22 Days ASR

Metal banged against metal, five quick knocks … for the tenth time in just over an hour. "Hey! You up there! Are you done digging us out?"

Garrus looked down from the roof of the shuttle and leveled a glare of death on Martin's grinning insolence. "Shut it, and if you're finished repairing those power couplings, get your ass up here." Try as he did to keep his demeanour stern, his mandibles kept trying to flick into a grin.

The kid's grin just widened. "I have finished the power couplings. While I was at it, I repaired three shorts as well. We're ready to check the engine and thrusters as soon as you clear the rubble away, so … " The grin took on a wicked edge. "... get moving, will you?"

A giant hand punched down from the top of the shuttle, grabbed the back of Martin's frame armour, and yanked the kid straight up off the ground. Martin's face froze into a comical mask of combined terror and surprise, his mouth opening, but his squawk didn't escape until his feet touched the shuttle roof.

"Wrex!" he screeched even before he turned around to identify his attacker. "You … you … ."

The krogan laughed, just two harsh, deep coughs of sound. "Get to work, Pyjak. You're the one with the fancy armour." That same massive fist shoved the kid toward the pile of debris covering the shuttle's back end and half the roof.

"Fine." Martin stalked over and lifted a massive chunk of wall. "You're an old bastard, you know that?" The kid tossed the rubble with an east that made Garrus's back ache just watching.

"Proud of it." Wrex gave Martin another shove and dug back in.

"General," Nyreen called over the radio.

Garrus paused halfway through rolling a concrete boulder off the side, straining to hear over the echoing racket. Not an easy task with twenty krogan bellowing and throwing debris around. "Go ahead."

"Comm channels are heavy with static from the ambient radiation, but open." She paused. "You've got a call from Captain Anderson."

Thank the spirits, the Normandy must have gotten through okay. Garrus heaved the chunk of concrete over the side, his hand leaping up to open the channel. "Thank you." He strode to the front of the shuttle, waiting for the call to clear.

"General Vakarian?" Anderson's voice called through the static. "SSV Normandy to General Garrus Vakarian, do you read?"

A scowl drew Garrus's brow plates and mandibles in tight as he strained to hear the faint transmission. Pressing both hands over his aural canals, he replied, "Anderson? I can barely hear you. Give me a second." He strode to the side of the shuttle, easing himself off the edge and down to the ground. Despite his care, pain seared along all the healing seams, knocking the breath out of him in a single cough as his feet impacted the ground.

Gasping, he limped into the back of the shuttle and closed the hatch, sealing the krogan cacophony on the other side. "Anderson? Do you read?"

"I read you." The relief in Anderson's voice came through loud and clear despite the interference. "Are you and the kid okay?"

"Yes, we reached relatively safe shelter before the bomb went off. We're digging out now and should be headed for the evac site within an hour or two." As he spoke, he paced the hold, looking down at his feet as he concentrated. "Freedom's Progress … was it a trap?"

"It was, but thanks to your warning, we took out their ambush. The Aesarus took some damage, twelve injured, one killed." Anderson disappeared into the static for a few seconds. "... was gone. The ground team ran into trouble with the colony's mechs. They'd been set to attack. Nihlus and a few of the Marines were injured, but they'll recover."

"So, the colonists were all just gone like in the other attacks?" Garrus sat on the edge of one of the seats. "Was the team able to find anything?"

Anderson paused a long time. What was it? Bad news? Good news? No … that long a pause never meant good news. Just before Garrus asked, Anderson said, "Another team, not Alliance … maybe mercs … came in, saved Nihlus and the Marines, but the team injuries cut the mission short. There's no sign of the merc vessel, so it has to have stealth technology. The Alliance is on the ground now, so I assume it's safe to say whoever the mercs were, they're gone."

Garrus frowned. Anderson was holding something back. He could just feel the unspoken words under everything the captain said. "No ID's?" he asked.

"We're checking faces from the hardsuit recordings against Alliance and council records, but we have more pressing issues." Anderson cleared his throat. "We received news from Omega. Instructor Kandros's people sent word that unprecedented numbers of mercs are massing on the station, and their last recon reports indicate that they are setting up staging areas around Archangel headquarters."

Garrus's heart fell into his belly, landing with a sickening splash. Frost crackled down his limbs. "They drew us away from base, set traps to take us out, and now they're going in for the kill." He drew in a long breath, pushing aside the pain and forcing himself to focus. "Are you and Nihlus on your way back?" Shaking his hands, he tried to jostle some feeling back into his chill, numb digits.

"Yes, but there's more, Garrus. Nyreen Kandros is missing from the base. She may—"

"Instructor Kandros is with me," Garrus said, sharpened steel slicing off the captain's suspicion. "She stowed away on the Passch because she thought I was the target. She saved my life and saved Archangel from being blamed for the bomb." He cracked his neck, letting go of the knee jerk defensiveness. "Keep a wary eye out when you get back to Omega; Kandros believes we have traitors in our midst. I'm inclined to agree." The poison of those words sunk claws down into his gut to yank his heart back into place. Three or four days earlier, he would have found them impossible. "I'll be on my way back in a few hours, but we've got nearly three days travel time ahead of us."

Garrus's mind whirled, trying to plan the base's defense. They had maybe three hundred of the rawest recruits left, a hundred and eighty hands aboard Normandy and the other two ships, a handful of instructors … some of their ships could be pulled in, but that still left Archangel's other assets at risk. Of any of the facilities, the base was the most easily defended. If they sealed the tunnels and dropped the blast shutters, they could force the mercs to come at them on only a few fronts. Shepard had liked that location for that very reason. No, he wouldn't leave the rest of the facilities helpless. Whoever was pulling the merc's strings had orchestrated one hell of a massive, intricate plan.

"Send word to all Archangel facilities," he said at last. "Tell them about home base and to go to general quarters. This whole operation has been nothing but feints and misdirection. They may come at us anywhere." He paused, one last detail appearing in his mind. "If Nihlus is medically fit, he has command of Archangel until I get back. If not … ." He shook his head. No one else had that sort of command experience. Except … . "Can I count on you to hold the line?"

"You can, General." Anderson paused. Garrus left the silence unfilled, hoping the captain would finally spit out whatever it was he'd been trying to decide how to say. Instead, Anderson cleared his throat. "We'll be putting boots on Omega in just under twenty-four hours and will keep you informed."

"Roger that. Thanks for bringing me up to speed. Is there anything else?" he asked, giving Anderson one last opening.

"No. If we get positive ID's on any of the mercs from Freedom's Progress, we'll let you know. Safe trip back, General. Anderson out."

Garrus closed the channel. They needed to get out of there and back to Omega. The damned Reapers and their puppets would not tear Archangel apart. Not while he still drew breath. He'd made a goddamned promise, and he'd bloody well keep it.

Spending too much time around Massani, Vakarian.

Anderson bringing up the mercs again sent Garrus's suspicion meter straight into the red. Did Anderson think their traitor had been there? Might he or she also be involved in the colony disappearances? He couldn't think of another reason it would matter, but he didn't have the time to puzzle it through. Trusting Anderson to keep his word and let him know if it became important, he pushed himself up and turned to lean through the access into the cockpit.

Nyreen turned to level a curious, but controlled stare on him.

"Contact a few of your most trusted people on Omega. Anderson said that mercs are moving in on the base. I need to know how many and where." He pulled back. They needed more and varied sources of information. Once he was away from the planet and comms cleared up, he'd call Aria. She'd probably lie, but even that would tell him something.

In order to coordinate a plan so huge, the Reapers' forces needed access to Archangel. He let out a long breath and turned to open the hatch. Traitors in his inner circle or not, he couldn't do anything until he got off that ruined rock and on his way back home.

§§§

"Garrus!" Herros strode over to shuttle, gripping Garrus tightly by the shoulders. "When we didn't hear from you after the bomb … ."

The general returned his father's embrace. "We managed to take shelter in a missile silo. Came through the explosion okay, but had to do a bit of digging out." Pulling away, Garrus turned to the torin walking up behind his father. He held out a hand. "General Victus. Thank you for your assistance."

The turian general gripped Garrus's wrist. "Thank you for getting my son and his men out of there, General."

"The least I could do." When he released the general, Garrus turned back to his father. Damn, Herros looked good, strong and fit … every ounce the turian officer in command. Getting back into action suited him and tweaked memories decades old. A rumbling sigh rolled through his second larynx. No time for sentimentality.

"Pari, I heard from Anderson. The Normandy and their escort ships came under attack on their way to investigate another Alliance colony disappearance. An ambush of Archangel ships, like what met the Passch at the relay here. They destroyed the enemy."

"The two that attacked your flagship are nothing but scrap as well," Victus reported. "The Passchendaele should limp into orbit in a few hours. They're trying to patch together repairs as they go."

Garrus tipped a nod of thanks and acknowledgement to the general before looking back to his father. "Anderson contacted me a couple of hours ago. Mercs are converging on Omega, moving into staging areas around the base. They've pulled almost all of our people away, tried to take out the leadership … they're setting up to wipe Archangel out."

Wrex lumbered over to stand at Garrus's side. "The council came after me … after my clan because they wanted to use one weapon that Shepard built to destroy another." He squinted at Herros then Victus. "You prevented that." He rumbled, sounding like a volcano building to eruption, then spat out, "Thank you."

Garrus hid a grin. The thank you sounded as though it hurt, but he'd never thought he'd ever hear Wrex say anything like it. Warm and bright, like the sun coming out from behind clouds, he felt Shepard's smile on the back of his neck.

You would have loved this moment, Kahri. Especially the irony of the council's attempt to destroy and isolate the krogan, bringing us together.

Herros passed Wrex a datapad. "The Hierarchy sent the locations of the rest of the bombs so that you can salvage and disarm them. You have our most sincere apologies that we allowed these travesties of a bygone era to fall into the hands of terrorists." He dropped his head in a sharp nod. "And I'm prepared to support you in any way I can politically. At the very least, we should be able to get a diplomatic representative on the Citadel."

Wrex took the datapad. "Good. I'll be ten days dead and a pile of varren shit before I let those Reaper loving council bastards get away with this." He turned, one wrecking ball of a fist slamming into Garrus's shoulder, sending him staggering. "But speaking of varren shit, first we get our asses to Omega, crush this attack on every front."

Before Garrus could counter him, Wrex waved his men over. "Have the female shaman, Chief Sentry, and the Chief Scout from all the allied clans meet me here immediately," the clan chief ordered. He turned back to Garrus. "I'll have fifty guns ready to board your shuttles in an hour."

Garrus opened his mouth to argue, but it took only one look at Wrex's huge, scowling mug to see that he might as well save his breath. After a second, he just nodded. "Thank you, Wrex."

Victus stepped up between Herros and Garrus. "You were both hip deep in Shepard's mess while chasing Saren and that dreadnought?" When they answered to the affirmative, Victus nodded toward a shaded spot where some crates had been set up around a water cooler. "I want you to fill me in as much as you can, send everything you've got on the Reapers, Saren, Sovereign, the council's involvement to my ship. Then, Hierarch … General, if you would do me the honour of allowing me to return you to Omega? If the council is behind this … ." Victus looked toward the cloud of dust and ash still billowing above the bomb site.

"We'd be glad to, General," Herros spoke up, ushering the general toward the seating area. "I've been making some inroads into the Hierarchy and military, but it's difficult to convince … ."

Garrus let the other two torini go ahead while he surveyed the evac site. Females, males, and the elderly worked, setting up places for the evacuees to sleep, stepping patiently around little krogan. The children played, chasing and rough housing like children galaxy wide. He'd never seen krogan young before. The little ones ran around without clothes, covered in dust and mud, beautifully free. Even with their narrowly-escaped destruction still rolling through the air over their heads, they seemed completely unphased.

The older children helped when called on, then returned to what Garrus realized was taking out Blue Suns, while the juveniles worked alongside their elders. The closeness between the females and the youngsters spawned a yearning deep in the general's gut that he didn't even realize he could feel.

"Do you have any of your own, General?" a soft voice asked from behind him.

He shoved the vague ache aside and shook his head, turning to face Nyreen. "No. I'll leave that to my sister." Like he needed to spend more time focusing on everything he could never have. He looked past her and lifted a hand to wave Martin over from the shuttle . "General Victus wants my pari and I to return to Omega aboard his ship, but I'll shuttle back and forth. I need access to the QEC." He let out a long breath. "Looks like we might end up with another ally out of all this."

Nyreen's brow plates rose. "The general wants to return to Omega with us? The hierarchy won't like that." She bumped Martin with her shoulder as the kid stepped up beside her. "Looks like you won't get to be the big hero, kid."

Martin shrugged, his face uncharacteristically hard. "We'll need all the help we can get, because it's not going to end with the mercs." He cursed as he met Garrus's gaze. "You know that, right? If the council's after Archangel, they aren't going to just give up. They're going to keep coming after you and Nihlus, and what if it is a fleet of council ships and soldiers they send? Killing mercs is one thing. Killing the good guys … the people we're going to need when the war starts?"

Garrus nodded. Certainty set like cement down his spine. "We got complacent." He chuckled, the sound like grinding glass. "Not even a month ago, I was lecturing Wrex on getting too big too fast, drawing notice."

"You've got to hate that irony," Nyreen spoke up, "but what's the choice, General? Do nothing? Wait for the Reapers?" She shook her head and crossed her arms. "No. We're just going to have to get stealthy where we can and get ready to start fighting back where we can't. General Victus isn't the most popular torin with the hierarchy, but he's incredibly popular with the troops. Where he leads, they'll follow."

Garrus nodded, but held up a hand to forestall the rest of that conversation. It could wait. He wanted to get off the planet and on the way back to Omega as soon as Wrex was ready. "Instructor Kandros, I would like you to see to the shuttle loading. Get everyone back aboard the carriers within the hour. Leave five shuttles. Wrex is coming with us as well and bringing fifty of his fighters. They can ride back on the Trimeri. The Passch is going to be a few days making it back, so the three of us will stay on the Istal'an except when I'm ferrying back and forth."

He jerked his head toward the virtual parking lot of shuttles. "Go help our krogan friends get organized. We need to get home."

They both saluted and strode off, poking at one another. He watched them for a moment, before his gaze slipped over to a krogan female sitting three little ones down to drink cups of water. He needed to keep Archangel alive for them … for all of them. All the families who deserved a shot at growing up and doing better. The female looked up, and seeing him watching, smiled. He smiled back, one hand lifting in a half wave before he turned and strode over to join his father and the general.

Victus listened while Garrus and Herros took him back to the beginning, starting with Eden Prime. By the time Wrex and the krogan were ready to go, he'd reached the point when they returned to Eden Prime and came back with the basketful of what Nihlus said were Prothean memory drives, and Legion. As they moved to Victus's shuttle, Garrus followed, taking the opportunity to rest his voice and settle the faint dizziness that accompanied laying it all out. He knew how nuts it all sounded. The crazy burned under his plates and pricked along his belly, sweat trickling over his hide despite his armour's cooling system.

The moment Shepard stepped into Chloe Michel's clinic, his life devolved into a combination of situational chaos and insanity.

And you wouldn't trade it for anything.

No, he wouldn't, but he also wouldn't have blamed Victus for shutting him down, threatening to have him locked up, and reporting him as a clearly mad terrorist. Instead, the turian general just listened. He asked the occasional question to clarify details, but for the most part he took it in, watching what vid footage they could give him.

By the time they reached Victus's cruiser, the Impavidir, Herros had joined in, filling in what he'd been able to unearth before and after leaving C-Sec. Garrus used the time to puzzle over something that hadn't occurred to him at the time or since, but while he listened to Shepard's conversation with Legion and Rael'Zorah, it leaped out and hard-docked at the base of his skull.

Thirteen times since the end of the Morning War the geth have been contacted by an unknown race offering us advanced technology, weaponry, and resources to assist in building our megastructure if the geth were to instigate aggressive activities against the creator's flotilla. Each time geth have rejected their offer."

Rael'Zorah slumped a little into his seat.

"Rael'Zorah? Have the quarians been contacted?" Shepard asked.

"Thirteen times since the end of the war, the flotilla has been contacted with much the same offer."

Damn it. Someone had been working damned hard to stir that pot. The rachni … the krogan … . His blood turned to the black sludge that had covered that floor on Haestrom. Invisible hands moving pieces on some galactic board? Extinctions every fifty thousand cycles? Through it all, the Citadel and the relays remained, silent sentinels carried forward through the eons.

He leaned his head in his hand, elbow braced on his knee. The orbs … where did they come in? The eyes, ears, and hands of this invisible foe? A gear locking into place, that idea solidified. Shepard said the black spiders used her eyes and ears to see … that they said she would show them who and what she was.

"General?"

Garrus jumped and straightened, looking around. The shuttle hatch stood open, his father and the general both staring at him expectantly from the shuttle bay deck on the other side of the threshold. He shook off his musings and the fear that crept along on their back.

"Sorry." He pushed himself up, his entire body creaking like an old door. Every step crushed glass inside his joints as he limped the couple of metres to the hatch and eased himself down, clinging to the door frame. When he saw the concern in his pari's eyes, he just shook his head. It truly was nothing that some medigel and a long sleep wouldn't cure. Well, that and enough time between firefights to actually heal.

Victus stepped up and rested a hand on Garrus's shoulder. "Go back to your ship, General. You can continue in twelve hours."

Garrus stared into the other torin's amber eyes for a long moment then nodded. A hell of a fight awaited them on the other end of their journey. Sieges always proved long, bloody, and exhausting. The moment he agreed, his entire body let out a collective sigh of relief, aching to lie down, stretch out and stay very, very still for a long time.

Victus gripped his elbow, helping him back up the step into the shuttle. "Rest well, General."

Garrus took a step, then turned back. "Are you sure you want to do this, General? As far as the galaxy knows, we're a rogue merc organization at best and terrorists at worst." He let out a short huff of air and shrugged.

"If this Reaper threat is real, you're the only people I know of who are working to meet it. I saw what Sovereign did to the Citadel Fleet. It took the Alliance, the quarians, the geth, and everything the Citadel could throw at that machine, and in the end … it didn't come down because of firepower. It came down because Shepard and Kryik exploited a feedback weakness." Victus lifted a foot to rest on the shuttle floor. "If more of those are coming, we haven't got a hope without some serious weapon dev."

His mandibles swept out wide then dropped and settled back. The fact that he felt the same uncertainty Garrus felt … it helped. The general turned his head to include Herros as he continued, "If you're wrong about the Reapers, you're still the only reason that Tuchanka's innocent civilian population didn't get halved today. And you're the only ones looking into the human disappearances. Those two reasons alone are good enough." He stepped back and lifted his hand to pull down the hatch. "Until tomorrow, General."

Garrus nodded, his mind going blank in the face of Victus's respect as the torin emphasized his title. After so many dead ends with the military establishment and governments … even someone just being willing to hear them out and keep an open mind felt like a gift of massive proportions. He sat in the closest seat and leaned back, head resting against the bulkhead.

"I'll give you a smooth ride home, General," the pilot said, glancing back through the access.

"Thank you." He let his eyes drift shut. A million things pressed at the back of his mind, demanding that he worry over them, but his exhaustion gave them all numbers and sent them to the back of the line. Disaster and destruction would arrive more than soon enough.

A-N: Thank you everyone who checked in last chapter. It was brilliant to hear from, and be able to thank, some people I hadn't before. The cast special is still coming. Looking forward to that. And getting back to Omega. As always, thank you so much for reading.