Author's Note: Okay so Remembrance day is finished for now, which is good. Read, Review Favourite and Enjoy!

Chapter 15: Therum Part 1

Two guns and a Grenade. Din Korlack adjusted his tie not for the first time that day as he reviewed the specifications of the technology he spent so much time working on seeing the light of day again in his head. Luckily Armax finished their prototypes just before the Union announced the joint project on Omega. Sparatus looked at the weapons with neutral judging eyes before he shouldered the prototype laser rifle and aimed at a target and fired. The laser beam burned a hole through the Omni-gel target, and left the area behind it blackened. But that was not all. Walking up to a second target Sparatus activated the 'Bayonet' function. Until now, the Bayonet option on a rifle would simply trigger a fabricator mounted on the end of a rifle to produce an omni-blade to vibrate at a high frequency to cut a target. Now though? Under the influence of the built in Mass Effect Emitter the laser beam that would fire out of the weapon instead produced a long glowing energy blade which he then used to slice another target clean in half. Immediately the weapon opened it's thermal vent and beeped loudly the heat having just built up to its limit. Waiting for the cool down to finish Sparatus took aim at ten separate targets at 200 yards, 400 all the way up to 2000. Sparatus knelled down on one knee and fired the weapon at the ten separate targets, using a scope at around half way through in order to hit the rest of the targets, and once he finished took a seat on what resembled a lawn chair as C-Sec collected the targets to present to him for inspection. The Laser Rifle had very little recoil, and can hit a target at a long range, however it was at it's most effective when used as a close range weapon as indicated by the size of the holes in the targets, and that it had only burned through about a third of them however it could be fired three times in 2 second bursts before it overheated.

"You used Rare Crystal as the Heat Sink?" Sparatus asked as he looked down at the interior of the weapon suspiciously.

"It has an incredibly high melting point." Din's Rebreather sounded out as he paused his speech. "And it converts heat directly into usable energy which saves on both the weapon's power source and extends time between cool downs."

"Economical." Sparatus stated bluntly, which he understands is the highest praise for a Volus.

The second weapon Sparatus took was aimed at a set of fresh targets that had just been erected. Once fired, the weapon released a small biotic field with a great deal of force, so much so in fact that the friction from the shot ignited the exotic gas being contained in the field, turned it into plasma, which then caused both the plasma and the field to detonate as one. The nearest target was ripped in half by the blast, after a few moments the top half of the target came crashing back down a charred smoking heap.

"That one we are particularly proud of." Din explained pointing to the air with one of his fingers.

The range was limited, but in terms of raw destructive power it outclassed the laser rifle. But it required the use of the Exotic Gas which like the other resources they had in limited quantities, even more limited by the fact that unlike the Rare Crystal they wouldn't be able to reuse it, even worst it requires the friction of a atmosphere so they wouldn't be able to scale it up and mount it on a ship, not unless they found another way of igniting the plasma once it reached it's target. Finally Sparatus's eyes landed on the canister grenade. Picking it up, Sparatus briefly recalled the explanation about it and so flipped off the safety cover, pressed down the button before chucking it at a target. The Grenade disappeared from his hand and reappeared attached to the target and then exploded. The Unstable highly explosive stone monster dung turned into a grenade, theoretically obvious, technically difficult. The key part of weaponizing the Unstable Mott is keeping it from exploding until you want to let one off, which the Volus have accomplished by creating a canister around it and suspending it inside of a biotic field. As that by itself wasn't good enough the scientists added more, a 'charge' function that allowed the Grenade to be biotically propelled across the battlefield and attach itself to a target before the Mass Effect field maxed out the mass of the canister and the Mott was set off utterly annihilating the target in question, as it had here.

"Satisfactory." Highest praise coming from a Turian.

"And the matter of the council seat?" Din was holding his breath.

"Paper work's in the system." Sparatus stated as he mentally reviewed the situation.

The Volus joining the council was good on multiple fronts, first there's the fact that they haven't done anything to piss off the union. There was also the fact that this would reduce the restrictions on the number of ships that the Volus can build according to the Treaty of Farixen, and Sparatus likes how they build ships, minimal crew and luxury systems, high number of redundant systems most notably an excessive amount of fire power. Most notably though they probably just deserved the position, as both the Third Race to achieve space flight and the one that was responsible for building the citadel economy, and it isn't until you become a politician that you can appreciate having a good economy backing up your army. Odds were good that the only reason the Volus didn't get a council seat was because the Asari and Salarians wanted someone they could feel superior over. Sparatus came from a meritocracy, he rewards people based on how much good they've done and punishes them according to how badly they've screwed up.

"I hope this doesn't mean you intend to give up your client species status." Sparatus stated eyeing the Volus suspiciously.

"The entire council relies on the Turians for protection." The little alien breathed deeply before he continued. "As far as I'm concerned they're all 'clients' of the Turians." Din stated bluntly.

"We're reassigning Armax to the L-Project." Sparatus stated as he started putting the weapons into cases. "The Salarian's have been chomping at the bit to experiment with the rare materials the Union has been selling to us, now that you've done the hard work for them I've run out of excuses to stop them."

"The 'L-Project?'" Sparatus waved his omni-tool around and Din received several files. "The Joint implant program with the Union!?" The little senator looked like he nearly forgot to breathe.

"Armax won the contract." Din didn't recall Armax applying for the contract. "They have the most experience with Exotic materials, have the best reputation with the Union, and this serves as good publicity for the eventual council seat." Sparatus took the two gun cases and handed them to C-Sec guards to transport them into secure lock up. "You're also on the Thanix Project." A second file was sent over to the other ambassador's omni-tool, a series of corrupted and flawed schematics for parts for a weapon of unimaginable power that gave even that damned corpse pause. "Get to work."

Liara T'Soni is a relatively young Asari Archaeologist, as well as a proficient Biotic Adept. At a mere hundred years old she had only just completed the Asari equivalent of college and was now acting as leader of a dig for the first time, there were three major factors behind this, the first her excellent grades, the second the fact that Therum was a low security mining world, and the third the influence of her mother Matriarch Benezia T'Soni, the third of those three facts she wasn't as proud of. But that didn't really matter much at the moment because here she was at her very own dig-site eager to make the archaeological find of the-

"What in Athame's name!?" Liara snapped as she looked at the state of the ruins, still with the mining drill that was pivotal to the discovery lodged inside.

She breathed deeply, and got her assistants to move the drill out of the hole. No discovery is without complications after all. This same mining equipment will, in a few short moments, be put to work excavating the ruins themselves. First there was going inside. The drones were deployed first and made the usual check to confirm the structure's integrity, afterwards they perched themselves at whatever corner was most convenient and lit themselves up bringing light to the ruins.

"Drones report minimal structural damage." Liara spoke into her Audio device as she looked around. "Some dirt and detrius presumably as a side effect of the heavy mining on the planet." Checking her Omni-tool Liara got further confirmation from the drones, the ones that went further into the structure. "Layout matches Prothean SCT-136, commonly attributed as a vehicle bay." Lighting her body with a navy blue biotic field Liara Pushed the dirt out through the hole she came in through, revealing no vehicles underneath, there was however several consoles. "No signs of vehicles at the moment. There are several consoles though." Liara looked up and saw that her Tech expert was getting a little too familiar with one of the Turian guards. "Ahem!" The female Quarian in question suddenly stood at attention. "I said 'There are several Consoles though!'" The Quarian took that as her cue to scramble down and attempt to salvage data from a computer older than most civilisations. She'd probably fail, but it was important to try. "At least..." Liara idly waved her finger around the room as she counted off the number of hallways in the room, ignorant to what she was walking into the middle of. "Three separate paths marked 'Storage' or maybe 'Sleep,' 'Memories' and-" Liara was rudely interrupted as a biotic barrier suddenly appeared beneath her feet and raised her up into the air, wrapping her in a zero-g force field. As one all eyes in the room turned to the Quarian at the console.

"My bad! I think I triggered a security alert!" The Quarian stated raising her hand into the air while admitting their guilt. "Hang on I'll just-" A light shot throughout the room, from the front of the Quarian's mask a perfect round hole had formed allowing those on that side to see cleanly through to the back at the makeshift entrance.

No one got to admire the hole though, in the moments following the Quarian being so rudely silence several gunshots rang out and dropped everyone with two slugs to the head. Several aliens Liara had never seen before stepped down from the makeshift entrance, insect like the lot of them, not only for their semi-organic looking armour but also the insect like wings they flew in on. They looked at the doctor with four glowing orange eyes briefly, then at the console. Raising a single weapon the latter was shot to pieces reducing it to a sparking mess. Liara wasn't so sure if she should be grateful or not that the bubble didn't deactivate from the display of violence. The insects made their way to the three hallways behind Liara, and were repelled by similar biotic security fields. Letting out a vicious hiss at the fields the insects were caught off guard when several automated turrets popped out of the sides of the walls and shot them to pieces. Instant Karma. The insects that entered last fled through the hole and back up to the surface.

According to Liara's Omni-tool it was several days before another group came in, a mixture of Krogan, Turians, other Asari, some Batarians. She was almost relieved if not for their armour, crimson red for the Krogan Blood Pack, Bright yellow of Eclipse, dark black of the Talons, and or course Batarians are never a good sight to see. Oddly enough the security system seemed to react to most of them in much the same way that it had reacted to the bug people, that is to say machine gun fire. Of course as there were shotgun totting Krogan involved do the overgrown Philisteins were just as content to shoot back until the Turrets were shattered.

"Real mature." Luckily Liara had a canteen on her that she could take a drink of water from. "You know if you punks break everything there's not going to be anything to salvage and sell on the black market! I would hate to think your overfed klixen friends murdered by respected Colleagues for nothing!" The Krogan continued to look for ways to brute force their way through while Talon set about setting up defences and Eclipse attempted to hack the ancient consoles, to little success. It was always Liara's personal theory that Prothean technology had some... components that never survive into the present without which operating it becomes impossible. Of course it doesn't stop Eclipse to simply use an omni-blade to pry open the console and attempt to hot wire their own solution in like the slightly intelligent savages that they are. "You're not going to get anything to work like that! Prothean technology is..." Liara was interrupted in her rant by the sounds of the console responding to the Eclipse goons blatant tampering, and then the floor opened up and revealed an even bigger gun which began to fire first on the middle hallway and then circle around the room adjusting and pivoting as needed to exterminate all of the mercenaries.

A strange choice Liara thought, but a thought occurred to her that the way she came in through was a hole arbitrarily punched into the temple, it was quite likely that weapon had started at the actual entrance and then worked it's way around. Now she was wondering what was so important about this place that it warranted attempting to kill everything inside not once but twice. A more immediately problem was starting to make itself known though: although Liara had been regularly taking in fluids she hasn't been to the bathroom since she was put into this damned bubble.

For the Therum ground team, Wrex would be busy settling affairs of state on Tuchanka for some time yet so he had to go back for now, Tali had stayed though as Wrex felt that the Krogan could use more quality time with some Tebrid instructors. For now Shepard, the muscle, was going along with Tali, a expert hacker, and Garrus, whose C-Sec clearance and infiltrator training would help on a mission that if luck was with them would have minimal fighting and more sneaking. Sadly as is often the case this wouldn't be.

The Hammer Head was a human designed hover craft/tank with two modes of transportation. Firstly it had Hovering capabilities thanks to the retractable twin rotors that slide out from the sides of the vehicle, as implied by the Designation 'hover tank' paired with a thruster system to push it forward after it clears the ground. However said rotors are extremely delicate and vulnerable to enemy fire while in use, this necessitates alternate means of transport, so when in battle the Hammer head becomes grounded on a set of four caterpillar treads on swivels, allowing it to smoothly move forward and back as well as side to side freely. There were three guns on the Hammer head, it's two secondary laser rifle weapons for sniping any annoying pests that get close, and the main gun the Mjornir. Take a few Unstable Mots, variables depending on the size of the... stool in question, encase it in a iron canister, load that canister into a rail gun and firing with enough force that it necessitates the tank nailing itself to the ground to prevent being blown backwards by the kick, in the process producing a shot that can travel over two hundred kilometers in a instant smashing into a target at three kilometers per second and then detonating. In layman's terms, even though they were using stealth to sneak up on the enemy forces they didn't really need it.

"Two Geth Armatures dead ahead." Garrus commented looking through the scope of the weapon. "Also your targeting systems crack." Garrus stated making his opinion known, he'll have to recalibrate the damned thing when he gets the chance.

"Debatable." Shepard stated as she let out a sigh.

"What are Geth doing here anyway?" Tali asked as she prepared her own nasty surprise. "I thought the Union brought them into the fold or something?"

"Hang on." Shepard looked through the notes on the meeting. "Apparently about fifteen percent of the programs had developed an irreconcilable grudge against the Quarian's and the Council and so choose to leave instead."

"So what do we do with them?" Garrus asked looking at Shepard curiously.

"We drop the hammer!" Shepard stated finger pointed off in a random direction as she posed dramatically.

""What?"" Neither of the Aliens in the cabin understood the pop culture reference leading to Shepard to face palm herself, the moment having died.

"Garrus, shoot them."

"That I can do." Getting the weapon ready to fire Garrus took a look at what he was up against.

As one part Therum's naturally hot atmosphere as a result of being so close to the sun and one part the over industrialisation the planet had suffered lakes and rivers of lava dotted the planet in a variety of locations. The Hammer Head was truely blessed to be able to just fly over all the unpleasantries with its hover capabilities, the Geth Armatures on the other hand? Not so much. So taking impeccable aim despite his complaints about the targeting system Garrus fired a single round into the exact location necessary to knock out one of the Armatures, capsize it, and send it back first into a river of lava to drown like a turtle that got stuck on it's back and can no longer get up.

"Nice shot." Tali commented looking at the footage of the destruction.

"You do know that cannon is likely strong enough to simply one shot them with a direct hit right?" Shepard asked looking at Garrus incredulously.

"Now where's the fun in that?" Garrus stated as he loaded a second shot.

"Can we try to keep this one in one piece?" Tali was already working on a little program she had whipped up in anticipation of her pilgrimage.

"With that Gun? It would get blown to bits." Shepard stated indicating the weapon resting above their heads.

"Which part do you need?" Garrus asked as he already made preparations to tear the enemy a new one.

"The Head." Tali replied simply.

"Pft!" Garrus made a partly amused chuckle as he aimed for centre mass. "And here I was hoping for a challenge." Armed with knowledge of exactly how powerful his new toy was Garrus took aim and with the aforementioned impeccable aim fired the cannon, obliterated the Armature's body and sent it's head sailing clean over the flow of lava and land on solid ground. The hammer head drove over to the severed head as Tali quickly got to work, hot-wiring it to the Hammer heads power core so that she could get what she needed.

"What do you need with that thing anyway?" Garrus asked as he watched Tali work.

"Normally a damaged Geth self destructs before any information can be extracted from it." Tali explained while fingers danced over her omni-tool. "You on the other hand cleanly separated its memory core from the rest of the body." Tali explained while her hacking program finished overriding the VI programs inside of the Armature and extracted it's memory. "Now we know whatever this Geth knew." With that Tali disconnected the Hammer head, put it back the way she found it, and the three of them resumed their trek to Liara's dig-site, taking a break to similarly snipe a group of turrets the Geth had thrown up.

"So what was in that memory core anyway?" Garrus asked as he took aim to annihilate the aforementioned turrets.

"Firstly these Geth are working with Desolas." Something that Tali will be all too happy to inform the rest of the Geth about and not gloat at all. "Secondly they're after a Prothean Artifact of some kind, or information about it, something called the Conduit."

"The Conduit?" Shepard asked looking at Tali suspiciously.

"It's what Nazara is calling it. That's what the Geth calls the Reaper by the way, in my people's language Nazara means 'Sovereign.'" Well that's not ominous at all. "Anyway, the Conduit is how the Reapers think the Ancient Protheans got back onto the citadel after the last cycle." A pause.

"Also I have no idea what any of this means." Tali admitted to her ignorance, having once considered herself an expert in Geth recent events have made her conclude that there's no expert in Geth outside of the Geth.

"It makes me wonder how my mother is dealing with the largest most densely populated Reaper artefact in the galaxy."

The council was a little... overwhelmed by the recent revelations made, the Batarian religious texts, themselves passed down directly from the reapers mouths, flat out states that the citadel, the centre of their entire government, the key most piece in operating the Mass Relays, home to over ten million civilians, is some kind of giant reaper construct. This by itself is not a big surprise considering the claims that the reapers were the ones who built the Relays. Rather there was a high possibility that located somewhere on the citadel, perhaps beneath their very office, is the same kind of technology that this 'Majesty' used on the Batarians. They saw the autopsy pictures, the ones taken of the priests who refused to cooperate with the Union and mysteriously died in custody. When their heads were cut open the mush that use to be their brains spilled out onto the floor, MRI scans on the still living priests revealed that much of their grey matter was in the process of rotting away. Needless to say, the situation was quite grave. The First order of business was establishing if anywhere in the citadel was safe: the three Councilors were the first to subject themselves to the scans and confirmed that there was no brain damage, clearing both their homes, offices, and the meeting room of suspicion.

"The Random scans across the Citadel are progressing smoothly." Valern stated holding up a data pad with the results in question. After the Council Chambers the next place they prioritised was the hospitals. Outside medical ships were brought over, the various staff including doctors and nurses were being cleared, and as soon as they know the Hospitals are safe they can begin with the mass readings. "I do not believe that indoctrination technology has been implanted throughout the Citadel." Valern stated as he proceeded to look through the information he had available. "If just being on the Citadel does this to people..." Valern indicated the autopsy reports. "Then we would've noticed by now."

They also couldn't ignore the possibility that something else entirely could be happening as well. For one thing it's ludicrous, at least according to the Union, to try and cram this much government into one structure, the council themselves countered pointing out that the Citadel itself was pivotal to their way of life as the central unit to the Mass Relay network, not that they expected people who blew up their own relays to understand or appreciate this fact. Then acting like they knew everything the admiral simply countered that instead of turning the Citadel into a city it should've been remade into a military base if it was so important to them, a fact that Sparatus actually agreed with which only made the situation worst.

"In any case indulging the Union in their paranoia doesn't cost us much, least what we're getting in return." The Lithoids were requesting rights to set up Matter Decompressors in Council space, after all there were approximately 10 million Blackholes in council space ripe for the harvesting, this exercise in paranoia made the difference between Citadel engineers being on or off the project, combine that with their knowledge of certain Key components in the technology and by the time the Union has set up their own decompressor they'll already have their own half built. In theory. How much of this tech they can get their hands on depends how much the Union is willing to let them watch be put together, both the practical and paranoid solution would be to have all the important components built planet-side and then shipped over to the construction site of the Mega Structure, in the worst case scenario citadel technicians jobs would be to shove the components into place. Now spies and saboteurs on the other hand...

"Apologies for being late." Din Korlack wheezed as he waddled into the meeting room, a regular occurrence pending the full induction of the little aliens as part of the council.

"Apologies for starting without you." Tevos pressed a button on the table and the automated chair that was sitting empty between her and Sparatus lowered itself and moved away from the table so that the Volus could get himself situated inside. "Time is Credits to borrow the Volus phrase." Din was certain Tevos didn't mean that in the vaguely insulting 'your participation isn't worth much' way that Volus are oft to use it.

"The latest results on the Thanix prototype, and the news on the L's implants." Din stated as he slapped a data-drive onto the table. "In the mean time I can catch up on the minutes of the meeting and figure out why the hell the Union has turned the citadel upside down today."

Author's Note:

RonaldM40196867: A little yes. True. Hard to say. Some people just don't get my high brow sense of humour.

Clown2107: Yeah. I was told in another review that people like Aria way too much for some reason, I have no idea why considering the whole ruthless dictator and Crime Lord bit she has going on for herself. Giant Military Grade Weapon's platform. Yes he is.

Gianfranco Cembran: Thank you for saying so.

Guest: Cool.

Winterwolf23543: I was told that the Vorcha's DNA have effectively remained the same for as long as anyone has cared enough to keep track, which is blatantly untrue if you ask my opinion because that's not how evolution works, not with binary sexual races anyway. Either way I plan on addressing the subject in the near future but for now I agree with your points, Vorcha are the fastest reproducing, most highly adaptable warriors in the universe, capable of reaching fighting fit faster than any other race in the universe. Aria is a criminal, and a particularly dangerous one at that, there's no good reason to not take her out of the picture, not without Reapers breathing down their necks anyway. I wouldn't say that they have a thousand fleets, but they certainly have more than enough power to take the whole Terminus system by force, and a good chunk of the Council System as well.