Hello dear readers!
Another chapter where I'm throwing new characters at you left and right, sorry for that, but fear not, we will see Nihlus again and I try to get all the exposition out of the way quickly.
()()()
Garrus slumped down in his office chair and put his feet up on his desk. Stretching his neck he began to contemplate what he should do with the rest of the day. There was so much work on his desk that starting any of it felt pointless. They had left the Council Chamber together with Nihlus but separated again after a little while. Nihlus had to go and find a ship then search for a crew to go along with it. But they agreed to meet later in a cafe in a mostly turian part of the Citadel.
On the way back to the C-Sec academy, they stopped at the hospital to visit their injured colleagues. Tarten was in pretty good health, all things considered. His skin grafts and bones were healing fast and he was to be discharged to bedrest at home the next day. Tinlenus had already been released from immediate medical care, shortly after Garrus had gone home. His arm was in a light cast to help with the healing of the fracture and he could have gone home but he had hardly left the hospital. He spend everyday next to the Batius' sickbed, making no secret of their relationship. Garrus felt kind of silly for never having noticed it before.
Batius had not regained consciousness yet even though his body seemed to be healing well according to Dr. Michel. The doctor was very friendly and explained to them in great detail what they had done for his injuries and was carefully optimistic about his chances. That at least was a relief. Garrus still felt guilty for putting the guys into danger, it was their job, yes, but in a way he was directly responsible for them ending up in a hospital. He said something along those lines to Frank who told him something like "shut up with the stupid". Frank went to give him a slap on the back of his head but got caught up in Garrus fringetips and almost broke a finger.
Garrus knew what Frank tried to say, he would say the same things if the situation was reversed. But he couldn't get away from the guilt and whenever he saw Batius lying unnaturally still in the hospital bed it got even worse.
They left the hospital in silence, both not so eager to put their worries into words. Frank received a call from Sarah, his contact at Everest Artifics on his omni-tool. He left in a hurry to meet with her and Garrus smiled at the memory of the happy grin on Frank's face. That guy was in love, he couldn't deny it.
So now Garrus was alone in his office with all the piled up work, guilty feelings and hazy memories of the last week.
He took a datapad into his hands with a sigh and downloaded everything from the warehouse case to it. Maybe he could at least get a start on that case. As he read he realized that nobody else had even looked at this until now. There were no notes, just endless lists of inventory from the warehouse and names of employees or people who happened to hang around the area that day. He wondered what Frank had been doing all week. Garrus started a search algorithm for background information on the names and then looked over the inventory lists. Apart from medical drugs, recreational drugs and some disturbing stuff that he would rather call poison than drugs, there were lists of weapons, electronic parts and mass effect generators like one would expect. But one thing caught his eyes. There was a cold storage room where the officers found boxes of meat.
Garrus looked closer, it wasn't just meat - it was organs! There were almost twenty boxes equipped with miniature life support systems with various organs ready for transport off the Citadel. He read through the descriptions: 'heart, salarian; heart, human; lung, turian; liver, turian; liver, human; kidney, turian; krogan, testicles...' it went on and on. He needed to know more about that, where did these organs all come from?
Scrolling through his contact list he called up the pathology lab and made an arrangement with Dr. Kaltkan to meet him in the lab. Then he went to the evidence storage and got three random organ boxes from the cold storage. Balancing the boxes on his arms he went down to the pathology lab. Dr. Kaltkan, an older turian in a labcoat, greeted him with a nod.
The doctor was a veteran of the force, he had seen pretty much everything in his career. Garrus had met him before and had never seen him show a hint of surprise. He was almost proud to see the doctors eyes widen in surprise as he read through the list of organs that had been found in the cold storage. "This is quite unusual", he said without looking at Garrus. "Twenty organs in storage, that is a lot." He opened one of the transport boxes a took a surprised breath. Garrus pressed down on his subvocals to not release the smirk his face almost showed.
"This life-support system is highly advanced!" The doctor sounded genuinely impressed. "It would be possible to keep the organs ready for transplantation for at least two weeks like that." He opened all three boxes and started to take samples from the organs. A faint hum could be heard from the small life support systems, Garrus made a note that he should check the supply lines for the parts needed for such an advanced system.
Dr. Kaltkan had placed the samples in the scanner and was looking through the results. He was mumbling to himself and Garrus chimed his subvocals once to get his attention. The doctor looked at him like he had forgotten that he was there. "Ah, yes, I'm sorry, let me tell you what I found." He transferred the data to Garrus datapad and highlighted some sections. "As you can see here, the organs are in good condition. They have been taken from very recently deceased specimen, there are no traces of decay. As for the quality of the transplant, I can't give a definite judgment yet but I will run more tests for that. I have heard of lower quality transplants showing up in the hospitals around here and if these come from the same source, they have improved the procedure or their donors very much. I think these are top-quality."
Garrus looked at the doctor in surprise, apparently he still knew what went on outside of his lab. "I'm shocked, Doctor, I thought Johnson and me were the only ones even looking at that case."
The doctor chuckled. "Yes, yes, nobody wants to touch this stuff, I was surprised that you took such an interest in it and your human partner as well. Humans can be so squeamish with things like that."
"Well, Johnson is a good cop, organs and blood won't stop him." Garrus wondered what the doctor was hinting at.
The doctor stopped chuckling and looked at him seriously. "Officer Vakarian, let me tell you something. Whenever someone in a lab somewhere set's out to work on illegal stuff there will always be traces, hints, something. But nobody sees it, nobody wants to look at it. Research and experiments take a lot of time, Vakarian, a whole lot of time. You can't completely hide it, people work with you, you need resources, if someone is willing to look, he will find things. I know most of the medical staff working in the Citadel's hospitals and I have heard about bad transplants for a while. I even told the Executor about it but nobody looked at it. Then suddenly, you and your partner, a human of all things, take one look at it and take the case to a whole new level."
Garrus waited for him to continue but he didn't says more, so he broke the silence with an angry trill. "Doctor, what are trying to tell me? That C-Sec let the case drag on purpose? Maybe that's true. That Frank and I blow it out of proportions? There are officers still in the hospital because of this! I won't accept you accusing us of ..."
The doctor raised his hands and his subvocals sang a calming apology. "Please, Vakarian, stop! I never wanted to suggest that you blew the case out of proportion." He laid his hands back on the table and looked down. "What I've tried to say - and apparently I didn't do it well - was that you and Johnson are damn fine officers. That after everybody else just stepped around this, you took the case and investigated. I tried to say that I'm very impressed with you and Officer Johnson and personally I can't even believe that I'm saying that about a human."
Garrus let out a snort. "I'm getting kind of tired of this whole 'for a human' thing. Johnson is a C-Sec officer and we both do our job as best as we can. I - eh - thank you for the compliment but it may not be all that deserved. We just sort of stumbled onto this and things didn't go exactly smoothly lately." He scratched his neck and then straightened. "We both take our job serious and we just do it."
The doctor nodded, "Yes, I may have to rethink old prejudices and I agree that it is your job. But believe me, I've seen other C-Sec officers not doing their job for such a long time, it's really refreshing to see some doing it well." Dr. Kaltkan smiled and Garrus was pretty sure he had never seen him do that before.
Garrus' datapad vibrated to indicate that it received another set of data and the doctor explained that he had made a DNA profile of each sample.
"Just send the other organs down here as well and I will make DNA profiles for all of them." the doctor said.
Garrus started to make a cross-search for DNA profiles in C-Sec's database. There was nothing on the salarian heart and liver he brought but he got a result on the turian liver. He started to read through the file of the turian when Dr. Kaltkan suddenly trilled at him.
"Officer Vakarian, your company is not completely displeasing but I have to say that I rather work alone down here." The doctor looked at him with a slight smirk.
Garrus looked around and agreed that maybe the pathology lab was not the nicest environment to work on this case. He got up and subvocally hummed his good bye and slowly walked towards the elevator, still reading his pad. As he stepped into the elevator his subdermal comm speaker beeped in his ear and he snarled in annoyance. He thought about ignoring the call but his omni-tool showed him that it was Johnson calling. He tapped the receiver behind his ear.
"Hey human." he said.
Frank answered, "Hey turian."
Their ritual for answering comm calls. Garrus waited for him to continue as he stepped out of the elevator into the central hall of C-Sec academy and kept on walking.
"Listen birdy, good news! Batius has woken up and he has even spoken coherently! The doctors think that he can make a good recovery! Tinlenus looks like his plates will pop off out of happiness!"
Garrus sighed in relief and sat down on one of the benches outside the academy. The Presidium was bright in artificial daylight and Garrus trilled out his happiness as he watched the clouds on the sky. Frank laughed in his ear, "Now listen to the pretty bird sing! It's okay, man, I know you were worried but everything is gonna be fine. Oh and I got more news, Sarah, you know...?"
Garrus interrupted him "Yes, Sarah your girlfriend at 'suspicious company' who doesn't know that you're C-Sec. What about her?"
Frank mumbled something under his breath but didn't say anything against Garrus' assessment. "Well, she got a job in one of the new labs and that will give us some new insights. I got a job in the clean-up crew, I already settled things with Pallin, I go undercover and take the job, he gave me two weeks to find something, it's not much but we'll see, I'm going there right now, see if I can get to work right away..."
Garrus interrupted Franks endless stream of words. "Hey, pyjak-man, stop! Listen, I got a new lead here I'm going to check out but if you're busy I just take Cercus with me." Frank didn't like Cercus at all and Garrus waited for him to take the bait. He could hear Frank hesitate but then he said "It's alright birdy, I can't let this opportunity pass and if you want to spend your time with whiny Cercus - that's your problem!" He laughed. "I know your game, Vakarian, haha!"
Garrus laughed back "Alright, you got me. Fine, I take one of the rookies with me, we're just going to ask to the family of one of the organ donors some questions, there won't be anything problematic going on."
Frank made a snort. "Now you jinxed it man, I'll just wait for the explosions."
"Very funny, Frank" Garrus growled.
"I'll see you later, birdy. Just send me the coordinates to meet you, I don't want to walk alone into some turian hellhole tonight."
Garrus agreed that that was probably not a good idea.
They ended the call and Garrus went back inside C-Sec to randomly pick one of the new recruits to come with him. He still remembered how he had felt back in the day when he started at C-Sec, how none of the veterans ever wanted to take him along. How were the new guys supposed to learn anything if they never went outside with one of the experienced officers?
He stuck his head into Pallin's office. "Executor, Sir? I'd like to take one of the new guys for some questioning I have to do. Nothing dangerous."
Pallin's subharmonics chimed loudly of anger and disbelief. "'Nothing dangerous?' With that coming from you, Vakarian, I'm inclined to send a SWAT team along." The Executor grumbled loudly again and then dismissed him with a wave of his hand. "Just take whoever you like, Vakarian. No explosions, no shootings please."
Garrus went to the main hall where he saw in one corner six new recruits huddled around a terminal, watching vids of C-Sec arrests. He walked over to them, the group consisted of four turians, a salarian and a human. When he was next to them he said to noone in particular. "I need someone to come with me to question people. Anybody interested?"
For a second they all just stared at him and then the salarian and the human, a female, both stepped forward at the same time saying "Yes, Sir!" very loudly. He chuckled slightly and looked at them. "This is not the military, you don't have to be quite so ... so 'yes Sir' you know? I'm Garrus Vakarian, what are your names?"
The salarian spoke first in a high voice. "My name is Berdin Lerv." His skin was white with yellow spots on his horns and he wore typical salarian armor with the handle on the front. Garrus had always wondered what that thing was for.
The human woman spoke next. Her skin had a dark tint and her hair was dark brown and sat in short curls on her head. She wore light grey armor with blue lines on her arms. "My name is Katrina Peters, I just got here three days ago. I don't know how much help I can be but I would like to see some real C-Sec work. Watching vids gets kind of boring." She spoke with a soft voice but still sounded confident.
Garrus chuckled, watching and learning from vids was a typical turian way of education, he had noticed with Johnson that he thought it was boring too. Maybe that was another one of those human things, they preferred hands-on training to watching instructional vids.
Garrus didn't feel like deciding between them so he took them both along. He didn't bother talking to Pallin about that, the new recruits had clearly nothing better to do anyway. They took a skycar from the garage and Garrus programmed the destination. He turned around to the young recruits in the backseat.
"Ok, Lerv, Peters, here is the short version. My partner and I have found some suspicious stuff with transplant organs. There seems to be a new, very active market for that going on here on the Citadel. We recently raided a warehouse and found a whole bunch of them. Among them was a turian liver that gave us a name via the DNA profile. His name was Titus Kerdotus, he had a bondmate and a son. I just want to talk to the family, how he died, how the organ donation was contracted, that sort of thing. This is probably a very emotional time for the family, so don't ask stupid questions, just look around and pay attention, see if anything seems weird to you."
The recruits both looked at him and nodded. Garrus then remembered that they both weren't turian and he tried to think of things they should know before they would cause an incident in a turian household mourning. "If you see a picture of the deceased don't touch it. That would be insulting. If you say his name, don't let your eyes wander away, that would be rude. Better let me do the talking and you just pay attention to our surroundings, got it?"
"Yes Sir!" came from the backseat and Garrus reminded them again that they needn't do that. They arrived at their destination and Garrus parked the car in the underground garage and they took the elevator up to the tenth floor. He pressed on the door chime and steeled himself for the grieving widow to open the door but he was greeted by happily smiling turian woman. She greeted him friendly and then looked at the three of them expectantly.
Garrus trilled an apology and lowered his voice. He looked her in the eyes, "Matrona Kerdotus, my name is Garrus Vakarian, C-Sec officer. I would like to ask you a few questions about your bondmate, Titus Kerdotus." He trilled apologetic again and she looked at him confused.
She smiled at him, "Why don't you ask him your questions yourself?" She looked over her shoulder to call out "Titus! Come here please cari!" Thankfully the way she was facing she couldn't see the dumb look on Garrus face. A turian, who looked exactly like the picture on the profile came around the corner and greeted Garrus with a friendly trill. His plates looked a bit dull but other than that he seemed to be in perfect health. He looked at his two alien companions but they had similar dumb looks on their faces. Garrus mind was completely blank, he could only stare at the turian.
Peters was the first who came back to her senses and stepped forward. "Sir, we have received disturbing news about health problems in this area and would like to ask you a few questions. Have you had any medical problems lately?" She held her datapad in front of her like she was just checking off a list on it. Kerdotus looked at her slightly bewildered but he answered the question.
"I had a slight accident at my workplace last week but other than that, I had no problems and I haven't heard of anyone getting sick."
His mate chimed in with worry. "Is it contagious? Are we in danger?" She looked in panic at them and Garrus finally remembered his training and trilled a soothing tone at her. "No, there is no illness spreading around, we have just heard of people - eh - getting hurt around her. It was a statistical anomaly."
Peters looked back on her datapad as if she was checking her list. "I just need to know where you both work and then we are done." she said with a friendly smile that showed all her teeth. Garrus flinched at that, hopefully the Kerdotus's were used to humans and didn't misinterpret the gesture.
Titus Kerdotus answered without hesitation "I work at Everest Artifics as a technical assistant for Dr. Saleon. My mate is a sales assistant at Saronis Applications down in Zakera wards. Do you have anymore questions? We expect visitors and we have to make some preparations for that."
Garrus was checking his omni-tool, already deep in thought about Everest Artifics and how this could all be possible but Peters wasn't missing a beat and thanked them very politely for their help and excused them.
The were silent until they reached the elevator, each of them reading things on their omni-tools. But once the elevator doors had closed, Peters and Lerv both looked at Garrus expectantly. He shook his head, "Honestly guys, if I knew what's going on here I'd tell you. There is a liver down in the pathology lab that has his DNA and even though I couldn't get a DNA sample from him now, he looks exactly like his profile picture. He should be dead. I don't understand it."
Peters looked at them both with raised eyebrows. "Do turians have more than one liver? Can you take one out and the donor lives on?"
Lerv finally spoke for the first time. "You can't take a whole organ from a body without killing the subject!"
"You can with human kidneys. You can take one out and live with just the other." Peters retorted.
Lerv looked at her unbelieving, "Really? Humans don't die if you take out a whole kidney?" Garrus found himself staring at the human woman in the same way. She nodded vigorously. "Do salarians and turians not have two kidneys?"
"They do but they are connected, you can't just take one out without injuring the other, at least as far as I know." Garrus said.
They both looked at Lerv and he huffed annoyed. "Don't look at me for confirmation! Just because I'm a salarian doesn't mean I'm an all-knowing scientist. I don't know a lot about other species, just the basics."
Garrus grinned. "Well, I may not be an expert either but I'm pretty sure that turians have only one liver. If he is the donor, he shouldn't be alive. That was good work there, Peters, you adapted pretty fast to that situation. I have to admit, I didn't know what to say when I saw him walking around the corner there."
The elevator stopped on the garage level as Peters laughed and said "You know, I finally know what a dumbfounded turian looks like now. They never covered that in 'xeno expressions'." Peters looked at him from a corner of her eyes, probably wondering if she overstepped with that. Garrus laughed wholeheartedly, he knew where she was coming from.
"Ok, guys, anyone got any idea what's going on here?" Garrus looked at his two young colleagues. They both shrugged their shoulders in an amusing accordance of cross-species body-language. Berdin Lerv was deep in thought, reading stuff on his omni-tool display and almost walked into a wall.
In the car he looked up and said "I made a search on recent police reports and nothing like this has been reported. Katrina and I could ask around if anybody ever heard about something like that."
Katrina looked at him with raised eyebrows, "Wouldn't that be in a report already if it had?"
Garrus shook his head, "No, Lerv is right, this is so weird, it might not get written down to avoid questions about it. You shouldn't just blurt this out either, you'll get ridiculed."
"Let's ask Bailey", Katrina said. "We met him yesterday, he seems to be a no nonsense kind of guy and I think he will always answer seriously to a serious question." Lerv nodded to that.
"I never met this Bailey", Garrus said, "you think he could tell you something?"
Katrina shrugged her shoulders again, "I don't know but he works down in Zakera Wards, maybe he heard something." She hesitated for a second before she continued. "He's a human, he was one of the few guys who actually talked to Berdin and me. The other officers ... other than you, Sir... they're not exactly friendly to us."
Berdin snorted. "Not friendly - they are downright hostile towards you, Katrina!" She shrugged her shoulders at that.
Garrus sighed. The racism, or better speciesism in C-Sec was one of the problems that nobody liked to talk about. C-Sec used to consist only of turians, then a few asari joined the force, hardly any salarians felt compelled to do police work and C-Sec had been turian dominated for centuries. Now the humans wanted to join too. And again, humans weren't content to wait around till they got invited, they demanded to participate. Their willingness to serve in the force should have impressed turians but instead they felt threatened by it.
Garrus suddenly felt very tired, the stress of the last week and lack of sleep last night catching up with him. He reprogrammed the car to take him to his apartment first before returning to C-Sec. "Okay guys, I'm gonna be a bad example of C-Sec officer and take a long break. I think I need a nap." He stretched his neck, his whole body was tense. "I'll send you the information that I have on this case and you can look that over. I'll contact you later and we can compare notes, alright? Do me a favour and bring the other boxes with organs to Dr. Kaltkan down in the pathology lab so he can make DNA-profiles from them."
His two young colleagues nodded and Garrus had to smile at how eager they looked. He remembered how boring his first few weeks had been at C-Sec, he would have loved to work on a real case back then. His only highlight of that whole month had been the hot meeting with Alliance-Red.
Up in his apartment he let the armor drop off with a sigh and shrugged out of his underarmor as well. That thing still smelled of the events of the last night and he was glad to throw it into the wash. Falling down on his couch he stretched his legs and let his fringe sit on the backrest. He placed one hand on his genital plates, just enjoying the feeling of pressure there. In his mind he went back to his favourite memory of Alliance-Red moving over him like fluid. He remembered what she felt like and how she smelled but frustratingly he couldn't remember her face. Back then he had next to no experience with humans and they all looked pretty much the same to him. All he remembered from the look he got of her in the hallway was her bright red hair and that she had smiled. But her face wasn't clear in his memory and that annoyed him to no end.
He had realized for a while now that he would probably never find her again, even if she ever came back to the Citadel. He had learned that humans dyed their hair and that their scent came mostly from the stuff they used to wash it. Some even used perfume, masking their natural scent completely. So none of the attributes he remembered of her were of any help.
But he still remembered how she had felt like fluid.
()()()
Garrus woke up still stretched out on the couch. He must have been more tired than he initially had thought, falling asleep with his hand on his plates. He checked his omni-tool, he had slept for over an hour.
Both Katrina and Berdin had messaged him in the meantime but they had no new findings to report. Dr. Kaltkan had sent him the DNA profiles of the other samples and he started a search algorithm on the database on all of them. Three came back with results and he started another search whether these three were alive or dead.
As he was looking through the information his omni-tool pinged with a reminder that one of his automatic searches had brought up another result. It was his 'Lieutenant Shepard' search, the algorithm he had set up this morning to gather information on the Extranet about her. He didn't have access to Alliance files but apparently she was already interesting enough to have people write about her. Maybe Frank was right, this could be the rising star of the Alliance.
One of the reports was about an operation on a planet called Tiptree. A small human colony, threatened by a catastrophic landslide from a collapsing mountain side. Lieutenant Shepard had transported a bunch of engineers from another mining colony to Tiptree to somehow contain the landslide until the settling could be evacuated. Without proper resources or time the engineers and the soldiers had managed to build a structure from scrap-wood and mass effect fields to contain the sinking boulders. The structure was so solid that the settlement could not only get evacuated, the whole village, with everything the people had owned was moved to a higher rise in the area.
Lieutenant Shepard was lauded in the report for having organized this rescue operation without direct orders from command. Her orders had been to just evacuate the people but she went beyond that.
The report also mentioned her involvement in several missions against pirates who attacked the many new colonies humanity had opened up around the galaxy. That she was an excellent soldier was without question, her platoon protected several small settlements. Still she could only do so much, it looked like the Alliance was stretched thin trying to protect all the colonies.
He wondered how Nihlus knew Lieutenant Shepard, when he saw him later on he would ask him about her.
Garrus was about to close the search results when he saw a small note about Lieutenant Shepard's past. Apparently she was colony kid herself, born and raised on Mindoir in a family of farmers. When she had just turned sixteen, Mindoir was raided by batarian pirates or slavers who attacked the colony and ruthlessly killed almost everybody. Garrus was shocked, she had lost her whole family in that attack, a little daughter of a farmer, having everything she ever knew and loved taken away from her. He found it hard to make the connection from a farm girl to a hardened soldier and he wondered what that experience had done to her.
He thought about his own family. He had left his home for his mandatory military service at the age of sixteen and it had been hard for him. Harder than he cared to admit, he had been so homesick. Leaving his family, especially his mother had been the most painful thing he had ever done at that point in his life. He couldn't imagine how it would feel to lose them in such a horrible way.
Garrus made a note on his calendar to call his mother when it was morning on Palaven.
He decided to visit Batius in the hospital and then show his face at C-Sec again and maybe have a serious look at all the other cases on his desk. There was still the question how the asari matriarch and this Verringer guy played into this weird case. He still had a few hours to kill before he would meet with Nihlus and Frank again, he might as well get some work done.
Frank was sitting on a bench on the side of the road to the mostly turian area of this ward. Around him turians were busily walking to and from the public market but almost everyone spared a look for the odd human sitting there. He looked like he didn't notice or didn't care about all the attention he was getting but Garrus could tell from his face that he was uncomfortable. He wasn't called the 'polygraph' for nothing!
Garrus got out of the taxi and as he approached the bench, Frank visibly relaxed, waving at him with a big smile. "Hey man! You look much better than you did this morning, did you polish your plates or something?"
Garrus grinned, "I just took a nap, I feel much better now. Oh and by the way, good of you to not call me 'birdy'."
Frank scratched his head, "Yeah, I figured that might not go over so well around here. I can be sensitive, you know?"
"Never would have guessed."
They made their way through the crowds to a small cafe, with windows towards the market place. They could see Nihlus already sitting at a table, working on his omni-tool and a bunch of datapads scattered around on the table. The cafe was almost empty, it looked clean and friendly. Every table was decorated with a flower from Palaven. Garrus took a deep breath, he hadn't smelled these flowers for almost two years now. Frank looked around in surprise. "You know, this is not what I had imagined a turian hellhole would look like."
Nihlus noticed them and got up with a joyful smile, he took Franks hand and pulled him into an embrace. Frank looked slightly bewildered at Garrus over his shoulder and Garrus could hardly control his face. He wanted to laugh out loud at Franks look of panic. Nihlus let him go, only to put his hands on either side of his face and pull it towards him. It looked like he wanted to kiss him and Frank was pulling back fast. "Hold it! You know, I do have a girlfriend! Could we stop with the kissing of the nice human please?"
Nihlus was clutching the cowl on his armor like Frank had hurt him on the inside but then he had to laugh himself. All three were giggling like little kids and the waiter behind the bar was looking at them like they were crazy. Nihlus took a deep breath and then pointed to the chairs around the circular table full of datapads. "Have a seat my friends. They have very good calida here and they even have levo coffee and tea, I have been told. There is a section of levo food on the menu although it's all asari, I think."
They settled down and the waiter brought coffee for Frank and calida for Nihlus and Garrus. Nihlus smiled happily and then it just burst out of him. "I have a ship! She's a beauty, almost brandnew. It's a frigate, medium sized, can house a crew of about ten but I only need four to run the ship. Spirits, it's gonna be so great to finally have a crew. I already hired two pilots and two engineers. I might look for soldier, to have someone at my back on a mission." There was a pinch in the back of Garrus' mind at that. Would Nihlus ask him to accompany him?
Frank had scrunched his eyebrows and asked "What do you mean 'to finally have a crew'? You were on a ship with Saren..."
"Yes, but Saren has no crew on his ship." Nihlus interrupted and they both stared at him in disbelief, "It's true, he is all alone in his ship, he runs everything with an advanced VI!"
Garrus shook his head "But that's crazy, he'll go insane!"
Nihlus snorted at that "Maybe he already has lost his mind, it would explain a lot of things."
Frank shrugged his shoulders "Maybe he just likes to be on his own, some people are like that."
Garrus shook his head "Not turians. It has been proven that turians need the company of others, a turian in solitude will most likely develop psychological problems. We are raised in families and clans, we live and work in tight communities. We shouldn't be alone for long periods of time."
"Saren was always a loner, "Nihlus said, "In the whole year I spend with him, I have never heard him talk about his clan or about friends. He only mentioned his brother once and how the filthy humans killed him." He looked at Frank, "Sorry."
"Don't worry, I already knew that." Frank said with a dismissive wave of his hand. His omni-tool lid up and he read the message. His ears turned slightly red.
Garrus grinned "Is that your girlfriend calling you? Does she know who you are by now?"
Frank's face turned red. "Yes, it's Sarah, my - ehm - girlfriend. And yes, I told her I work for C-Sec and she wasn't really mad at me for that." he replied sheepishly. "I'm just going to go outside for a bit to call her, could you order me something to eat?"
"I don't know what you like..." Nihlus said, "and I'm hurt that I have been replaced so easily!" He sighed dramatically.
"Oh, shut up you." Frank grumbled with a smile and walked outside.
"We'll just order something random, " Garrus said while he laughed, "Frank always says that asari food tastes nice no matter what you get."
Nihlus began to put the datapads in a bag and they ordered their food. They were silent for a little while as Garrus tried to come up with a way to ask about Lieutenant Shepard.
"I wanted to ask you something." he started and Nihlus grinned at him and said "About Lieutenant Shepard?"
Garrus was stunned. "How do you...?"
"The way you looked at her and she smiled at you - it was like watching a spirit light up between you two."
"What? No, we hardly talked, I don't even know what kind of a person she is. I am just curious how you know her." Garrus said.
Nihlus smiled, "Well, I met her while I was still in the military. We were on our way to a distress signal from a turian colony, the only cruiser in the area. As we arrived the orbit was swarming with mercenary ships, pirates who were after the eezo resources from that colony. They had already punched through the orbital defences and were landing troops on the ground. We were hopelessly outnumbered but of course we engaged."
Frank came back to the table and sat down, listening to Nihlus story.
Nihlus nodded at him and carried on, "Things looked bad when suddenly an Alliance cruiser appeared, very precisely shooting pirate ships out of orbit and two shuttles were landing on the planet with small ground troops. Our troops were already pinned, we had attacked with one platoon of 30 soldiers and they had us trapped with nowhere to go. Typical turian battle tactic, attack with overwhelming force, well, that only works if you have the overwhelming forces. We didn't, we were just a bunch of soldiers in a bad situation.
The humans used a different tactic, they had small teams of three or four soldiers. They cut down communications, destroyed their weapons and forced the enemies to spread out and lured them into traps. I couldn't see any of that of course, we were just sitting behind cover, hearing firefighting all around us. After half an hour the pirates fled and three human soldiers stepped towards us. I got up and saluted, thatgot me some looks from my platoon. And then I thanked them for their help and the leader took off her helmet, grinned at me and said 'Glad to be of service' and then she made a perfect turian salute."
Nihlus smiled at the memory. "Most of my platoon had never seen a human soldier before and you know what they teach at the academy, humans are weak and their tactics are wrong and all that. That day changed a lot of minds, I have no doubt that we wouldn't have survived without the help of Lieutenant Shepard and her platoon."
He took a sip of his calida and continued. "After that experience I set out to organize combat trainings for human and turian troops together, I was convinced and still am that we can all learn from each other. Spirits, the amount of stercus I got for that from the Hierarchy! Admittingly, the Alliance was reluctant at first as well but Lieutenant Shepard and Captain Anderson liked the idea and worked for it on their side. It took a whole lot of diplomatic tubaric to get that project off the ground. But we got it, there are now regular trainings with turians against humans or mixed platoons. And there is another project that sprang from that that I can't talk about yet. But it's amazing!" His eyes were shining and Garrus wondered what secret could have gotten Nihlus so excited.
"Anyway, that's how I met Shepard and we have stayed in contact ever since. She's a good person, you can trust her."
Garrus had no idea why he felt such a relief at that remark. Frank was grinning at him. Suddenly he looked intently out of the window and his grin got even wider. He pointed outside at a figure strolling towards the cafe's door. "Speaking of the devil...!"
"Devil? What devil?" Garrus asked confused.
The door opened and Lieutenant Shepard stepped in.
And she smiled at him.
()()()
I had so many more things in my mind that were supposed to go into this chapter but I think it is long enough now. That stuff will have to go into the next chapter. Phew.
Like any writer I love getting reviews, so thank you for the reviews.
Thanks also go to TheLadyKellet for beta reading this long ass chapter.