3: But at what cost?

uncil Hall of Congregation at: 11:00

It didn’t hurt to be close with the family of the Veatorian representative. We had joined the council at the same time. so it made sense to pair us up. Every civilization in the council was paired up, and their colonies would be slowly merged until they could be considered one. It was all a part of the councils eventual goal to create one universal civilization. I doubt I’ll see it happen in my lifetime, or even kerys’. Humans aren’t generally chuffed about suddenly being forced to share with 7ft tall violet humanoids, and they made sure I knew it. The disc in my pocket vibrates, time to go in

“Veris! Let’s go.” The kid looks up excitedly at me, their black and yellow eyes wide with excitement.

“This is gonna be so cool!”

“Just don’t tell your parents alright? And don’t touch anything,”

“Not even the button that says self-destruct?”

“Funny,”

We step forward into my designated sphere, there’re 3 buttons situated underneath a large screen, each one for when it comes to voting, aye/nay and abstain, extremely archaic words from a long dead planet but tradition dictates we use them. It’s my understanding that some booths have up to 5 buttons, some civilizations have concepts beyond the three yes no and maybe. I tried talking to a tra'ha'dowl about them but I just ended up getting confused. In the booth with us are my secretary, Philippa Desiva and Ioan Ceri who is the assistant representative. They look quizzically at the Veatorian kid

“Come on,” I say, looking at the two of them “It’s not like we’re at war, she’s the child of a friend,”

Philipa shrugs if to say ‘fair enough’ but Ioan continues to look at Veris. Not everyone is as accepting of veatorians being buddies with humans. If I could choose an assistant representative like I could my secretary I would have chosen someone else, but unfortunately Ioan was the runner up in the elections.

[the bustle of lots of different conversions reverberates in the hall]

The chamber is a huge cylindrical room completely covered in spheres embedded in the wall, each one contains the representative for a civilization. It’s a complicated system that puts them there that very few fully understand. At the centre of the room is a podium, on which stands a 3d projector, as the other representatives file in, the projector flickers into life as the chamber gets quiet, a voice comes from my speakers in Human,

“We will now play the council anthem” I stand and so do Ioan and philippa.

[an anthem blares from the speakers]

I peer out of the sphere at the other representatives, Meductions, veatorians tra'ha'dowls, dwrians, hass’. Each one of us here in service of the greater good.

As the anthem finishes we all sit down and a visualisation of Ethos appears, this time in the form of silk scarves floating around in a beautiful dance. It speaks, every one of us is hearing it in our mother tongue.

[The voice of ethos is a text to speech male voice with a welsh accent with a slight robotic quality to it]

“The Rhetores acknowledge the representatives who have joined us in this congregation of the council of nimonea. The reason for this meeting is the destruction of the CNSS Gorlan and subsequent loss of Thanes aiek tubalcain, a veatorian male and Fatima Hasan a human female.”

I never met Fatima but I spoke to her family back on Annwn when I attended her funeral, it was all carried out with such military efficiency I’m not even sure if they got to see her body. Not that that would be a good thing, from the photos on my screen there wasn’t much left of her. As for Aiek, his body is still in the Council Morgue, despite numerous requests from the veatorians on Agorakitos to send him home.

“ Logos is sending the necessary information to your screens. From what we gather something emerged from the dwarf star tyreesius and presumably tore apart the Gorlan. The Rhetores find it prudent to tell the council that Kairos was 68% ready for activation,”

We look at the dancing scarves in shock. And Ioan swears under his breath

Kairos was the lesser known part of the Rhetores, it was responsible for when time was of the essence, the council would be suspended and the galaxy would enter a state of emergency. 68% was extraordinarily high. Ethos disappears and in its place an eternally constructing spiral appears, logos speaks

[logos has a text to speech female voice with an english accent with a similar robotic quality]

“The energy signature of tyreesius changed significantly at 6:43 set time, at that point all telemetry cut out we do know that something left a large amount of organic matter in its wake, a trail of an ashy substance can be found leading form tyreesius past the Gorlan and onward out of the solar system, the organic matter trails off but on your screens you will be able to see the predicted course. The Rhetores recommends military action all along this path and the implementation of an immortal operative,”

At this I turn to philippa, I can already tell what she’s about to say,

“The kid shouldn’t be here for this,”

“Agreed,” ioan chimes in

I press the door release and shoo them out before they can say anything, I quickly transfer them a few units to buy themselves some food and mouth “go!” Before closing the door again

“Sorry guys, my bad. I didn’t realise this congregation would be so… grave”

I turn back to the hall and a debate is ensuing about which operative would be assigned to the case.

From the 3d projector there are profiles of the different Ancient beings in service to the council, they’ve been indentured to us as punishments from gods. Each one having done…. Something. We don’t get told that sort of thing

The representative Karxcki is speaking, my sphere translating the series of clicks and taps into something I can understand.

“-and so, in short, Artemis cannot be assigned to this job as she is doing important work on the moon of Halvather and to remove her would undo everything that she and the vints there have worked to achieve.”

Fair enough I think, and press the option to remove Artemis from the listing. For the next few hours we methodically go through each ancient being in our service:

Deliah of Corinth, busy in the depths of the temple of nemesis on rygel-x

Neutronus, clearing a space station of demonic infestation

One by one the list gets shorter and shorter and I watch the name at the bottom of the list get closer and closer to the top, and with creeping dread I begin to realise that we might actually have to use him. I can tell that everyone else in the chamber feels the same and they begin to shuffle nervously. After the penultimate operative is removed from the list his profile takes the center of the room. before anyone gets the chance to speak the vote is almost unanimously a “no”. I tap my screen a few times to contest the result, only one of 5 I get in a year.

Ethos announces me “The hall recognises representative of the humans Alecksander Ashton”

“I fully empathise with the council, we all have our grievances with him, the humans more than anyone, but time is of the essence, we cannot afford to wait around and do nothing while whatever this thing is wreaks havoc in our galaxies. Say what you will about him but he always completes his task,”

“But at what cost?” The Hass representative Morvil of the Deep speaks “On the colony of vestia he was sent to free the Copper Shadow from its torment and he ended up destroying the whole artefact along with it”

“On a mission to retrieve a new weapon schematic he just didn’t return, there’s a reason he’s nowhere near having done his time in working for us!” [another voice chimes in]

I take a deep breath.

“And I see that, I see all of you, but no one else is available and if we wait any longer the trail of this -thing- will go cold. Kairos was at 68% and if the Rhetores recommend the use of an ancient one then I for one intend to take their advice. I implore you to think not about your petty squabbles, but about the greater good for all of our sakes”

I sit down and watch the chart on my graph fill in with the new votes. Every single representative in the hall selected abstain or some equivalent. And as the yellow bar rises and rises I get the message 'if we absolutely have to use him, it’s gonna be you who bears the responsibility’ as the final vote comes in I press “aye” and ethos speaks

“The motion carries, the council moves to assign Adam Delta 5 to the task of investigating the new disturbance. He shall be notified.”

The congregation disbands for the day and we begin to file out, still in the sphere I turn to philippa, “he’s gonna be our problem isn’t he?”

She nods sympathetically, “I’m gonna need some painkillers….. and a whiskey”