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Hellenia Orbit
"Ship-Proselyte, the message from the third party vessels seems to be an escalating listing of prime numbers on repeat. 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, then it loops." The Ensign said, not turning away from her screen or even so much as sparing Bashar the slightest of glances.
"At the very least they are more polite than the Scrin were, Yuri be praised." He said quietly to himself, placing his chin between his thumb and index finger.
"We have no intelligible communications otherwise, yes?" He added, folding his arms while the icons of the three fleets maneuvered about on his holographic display of the battlefield. The Epsilon fleet had a numerical advantage, but the Alliance had both a greater concentration of production facilities here than could be provided by Epsilon Cleric ships with this fleet, and were almost certain to have their reinforcements arrive before Epsilon's own relief fleet.
"No Ship-Proselyte."
"Have a mastermind ship establish psychic contact, show them our language, so that we do not lose anything in translation." The ship-proselyte asked.
"The Fleet-Proselyte concurs with your course of action brother." The Ensign said in her typical almost bored voice, but she managed a glance and a smile at her commander, the woman clearly harboring some excitement beneath her mask of stoicism.
"Thank you ensign Petrovic." He said, giving her a tip of his peaked cap. She wasn't fond of telepathic communiques and while he found that odd, Bashar respected her wishes to speak to her through purely verbal means.
As he observed his holographic table, the icon of a mastermind ship steamed forward under escort, and, thank Yuri, was not targeted for enemy attack, with a response to the Aliens' prime numbers being given in hopes of not adding to the shooting war. A tense moment passed, and then the telepathic waves crossed the gulf of space, not the domineering sort usually expected from mastermind vessels, but a wave of speech.
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Citadel fleet
Gladius blinked as she watched the view screens, then a wave of thoughts foreign to her mind struck her head. As per Epsilon first contact protocols not just language, but history was broadcasted, in a method far more invasive than any mere data-stream. Her hands soon found their way to her temples as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing.
Images of progress, regress, war, peace, culture, barbarity, a history and a language course crammed in the space of a few moments. Stars made their presence known behind her eyes, but new words found themselves rooting in her mind, new concepts, new ideas. Her mind somewhat dulled the onslaught of the infodump, a combination of fierce training and neurological differences meant the process was not entirely perfect, and she could sense the subtle bits of the message that had an underlying seed of subliminal propaganda in them.
She'd read about Asari mind melding, though she never engaged in it herself, not finding the Asari particularly pleasing to her sense of aesthetics, but she thought she had an idea of it. She found that this idea was incomparable to the implantation of information into the minds of her and quite likely everyone else the mastermind ship could reach. No orgasmic wave of delight, no seering probe of pain, just a dull headache from so much being forced into her mind at once.
There was no real information on military capacity, a wise move she thought, but in addition to information on language, she had received the protocols needed to properly sync their communication devices, certainly more useful than the piles of information waxing poetic about the greatness of Yuri.
"Goddess...w-what?" The Asari next to her said as she winced, reaching for a thermos filled with some warm liquid and quickly chugging it down to try and relieve the sensation dancing around behind her eyes. A relieved sigh came from her as the liquid sent a warm feeling through her digestive tract and she soon regained her footing.
"Something very interesting just fell into our laps." Gladius said, and though Turians did not have the range of facial motions to provide a grin, the Asari was more than capable of telling that she was, terrifyingly, excited about what was to come.
"Make sure to put in a call for reinforcements, if this comes to a fight I want reserves at my back. Send them some calls and see if we can have a chat." She said, her orders being followed the very instant she gave them. Everything falling into place when she so requested was something that made her a very happy Turian.
"What do you want us to say first?" The Asari asked, shaking her head as he did so while the Turians around her seem to have largely shrugged off the prior mental offloading.
"Well they've fired the first shots of the infodump war, so I say we fire back. Make sure to exclude strategic or tactical information, I've been in enough negotiations to know that a bit of uncertainty goes a long way into making the other party more pliable." Gladius ordered before realizing that technically, as a negotiator the Asari wasn't formally under her command. Frakking civvies.
"Aren't we also uncertain of them?" The Asari asked, her face forming into an expression of puzzlement.
"We've seen them fight, we've even had a short firefight, they haven't seen us do anything more than drive around. I'd say we have the informational edge. Oh and Ambassador; if you think I don't know my way around diplomacy because I'm a Turian who hasn't spent a day out of the military in decades, I've got this Prince from the Terminus systems I'd like you to meet who wants to deposit his money with you." She said with breath-taking bluntness that almost made the Asari's jaw drop.
"Data-packets transmitted fleet Admiral." One of the ensigns reported, and almost immediately Gladius could just imagine the scientists and diplomats swarming over any terminal they could to get a peek at that data. Right now any information was worth it's mass in element zero to be hoarded and only grudgingly passed out. Once both sides had been properly contacted, two holograms appeared, one of a woman in an Epsilon female herald uniform, a rather gothically styled suit, and the other was the Alliance commander in the region, a bearded man whose otherwise professional looking uniform was marred by his cowboy hat. Herald Danica Pavelic and General George A. Chappell.
"Are you two capable of understanding me?" The Asari asked, getting a nod from the holograms of them both.
"Yes, of course I can." The woman responded, her face seeming to bear a constant expression of disinterest.
"I'm gonna have to ask you to power down your weapons there ." The man said with a prominent drawl to his voice.
"...Are you making unilateral demands of us?"
"Ab-so-lutely. Wouldn't want ya makin' any sneak attacks or anythin'." Chappell said with a tip of his hat, prompting a look of disbelief from the Asari and Gladius.
"And what if we refuse?" Gladius said, folding her arms.
"Why I reckon I'll have to blow y'all to smithereens for violating restricted territory." He said with a grin that put him halfway between ecstatic and batshit insane. Gladius had never seen a human before, but she had seen enough "smoothface" species to know that that kind of expression generally was as much of a threat display as it was a greeting. That made her slightly nervous, if he was feeling that confident he almost certainly wasn't bluffing.
"You're heavily outnumbered, and we are trying to establish peaceful contact here." The Asari said, having to restrain herself from gritting her teeth.
"Sure, sure, but I don't like havin' to negotiate when the other guy's got all the cards ya hear? As for the outnumbered thing? Eh, you should do a recheck in about...oh I'd say...ten seconds if I'm readin' this plan right." He said as he brought up his PDA, chuckling to himself.
Sure enough, space proved to be warped and time showed itself as bendable, white flashes began to make themselves apparent all through the orbit of the planet as the chronosphered in reinforcements made a mass shift to reinforce the Alliance positions. In a moment, Gladius became very aware of being at a strong numerical disadvantage, and that these beings were something she'd have to treat carefully with.
"Now, if ya'll are willin' to play ball we can talk this out like civilized folk, or I can get real violent and tell Lord Grand Admiral Squeaky flippers the Dark Duke of all that ya'll've been a mighty nuisance, and you don't want me to get Squeaky out 'fore he's had his chum bucket, trust me. Your choice." Chappell said, spreading out his hands and grinning, making sure his words implicated both the Epsilon and Citadel forces as being at risk of drawing the wrath of the Red and Blue.
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Author's notes: Yes, I'm avoiding a FCW. Don't worry, you'll get your daily dosage of mindless violence later on.
