Chapter 7

The Carrier Open Palm slid through the ocean of space like a knife through water, her great form soaring towards the massive relay at the edge of the Trebia system. Garrus stood in the cargo bay, watching as the stars seemed to drift lazily by. The Palm was using FTL drives to reach the Mass Relay, alongside the other ships in the fleet. Four cruisers, The Axe head, War Horn, Hidden Dirk, and Blade Tip, formed the bulk of the detachment, while this Carrier held the fleet's fighters and invasion forces, and her Sister ship, the dreadnought Shaking Fist carried their real firepower.

Supporting them were a dozen frigates, Crimson scale, Sharpened Talon, Spirit's Hammer, Age of Iron, and others. It was one helluva fleet.

Garrus stood in the Open Palm's sparring room, his eyes to the viewport. The windows were made of powerful clear alloys, but were built to be armored during combat none the less. The room was empty, save for Garrus.

Off duty, he was still armored, and his weapons sat before him on a workbench in the corner. Technically, he should have been tinkering in the armory, or even in his off-duty quarters, but Garrus had always enjoyed the peace and quiet of the sparing room whenever it went unused, and besides, the Armory would be full of soldiers, as it always was on this ship. Not even disciplined Turian troops either, but the Arterius brothers' pet projects, their "special delivery".

Garrus's gut sunk at the thought of their mission. Their job was not going to be quick, or clean or even honorable. This was a job almost better suited for Proxy forces, Pirates and slavers to be paid for, like the Skyllian Blitz, not for an entire fleet with a Major Admiral at its head. This must have been a damned important payload to the Primarchs if they were willing to send Saren in with this much firepower behind him.

The sound of the door opening was soft, though it may as well have boomed with the volume of a gunshot for the previous moments' silence. Garrus turned only slightly to see who was coming in. if he was lucky, they were Turian.

The soldier who walked through the door had tan scales, purple-blue markings in small pieces on his mandibles. He was armored, but held no weapons except the usual carmfex sidearm. Garrus had one on his hip as well; it was expected, even aboard your own ship.

"Captain Vakarian" he said, turning towards Garrus with a friendly face "I thought I might find you here. Always got to have your hands on that Raptor yours, even if you're not shooting it."

Garrus turned to his partner, "Lantar, you know I don't like it when my own teammates call me by rank, please? Just Garrus."

Lantar shrugged, continuing. "I'm glad for you Garrus, you deserved the promotion. You're a good soldier and I'm grateful to serve with you."

Garrus, nodded, taking the compliment. "Thank you Sidonis. And for what it's worth, I'm glad to serve with you."

Lantar stretched his arms, bending down to touch his toes. "You want to go for a round? We're already in here, so we might as well."

Garrus smiled, setting his rifle carefully down on the bench to be reassembled later. "Okay, but no biotics this time, hand to hand only."

"Well where's the fun in that?" Lantar responded, a small blue aura emanating from his left hand "If I get in a fight, I'm sure going to use them, and if you get in a fight with another biotic then they're sure going to use them. We might as well train for it."

"Maybe, but I'm tired of you taking me down from across the sparing mat when I don't even get an omni-tool, or trying to hit you only to jam my wrist against your barriers. No Biotics."

"Fair enough"

And so they began, Lantar charged in for a tackle, Garrus rolling to his left, turning as Sidonis did the same. Garrus took a step closer, throwing a half-formed right fist towards Lantar's neck. The left hand parried reflexively, crossing his body, leaving him unable to stop Garrus's left arm from striking him in the gut, or from Garrus's right leg from coming up to kick him in the midriff. After a backwards stumble, Lantar came back at him, hands up protectively, lashing out in quick strikes.

The fight dragged on for a few minutes, until Garrus's shoulders were sore from blocking shots, and his stomach ached from a few well placed blows. Garrus dodged low from a punch, kicking for Lantar's ankles with his left leg, while punching Lantar's stomach with his right fist.

Both shots connected, and Sidonis hit the ground momentarily afterwards.

Garrus got up breathing heavily, offering Lantar a hand. The second soldier took the offering, sitting down on a nearby bench when they were finished, simply watching the windows.

Neither said anything for a moment, both watching the star field before them, a foreign starscape, they'd already hit the Mass relay to the Atheon cluster, still in the heart of Vol-Hierarchy space. That would change at the next relay.

It was Garrus to find his voice first. "We'd better get ready, Nihlus will want us both prepped for battle once we hit Alliance space."

Lantar sighed, "Yeah, he will." Standing as Garrus crossed over to his weapons. ""I'll see you in the quarters then." And with that, the man left, leaving Garrus alone reassembling his rifles.

Garrus didn't watch the time as he closed up the inner workings of his weapons, or as he sealed on their barrels and scopes. But when his gaze rose from his weapon, holstering it upon his back, the window showed not empty space, but a relay.

The Mass Relay floated before the Open palm, massive, defiant to this civilization and its pathetic size in comparison to the great empires it had connected. It was shaped in a circular fashion at one end, but the circle was unclosed, having two strait rods protruding from the edges towards the connecting relay. Within the circle lie a pair of spinning rings connected to the Relay itself, spiraling and orbiting about a massive Spherical Mass Effect field.

The giant artifacts had once, like so many other ruins and technology throughout the galaxy, been attributed to the long-extinct Prothean Empire, which had disappeared over Fifty Thousand Years prior. It had been discovered only recently, within the last century, that prothean technology was at an inadequate level to construct such massive and powerful tools, and not long after it was realized that the Protheans had discovered the Mass Relays much as modern civilization had, and that they had, credited the Relays as constructions of the Inusannon, an immensely powerful race now believed to have died out in a prolonged war of attrition with the Protheans that ended with the deaths of both their empires.

With weapons assembled, Garrus walked from the sparing room, hurrying to his squad's Quarters. When he got there, he found Nihlus working on his shotgun, a long, silver, tubular weapon that lacked a stock, forcing the wielder to hold it apart from their body completely.

"Garrus, good. We just passed into the Kite' Nest. This is Human Alliance territory, and we've got an hour and a half before we reach the relay to the Exodus Cluster." Nihlus explained "I wouldn't be surprised if we were attacked before then, so I want you both to stay sharp, armed and near the hanger bay. If any attack comes, I want the three of us either on the first boarding shuttle, or firing the first shots at enemy boarding parties, agreed?"

Both Garrus and Lantar spoke in unison "Yes Sir, Major Kryik"

Their leader gave them a grin, the ridges above his eyes rising slightly. "And don't let any of these damn Beserkers get in your way, We'll be one of the infiltration teams on Eden Prime, so we shouldn't have to work with them long."

[And you know the drill by now: Writer's notes.]

This chapter was actually really disconcerting to write, not because of anything that happens in it, but because I actually checked a map of the Mass Effect galaxy with all the relay paths etc marked out. And damn, Palaven is kind of dangerously close to Earth. There's a codex entry or something that mentions a Turian-Human war might lay waste to a significant portion of the galaxy, but I have to call bullshit on it now, it'd just utterly destroy the same fifth of the galaxy both planets occupy: they're close enough to throw rocks at eachother from their respective moons. Or Dreadnought shells if they want to just ruin someone's day somewhere, and some time.

I also now realize that the Batarian homeworld is, assuming it's fairly deep in the Terminus systems, or at least not within stone-throwing distance of Virmire or Horizon, pretty far from Earth, to the point that if they share borders and nobody except maybe the Quarians are in that region of space, then they would have to control about half the galaxy, and that doesn't really work for what I'm trying to do. So yeah, there's a bit of a problem there that I can't really solve, though I guess I could just say that they control whatever fraction of the galaxy they do based not on pie chart logic, but on actual number of systems or planets in their control. Either way, let this be a lesson to you all: Do your homework before you make plans, because it can come back to bite you in the ass. The Citadel is also really close to palaven, but on the other side of the local cluster, kind of squeezing Vol-Hierarchy territory into a vice grip (Oh come on, that's not a spoiler, I was too blunt about it last chapter). Also, Tuchanka is really poorly positioned in relation to what I want to do with the krogan, but I guess I could make some excuses. Whatever, I'll figure it out. Or just ignore the Cannon Galactic geography, that'd work too. I already made the SSV into the SR2 for no reason except that I thought it'd be more fun, and also because I like EDI. And I don't intend the Normandy to get blown up any time soon. I still reserve the right to do so, but I don't think I will.

You know, while I'm at artistic license changes without a real excuse or reason, I did make the Batarians good guys (without a caste system btw) and Quarian-Geth peace before I came up with logical reason why. Which I have now, and will bring up in the story, but they are contrived.

Oh yeah, also: I lied about the crew deck thing last time, figured I needed to talk about Garrus a little, and I have a bit of spacing that I'm going to use for the next few chapters, fitting chapters on the Normandy around the not-Normandy Chapters, which no, will not exclusively be about Garrus. Crew deck is next chapter, and the Loft won't be explored until at least after Eden Prime.

Other than that, beserkers means exactly what you think it means and I did in fact write this chapter in one or two days, because, as it turns out, I feel weird surfing the web to a lot of sites from the desk my computer got moved to for some reason, but writing just comes naturally and comfortably here. Hm. Weird, but great for you guys I guess.