His promises were reliable. John would see to that, he would always see to that.
Senate was in session, the full Senate, now, and raucous discussion echoed throughout the tiered room. Since John had been escorted in with a disgruntled Theia by an anxiously exuberant Lecebra at six AM station time, it had been like this.
The day before had ended with a promise of what was to come in following days, and John had more or less been mentally prepared for it. He'd never served in any upper echelon where such hefty decisions affecting all sectors of society had to be measured, but he expected thorough debate and discussion to see the appropriate organisation of their agreement.
Theia dreaded the discussion, and she'd been at his door in the accommodations above at five AM to pre-vent about politicians. John had found his shoulders rising and falling, along with grunted "Maybe's" and "Yes's," and "If that's what it takes," for an hour until the blatantly interested Asari receptionist with a frame that looked far to lithe for the heft of her chest arrived to escort him back to the senate chamber.
It was a formality, one that the Asari was only too happy to undertake, and John had treated her as he would any civilian dignitary as a way of politely brushing her off.
But the past six hours in the senate chambers hadn't made him feel all too different, or react entirely differently, to Theia's earlier frustrations.
As it turned out, Omega's economy, and trade routes, were as the same bald chestnut-skinned man from the day before briskly called a "Gorram cluster-fuck," in his jowly British accent.
Every time the older man spoke, it was with a distinct lack of decorum, but with a particular way of painting the truth concisely where everyone who heard him smirked at his choice of words but nodded in agreement.
The first topic of the day, which had only ended an hour earlier, had been about the supplied soldiers and crews – how they would be fed, how they would be paid, the hierarchy of their chain of command, and ultimately, where they would live.
That had crossed multiple discussion barriers, which D'argo, seated in the podium at the lowest point in the chamber, had called back closer to the point whenever they had strayed too far.
Omega's food supply was flimsy, as it turned out. Apparently, it had been the various merc groups on Omega who had controlled a vast majority of the shipping in and out of the station, and with those bands gone, so were the imported goods, which included a vast majority of the foods that were traded and sold on the station.
It had been described to John, quietly, by the older man who'd elected to sit next to him in the lowest tier near the stairs, named Miles Musa, that it was the food shortage which had been one of the largest instigators of the revolution.
When the Merc groups had disintegrated, the only surviving group to still bring in food was Aria's forces, and they flatly refused to share them with the masses. From there, Kandros had stoked rebellion and raided the abandoned supplies of the Merc barracks to equip the people.
Since then, Omega had been struggling to form trade alliance and agreements with any legally operating entity in the galaxy. It seemed that the asteroid colonies history of fraudulence was hanging heavy on its prospects.
Every citizen of Omega now received allotted rations calculated by their livelihood and species, and the value of those rations was taken out of their taxes.
John had made the only sensible offer available to him, and the senate had been stunned into silence – agricultural lease and citizenry agreements. Caucasus was a vibrant and untouched garden world with a range of climates that made it suitable for hundreds of different agricultural ventures.
