Grave to cradle, Arc 3 of "Gone with the Sun"

Chapter 21 Risky Business

Take the long way home

There were fifteen in the newly-arrived flotilla; eight frigates, five cruisers, a dreadnought, and the huge dry dock, doing duty as a freighter. Garrus contemplated the loading schedule in the fading Tasmanian sunlight.

"This won't do, Primarch, Forget the dreadnought. It's time to take a risk and replace it with two freighters."

"You're assuming there's no risk of pirates down the Palaven chain."

"The Salarians will be heading for the Annos Basin in cold sleep with only automated systems and one watch crew rotated every year. You don't think they have a handle on the risk? We are pushing towards the Apien Crest, directly opposite the Attican Traverse never mind the Terminus systems, and there's no way a pirate fleet will catch up on FTL."

"So what do we do with the dreadnought?"

"Start a conversion to fighter and frigate carrier. Duplicate some of the dry dock's fabrication capability."

"Seriously?"

"Two reasons. The original idea of a single string of conduits in a loop doesn't do the idea justice. There needs to be the ability to quickly explore planets off to one side, so for every conduit relay on the main line, there should be three or four going off at right angles."

"For land vehicle exploration?"

"Perhaps. Also, we really need the big dock here. Bear in mind that the Conduit team's third prototype can just barely accommodate an Alliance-issue Trident fighter, or a Kodiak shuttle. In nine weeks we'll be starting to produce the fourth generation in volume, a frigate's still too big but we should be able to get our gunships through."

"So we'll have a space link capability behind us back to Earth."

"Yes, Primarch. A limited one, but we should be able to fabricate conduits from local material, on board a converted dreadnought. Our generation-zero conduits had a range of only three hundred parsecs. We are doing better now, but still only at four hundred and eighty parsecs. On the other hand that represents an improvement of two orders of magnitude over the speed of FTL travel."

"Very well. If we downconvert a dreadnought, we should arrange for evacuation pods to be able to pass through too. If we can't fight what we encounter, we must run from it."

"That's wise, sir, but the risk is small. After the trashing of so much tech – and pirates don't keep shielded spares like properly organized warships – a frigate will be essentially invulnerable to anything fast enough to catch it."

"Very well. Any more bright ideas, Vakarian? People are already muttering about unproven brainstorms."

Despite the clear warning, Garrus couldn't help himself.

"Replace the fighter and frigate FTL cores with one of our own design that can disengage safeties. Equip with a VI and you have a an impact kinetic weapon that, given time and enough Casimir feed, would rival an asteroid hit."

"Preposterous."

Garrus sighed.

"Primarch, Tali tells me the humans are already discussing this in their research stations, and the general tenor is not can we do this but how quickly. Because there's precedent, which we set!"

"The Taetrus rebels. Yet, there has been nothing in the intelligence briefings."

"Riiiight. If you need motivation, just bear in mind that humans appear to have no qualms about trying something new. Like opening strange mass relays to Spirits know where. We will be crossing space that we never opened relays to. What will we meet?"

Victus contemplated his general's stony gaze. "Alright, Vakarian. I'll take a chance on needing human help. And on you and your quarian Admiral. When is she leaving?"

"She isn't. Three days ago they recovered a frigate with a working QEC pair back to Rannoch."

"Which means?"

"She can actually perform admiralty functions here on Earth. She can't do that in transit. She's staying here, for now."

"Oh. I'm happy to hear that. She has been a friend, and a useful one."

You think you're happy, thought Garrus, but carefully introduced the next item on the agenda, more news from Rannoch.

"Primarch, we need to bring this to the attention of Hackett and his geth."

"Oh?"

"The news isn't awful for Earth, but it's pretty bad. Every single geth hardware platform on Rannoch collapsed after the passage of the red flash."

"The geth are extinct?!"

"That's the report. And there has hardly been any flicker of their existence further afield."

"Nothing at all?"

"Just three, Primarch, three geth distress signals have been relayed by QEC, several hundred parsecs apart. It's going to take decades to recover them, not least because something like seventy percent of the quarian ground and fleet installations have been knocked out, they're struggling but so far improvisation has held starvation and mass deaths at bay."

"Spirits. Wait. Hackett's platoon of geth Primes–"

"– are intact, yes. Because he took shelter behind Arcturus. Also the Primes' combat ships. But those form the only substantial geth population we know of."

"I will inform the Council. You tell Hackett, first."

– Next chapter will be #22, "Knot theory…" –

Saturday, July 18, 2015