets, and restoring relay stations."

I paused briefly.

"But for the first time, we are not going to wait for their next strike."

A signal lit up behind the lens. The first update cleared for transmission had arrived from command level. I kept talking while the editor read the message and then put its key words on my screen.

Contact confirmed. The first phase of the operation is proceeding according to plan.

"Several allied formations have already entered combat. We cannot say where the engagement is taking place or how many ships are involved. Command confirms that the operation is proceeding in accordance with the approved plan."

A standard phrase. It could mean anything from complete success to an attempt to preserve command and control after a devastating defeat.

The broadcast continued for almost two hours. Between my segments, we showed footage of crews preparing, stories from the families of service members, and old recordings of frontier battles. Experts explained how relays worked, compared ships built by different species, and cautiously discussed the significance of the operation without access to most of the real data.

New messages arrived at the station constantly.

Some were immediately marked in red and vanished from the newsroom screens. Some carried warnings forbidding publication for several years. A few recordings were cleared for use without sound and only after every tactical display had been removed.

We saw fragments of the war.

An asari cruiser came out of a relay with a damaged engine. Aiterri rescuers pulled crew members from a breached transport compartment. A salarian reconnaissance ship transmitted a brief report, and then the recording cut off.

A separate group of editors worked with personal messages. Before the operation, service members had been allowed to record messages for their families. The files were supposed to be sent only in the event of death, but some crews had agreed to provide part of the material for the future chronicle. There were thousands of such recordings.

A krogan promised his sons he would bring them a chitin plate from a destroyed hive. An Arun pilot complained that her parents would find out about her participation in the operation from the news anyway. A young Aiterri spent a long time trying to find solemn words, then lost his train of thought and simply asked his younger sister to look after their mother.

Almost no one spoke about heroism.

They talked about home, unkept promises, debts, children, and the things they intended to do after returning. That was why those recordings felt more honest than any speech.

I selected several messages whose authors were confirmed to still be alive as of the latest report. The rest could not be shown until the casualty lists had been checked.

"Over the past few days, thousands of service members have left recordings for their families and for future chronicles. Thousands of cameras are operating aboard ships, with landing units, and in rescue services. Once the operation is over, we will learn many stories about those who kept damaged ships in action, went back for those left behind, and continued carrying out their mission after losing their command."

I looked directly into the lens.

"But most acts like these will never appear in an official report. In a battle of this scale, it is impossible to preserve every name and every recording. That is why it is important to remember today: five thousand ships are not symbols on a map. Living beings serve aboard every one of them, and they want to return home."

The next update cleared for publication arrived three hours later.

The main rachni force was continuing to move. The allied formation remained combat-capable. Several reserve fleets had been ordered to prepare for transit.

I was forbidden from saying the last part.

By then, the viewers on Aetris had probably stopped leaving their screens. Large projectors had been set up in the squares of major cities. Temples remained open, and facilities connected to the fleet temporarily suspended some work so employees could follow the broadcast.

For most citizens, the war had become distant in recent years. The rachni had not broken through to inhabited Dominion worlds for a long time. New generations knew them from textbooks, monuments, and reports on military spending. But today the war had become real again.

Not because the enemy had drawn closer to their homes. Quite the opposite - because for the first time our ships were preparing to move beyond a border many had begun to regard as permanent.

Before the next segment, I was given the name of the commander of the Dominion forces. It was not secret, but the military had deliberately refused to confirm it before the operation began.

"The Dominion formations are commanded by Admiral Tiberius Kirk. He served for many years on the frontier and took part in the battles that led to first contact with Citadel Space. He has now been given command of the largest strike force our state has ever assembled."

Tiberius Kirk appeared on the screen.

The footage had been recorded before the fleet departed. The admiral stood on the bridge of his flagship, speaking with several officers. There was nothing ceremonial in his movements. He skimmed through data, asked short questions, and barely looked toward the camera.

We had received no special address from him.

At first the editors considered that a problem, but I was almost glad. Before a battle like this, another beautiful speech would have felt out of place. Kirk was preparing to command a fleet, not become the hero of a broadcast.

"The admiral declined to make a separate address before the operation began. In his message to command, he asked that the coming battle not be called decisive until the last ship returns from the fighting. We will honor that request."

That sentence had not been in the approved script. Several editors looked at me, but no one stopped the broadcast.

"But we can already say that never before have the Dominion and Citadel Space acted in such close coordination. Our communications systems had to be integrated. Tactical designations were translated into several languages. For weeks, crews practiced joint transits and learned to recognize unfamiliar ships among thousands of contacts."

Asari and Aiterri officers sitting at the same table appeared on the screen.

"Only ten years ago, we knew almost nothing about one another. Today, asari formations cover Dominion ships, salarian reconnaissance passes information to our headquarters, and krogan armies are preparing to land after the Aruns and Lizards. That does not mean the disagreements between our states have disappeared. But today, they have been set aside for a common purpose."

By the end of the first day, the broadcast had to be interrupted for a while. New messages stopped arriving, and the military refused to explain why.

The silence lasted almost four hours.

We continued showing older footage, but conversations around the station gradually faded. Specialists looked more and more often toward the closed tactical screens. Even the editors stopped arguing over wording.

The delay might have been part of the secrecy regime. Communications might have deteriorated after a relay transit. The transmitting ships might simply have been too busy to send material.

But there were other possible reasons.

I reread the opening script in front of me. Its final paragraph spoke of the inevitable victory of the sapient species over the swarm. I had not delivered that part. No one's victory was inevitable.

At last, activity began at command level. Several officers entered the newsroom, cut off access to the general network, and handed the head editor a new data package.

He read it twice. Then he looked at me and nodded.

"We have confirmation," he said. "The first objective has been completed. The enemy's main mobile forces have entered battle with the combined fleet."

"Destroyed?"

"The wording is different for now. The enemy has lost the ability to retreat in an organized manner."

"Losses?"

"Not cleared for publication."

"Have our forces begun the assault on the fortified system?"

He was silent for a moment.

"You can say the way is open."

That was enough.

We went back on air. This time the text in front of me was only a few lines long.

"Combined Fleet Command has confirmed the successful completion of the first phase of the operation. The main mobile rachni forces in the cluster were drawn out of the fortified systems and entered battle under conditions chosen by allied command. The enemy is no longer capable of returning to its former positions in an organized manner."

I had to pause while the editor checked the latest message.

"Dominion formations have begun moving toward the system that has blocked our further advance for more than a century. The battle continues. We do not yet know its full cost, and we cannot state how many ships have been lost."

The border appeared on the screen again. One of the red systems near the golden territory slowly began to change color.

It had not yet been captured. The image was only a symbol. In reality, fixed batteries were still firing there, ships were dying, and new formations were arriving.

But for the first time, the symbol did not feel premature.

"The asari helped draw the enemy fleet away from its fortifications. Salarian reconnaissance confirmed its movement. Ships of the Dominion and Citadel Space jointly cut off the routes of retreat. Aiterri formations are now preparing a passage for the forces that will have to assault the system itself."

I did not say that this part might prove far harder than the first. I did not say that the mobile rachni fleet had been only one layer of the defenses. I did not mention the orbital hives, the batteries around the relay, or the ships the enemy could still produce inside the system.

There would be other broadcasts for that. Right now, the Dominion needed to understand what had happened.

"This victory does not belong to one people. Without the allied fleet, the Dominion would have had to spend decades more gathering enough strength for a breakthrough like this. Without Dominion ships, Citadel Space could not have held the passage once it was taken. Today, every participant in the operation did something the other side could not have done alone."

I remembered the recordings we had not been allowed to show. The damaged asari cruiser. The rescuers disappearing into a depressurized compartment. The salarian ship whose communications had never been restored.

"We will learn the names of the dead. We will learn which ships will not return, which crews kept fighting after suffering severe damage, and who managed to save those who had already been considered lost. Most of that information remains classified for now because the battle is still under way."

The red marker on the map finally went dark. In its place remained a neutral symbol indicating an ongoing battle.

"What ends today is not the war. What ends is the time when only the rachni decided where and when it would be fought."

I delivered the final sentence more slowly than I had in rehearsal.

"For the first time in many generations, they are not advancing on our worlds. Today, we are going after them."

The broadcast signal went dark.

No one in the newsroom began celebrating. Some staff simply leaned back in their chairs, while others immediately returned to the incoming material. New messages continued to appear on the closed screens, and almost every one carried a casualty marker beside it.

I removed my microphone and asked to see the recording with which the operation had begun.

After a brief argument, the military allowed us to open one fragment intended for a future chronicle. In it, the same asari admiral stood on the bridge of her ship. Ahead of her, the relay leading into the enemy system was glowing.

She waited for confirmation that the other formations were ready and gave the order to transit.

The recording ended at the moment space in front of the ship vanished in a blinding flash.

That was how the week we had already begun to call a victory started.